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T_i_B

(14,734 posts)
Thu May 15, 2014, 07:29 AM May 2014

The rise of Europe's far right will only be halted by a populism of the left

I tend not to agree with Seamus Milne all that often at the moment, but he has a very good point here. The European Parliament elections taking place over here at the moment seem to resemble a far right version of the "People's Front Of Judea" scene from Monty Python's Life Of Brain.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/14/rise-of-europe-far-right-only-halted-by-populism-of-left

In France, Denmark and Finland, rightwing nationalist and racist parties are set to win more than 20% of the vote – with Geert Wilders' Muslim-baiting Freedom party not far behind in the Netherlands. So is the virulently anti-Roma and antisemitic Jobbik in Hungary, while the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party in Greece is on the way to winning its first Euro seats.

In fact, they're a disparate bunch. While UKIP are free-marketeers, the French National Front pitches for working class votes with demands for state intervention and social protection. And although opposition to immigration is a mobilising cause for most of these parties, some such as Jobbik scapegoat existing minorities instead.

What is common to all is that they are drawing on the social discontent that has mushroomed across the continent on the back of a decade of growing insecurity and unemployment, falling living standards and austerity. For many of their voters abandoned by the establishment parties, the populist right looks like the only alternative to hand.

So long as Europe's establishment remains locked in this Brussels orthodoxy, the only antidote to the growth of the far right is a populism of the left: one that targets class and corporate power instead of foreigners. In different ways, that has been the approach of Syriza, now leading the polls in Greece, and the Dutch Socialist party, expected to overtake Labour for the first time. Without it the rise of the racists and xenophobes will go on.
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