A confederacy of xenophobes in Europe?
By Anthony Faiola, Published: April 13
PARIS — From her nondescript offices in the Paris suburbs, *Marine Le Pen — the blond, hazel-eyed face of France’s far right — is leading the charge to build a new alliance of European nationalists, this time by blitzing the ballot box.
A 45-year-old lawyer who wants to halt immigration, Le Pen led France’s National Front to historic gains in local elections last month. She did it by destigmatizing the party co-founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, her 85-year-old father, who once called the Nazi gas chambers a mere *“detail” of history and lost five bids for the French presidency.
In appearances across the country, the younger Le Pen is rolling out a more tempered brand of nationalism that has become a new model across Europe, rejecting her father’s overt racism and playing down the party’s former links to Nazi collaborators. All the while, she is tapping into the rising economic despair of a nation as well as a backlash against the European Union, the 28-country bloc headquartered in Brussels.
Now she is training her sights on a larger prize. From Sweden to Austria, Britain to Italy, nationalist and far-right parties are poised to make record gains next month in elections for the European Parliament. Rather than see their power diluted, Le Pen is seeking to unite a variety of such parties into an extraordinary coalition of anti-E.U. nationalists.
Together, she said, they would work to turn back the clock on the integration and open borders that have defined post-World War II Europe. “You judge a tree by its fruit,” she said last week in her office, a statuette of the Greek goddess of justice resting on a shelf above her. “And the fruits of the E.U. are rotten.”
But these are, after all, nationalists, and forging an international alliance of xenophobes is proving to be just as hard as it sounds. On a continent riddled with old grudges and the ghosts of battles past, working together — for some, anyway — means setting aside centuries-old animosities.
Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, for instance, remains locked in a war of words with its counterparts in Romania and Slovakia over Hungarian-speaking regions in those countries that date to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Far-right Italians, meanwhile, are at odds with Austria’s Freedom Party over the fate of Alto Adige, a largely German-speaking enclave in northern Italy that has been the site of a political tug of war for years.
But there is also a lingering question about just how much certain parties have truly changed. Indeed, even as Le Pen and her European partners seek to shed their image as far-right extremists, their words have often seemed to undermine that effort.
Le Pen’s closest ally, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, sparked outrage at home last month after fiercely promising his faithful that he would work toward having “fewer Moroccans” in the country. Last week, the Austrian Freedom Party’s Andreas Mölzer pulled out of his campaign for reelection to the European Parliament after calling the diverse bloc “a conglomerate of Negroes” whose regulations were worse than Germany’s Third Reich.
But unlike her father, who was accused of being anti-Semitic, Le Pen has been accused of espousing Islamophobia — a word she dismissed in an interview as “a creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Yet she has appeared to push the envelope recently, telling French radio that pork-free meals for Muslim and Jewish children would be banned in the cities and towns now controlled by her party. In an interview with The Washington Post, however, she seemed to backtrack, saying that both pork and non-pork meals would be offered in schools.
And although they agree on the fundamental issue of loosening the ties that bind the E.U., the parties remain deeply at odds over a host of issues, including same-sex marriage. The track record for cooperation among members of the far right also bodes ill. Such parties have repeatedly sought to build alliances in the European Parliament, only to see them fall apart because of infighting.
“Nationalists inherently disagree with each other,” said Simon Hix, a professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics. “They’re all like, “My country is the best one in the world,’ and then the other one says, ‘No, my country is the best one in the world.’ And from there, they all end up fighting.”
But Le Pen insists that this time will be different, that she is gunning for a big win next month. A strong showing by the nationalists, which opinion polls in multiple countries suggest could happen, could effectively put some of the E.U.’s toughest opponents inside its gates.
More at link: A confederacy of xenophobes in Europe? - The Washington Post
"There are always men like you."
--Old German Guy standing up to Loki, The Avengers
By Anthony Faiola, Published: April 13
PARIS — From her nondescript offices in the Paris suburbs, *Marine Le Pen — the blond, hazel-eyed face of France’s far right — is leading the charge to build a new alliance of European nationalists, this time by blitzing the ballot box.
A 45-year-old lawyer who wants to halt immigration, Le Pen led France’s National Front to historic gains in local elections last month. She did it by destigmatizing the party co-founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, her 85-year-old father, who once called the Nazi gas chambers a mere *“detail” of history and lost five bids for the French presidency.
In appearances across the country, the younger Le Pen is rolling out a more tempered brand of nationalism that has become a new model across Europe, rejecting her father’s overt racism and playing down the party’s former links to Nazi collaborators. All the while, she is tapping into the rising economic despair of a nation as well as a backlash against the European Union, the 28-country bloc headquartered in Brussels.
Now she is training her sights on a larger prize. From Sweden to Austria, Britain to Italy, nationalist and far-right parties are poised to make record gains next month in elections for the European Parliament. Rather than see their power diluted, Le Pen is seeking to unite a variety of such parties into an extraordinary coalition of anti-E.U. nationalists.
Together, she said, they would work to turn back the clock on the integration and open borders that have defined post-World War II Europe. “You judge a tree by its fruit,” she said last week in her office, a statuette of the Greek goddess of justice resting on a shelf above her. “And the fruits of the E.U. are rotten.”
But these are, after all, nationalists, and forging an international alliance of xenophobes is proving to be just as hard as it sounds. On a continent riddled with old grudges and the ghosts of battles past, working together — for some, anyway — means setting aside centuries-old animosities.
Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, for instance, remains locked in a war of words with its counterparts in Romania and Slovakia over Hungarian-speaking regions in those countries that date to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Far-right Italians, meanwhile, are at odds with Austria’s Freedom Party over the fate of Alto Adige, a largely German-speaking enclave in northern Italy that has been the site of a political tug of war for years.
But there is also a lingering question about just how much certain parties have truly changed. Indeed, even as Le Pen and her European partners seek to shed their image as far-right extremists, their words have often seemed to undermine that effort.
Le Pen’s closest ally, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, sparked outrage at home last month after fiercely promising his faithful that he would work toward having “fewer Moroccans” in the country. Last week, the Austrian Freedom Party’s Andreas Mölzer pulled out of his campaign for reelection to the European Parliament after calling the diverse bloc “a conglomerate of Negroes” whose regulations were worse than Germany’s Third Reich.
But unlike her father, who was accused of being anti-Semitic, Le Pen has been accused of espousing Islamophobia — a word she dismissed in an interview as “a creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Yet she has appeared to push the envelope recently, telling French radio that pork-free meals for Muslim and Jewish children would be banned in the cities and towns now controlled by her party. In an interview with The Washington Post, however, she seemed to backtrack, saying that both pork and non-pork meals would be offered in schools.
And although they agree on the fundamental issue of loosening the ties that bind the E.U., the parties remain deeply at odds over a host of issues, including same-sex marriage. The track record for cooperation among members of the far right also bodes ill. Such parties have repeatedly sought to build alliances in the European Parliament, only to see them fall apart because of infighting.
“Nationalists inherently disagree with each other,” said Simon Hix, a professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics. “They’re all like, “My country is the best one in the world,’ and then the other one says, ‘No, my country is the best one in the world.’ And from there, they all end up fighting.”
But Le Pen insists that this time will be different, that she is gunning for a big win next month. A strong showing by the nationalists, which opinion polls in multiple countries suggest could happen, could effectively put some of the E.U.’s toughest opponents inside its gates.
More at link: A confederacy of xenophobes in Europe? - The Washington Post
"There are always men like you."
--Old German Guy standing up to Loki, The Avengers
