Nationalism and Violence

All over Europe the extreme right parties share values and policy position. The European parliament is elected by popular vote, so while few of these parties have seats in their national parliament, many have a member of the European Parliament to represent them. This has lead to an ironic international coalition of right-wing euroskeptics in the European Parliament; working in a multinational partnership in Brussels so their countries will no longer have to work in a multinational partnership in Brussels. Who are these parties?

In France, there is Le Front National:

If you cannot read French, consider yourself lucky. This is a poster from a campaign against le Front National, the central text reads "Let's unmask le Front National" and it is surrounded by unseemly quotes. In the bottom-left corner is a quote from Jean-Marie LePen, Honorary President of Le Front National.

"I am not saying that the gas chambers didn't exist. But I believe it is a minor detail in the history of the Second World War."
-Jean-Marie LePen

This LePen's daughter,  Marine LePen, the current leader of the party, has been making an effort to normalize the image of the party, turning the rhetoric down without altering the party platform. She actually cast her own father from the party for his antisemitic remarks. This strategy is working: while the French electoral system is such that le Front National has no members of parliament, preliminary polls show Marine LePen as the frontrunner in the first round of the 2017 presedential elections.

In Hungary, there is Jobbik:

Yes they are as creepy and naziesque as that looks. Antisemitic scapegoating, a xenophobic immigration policy, euroscepticism, and extreme right-wing religious views are their party platform. In Hungary and throughout Europe, the extreme right also likes to bill itself as anticommunist. For so many Hungarians, the fear of immigration eroding Magyar cultural preeminence, and the painful and recent memory of the communist police state, mean that rather than viewed as aberrant, these young men are instead viewed as merely having "taken things a bit too far." This is the ugly truth of the extreme right, they give voice to widespread fears that others are too reserved to express publicly. They are not the cause of xenophobia, islamaphobia, homophobia, and antisemitism, but a product of it.

The United Kingdom boasts both the UK Independence Party and the British National Party:

In Britain, there is a whole class of very angry people, who feel that the last half of the 20th century left them behind. They aren't wrong; the ethnic English working class cannot expect the sort of life which their parents were guaranteed, and it easier to scapegoat minorities than to understand the structural economic changes responsible. Attitudes toward LGBT people and religious and ethnic minorities have changed fundamentally, and the British media culture reflects this. In so much of public life, right-wing ideas are now anathema. It is even illegal to use speech which might promote violence. While it doesn't do to sympathize too much with bigots, one can see how this disaffection could grow into political movement. In terms of electoral groups, the British National Party is the older and more traditional right wing party, and its previous leader's attempt to "de-demonize" the party ended in failure. He resigned in a statement that declared the party "full of racists." I think he was the only one surprised. With substantially more success there is UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party). While sharing many policy planks with the BNP, UKIP has tried to style itself as classier, friendlier, and more focused on breaking away from the EU. UKIP began its life as a single-issue anti-EU party, and the rest of its right-wing, nativist platform was added later. Contrary to the world I would prefer to live in, this right-wing anti-immigrant rhetoric has made them more popular; chiefly by targeting electoral districts with large populations of uneducated white people.

Even the Nordic countries have their own brand of right-wing nationalism. For example, the Dansk Folkeparti or Danish People's Party advocates an end to immigration, but not the dismantling of the welfare state. Perhaps it is this more moderate stance on social issues that makes the Folkeparti one of the most widely represented nationalist parties in Europe. The Danish Electoral system has proportional representation for all parties above a certain threshold, which means that the Folkeparti has 37 seats in the Danish parliament,

This picture is actually from Sweden, but everyone likes to see a Nazi being whacked with a handbag.

In Germany there is the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands:

The common threads begin to weave a pattern: They condone racist and xenophobic violence, they tolerate the Neo-Nazis in their midst, and they scapegoat Muslims, immigrants, and Jews. Germany is somewhat more hesitant to allow Neo-Nazi parties than other European states, and the security services and judiciary have repeatedly attempted to shut it down. However, in the last attempt, the courts found that too many government agents had been undercover in the organization, so it was not clear that the party would have planned illegal activity otherwise.

These are not the only right wing parties in Europe. Literally every country with free elections has at least one. I bring them up because I feel like they tell a story; one that repeats in America, and perhaps throughout the world. White folks are the wealthiest and most privileged class of people in nearly every country they inhabit, however it is not generally the wealthiest white people that wind up participating in racist, nationalist political movements. Instead, these parties' ranks swell with the white working class; a group of people raised to believe that they were entitled to a certain standard of living. The forces that denied them that standard of living are difficult to identify, but these poor white folks can look around them and see loads of immigrants doing as well or better than they are.

Whether it is racism, chauvinism, or just jealousy that leads them to believe that these people are their inferiors, the results are the same: the non-white, the religious minorities, the LGBT, any who can be marked as other are blamed for their misfortune. I think we need to consider the populist and nativist tendencies in American politics; rule by a right-wing nationalist party is not as unlikely as one might imagine.