Long-gone:
Extremists Making Big Inroads In Europe
by Jack Kinsella
Europe is in a state of shock following the defeat of French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. What stunned the European establishment was the success of right-wing extremist and ultra-nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen came second in the first round of the presidential vote on Sunday, beating off the left's favorite, Lionel Jospin, to reach the final run-off against the conservative incumbent, Jacques Chirac.
To give some sense of relativity, the term 'conservative' as applied to Jacques Chirac is by French standards.
Additionally, in the US, the appellation 'right' is generally applied to conservatives, 'left' to liberals. But in Europe, when one speaks of the right, one is speaking of political views approaching those of the '30's.
By US standards, Chirac would stand somewhere to the liberal left of Ted Kennedy. As a result, the terms liberal and conservative are misleading. The French are among the most liberal in Europe.
So the victory of Jean Le Pen over the more-liberal-than-Chirac Lionel Jospin means more than at first meets the eye. Le Pen scares both the liberals and the conservatives across Europe.
Jospin's Socialists and the other main parties of the left have called on their supporters to back Mr Chirac on 5 May in a concerted effort to defeat the far-right challenger.
About ten thousand people demostrated against the results in Paris alone. Banners denounced Mr Le Pen, who earned notoriety for his remarks on the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews and his opposition to immigration. "Mussolini: 1922. Hitler: 1933. Le Pen: never" was the cry at a rally in the eastern city of Strasbourg.
Assessment:
While the mainstream may have been shocked by the election of Le Pen, it is important to remember that he beat the sitting Prime Minister, meaning his ultranationalist views are shared by a significant segment of the French population.
Europe may still be far from the pandemic despair that gave rise to fascism in the 1930s. Today's sense of insecurity, however, is provoking some comparisons to the brooding atmosphere that led to social upheaval, dictatorship, atrocities and war.
Although Le Pen, who once dismissed Nazi gas chambers as "a minor detail in the history of World War II," is likely to be routed by incumbent President Jacques Chirac in the May 5 runoff, far-right figures have triumphed elsewhere in Europe.
The xenophobic Freedom Party shares power in Austria, even though its charismatic leader, Joerg Haider, has stepped down.
In Denmark, voter disaffection with left-of-center rule was galvanized by the strong anti-immigration platform of the Danish People's Party, which also sits in government.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media magnate and no friend of the left, governs the country with the support of the right-wing National Alliance and Northern League.
Mainstream Europe is feeling an ominous hint of recognition in the drift to the right. In Greece, fascist occupation during World War II left deep scars on the national psyche.
Greek daily Ta Nea wrote that "Europe freezes as fascism rises" and likened the spread of far-right influence to "resurrection of the vampire" that drained the continent's lifeblood during the Holocaust.
Kristallnacht Revisted?
Meanwhile, the Washington Times headlined a story yesterday, "Synagogues burn as Europeans rage".
The Times reported that in recent days, one synagogue in Marseille, France, has been doused in gasoline and burned to the ground.
Another in Lyon, France, was damaged in a car attack. A third, in Brussels, was firebombed. A fourth, in Kiev, was attacked by 50 youths chanting, "Kill the Jews," before beating up a rabbi.
In Great Britain, police have logged at least 15 anti-Jewish episodes this month, including eight physical assaults, synagogues daubed with racist slogans and hate mail sent to prominent figures among the nation's 300,000 Jews.
A Jewish theology student was reading a book of Psalms aboard a London bus when he was stabbed 27 times.
The destruction of the synagogue at Marseille was the sixth attack on a Jewish religious site in France in less than a week. In Lyon, 15 masked assailants smashed two cars into a synagogue and set it on fire. Other arsonists tried to set fire to a synagogue in Strasbourg.
There were also attacks on Jewish citizens. A man opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop in a village near Toulouse. A Jewish school at Sarcelles, near Paris, was ransacked.
Youths stoned one Jewish school bus and set fire to two others in Paris, and a gang waded into a team of Jewish soccer players, beating them with iron bars.
A Jewish synagogue in the German town of Herford was daubed with the words "Six million were not enough". Six million Jews were shoveled into ovens by the Nazis during World War II.
Eclectus |
