Far-Right “Contagion” or a Failing “Mainstream”? How Dangerous Ideas Cross Borders and Blur Boundaries

Abstract

The article argues that we are witnessing a lethal “mainstreaming” trend across Europe that involves previously taboo ideas, frames, and practices becoming the new “common sense” for growing sections of European politics and societies. As in the case of the dramatic slide into dictatorship and the spread of virulent anti-Semitism in the 1930s, the divisive ideas of the contemporary far right vis-à-vis minorities, immigrants, and Muslims/Islam in particular have been crossing multiple boundaries—between “extremist” and “mainstream” politics and voters, between taboo and legitimate views, as well as between countries. As in the 1930s, the success of this putative “far-right contagion” today owes at least as much to the weakening defenses or cynical opportunism of the mainstream as to the dynamics and appeal of the radical right's ideas themselves.

Keywords:

• Far-Right Contagion
• Golden Dawn
• License to Hate

Notes

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3. “Greece: Halt Mass Migrant Round-Ups: Discriminatory Police Sweeps Violate Rights,” Human Rights Watch, August 8, 2012, www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/08/greece-halt-mass-migrant-round-ups.

4. Aristotle Kallis, “Greek Populist Parties and the Disoriented Mainstream, OpenDemocracy, June 18, 2012, www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/aristotle-kallis/greek-populist-parties-and-disoriented-mainstream; “Special Report: Greece's Far-Right Party Goes on the Offensive,” Reuters, November 12, 2012, www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/12/us-greece-crisis-dawn-idUSBRE8AB09F20121112.

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7. Patrick Moreau, “The Victorious Parties—Unity in Diversity?” in Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau, eds., The Extreme Right in Europe. Trends and Perspectives (Goettingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 98–101; and Antonis A. Ellinas, “LAOS and the Greek Far Right Since 1974,” in Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin, and Brian Jenkins, eds., Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From Local to Transnational (London: Routledge, 2012), 125ff.

8. Human Rights Watch, 2010, 2011.

9. Report on Greece, Amnesty International Annual Report 2012, www.amnesty.org/en/region/greece/report-2012; “Greece's Far-Right Golden Dawn Party Maintains Share of Vote,” The Guardian, June 18, 2012; “Greek Far Right Hangs a Target on Immigrants,” New York Times, July 10, 2012.

10. “Racist Violence Recording Network: Findings 1.1.2012–30.9.2012,” UNHCR-Greece, www.unhcr.gr/fileadmin/Greece/News/2012/pr/ConclusionsOctober2012EN.pdf ; “Greece's Other Crisis,” Human Rights Watch, July 13, 2012.

11. Human Rights Watch, “Hate on the Streets,” July 2012, www.hrwnews.org/distribute/hrw_greece_migrants.pdf; “Racist Attacks in Greece Hit ‘Alarming’ Levels: UNHCR,” Reuters, October 23, 2012.

12. Interview with the mayor of Corinth, Alexandros Pnevmatikos, August 24, 2012, available at www.aftodioikisi.gr/sunenteuxeis-arfra/22339. Even more derogatory references to immigrants as “miserable subhumans … [who] have invaded our country and carry all sorts of diseases” were made by the Golden Dawn MP Eleni Zaroulia (wife of the party's president) inside the Greek parliament in October 2012.

13. The comments were made at a radio interview of the Minister of Public Order on August 4, 2012 and were reproduced by the newspaper To Vima on August 6, 2012 (available online at: www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=469853). Similar comments about “taking back the cities [from the immigrants]” had been made by the then-leader of the opposition (and current prime minister) Antonis Samaras during the 2012 election campaign—see “Samaras Claims That Greeks Must “Take Back” Cities From Immigrants,” Athens News, April 20, 2012, www.athensnews.gr/portal/8/55031.

14. “Greece must halt the sweep-operation “Xenios Zeus” and ensure that the right to asylum is guaranteed for persons seeking international protection,” European Council of Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), August 15, 2012, www.ecre.org/component/content/article/56-ecre-actions/307-round-ups-in-greece.html.

15. Kappa Research poll results were published in November 2012. For the earlier poll on attitudes toward immigrants, see Paul Tugwell, “Most Greeks Support Clampdown on Illegal Immigration, Poll Shows,” Bloomberg, April 8, 2012.

16. Daniel Trilling, “A Warning from Athens,” New Statesman, December 12, 2012, www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/12/warning-athens; and William Wheeler, “Europe's New Fascists,” New York Times, November 17, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/europes-new-fascists.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

17. Anthony Faiola, “Anti-immigrant Golden Dawn Rises in Greece,” Washington Post, October 20, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-20/world/35500727_1_golden-dawn-greek-parliament-immigrant.

18. See, for example, Paul Mason, “Alarm at Greek Police ‘Collusion’ With Far-Right Golden Dawn,” BBC News, October 17, 2012, available (along with various video clips showing attacks) online at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841.

19. Information about recent polls showing significantly rising support for the Golden Dawn can be found in Damien McElroy, “Golden Dawn Takes Advantage of Recession Ravaged Greece,” Daily Telegraph, November 2, 2012, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9651505/Golden-Dawn-takes-advantage-of-recession-ravaged-Greece.html.

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21. Elisabeth Carter, The Extreme Right in Western Europe: Success or Failure? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 2–8.

22. Jens Rydgren, The Populist Challenge: Political Protest and Ethno-National Mobilization in France (New York & Oxford: Berghahn, 2004), 3–10; Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer, “Right-wing Extremism as a Social Movement,” in Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer, eds., Extreme Right Activists in Europe Through the Magnifying Lens (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 11.

23. Ruud Koopmans et al., Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 180–204.

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31. Aristotle Kallis, Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Interwar Europe (New York: Routledge, 2009), 216–227.

32. Eatwell, “Ten Theories,” 51–52.

33. Paul Jackson, “Supplying the Demand,” Searchlight 19 (November 2011), www.radicalism-new-media.org/index.php/activities/publications/searchlight-articles/113-supplying-the-demand.

34. Katherine Fieschi, “How the Far-Right Is Becoming Mainstream,” New Statesman, April 25, 2012. The mainstreaming of anti-Islam discourses is discussed in From the Far Right to the Mainstream: Islamophobia in Party Politics and the Media, eds. Humayun Ansari and Farid Hafez (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2012).

35. Note, however, that there are increasing voices from mainstream parties to abandon the policy of the cordon sanitaire. In January 2013, Flemish Christian Democrat senator Rik Torfs publicly described the political ostracism of the Vlaams Blok a “mistake,” adding that “[without the ‘cordon’ policy] Bart De Wever would never have been where he is today because nationalists would have had a better representation and because other parties would have had to organize themselves better as a result.” See “Cordon Sanitaire Was Good for N-VA,” Flanders News, January 2, 2013, www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/news/1.1516769.

36. “Party of European Socialists (PES) Adopts Stringent Guidelines to Counter the Rise of the Extreme,” Press Release of Party of European Socialists (PES), October 15, 2010, http://pr.euractiv.com/pr/party-european-socialists-pes-adopts-stringent-guidelines-counter-rise-extreme-right-90256.

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39. Rydgren, Populist Challenge, 162–171.

40. Christian Schori Liang, “Europe for the Europeans: The Foreign and Security Policy of the Populist Radical Right,” in Europe for the Europeans: The Foreign and Security Policy of the Populist Radical Right, ed. Christian Schori Liang (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 7–8; David Art, Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 18–20, 32, 39; Jens Rydgren, “Is Extreme Right-Wing Populism Contagious? Explaining the Emergence of a New Party Family,” European Journal of Political Research 44, no. 3 (2005): 413–437.

41. Hans-Georg Betz, “Against the ‘Green Totalitarianism’: Anti-Islamic Nativism in Contemporary Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe,” in Christina Schori Liang, ed., Europe for the Europeans: The Foreign and Security Policy of the Populist Radical Right (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2013) 33–54.

42. See, for example, Charalambos Kasimis, “Greece: Illegal Immigration in the Midst of Crisis,” Migration Policy Institute: Country Profiles, www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=884.

43. Chris Tilly, “The Impact of the Economic Crisis on International Migration: A Review,” Work, Employment and Society 25, no. 4 (2011): 675–692; Uri Dadush and Lauren Falcao, “Migrants and the Global Financial Crisis,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy Brief 83 (November 2009).

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72. Kallis, Genocide and Fascism, 168–170.

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88. Rydgren, “Is Extreme Right-Wing Populism Contagious?,” 429.

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