CC BY
5УДК 323.1
В. Р. Атнашев
ПРОБЛЕМЫ КСЕНОФОБИИ И ПРАВОГО ЭКСТРЕМИЗМА В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ ЕВРОПЕ
АТНАШЕВ Вадим Рафаилович - кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры международного и гуманитарного права. Северо-Западный институт управления Российской академии народного хозяйства и государственной службы при Президенте Российской Федерации. 199034, В.О., 7-я линия, д. 16-18, Санкт-Петербург, Россия. E-mail: vatnash@hotmail.com.
В статье рассматриваются особенности правого экстремизма как угрозы современной Европе. Ксенофобия и мигрантофобия, наряду с противоречивой политикой правящих партий в европейских странах, приводят к экстремизму и насилию. Ультраправый экстремизм также тесно связан с мигрантофобией и расовой ненавистью, которые не являются новыми явлениями и имеют предысторию, в том числе в Германии, Франции и Австрии. Признаки «вечного фашизма» Умберто Эко полностью подходят для характеристики «европейского нового порядка» и современных ультра. В статье, в основном, дается анализ правоэкстремистской деятельности в Германии и Австрии. Наконец, автор затрагивает вопросы евроскептицизма и «Брекзита».
ЭКСТРЕМИЗМ; КРАЙНЕ-ПРАВЫЕ; МИГРАНТОФОБИЯ; ФАШИЗМ; НЕТЕРПИМОСТЬ; ДИСКРИМИНАЦИЯ; БЕЖЕНЦЫ; НАЦИЯ; ЕВРОСКЕПТИЦИЗМ; БРЕКЗИТ
"Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first".
Charles de Gaulle1
Nowadays, the subject of sustainability of European unity and integration of Greater Europe seems especially important. European values and integration
1 Quotations about World and National Patriotism. http://www.quotegarden.com/patriotism.html
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model have spread widely outside the EU, including Eurasian space. At the same time, today's political and economic problems call for clearer directions of integration and cooperation between countries to maintain sustainability, regional stability and safety. However, these problems cannot be solved without resistance to extremism, which is largely based on race discrimination, intolerance and xenophobia.
In many states, the spread of xenophobia among the population has been an acute problem, partly caused by different fears (threat to lose resources, identity and so on). Xenophobia often brings about common extremism or even terrorist acts against foreigners and immigrants. The hosting communities often do not understand that migrants naturally have their own traditions and culture, which, nevertheless, gradually change due to adaptation to local conditions.
Extremism is understood as extreme manifestation of ideas, actions, views aimed at radical change of the existing generally accepted political, social, ideological fundamentals of state and society which create real threat to rights, interests and safety of individuals, society and state.
When they encourage or advocate aggression or violence towards other groups and minorities, they become extremists. Moreover, when they use violence themselves, assail or assault, they become violent-extremists or terrorists.
A special form of extremism - ultra-right extremism - represents a significant threat to democratic values, national and regional stability in Europe for a number of reasons.
First, the cornerstone of today's right-wing extremism is fascism - they have a lot in common in terms of ideology, methods of political struggle and attraction of electorate.
Secondly, today's right-wing radical nationalist parties feature anti-democracy and conscious rejection of Western liberal values. The common characteristic both for fascism in the past and right-wing extremism today is racism and enemy image because they always think about others in dichotomy "us and them", "friend or foe". The majority of the far-right put forward nationalist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic and anti-Marxist claims (regarding impact of Islamophobia on extremism see my chapter in [1]).
Thus, political, ethnical and even race mobilization of some part of the
population in European countries causes social unrest, different social conflicts, spread and consolidation of other forms of extremism
Umberto Eco in his famous list of features of Eternal Fascism (Ur-Fascism) defines that it "grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition" [2].
The next feature (6th) is that "Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois, the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority" [2].
To date, lowest social groups are immigrants and refugees who frighten that new majority both in Germany or Austria and in Great Britain.
Finally, it is worth to mention one more feature of Ur-Fascism (7th):
"To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside" [2].
For the today, scapegoating is yet more convenient because the target groups are second-class citizens, migrants and refugees, who do not enjoy the same legal rights to protection, whose lives and lifestyles are at risk, and who can be intimidated into silence with the threat of deportation.
Though there are many distinctions among far-right movements in Europe, they all are against liberal values, egalitarianism and multi-culturality, so anti-European Union. The far-right movement has deep roots in post-war or even earlier period of the Europe's history, especially German history.
Under Dr. R. Griffin, "it celebrates nationalism at its most local level of regional culture and dialect, appealing to and fomenting separatist sentiments, while replacing the luke-warm liberal Europeanism of political, legal and economic union with one based on the myth of common historical roots and unique cultural heritage" [3]. Below there are some illustrations to the cited statement:
In 1949, former SS Officer Arthur Erhardt founded the monthly Nation Europa to create a forum for all those who cherished the dream of a post-liberal and anti-communist European New Order'. Its ultra-nationalism embraced different organizations and parties which covertly or overtly still promote the ideology (e.g. Le Pen's Front National, Frey's Deutsche Volksunion, Schoenhuber's Republikaner). A propos, the Swede Engdahl formed his own 'European New Order' in 1954 (which in 1958 gave birth to an international youth movement, the Young European Legion).
• A Neo-Nazi congress held in Paris in 1953, created a new body, the European People's Movement, committed to saving "Christian Civilization" from the ravages of Judaism, Communism and Freemasonry.
• "Qu'est-ce que le fascisme?" (1961) by Maurice Bardeche is a major statement of the principle that the belief in the need for national rebirth forms the common ground between the most diverse fascist movements (and it should be channelled into an international crusade against Bolshevism and Americanization).
• In "Vu de droite" by Alain de Benoist (1977) we are told that the "450 million human beings in Europe...are heirs of the same culture, they have a common origin". Thus, the overt rehabilitation of Aryan racial fantasies in order to consider Europe culturally "clean" is a typical sign of the cultural racism of ultras [3].
According to the traditional standpoint, which many European scientists still stick to, racism is "domination of one group over another based on the concepts of race differences" (J. Hazekamp, K. Popple [4]).
In general, it is natural for ultra-nationalists to identify the nation with an allegedly pure ethnic community and hence see the presence of racial minorities, Jews, Gypsies and foreign workers from developing countries as bacilli of cultural contamination. One symptom of the prevalence of this attitude has been
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the resurgence of anti-Semitic, anti-Polish feelings and out-and-out neo-Nazism in the former DDR, feelings which have later become vociferous too in Western Germany.
Meanwhile, now in the East Germany, former GDR, there are much less immigrants than in the west (for example, in Saxony and Thuringia they number 30 thousand). However, about one third of Syrians and Iranians have already moved to the western part of Germany. The reason is that xenophobia and extremism are more spread in the East and neo-fascist parties and forbidden groups are more in favour there.
For example, in the period until 28 August 2015, when riots took place around the hostel for refugees in Heidenau (former GDR) and affected more than 30 police officers, NGOs registered the acts of violence against refugees in 40 cities of Saxony. In 12 cities of the number, the local councils include members of the NPD . Also, xenophobic attitudes in the eastern part of Germany are fuelled by anti-Islamic movement PEGIDA.
Before the beginning of 2016, Germany has hosted more than 1 million refugees from the Middle East. In 2015, violent incidents against homes or future homes of refugees in Germany increased sharply (202 between January and June, as many as there were in all of 2014, according to official figures).
It is worth to note that more than 20 years earlier, in 1992, when 1,5 million immigrants from the Eastern Europe and former USSR arrived to the united Germany, there were also many acts of violence against refugees, arsons and even murders. Main reason for the ban (in 1995) of Free German Workers' Party (FAP), large neo-Nazi association, was the wave of ultra-right attacks on shelters for refugees.
In general, immigrant community has a high percentage of able-bodied people who are not in demand, and politicians in Germany should effectively use their employment potential instead of thinking about their deportation.
Let me remind that it was foreign manpower after the Second World War, when Germany laid in ruins, that rebuilt Germany. In mid 1950s, the German government signed a series of labour supply agreements with Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, Turkey and Greece. According to official statistics, from 1955 to 1973, 14 million migrant workers entered the country (about 800 thousand per year).
2 Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands = National Democratic Party of Germany.
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Only 3 million of them left, and the rest returned to their homeland.
Recent events in Europe and worldwide demonstrate again the necessity to fight with violation of collective and individual rights, to prevent xenophobia and race discrimination. The known unrest, which appears due to different reasons between the immigrants and the recipient countries, contributes to intolerance, mutual distrust, growth of ethno-nationalism, radicalization of the population, escalation of conflicts.
To solve problems of integration of immigrant communities, collective rights of ethnical, language, religious minorities in Germany, Austria and other countries must not be curtailed.
According to Eurostat (as of March 2016), the number of first time asylum applicants in Germany increased from 173 thousand in 2014 to 442 thousand in 2015. In relative terms, the largest increases in the number of first time applicants were recorded in Finland (over nine times as high), Hungary (over four times) and Austria (over three times), Germany's share of the EU-28 total rose from 31 % in 2014 to 35 % in 2015 while in Austria's up 2.2 percentage points to 6.8 % [5] .
The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, launched in 2013 essentially as an anti-euro platform, has seized on the migrant crisis and has seen its support skyrocket in regional elections earlier this year. One can say that AfD moved the German policy from the centrist position to the right side. It has been the refugee influx that helped AfD to get its second wind.
In Autumn 2017, Germans will elect the new Bundestag. AfD has established itself as the third-largest force in opinion polls, and looks set to comfortably go above the 5% threshold needed to win seats in the Bundestag. For German politics, it would be a trial.
In the neighbouring country, Austria, the national extremism there is stronger than in Germany. Already in 2008, after the Austrian legislative elections two allied right extremist parties received 25 seats. In 2013, Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) got 23,4% votes and 34 seats. The party
3 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_quarterly_report)
succeeded mainly because of its anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic propaganda4 [6]. One of the then requirements for migrants "Either be assimilated or be deported!" was supported by 71% Austrian respondents [7].
At the same time, the authorities' policy since 2008 aimed at the integration of immigrants into the Austrian society without forced assimilation gradually began to get more support, according to surveys. But an influx of refugees from the Middle East gave occasion for the right-wing extremists [8].
Austria could recently become the first European country since the Second World War to elect a far-right head of state. At the presidential election in May 2016, leader of the Austrian Freedom Party N. Hofer lost by less than one percentage point to A. van der Bellen [9]. In June 17, it was in Vienna where the leaders of Europe's largest far-right parties gathered to join forces against the European Union, Islam and asylum seekers.
Conclusion
In the early 1990s, the world witnessed the rise of support for the neo-fascist Republican Party in Germany, the parades of racists in full neo-Nazi and neo-fascist regalia celebrating the anniversary of Germany's unification, the burning down of the hostels of asylum seekers and Turks in previously peaceful German towns and so on. At the same period, with the resurgence of the extra-parliamentary radical right, Eurofascism at Strasbourg also extended its influence.
Nowadays, the situation is complicated due to disillusionments with EU's policies and institutions among "new majority" (in terms of Umberto Eco) in different European countries. The Euroscepticism is much stronger than twenty years ago, and so far, its peak is the success of Brexit. After 24th June, 2016, I would compare such a radical right resurgence to a tsunami that has irretrievably disfigured the European political landscape.
As an illustration, let me cite the statement from a blog comment by one English Euro-sceptic: "Civil war will get closer. The EU will of course eventually collapse, like the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia..."5
4 European Elections: 9 Scariest Far-Right Parties Now In The European Parliament / The Huffington Post UK (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/26/far-right-europe-election_n_5391873.html).
5 http://openeurope.org.uk/today/blog/europes-political-landscape-may-look-quite-different-end-2017-uk-referendum-just-one-reasons (nickname "Rollor": June 3, 2016).
In spite of Brexit and far-right international ardour, victories of far-right movement supporters can become Pyrrhic and dangerous for the national and European stability. Hopefully, the EU will not collapse but it has to be reformed to avoid such a pessimistic scenario. In any case, xenophobia, racism and extremism can only push the societies to chaos and conflicts.
Moreover, it should be considered that the countries of Asia and Africa, where the immigrants to today's Europe mostly come from, have their own concepts and models of nation building. In many countries of the Middle East, efforts of the majority to build the nation have often resulted in injustice towards minorities or in their discrimination, to the extent of ethnic cleansing. Hence, an issue emerges about the need for real consideration of the minorities' interests, first of all at the state level. Destabilization of the situation in such countries brings about a dramatic growth in the number of refugees, who flee to the most prosperous and comparatively accessible region - Western Europe.
БИБЛИОГРАФИЧЕСКИЙ СПИСОК / REFERENSES:
1. Atnashev V.R. Impact of Islamophobia and Human Rights: The Radicalization of Muslim Communities // Eradicating Terrorism from the Middle East: Policy and Administrative Approaches. Dawoody. A.R. (Ed.). Springer, 2016. P. 91-106.
2. Eco Umberto, Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt // The New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995. P. 13-14.
3. Griffin, Roger. "Europe For The Europeans: Fascist Myths Of The New Order 1922 - 1992": http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/theories-right/theory1.html.
4. Hazekamp J.L., Popple K. Racism In Europe: The Challenge For Youth Policy And Youth Work. London and New York, 1997.
5. Asylum quarterly report by Eurostate, 2015 (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_quarterly_report).
6. European Elections: 9 Scariest Far-Right Parties Now In The European Parliament/ The Huffington Post UK, 26.05.2014 (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/26/far-right-europe-election_n_5391873.html).
7. The European Union and the Challenge of Extremism and Populism / October, 2013. The European Humanist Federation (http://ec.europa.eu/justice/events/assises-justice-2013/files/contributions/).
8. Across Europe, distrust of mainstream political parties is on the rise / The Guardian, 25.05.2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/across-europe-distrust-of-mainstream-political-parties-is-on-the-rise).
9. Swidlicki P. The far-Right may have lost in Austria but the march of the populists will continue/ The Telegraph, 24.05.2016 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/24/ the-far-right-may-have-lost-in-austria-but-the-march-of-the-popu).
ATNASHEV, Vadim R. - North-West Institute of Management of the Russian Federation Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). 199034, 7-ya linia, V.O. 16-18, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. E-mail: vatnash@hotmail.com.
XENOPHOBIA AND RIGHT-EXTREMISM ISSUES IN THE MODERN EUROPE
The article considers peculiarities of right-extremism and its threat to the modern Europe. Xenophobia and migrantophoby, along with discrepant policies of ruling parties, often lead to extremism and violence. The ultra-right extremism is also closely linked to migrantophoby and racial hatred. These are not new phenomena but can be traced back through history, including Germany, France and Austria. Umberto Eco's features of Eternal Fascism are also perfect for characterizing "European New Order" and modern ultras. Far-right activity in Germany and Austria is mainly analyzed. Finally, the author touchs upon the issue of Euroscepticism and Brexit.
EXTREMISM; FAR-RIGHT; MIGRANTOPHOBY; FASCISM; INTOLERANCE; DISCRIMINATION; REFUGEES; NATION; EUROSCEPTICISM; BREXIT
