The far right: a nationalist International?
Listen to the programmeJoerg Schulze presents The far right - a nationalist International and David Ceserani gives his personal view in Comment.
Earlier this year at a rally of the Far Right NPD party in Germany supporters sung the national anthem. For obvious historical reasons any resurgence of the Far Right in Germany is watched with concern, both at home and abroad.
West Germany was able to establish firm democratic roots after the defeat of Hitler. But its reunification with Eastern Germany which had no real democratic foundation and was in a much poorer economic state, combined with the completely new phenomenon of mass and persistent unemployment provided the classic breeding ground for extremist politics.
Last month the threat from the right moved a bit closer when the German People´s Party won thirteen per cent of the vote in the elections in the eastern state of Saxony Anhalt.
But in the New Europe support for nationalist parties is not a problem unique to Germany. In the past decade their numbers have swelled across the continent. Despite their electoral gains, so far, no Far Right party in Europe has been able to break through the 15 per cent barrier with any consistency.
According to George Schopflin, of London University, that's a level of support which democracy can just about tolerate. "We can live with that. It can be very disagreeable, most unpleasant, but we can live with that. The danger arises when it starts to be significantly above ten to fifteen per cent because at that point you have the basis for a proper parliamentary, perhaps extra-parliamentary action - and that paralyses the rest of your parliament."
There is, however, a danger of complacency, especially with unemployment in Europe high and with the unsettling changes associated with EU enlargement and Economic and Monetary Union.
In France Jean-Marie Le Pen´s Front National has become an established part of the political landscape, gaining well over ten per cent in most elections. The National Front has one principal preoccupation - immigration. Jean-Marie Le Chavallier was re-elected mayor in March this year with over a third of the vote in the southern port town of Toulon . His slogan is "Your security and the French first". "France is made up of those born in France and those born elsewhere. What´s important is culture and a sense of belonging to the international family. In the last thirty years we've had ten million immigrants, and every year there are one hundred and sixty thousand more - usually from the third world. They have no financial means, no qualifications and there are too many of them. This is no longer immigration, it´s an invasion." Earlier this month Le Chevallier's wife was defeated in the only seat held by the Front National in the National Assembly. Nonetheless, the views of the Le Chevalliers, with their often exaggerated claims on immigration numbers, can easily be heard echoed in the street. This, for example, from an old man who was shopping in the market in Vitrolles, another National Front stronghold. "It´s those who are born in France, those who lost parents, men during the war, those who worked in France and raised their children in France, who have unemployed children, for example. We have to give priority to them. Now I´m not saying we should put the others in camps, but we have to look after French people first."
Opposition to immigration is the battle cry of the extreme right across Europe, such as Austria's Freedom Party. Its supporters demand tougher restrictions on foreigners.
The Freedom Party´s leader Jöerg Haider is charismatic and youthful. His strategy has been to make his party respectable - electable to the middle class. That's why he rejects any comparison with other Far Right leaders such as Le Pen -- even though the Freedom Party´s manifesto mirrors that of the National Front´s and even though the National Front too has been aiming for respectability by making deals with moderate conservative parties. Joerg Haider -"When I came to the United States for the first time I had to explain - is the Freedom Party similar to Le Pen or something else? I explained it by an example in the United States and said: "Look to your south border in San Diego for instance where the border control has erected two metre high walls to prevent the Mexican people coming to California." It would not be imaginable to do it in Austria but we have to fight against the wave of immigration too."
Many of the Austrian immigrants have arrived from Central Europe. The collapse of communism opened the door for workers in the East to seek employment - legally or illegally, in the affluent West. But far right parties in former communist countries have found their own scapegoats - established minorities such as gypsies.
Unlike its counterparts in the West, the Republican Party in the Czech Republic has had to build up its support base and party structure from scratch. Jan Vik is an MP for the Republican Party. "We don´t like seeing the so-called waves of migration from various East European countries, Asia, Africa and so on - because even with the best will [in the world] we've got enough problems of our own, for example with our gypsies. And we don´t see why they should be reinforced fromRomania, Ukraine and I don´t know where else."
David Ceserani, director of the London based Wiener Library on the holocaust and fascism, leafs through the mountains of research tracking the far right. According to Professor Ceserani, it would be a mistake to see nationalism in Eastern and Central Europe as a new phenomenon. Instead, he says, it's merely been suspended in time. "In some cases, what we are seeing is a resurgence of ethnic and national conflicts that were frozen by communism. The position of minorities within certain central and Eastern European states, the Hungarians in what is now Slovakia for example, was simply not an issue while Hungary and the Czechoslovak Republic were both members of the Eastern bloc and enjoyed fraternal co-operation. Now these are independent countries. And some ruthless, unscrupulous political leaders in both countries have used the minority situation." Slovakia has not been invited to join NATO and has been put into the slow track of EU membership, in part because of the government's curtailment of the cultural and language rights of the Hungarian minority. The radical nationalist Slovak National Party was invited to join the ruling coalition in 1994, and has been there ever since. But Dusan Slobodnik, a Slovak National Party MP and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, maintains the Hungarian minority enjoy a privileged status. "The official policy never has been in Slovakia judged or evaluated as a nationalistic policy. We are patriots of our country but nationalism means not saying about the whole range of this term - it means suppression of some other nation or of some other group. And it doesn´t happen in Slovakia."
The anti-immigrant, anti-minority rights campaign, is not the only issue which unites the European extreme right. The Far Right is also virulently anti- Brussels. Jan Vik of the Czech Republican Party says the EU threatens a new imperialism. "The Czech Republic should finally be itself, not move away from the Eastern sphere around Moscow just to turn madly a hundred and eighty degrees and do everything they want in the West - be it in Bonn or Brussels."
All the Far Right parties in Europe oppose closer European integration. That, says the Czech born historian Jacques Rupnik, is potentially fertile political territory. "With the progress of European integration, with Maastricht, with now the common currency and of course with Schengen, with the idea that borders between European Union members are being abolished - well, that obviously is a whole new unchartered territory and naturally the right wing nationalists will try to use it and abuse it, and they are already doing so - not very effectively in most cases but I think on the immigration issue and on the issue of borders they will try to make some mileage out of the anti-European campaign."
For most Europeans, nationality remains one of the most important badges of identity. According to Professor Cesarani, the nationalism of the Far Right will eventually be weakened - not by a growing attachment to Brussels, but rather by a growing attachment to one's region. "The EU is a practical demonstration that the old nation-state has probably come to the end of its career but more positively it does stimulate and facilitate regional identities. In the case of the United Kingdom, for example membership of the European Union has made it possible for people of Scotland to press the case for autonomy within the UK and to make the case for independence much stronger because the EU provides a nest in which small nations and regions can function effectively. It has to some extent shifted the focus to cultural identities and away from political identities."
In Russia the extreme nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has been known to throw a glass of juice over his opponent in a heated television debate. A crude political style often accompanied by a crude anti-semitism. Zhirinovsky has tried to forge links with like-minded political leaders across Europe. On several occasions he's met representatives of nationalist Serb organisations, repeating his pledges of Russian support for the Serb cause. He also tried to enter Belgium and Germany -- but has been refused visas. There are some signs of co-operation among parties of the European far right -- facilitated by modern communications such as the internet. But George Schöpflin from the University of London thinks that the spectre of far right networks has more to do with media hype than reality: "I can see far right skinheads from a variety of countries getting together and saying "let´s all be horrible together" and then the journalists will go "oh - magnificent story, look at them!" - and they will focus on two hundred shaven-headed thugs and say 'There´s the New Europe'. That's rubbish, it´s not true. But that´s the way that television especially likes to handle it. They might even be horrible to each other but they are a drop in the ocean."
Well maybe. But in parts of the New Europe, violence against minorities and immigrants has become endemic. In East Germany alone last year several were killed and over a 1000 injured by far right thugs. Nonetheless, Professor David Ceserani, believes the idea of a nationalist international, is a contradiction in terms. "There has always been talk of a "black international", there have been attempts to bring fascists throughout Europe together since the 1920s and they´ve always failed because there is a fundamental incompatibility between a nationalism, particularly in its far-right version, which accentuates national difference or racism and posits irresolvable differences between people and nations in the attempt to create transnational alliances. It´s possible for fascist groups to operate together at a pragmatic level. But when push comes to shove and when these chaps get drunk at their annual rallies they very soon start hurling racial and nationalistic epithets at each other and they find it impossible to co-operate, I regard the chances of a "black international" with a pinch of salt ." 
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