Not so right after all? Making sense of the progressive rhetoric of Europe’s far-right parties (original) (raw)
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It is becoming increasingly clear that the debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants has moved into the center of European political discourse. The increasing volume of publications about the role of Islam in social, cultural and political spheres indicates that Islam is now a major political issue, often associated with the debate on terrorism and security. This article argues that the shift in focus should be understood as the result of a hegemonic shift that goes back to the mid-1980s when the populist far-right intervened in the immigration debate in Europe. The far-right not only presented immigration as a cultural threat to the future of European nations but also succeeded in moving immigration to the center of political discourse. This was done through successive right-wing political interventions that helped establish Muslim immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture, and kept the national focus on immigration as an imminent threat to 'our common' achievements.
Brookings Institution, 2019
Today, fear of and opposition to Islam or Muslims provides a connective thread uniting otherwise disparate political parties. In Europe, nearly every major right-wing populist party emphasizes cultural and religious objections to Muslim immigration. The bigger issue is that the immigrants in question are Muslim, not that they are immigrants. Importantly, anti-Muslim sentiment also affects Muslims who are already citizens. The ongoing debate then is less about immigration and more about integration. This paper argues that anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiment should be considered as defining features of right-wing populism. Moreover, the extent to which a given populist party—which might otherwise be ambiguously positioned on a left-right spectrum—can be considered right-wing is closely related to its positions on Islam-related questions. This is particularly relevant for parties that have not always been characterized as “right-wing,” such as Italy’s Five Star Movement, which, after vacillating on refugees and immigration, has increasingly highlighted its anti-Islam bona fides. Anti-Muslim sentiment is fueled by perceptions—some of which are supported by survey data—that Muslims are less assimilated, particularly when it comes to prevailing norms around secularism and the private nature of religious practice. These markers of Muslim religiosity include workplace prayer accommodations, abstention from alcohol, discomfort with gender mixing, conservative dress, and demands for halal meat options. Observed by significant numbers of Muslims, these are all practices that reflect “private” faith commitments that are at the same time either publicly observable or have public and legal implications. It would be a mistake to view the debate over Islam and Muslims as only that. The increased salience of anti-Muslim attitudes signals a deeper shift in the party system away from economic cleavages toward “cultural” ones. Increasingly, attitudes toward Muslims become a powerful proxy for a long list of primarily cultural issues and grievances, including gender equality, gay rights, sexual freedom, the role of the European Union, secularism, the decline of Christianity, race, and demographic concerns. Demographic fears—even if they don’t correspond to reality—are difficult to ignore in democracies, where the changing ethnic or religious composition of the population can shape and even determine whether a party can win on the local or national level. In established democracies, we might expect party systems to be resistant to change, with shifts happening along the margins without altering the basic structure of electoral competition. This makes the current shifts in party alignment and agenda-setting more striking. If party realignments are rare, occurring perhaps only once every few generations, then this suggests that the emerging party system may become entrenched for the foreseeable future, just as previous economic “left-right” divides dominated for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. If there is a cultural divide—and one that is likely to persist—then there are two basic directions to go in response: either some form of top-down, state-driven forced integration; or an effort to accept and accommodate at least some cultural and religious difference. Instead of imposing the responsibility to adapt solely on Muslim citizens or immigrants, both “sides” would need to make compromises.
Al-Kindi Center for Research and Development , 2024
This study examines the relationship between immigration and the rise of far-right parties in Europe from 2014 to 2024, focusing on the implications for societal security. It explores how far-right parties have capitalized on immigration, framing it as a critical threat to national identity and social stability. Applying the Copenhagen School's securitization theory, the research analyzes how these parties have redefined immigration as a national security issue, thereby legitimizing more stringent immigration policies and exclusionary practices. The findings indicate that far-right parties have effectively utilized public anxieties and uncertainties surrounding immigration to influence the political discourse across Europe. This shift has significant socio-political consequences, posing challenges to the European Union's foundational principles of integration, democracy, and human rights. The study highlights concerns over democratic backsliding, the erosion of social policies, and threats to freedom of movement and human rights. Additionally, it examines the potential impacts on the EU's cohesion policy, foreign policy, enlargement process, and environmental sustainability. The research underscores a major transformation in Europe's political landscape with far-reaching implications for the stability of the European Union and its member states.
The Impact of the Rise of the European Far Right on the Issue of Immigration
International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education (IJHSSE), 2022
Migration and asylum issues are one of the most important problems in the international arena today, in light of the escalating crises in the Middle East region in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and even Afghanistan. Despite the interpretations and solutions offered by the politics of international law and the development of political and legal frameworks in an attempt to understand and codify the mechanisms of dealing with the refugee crisis through political decisions and international agreements and treaties, there are aspects that are difficult to deal with that have to do with political psychology and conflicts in international relations, especially if the crisis is based on many of what are called "misperceptions". Therefore, this study seeks to investigate and analyse misperceptions by focusing on the European position, especially in light of the growing role of far-right parties within the European Union, towards the problems of migration and asylum and the rise of the far-right in Europe, and the impact of these stereotypes on European policies
2019
Arguably, the most urgent narratives in the contemporary world are political in the widest sense of the term. It seems to me, certainly from a European perspective that there are two major, conflicting political narratives at the moment: a European one from a White Nationalist, Identitarian perspective, seeing itself in danger of being displaced by migrants, challenged by a narrative from the Global South, itself constructed by those in flight from war, poverty, and exploitation. Both, in a profound sense, are linked by displacement, one metaphorical/symbolic, and the other emergent and actual. In this paper, I want to concentrate upon this particular European (or, more precisely perhaps, Euro-American) far Right narrative which, if not exactly dominant, is certainly gaining currency and is manifested in populist politics. The principal target of this narrative is immigration, specifically refugees;its main adversary is the ‘lickspittle mentality’ of Liberalism which has, it is clai...
Contemporary Far-Right Racist Populism in Europe
Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2016
A spectre is haunting Europe. Not for the first time, right-wing racist movements are on the march across that continent, with parliamentary beachheads in a number of nations, as well, of course, as the possibly disintegrating European parliament. These troubling processes were under way when this special issue was planned in 2014, arising from a session, on right-wing racist populism, of the Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations (RC05) of the International Sociological Association at its congress in Yokohama. The session had been proposed in 2012, and already the signs were there that nationalist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic movements and political parties were on the rise, from the upsurge of Golden Dawn in economic crisis-ridden Greece, to the arrival of English Defence League (EDL) thugs on British streets. As yet then, Brexit was inconceivable, however, and indeed it failed to be conceived by the British elite until they were surprised by the 2016 referendum and the effectiveness of its antiimmigration campaign. The crisis of refugees fleeing from war in Syria and other devastation from the Arab Winter had not been imaginedat least not in the scale that eventuated, with its impact and reaction in Europe. We are currently confronted by all of these realities; can we make sociological sense of the bigger picture? The EDL, the mainstreaming of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) that claimed victory in the Brexit vote, the rehabilitation and popularity of the National Front in France, the advent of Alternative für Deutschland (AfDwhich has, as we write, just won the second-largest party share of the vote in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election), the 'protest' phenomenon of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA) in Germany (and somewhat beyond), the continued interventions of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands and their gains in the national and European parliaments, the very close-run Austrian presidential election in 2016 (to be rerun in October) with far-right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer, gaining almost 50 per cent of the vote, in Sweden the rise in support for the far-right populist anti-immigration party the Swedish Democrats, and in Greece the popular and electoral surge of the aforementioned Golden Dawn: this is by no means a comprehensive listing, even for Europe. Nor is the growth of right-wing populist, nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-asylum seeker, anti-Muslim politics confined to Europe. Donald Trump's phenomenal
2018
Populist politic is spreading his influence in western democracies contesting at all each form of multicultural enlargement of democratic citizenship. At the same time, populists rudely contest traditional parties – either conservatives or progressives – for the indifference their policies demonstrate to ‘common people’s’ interest, just because they’re accused to represent mainly the issues of so-called establishment. Nevertheless, both the technocratic and the leadership dilemmas maybe could find an interesting perspective of democratic innovation just renewing political elites trough the contribution of the ‘new europeans’, as the cases of mayors of Paris and London or the new leadership of Dutch Green Party demonstrates. What’s the relationship between the extensions of vote rights to new Europeans and immigrants and populist politics affirmation, and can the social or ‘sociologic’ renovation of parties memberships and of democratic citizenship at all represent an antidote to it? How old and new European non-populist parties are discussing the theme of the electoral naturalization of the migrants? How they involve ‘new Europeans’ and their cultural issues in the space of parties’ membership and agenda? And, overall, may this represent an innovative policy-asset to promote and renew the democratic and freedom-based European model of citizenship?