Charles Brown
Fri, 4 Feb 2000 11:57:09 -0800
Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1999, Sunday, Home Edition
THE WORLD / EUROPE; THE FASCIST RESPONSE TO GLOBALIZATION
by Martin A. Lee, Martin A. Lee is the author of "The Beast Reawakens," a
book about, neo-fascism
Austria's far-right Freedom Party sent shock waves through Europe when it
won 27% of the vote in recent national elections. Joerg Haider, the Freedom
Party's youthful, charismatic fuehrer, is now in a strong position to
contend for the Austrian chancellorship, despite his penchant for
expressing pro-Nazi sympathies.
While Austrian officials struggled to put together a viable governing
coalition, Switzerland's extremist right-wing People's Party, led by
Christoph Blocher, scored a major electoral breakthrough, winning 23% of
the vote in late October. Blocher, like Haider, is a tub-thumping,
xenophobic multimillionaire who rails against immigrants, government
corruption and the European Union. Blocher caused a stir when he praised
the author of a book that denied the Holocaust.
Austria and Switzerland are small countries with comparatively little
influence on the world stage. But if such enthusiasm for the extreme right
extended across the border into Germany, it would be a matter of grave
concern for the entire international community. Currently, in economically
depressed eastern Germany, an alarming 15% to 20% of young men vote for
neo-fascist parties. "To say that one-third of East German youth is now
prone to the extreme right is an understatement," warns Berlin
criminologist Berndt Wagner. "The point of no return has already been
reached for many. It's growing. It's getting worse."
"Neo-fascism and neo-Nazism are gaining ground in many countries,
especially in Europe," says Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo, special rapporteur of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Of particular concern,
Glele-Ahanhanzo noted in a recent report to the U.N. General Assembly, is
the "increase in the power of the extreme right-wing parties," thriving in
"an economic and social climate characterized by fear and despair." Among
the key factors fueling the far right, according to the U.N. report, are
"the combined effects of globalization, identity crises and social
exclusion."
Radical right-wing populist movements with openly fascist roots have made
significant inroads into mainstream politics in several West European
countries, including Belgium, where the neo-fascist Vlaams Blok outpolls
all rivals with 30% of the vote in Antwerp, the second-largest city.
Far-right parties have also gained at least 15% nationwide in France, Italy
and Norway. While this percentage may seem inconsequential in terms of the
U.S. two-party system, it can carry great weight in parliamentary balloting
and determine the political makeup of government.
Even when they lose elections, neo-fascists are like a toxic chemical in
the water supply of the European political landscape, polluting public
discourse and pressuring establishment parties to adopt extremist positions
to fend off challenges from the hard right. Scapegoating foreigners and
ethnic minorities, ultra-right-wing demagogues have touched a raw nerve in
a tumultuous post-Cold War world still reeling from the demise of
Soviet-bloc communism, the reunification of Germany, global economic
restructuring and major technological change.
In Western Europe today, there are 50 million poor, 18 million unemployed
and 3 million homeless--and Eastern Europe is faring much worse. Such
conditions are ripe for exploitation by extreme-right organizations that
range from tiny splinter groups and underground terrorist cells to sizable
political parties. While skinhead gangs may function as shock troops of the
far right's march through Europe, leaders of the more successful mass-based
neo-fascist organizations have softened their image and tailored their
message to appeal to mainstream voters.
Riding the crest of a populist backlash against globalization, far-right
opportunists couple their anti-immigrant tirades with pointed criticisms of
the European Union and the recent introduction of a single currency, the
euro. They have gotten mileage out of exploiting justifiable qualms about
the European Monetary Union, which they present as an attempt by Europe's
big business to adapt to the needs of the new global economic order.
Full participation in the European Union required painful budgetary
retrenchment by member states, which, for better or worse, relinquished
authority on key fiscal matters to unelected central bankers in Frankfurt.
The adoption of the euro and the globalization of financial markets, in
general, have significantly limited the capacity of national governments to
regulate their economies and redress high unemployment by adjusting their
currencies and tweaking their interest rates.
Not surprisingly, voter turnout among Europeans has dropped precipitously,
along with public confidence in elected representatives. Disenchantment
with the conventional political spectrum is heightened by the failure of
erstwhile left-of-center social democratic parties to offer an alternative
agenda to rigid EU policy nostrums. This, in turn, has strengthened the
hands of neo-fascists and other right-wing extremists who have successfully
tapped into widespread resentment of unresponsive state governments.
President Bill Clinton has spoken about "the inexorable logic of
globalization" that no country can escape. While economically driven, this
phenomenon also has far-reaching social consequences. Global commerce acts
as the great homogenizer, blurring indigenous differences and smothering
contrasting ethnic traits. Consequently, many Europeans are fearful of
losing not only their jobs, but their cultural and national identities.
Where local traditions lose influence, individuals tend to become atomized
psychologically and thus more susceptible to the lures of ultranationalists
who manipulate deep-seated anxieties.
The much-ballyhooed new information technologies have created an
environment conducive to financial speculation and the rapid growth of
global commerce. Increasingly, the key players in the global economy are
multinational corporations, transnational lobbies and elite trade
associations, rather than popularly conscripted officials. These global
forces have usurped many of the usual prerogatives of the nation-state,
while also calling into question democratic notions of political power and
representation.
Though free markets are supposed to guarantee maximum efficiency, they have
instead magnified inequalities and hastened the breakdown of certain social
structures, leading to instability, mass migration and ethnic strife. At
the same time, the waning power of the nation-state has triggered a harsh
ultranationalist reaction, as demonstrated by the surge of support for
mass-based far-right parties in several European countries.
Supporters of the EU have long argued that economic integration is a
crucial step toward creating a political union, which, they hope, will end
forever the scourge of pitiless nationalism that has ravaged the continent
in the past. But just the opposite seems to be happening. As economic
globalization has accelerated, producing definite winners and losers, so,
too, has the momentum of neo-fascist and right-wing extremist organizations.
If anything, European integration is likely to foster the continued growth
of radical right-wing parties. Burgeoning ultranationalist movements are
collateral damage inflicted by unfettered globalization, which breeds the
very monstrosities it purports to oppose. And the extreme right provides an
alibi for globalization while revolting against it.
A product of democratic decay, radical right-wing populism and its current
fascist manifestations, which vary from country to country, can only thrive
in situations where social injustice is prevalent. Converging economic,
political and social trends suggest that increasing numbers of people in
the Western democracies will become vulnerable to the appeals of
neo-fascists posing as national populists offering simple solutions to
complex problems.
"It is becoming frighteningly evident that unspeakable evil can take the
stage again," Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson declared at a recent
conference on resurgent racism and neo-fascism in Europe. The ghastly
miscarriage of free-market restructuring in much of the former Soviet bloc
and the Third World, the abdication of the socialist left as a vehicle for
discontent in Western Europe and the homogenizing juggernaut of
transnational capitalism across the globe--all are elements of a potent
witches' brew that propels mainstream governance further and further into
the politics of resentment.
Shortly before he died in 1987, Primo Levi, a survivor of Auschwitz, warned
of the advent of "a new fascism . . . walking on tiptoe and calling itself
by other names." This new fascism is a decidedly contemporary phenomenon
that looks different in many ways from its antecedents. When Adolf Hitler
came to power, he took the world by surprise. Those who remain fixated on
images of the fascist past and neglect the growing dangers of the present
may be taken by surprise again.
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