After the Greek debt crisis, Europe may be headed for its next nightmare

As if the economic ramifications of a full-blown Greek default were not terrifying enough, the political consequences could be far worse. A chaotic eurozone breakup would cause irreparable damage to the European integration project, the central pillar of Europe’s political stability since World War II. It would destabilize not only the highly indebted European periphery, but also core countries such as France and Germany, which have both been the architects of that project.

The nightmare scenario would also be a 1930s-style victory for political extremism. Fascism, Nazism and communism were children of a backlash against globalization that had been building since the end of the 19th century, feeding on the anxieties of groups that felt disenfranchised and threatened by expanding market forces and cosmopolitan elites.

Free trade and the gold standard had required downplaying domestic priorities such as social reform, nation-building, and cultural reassertion. Economic crisis and the failure of international cooperation undermined not only globalization, but also the elites that upheld the existing order.

As my Harvard colleague Jeff Frieden has written, this paved the path for two distinct forms of extremism. Faced with the choice between equity and economic integration, communists chose radical social reform and economic self-sufficiency. Faced with the choice between national assertion and globalism, fascists, Nazis and nationalists chose nation-building.

Fortunately, fascism, communism and other forms of autocratic ideologies are passé today. But similar tensions between economic integration and local politics have long been simmering. Europe’s single market has taken shape much faster than Europe’s political community has; economic integration has leaped ahead of political integration.

The result is that mounting concerns about the erosion of economic security, social stability and cultural identity could not be handled through mainstream political channels. National political structures became too constrained to offer effective remedies, while European institutions still remain too weak to command allegiance.

It is the extreme right that has benefited most from the centrists’ failure. In Finland, the heretofore unknown True Finn party capitalized on the resentment around eurozone bailouts to finish a close third in April’s general election. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom wields enough power to play kingmaker; without its support, the minority liberal government would likely collapse. In France, the National Front, which finished second in the 2002 presidential election, has been revitalized under Marine Le Pen.

Nor is the backlash confined to eurozone members. Elsewhere in Scandinavia, the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, entered parliament last year with nearly 6 percent of the popular vote. In Britain, one recent poll indicated that as many as two-thirds of Conservatives want Britain to leave the European Union.

Political movements of the extreme right have traditionally fed on anti-immigration sentiment. But the Greek, Irish, Portuguese and other bailouts, together with the euro’s troubles, have given them fresh ammunition. Their Euro-skepticism certainly appears to be vindicated by events. When Marine Le Pen was recently asked if she would unilaterally withdraw from the euro, she replied confidently, “When I am president, in a few months’ time, the eurozone probably won’t exist.”

As in the 1930s, the failure of international cooperation has compounded centrist politicians’ inability to respond adequately to their domestic constituents’ economic, social, and cultural demands. The European project and the eurozone have set the terms of debate to such an extent that, with the eurozone in tatters, these elites’ legitimacy will receive an even more serious blow than it already has.

Europe’s centrist politicians have committed themselves to a strategy of “more Europe” that is too rapid to ease local anxieties, yet not rapid enough to create a real Europe-wide political community. They have stuck for far too long to an intermediate path that is unstable and beset by tensions. By holding on to a vision of Europe that has proven unviable, Europe’s centrist elites are endangering the idea of a unified Europe itself.

Economically, the least bad option is to ensure that the inevitable defaults and departures from the eurozone are carried out in as orderly and coordinated a fashion as possible. Politically, too, a similar reality check is needed. What the current crisis demands is an explicit reorientation away from external financial obligations and austerity to domestic preoccupations and aspirations. Just as healthy domestic economies are the best guarantor of an open world economy, healthy domestic polities are the best guarantor of a stable international order.

The challenge is to develop a new political narrative emphasizing national interests and values without overtones of nativism and xenophobia. If centrist elites do not prove themselves up to the task, those of the far right will gladly fill the vacuum, minus the moderation.

That is why outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou had the right idea with his aborted call for a referendum. That move was a belated attempt to recognize the primacy of domestic politics, even if investors viewed it, in the words of a Financial Times editor, as “playing with fire.” Scrapping the referendum simply postpones the day of reckoning and raises the ultimate costs to be paid by Greece’s new leadership.

Today, the question is no longer whether politics will become more populist and less internationalist; it is whether the consequences of that shift can be managed without turning ugly. In Europe’s politics, as in its economics, it seems there are no good options – only less bad ones.

Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, is the author of “The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy.” THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).

(Lebanon) Daily Star

Far right on rise in Europe, says report

Study by Demos thinktank reveals thousands of self-declared followers of hardline nationalist parties and groups

The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon.

Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires.

The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a concern.

"We're at a crossroads in European history," said Emine Bozkurt, a Dutch MEP who heads the anti-racism lobby at the European parliament. "In five years' time we will either see an increase in the forces of hatred and division in society, including ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism, or we will be able to fight this horrific tendency."

The report comes just over three months after Anders Breivik, a supporter of hard right groups, shot dead 69 people at youth camp near Oslo. While he was disowned by the parties, police examination of his contacts highlighted the Europe-wide online discussion of anti-immigrant and nationalist ideas.

Data in the study was mainly collected in July and August, before the worsening of the eurozone crisis. The report highlights the prevalence of anti-immigrant feeling, especially suspicion of Muslims. "As antisemitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century," said Thomas Klau from the European Council on Foreign Relations, who will speak at Monday's conference.

Parties touting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic ideas have spread beyond established strongholds in France, Italy and Austria to the traditionally liberal Netherlands and Scandinavia, and now have significant parliamentary blocs in eight countries. Other nations have seen the rise of nationalist street movements like the English Defence League (EDL). But, experts say, polling booths and demos are only part of the picture: online, a new generation is following these organisations and swapping ideas, particularly through Facebook. For most parties the numbers online are significantly bigger than their formal membership.

The phenomenon is sometimes difficult to pin down given the guises under which such groups operate. At one end are parties like France's National Front, a significant force in the country's politics for 25 years and seen as a realistic challenger in next year's presidential election. At the other are semi-organised street movements like the EDL, which struggles to muster more than a few hundred supporters for occasional demonstrations, or France's Muslim-baiting Bloc Indentitaire, best known for serving a pork-based "identity soup" to homeless people.

Others still take an almost pick-and-mix approach to ideology; a number of the Scandinavian parties which have flourished in recent years combine decidedly left-leaning views on welfare with vehement opposition to all forms of multiculturalism.

Youth, Demos found, was a common factor. Facebook's own advertising tool let Demos crunch data from almost 450,000 supporters of the 14 organisations. Almost two-thirds were aged under 30, against half of Facebook users overall. Threequarters were male, and more likely than average to be unemployed.

The separate anonymous surveys showed a repeated focus on immigration, specifically a perceived threat from Muslim populations. This rose with younger supporters, contrary to most previous surveys which found greater opposition to immigration among older people. An open-ended question about what first drew respondents to the parties saw Islam and immigration listed far more often than economic worries. Answers were sometimes crude – "The foreigners are slowly suffocating our lovely country. They have all these children and raise them so badly," went one from a supporter of the Danish People's Party. Others argued that Islam is simply antithetical to a liberal democracy, a view espoused most vocally by Geert Wilders, the Dutch leader of the Party for Freedom, which only six years after it was founded is the third-biggest force in the country's parliament.

This is a "key point" for the new populist-nationalists, said Matthew Goodwin from Nottingham University, an expert on the far right. "As an appeal to voters, it marks a very significant departure from the old, toxic far-right like the BNP. What some parties are trying to do is frame opposition to immigration in a way that is acceptable to large numbers of people. Voters now are turned off by crude, blatant racism – we know that from a series of surveys and polls.

"[These groups are] saying to voters: it's not racist to oppose these groups if you're doing it from the point of view of defending your domestic traditions. This is the reason why people like Geert Wilders have not only attracted a lot of support but have generated allies in the mainstream political establishment and the media."

While the poll shows economics playing a minimal role, analysts believe the eurozone crisis is likely to boost recruitment to anti-EU populist parties which are keen to play up national divisions. "Why do the Austrians, as well as the Germans or the Dutch, constantly have to pay for the bottomless pit of the southern European countries?" asked Heinz-Christian Strache, head of the Freedom Party of Austria, once led by the late Jörg Haider. Such parties have well over doubled their MPs around western Europe in a decade. "What we have seen over the past five years is the emergence of parties in countries which were traditionally seen as immune to the trend – the Sweden Democrats, the True Finns, the resurgence of support for the radical right in the Netherlands, and our own experience with the EDL," said Goodwin.

The phenomenon was now far beyond a mere protest vote, he said, with many supporters expressing worries about national identity thus far largely ignored by mainstream parties.

Gavan Titley, an expert on the politics of racism in Europe and co-author of the recent book The Crises of Multiculturalism, said these mainstream politicians had another responsibility for the rise of the new groups, by too readily adopting casual Islamophobia.

"The language and attitudes of many mainstream parties across Europe during the 'war on terror', especially in its early years, laid the groundwork for much of the language and justifications that these groups are now using around the whole idea of defending liberal values – from gender to freedom of speech," he said.

"Racist strategies constantly adapt to political conditions, and seek new sets of values, language and arguments to make claims to political legitimacy. Over the past decade, Muslim populations around Europe, whatever their backgrounds, have been represented as the enemy within or at least as legitimately under suspicion. It is this very mainstream political repertoire that newer movements have appropriated."

Jamie Bartlett of Demos, the principal author of the report, said it was vital to track the spread of such attitudes among the new generation of online activists far more numerous than formal membership of such parties. "There are hundreds of thousands of them across Europe. They are disillusioned with mainstream politics and European political institutions and worried about the erosion of their cultural and national identity, and are turning to populist movements, who they feel speak to these concerns.

"These activists are largely out of sight of mainstream politicians, but they are motivated, active, and growing in size. Politicians across the continent need to sit up, listen and respond."
Voting trends

As a political party, having tens of thousands of online supporters is one thing but translating these into actual votes can be quite another. However, the Demos survey found that 67% of the Facebook fans of the nationalist-populist groups which put up candidates – some are street movements only – said they had voted for them at the most recent election.

Further analysis found that female supporters were more likely to turn support into a vote, as were those who were employed.

Observer

UK and France: far right’s opposing fortunes

France’s Front National is pushing to become part of the political mainstream, while the UK’s British National Party has returned to the fringes

British National Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin sought to take advantage of the disorder that broke out in England in August as fast as he could, saying: “We are on the verge of a very hot race war in this country.” On 11 August, when shops were boarded up and cells crowded, he said: “People like me have warned the political elite ... that their great multicultural experiment was doomed to failure” (1).

The first disturbance began on the Saturday after police shot Mark Duggan, 29, in Tottenham, north London. There followed two more days during which there was disorder in various parts of London and other cities. Those who knew the areas and watched the television footage recognised that the rioters were of every ethnicity, as were the police officers, the shopkeepers defending their property and those involved in the clean-up process. Yet Griffin insisted it was a racial problem: the black community was “desperately sick”; Muslims in the UK had a problem with drugs, he said, and groomed young white girls.

The BNP saw in the riots a chance to re-present itself to a sceptical British public at a time when support has dropped sharply and the party is preoccupied with factional infighting and high-level defections.

Two years ago it had seemed to make a political breakthrough: at the 2009 European elections, the party finally achieved a semblance of electoral respectability, returning its first two members to the European parliament and winning close to a million votes. Meanwhile in France, Griffin’s long-standing ally, the Front National (FN) leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, experienced a decline: the FN lost four of its seven MEPs and over half a million votes. Le Pen graciously congratulated his “friends in the BNP” and suggested a potential European nationalist alliance with the party. Griffin and Le Pen had been comrades for decades. They share experiences — physical attacks, accusations of Holocaust denial and convictions for race-hate crimes. Although the media, mainstream politicians and the majority of French and British people found their brand of aggressive nativism vulgar and dangerous, each managed to establish a solid support base and take votes from the traditional parties.
Enter Marine Le Pen

Since Le Pen was replaced by his daughter Marine earlier this year, the FN has increased its poll ratings, with Le Pen Jnr working hard to detoxify the party’s image. Given President Nicolas Sarkozy’s growing unpopularity, she considers herself a serious contender for France’s presidential elections next year.

The changing fortunes of these far-right populists is remarkable. Is it because of differences in leadership style, the presentation of their anti-establishment credentials or shifts in political discourse around immigration and identity?

In Britain, the 2009 European election was Nick Griffin’s greatest success as BNP leader. Griffin was very evident in the broadcast studios during the campaign, appealing to the public to elect “a whistleblower” on the improper activities of the political class. With the slogan “Punish the Pigs”, the party’s election video combined Europhobic outrage and anti-immigrant rhetoric with a sentimental yearning for a time when the UK was a “decent, fair and happy society”. “What’s it coming to,” the voiceover asked, “when you’re made to feel like an unwelcome foreigner in your own country?” (2).

Anticipating a collapse in their traditional support base, the mainstream parties reacted to this audacious populism by stressing the threat from the BNP. Gordon Brown (then prime minister) was facing a leadership crisis and, after a scandal over MPs’ expenses, British public trust in politicians was at an all-time low. Endorsed by celebrities, sports stars and trade unionists, Brown lent his name to an anti-BNP campaign letter calling on the public to “join us in voting for a great Britain” (3). The Church of England directed the public not to vote for a party that encourages “division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background” (4). This did not have the intended effect. Griffin was elected to represent North West England and proclaimed: “The waters of truth and justice and freedom are once again flowing over this country. It’s a great victory: we go on from here” (5).

The victory was short-lived. The BNP failed to win a single seat at last year’s general election and are losing council seats across the country. The media, politicians and grassroots activists have shifted their gaze to the Islamophobic street movement, the English Defence League (EDL). After a recent and bitter leadership challenge that threatened to split the BNP, Griffin was re-elected by less than 10 votes.

In Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Griffin told me he understood the BNP had a way to go if it was to have any meaningful influence in British political life. “The response on the doorstep is generally ‘Well everyone is voting for you’ And then most of them don’t. We’ve got an enormous amount of soft-popular sympathy but it only rarely translates solidly into votes.” Though some polls have indicated that a sanitised nationalist political party — non-violent, non-racist — may attract popular support, this does not seem to aid the BNP directly.
Sarkozy steals FN ground

In France, the situation is quite different. At FN headquarters in suburban Paris, Marine Le Pen told me her party were on their way to becoming more accepted. “Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National were demonised for many years. This demonisation led to a wall around them which prevented the French people from joining the FN. Thanks to changes at the head of the organisation these walls are beginning to crumble.”

She explained why her party had spent years as political outsiders. There was a high point in 2002, when the FN rode a wave of popular antipathy against the French establishment to displace the Parti Socialiste in the presidential run-off. But in the 2007 election the FN dropped: “Le Pen, la fin,” proclaimed Libération (7 June 2007). A further poor showing in the 2008 municipal elections suggested that far-right populism in France was on the wane. In 2009 Jean-Marie Le Pen blamed the poor performance in the European elections on a media boycott, which he claimed shielded the public from hearing voices outside the self-interested political class.

However the main reason may have been Sarkozy’s adoption of staple FN policies: the promotion of a French identity; national preference in work, welfare and public service access; hostility towards low-income immigration; special crime laws for foreign-born migrants. Voters sympathetic to the FN saw Sarkozy as a more viable vehicle for their politics. As Le Pen Jnr put it: “The only thing that weakened the Front National was Sarkozy’s strategy of presenting himself as a kind of double of the FN.” Sarkozy saw that “the French people were turning more and more towards the option of the Front National. He managed to harness the force of that river and divert it to his own advantage.” She laughed. “But now the river has returned to its own bed.”

She understands her father’s failure to capture the political mood. “The FN addressed subjects that were completely taboo”: hostility towards all forms of immigration, the negative aspects of globalisation, which she says are only now being widely understood. “Sometimes arriving at a conclusion too early is another way of being wrong.”
Personification of the past

In Britain, soon after becoming an MEP, the BNP leader attracted media attention after he was pelted with eggs by anti-fascist activists shouting “Nick Griffin, Nazi scum”. He believes the “liberal media elite” does not want him to improve his standing. Though building bridges with the media would be “very, very valuable”, this is unlikely to happen.

Griffin found it difficult to communicate the party’s message on television when, in October 2009, he was invited to make his first appearance on the BBC’s political panel show Question Time. His appearance pulled in over eight million viewers — the most watched episode in the programme’s 30-year history — and the event was tailored towards examining Griffin’s party. Front-bench politicians and audience members exchanged insults with the BNP chairman, castigating him for having a “fascist background” and “no moral compass”. People were horrified by his statements: he admitted links with former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, and described gay men kissing as “really creepy”. As he failed to deflect accusations of Holocaust denial, many viewed him as the personification of the party’s past (6).

Unlike Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose first major TV appearance on Antenne 2’s L’heure de Vérité in 1984 increased membership and cemented his place in French political life, Griffin’s poll ratings have declined and the media have stayed away: “Unless I strangle a kitten, I’m not going to get on television.” Griffin alleges that powerful forces in the media are denying his party the exposure it deserves. “This is not a conspiracy theory or anything anti-semitic, we’ve got Jewish councillors and Jewish members. The Zionist lobby has a lot of power in the media.” He added: “There is a very militant gay lobby within the media. They don’t like us. We just want to stop them teaching homosexuality to five-year-olds.”

Despite Griffin’s explanations of why his party is not doing better, it is likely that he has not developed a narrative to engage potential supporters. In recent years the BNP has appeared opportunistic, clinging to any passing issue not fully exploited by the mainstream parties. The party was against the war in Afghanistan; in favour of improved environmental policies but against the great global warming “hoax”; in favour of the nationalisation of telecom services and the creation of local currencies. Griffin may have found a number of political positions that the party could take to entice new sympathisers, but has yet to develop the arguments for people to make the commitment.
Isolationist escape route

Marine Le Pen believes that she has found the language to attract new support to the Front National. The party often depicted as a mixture of white separatists, older rightwing Catholics and Vichy apologists has started to gain followers from more diverse parts of the electorate. First-time voters, middle-income workers and some second- and third-generation immigrants have been welcomed as Le Pen presents her party as a radical alternative to the discredited politics of the past.

Does she care about building bridges with the mainstream and courting the media? “No, because it would be a step that was politically dishonest and completely opportunistic.” Even so she has found fame on television talk shows, and the French press publishes more features about her than any other opposition figure. She has successfully harnessed a negative populist narrative: she is against immigration, the EU and globalisation. She seems less willing than her father to demonise sections of the general public. She saves her ire for elite politicians and financiers, whom she feels are to blame for society’s woes — crime, unemployment and public service shortages.

Le Pen brazenly offers disgruntled voters an escape route from economic stagnation and national decline. She promotes an isolationist programme, arguing that her party can make France economically self-sufficient, through restricting the flow of labour and building up the industrial base. She wraps all this in a language that makes anxious “French” people feel prioritised. “We don’t have the means any more, nor the national community, to subsidise the needs of foreigners who come to France while there are so many unemployed people.”
Immigration, identity and Islam

In France, the UK and most of western Europe, there has been a recent re-evaluation of the benefits of immigration. Leading political figures, social democrat and conservative, have initiated public debates on national identity and spoken out against multiculturalism, calling on the continent’s minorities to adhere to “European values”.

In France, the government-led debate on “what it means to be French” and “what immigration contributes to our national identity” has pressured minorities to adapt to majority culture. On the orders of the president and his former immigration minister, Eric Besson, town hall meetings were held and plans discussed for immigrants to attain a strong command of French and all schools to fly the tricolour. “We must reaffirm the values of national identity and pride in being French,” Besson proclaimed, amid arguments that the ruling party were pandering to the far right (7).

Did the FN spark this whole debate? “Yes of course, entirely,” Le Pen says bluntly. “We are at the centre of political life in France. Everybody has their own position in relation to us.”

She has steered clear of making racially inflammatory remarks, unlike her father. Instead she invokes the republic when discussing the status of minority communities in France. “I think the state must remember that in France, it’s French laws and French principles and values which apply. Anyone who wants to live in contradiction to these laws, these principles, these values does not have a place in France.”

An alarmist narrative is developing around the rights of the country’s Muslim population, Europe’s largest. In March the president announced another national debate, on Islam’s place in French society. He followed this by praising the country’s “Christian heritage” and made clear his distaste for visible signs of Islam in secular France — halal food, outside prayer and minarets (8).

The change in legal status of the Islamic full-face veil (worn by only a few hundred women in France) dominated political discourse for months, supported by most parliamentarians. This added to Muslims’ beliefs that they were being singled out by the political establishment — marginalised by desperate politicians searching for votes.

Le Pen refuses to be drawn into a debate about Islam’s compatibility with French society because she says: “In France we don’t make judgments on religion. I prefer to talk of fundamentalism; that’s to say sharia law.” This focus on “extremists” deflects accusations that the FN (and the ruling party) are seeking to stigmatise France’s Muslims en masse. Yet the wellbeing of the country’s Muslim communities has been absent from high-level discussion, even though these communities have high rates of deprivation, suffer increased discrimination in work, the criminal justice system and public services, and witnessed a rise in physical attacks. Le Pen does not attempt to explain these issues, as if she is afraid of disappointing her support base.
British jobs for British workers

Britain has been reconsidering the success of its ethnically diverse society. Ten years after the former foreign secretary Robin Cook made his “chicken tikka masala” speech, in which he declared that his country could “celebrate the enormous contribution of the many communities in Britain to strengthening our economy, to supporting our public services, and to enriching our culture and cuisine” (9), front-bench politicians have refined their positions on the benefits of immigration.

This move has been influenced by the populist press binding any discussion of immigration to security issues and economic crises, despite their many and frequent anti-foreigner stories. Comments on immigrant crime levels and minority communities’ dependency on welfare payments have become intellectualised through a conservative backlash against political correctness.

Nick Griffin takes responsibility for this change in political debate. He claims that both the Conservative and Labour parties are speaking in a language which was considered extremist in the past, and made him a pariah for three decades. The slogan “British Jobs for British Workers”, first uttered by Gordon Brown, was emblazoned on BNP literature and the party warned of a tsunami of foreign-born migrants flooding the country to seek work. During the general election campaign, Griffin suggested that immigration had led to parts of his constituency looking like “something out of Africa” (10) and claimed that African immigrants were paid up to £50,000 by the government to move nearby and ensure “safe Labour majorities in the future” (11).

Griffin came a poor third and his personal percentage of the vote fell. The party failed even to get two-thirds of their supporters from the previous year’s EU election, and on a higher turnout. “There were crocodiles of African voters being led to each polling station with a Labour party activist or local election candidate standing inside the polling station, telling them how to vote,” he told me.

Griffin is preoccupied with race. While far-right parties across Europe had already begun to attract support from growing numbers of second and third generation non-European migrants, the BNP only allowed non-white people to become party members last year. This was precipitated by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission taking the party to court for breaching non-discrimination law.

Why did they not change the policy earlier? Griffin offered a disturbing explanation. “If you were talking to a group of female victims of rape and gang sexual assault, and you said: ‘Why won’t you let men in? Do you hate men?’ The same is true of the party. It’s a refuge centre for people battered by the multi-racial experiment.”
Rise of Europe’s far right

Anti-immigrant and far-right populist parties have increased their influence across Europe: the Dutch and Austrian Freedom parties, the Danish and Swiss People’s parties, Italy’s Northern League, the Norwegian Progress Party and True Finns. All are in positions of influence, either as part of a governing coalition or as the most vocal opposition party in their national parliaments.

A number of them have distanced themselves from the FN, still tainted by the name “Le Pen”. Domestically and abroad, many understand that although the commander has changed, the lower ranks still retain the ethnic nationalists and unashamed xenophobes. Now Marine Le Pen wants to strengthen the party and build alliances with natural partners across the continent. She is confident that she will not make the same mistakes that ensured her father was quarantined for his entire career.

Nick Griffin insists that the British National Party is “part of the same thing” — a new nationalism sweeping the continent. In reality, his organisation is not achieving anywhere near the same level of political leverage and the mainstream seems content to ignore it; most people find his paranoid style of politics and crude language impossible to connect with.

The future of the cross-Channel relationship is also in doubt. Marine Le Pen told me that she finds some of the BNP’s policies “repugnant” and prioritises her relationship with the “younger” United Kingdom Independence Party (the single-issue anti-EU party). Griffin believes the relationship between FN and his party “is pretty much as it’s always been. We admire what they do, they admire what we do.” When I tell him of Le Pen’s comments, he says: “Good luck to her. If it’s useful, convenient or sincere for her to say that she doesn’t like things that we do, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”

The author of this article, K. Biswas, is a writer based in London; he is currently working on a book on the emergence of far-right populism across Europe and the US

(1) “Nick Griffin addresses the nation”, British National Party Online Television Channel, 11 August 2011.

(2) BNP European election broadcast, 4 June 2009.

(3) Letter to The Guardian, 2 June 2009.

(4) 2009 Archbishops’ Statement on the European Elections, Church of England website, 24 May 2009.

(5) Nick Griffin, speech at Manchester town hall, 8 June 2009.

(6) Question Time, BBC, 22 October 2009.

(7) Eric Besson, Le Monde, Paris, 25 October 2009.

(8) The Guardian, London, 3 March 2011.

(9) Speech at the Social Market Foundation, London, 19 April 2001.

(10) Barking and Dagenham election appeal, British National Party Online Television Channel, November 2009.

(11) BNP election leaflet, 2010.

Le Monde Diplomatique

A solution to a non-existent problem

Kenza Drider, wearing a niqab, leaves a shop in Avignon, southern France

Cynical, desperate electioneering fuels growing Islamophobia in Europe

From the beginning of next month, it will be illegal for a Muslim woman in France to wear a full-face veil (niqab) in any public place. An opinion poll last week suggested that Marine LePen, the new leader of the far-right National Front, could win the first round of next year’s presidential elections in France. These two facts are not unconnected.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is in a panic as the National Front gains in the polls, for his own core vote is also on the right. He has responded by ordering a countrywide debate on Islam’s place in secular France, and he has made it quite clear which side he is on: he wants no minarets in France, he tells journalists, and no halal food in school canteens. But the new anti-niqab law is the centrepiece of his strategy.

It is a solution to a problem that does not exist. There are around five million Muslims in France, about 8 per cent of the population, but only a couple of hundred Muslim Frenchwomen wear the niqab in public. They probably shouldn’t drive, since all that paraphernalia severely restricts their field of vision, but in what sense is their occasional presence in public spaces a threat to society?

There are probably more British women wearing niqab in my small patch of London than there are French women wearing niqab in the entire country. In Camden Town, I see them in the supermarket, on the bus, in the street — and when I overhear them talking to their husbands or their kids, I notice that most of them have London accents.

That’s because most of the niqab-wearers are not immigrants. They are the British-born daughters of immigrants, and the fact they now appear in public wearing this extreme garb — which was not normally worn by women back in Pakistan, or Algeria, or wherever their parents came from — is part of the crisis that always affects second-generation immigrants everywhere.

The men of the conservative older generation are horrified as their daughters absorb the values of the larger society around them, and try desperately to isolate them from those influences. It was a losing battle for Italian and Jewish fathers in New York a hundred years ago, and it’s a losing battle for Algerian and Indian fathers in London and Paris now.

But these things take time to work out, and in the meantime a tiny minority of British Muslim women wear niqabs, and an even tinier minority of Muslim Frenchwomen. So why would a French government ban women wearing niqab from taking a bus, entering a shop, or even just walking down the street, on pain of a 150-euro ($200) fine?

In addition to a fine, the wicked transgressors will be obliged to attend a citizenship class that stresses the egalitarian values of the French republic, including gender equality. This is a very large sledgehammer being used to crack a very small nut. But it will have served its purpose if it gets Sarkozy re-elected.

The right is in the ascendant in French politics, and this has unleashed a wave of panic-mongering over “multiculturalism.” Assimilation of second- and third-generation immigrants is actually proceeding at the normal pace, but in the midst of the process it is possible to believe that the cultural turmoil is leading to a permanently divided society. Most people on the right do believe that.

Whoever can more convincingly claim to have the solution for this imaginary problem wins the right-wing vote, and the National Front is drawing ahead of Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front came second in the 2002 presidential election; under the leadership of his daughter Marine Le Pen it could do even better.

The recent opinion poll commissioned by Le Parisien newspaper gave her 23 per cent of the vote, while Sarkozy’s party and the Socialists got 21 per cent each. She has ditched the National Front’s neo-fascist and racist rhetoric in favour of a low-key, “common-sense” style that is having a real political impact.

But all she can do is force a run-off second round in which, like her father in 2002, she would be overwhelmingly defeated. French political parties are divided on many things, but they would all unite to keep the National Front from power.

The tide of Islamophobia is running strongly on the European right at the moment. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been trumpeting the failure of multiculturalism for the past six months, and British Prime Minister David Cameron recently added his voice to the chorus. It is only a cynical political stratagem, but it could have real consequences.

Left to their own devices, the various immigrant groups in these countries, including the Muslim groups, will assimilate to the general society in a couple of generations, as immigrants generally do. You can accelerate the process a little with the right government policies, but not much. However, you could stall it entirely by attacking the minority groups and driving them into cultural ghettoes. That’s the game that Sarkozy is playing now.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist who is published internationally.

thespec.com

Marine Le Pen 'chosen to lead France's National Front'

France's far right National Front has chosen Marine Le Pen as its new leader, replacing her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, party officials say.

The results will be officially announced on Sunday, but party sources said she had secured about two-thirds of members' votes. Mr Le Pen is stepping down after leading the ultra-nationalist party, which he founded, for almost 40 years. In 2002 he came a shock second in the first round of presidential elections. Mr Le Pen lost the second round to incumbent Jacques Chirac.

A count of votes cast ahead of the annual FN congress in the central city of Tours showed Ms Le Pen, 42, who had the backing of her father, had easily beaten her rival, Bruno Gollnisch.

The FN, with its anti-immigration agenda has been shunned by France's main parties. But Ms Le Pen has said she wants to break with its xenophobic, anti-Islam image and is confident the FN can become part of mainstream politics. A recent poll suggested the party could come third in the presidential elections to be held in 2012.

BBC

Marine Le Pen under fire for comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation

Marie Le Pen - a racist, just like Papa

The daughter of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was under fire Sunday for comparing Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques in France to the Nazi occupation

The daughter of French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was under fire Sunday for comparing Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques in France to the Nazi occupation. Marine Le Pen said Friday at a rally of the anti-immigrant National Front that there were "ten to fifteen" places in France where Muslims worshipped in the streets outside mosques when these were full.

"For those who want to talk a lot about World War II, if it's about occupation, then we could also talk about it (Muslim prayers in the streets), because that is occupation of territory," she said at the gathering in Lyon. It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of districts in which religious laws apply. It's an occupation," she said at the rally that was part of her bid to take the party leadership when her father steps down in January. There are of course no tanks, there are no soldiers but it is nevertheless an occupation and it weighs heavily on local residents," the 42-year-old noted.

The comments sparked condemnation from politicians from President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party and from the opposition Socialists and the Greens.

"This is the true face of the far right which has not changed in the slightest, and Marine Le Pen is just as dangerous as Jean-Marie Le Pen," Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon said Saturday.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has several convictions for racism and anti-Semitism, shocked Europe in 2002 by coming in second in the French presidential elections.

The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) said Saturday that Marine Le Pen's comments were "insulting towards the Muslims of France" and were an "incitement to hatred and violence against them."

On Sunday, an anti-racist group said it planned to file a civil lawsuit against her.

"Comparing Muslims to an army of occupation is humiliating. To be treated like invaders, like fascists, that is just not possible," said Mouloud Aounit, head of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP).

Paris' Goutte d'Or district, where mosques are so full on Fridays that many believers end up praying on the streets outside, is one of the ares that Le Pen was referring to in her Lyon speech. Police in June banned a "pork sausage and wine" street party planned by extremist groups to combat what they saw as the "Islamisation" of the neighbourhood. The plan sparked outrage from politicians and anti-racism groups who said it was blatantly racist and could lead to violence on the streets.

That controversy came after a government-sponsored debate on national identity spotlighted anxieties about the integration of France's five to six million Muslims.

On Sunday locals in the Goutte d'Or district said they were well used to comments like Le Pen's.

"Most Muslims feel threatened. They won't leave us alone," said a grocery store worker who gave his name as Hakim.

"With the cold and the dirt, we'd love to have a clean hall to pray in but we don't have the choice," said Walid Ben, who works in a fabric shop in the area.

"I understand that it bothers people (if Muslims pray in the streets) but what solution is Marine Le Pen proposing?" he asked.

Ahlul Bayt News Agency

Far right pays tribute to Japan's 'war heroes'

British and Japanese ultranationalists will shrug off protests from war veterans in an unlikely show of solidarity at a controversial Tokyo memorial today, on the 65th anniversary of Japan's surrender in the Second World War.

The British National Party member Adam Walker (pictured above, with Nick Griffin) and France's most famous Holocaust-denier, Jean-Marie Le Pen, will be among a group of European delegates to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which venerates the militarists who led Japan's brief but disastrous rampage across Asia.

"I realise that there are war veterans in the UK who will see this as an insult, especially on V-J day, but Yasukuni is dedicated to the souls of men who died fighting for their country," said Mr Walker. "It's easy to point fingers now but these people were doing what they thought was right at the time."

Mr Walker was cleared earlier this year by the British General Teaching Council of "racial intolerance" after posting comments online calling immigrants "savage animals" and "filth" while working as a teacher in Houghton-le-Spring.

One of the most contentious pieces of real estate in Asia, Yasukuni is considered sacred by nationalists – and a monument to war, empire, and Japan's unrepentant militarism by millions of others. A museum attached to the shrine claims that Japan was lured into the war by the US and waged a campaign to free Asia from white European colonialism.

Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, who earlier this week apologised to South Korea for the colonisation of the Korean peninsula, has ruled out visiting the shrine out of respect for Asian victims of his country's past militarism. The leader of the LDP opposition, Sadakazu Tanigaki, meanwhile, plans to visit the shrine tomorrow.

But the European visit looks set to stir greater controversy. The foreign delegation, which also includes ultra-right politicians from Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Austria and Belgium, has been invited to Japan by Issuikai, a right-wing association that denies Japanese war crimes and wants to build a global alliance of nationalist groups to fight American "hegemony". Its leader, Mitsuhiro Kimura, counted among his friends the exiled Iraq leader Saddam Hussein, whom he urged to resist the US invasion of his country in 2003.

Yesterday he and other delegates attended a conference of "patriotic organisations" in Tokyo, where they discussed the perils of immigration, climate change and Islam.

One speech warned that "environmental Marxists" are exaggerating the quantity of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere in a plot to bring more immigrants into the advanced countries and destroy the nation state. "More and more climate immigrants are coming to Europe," said Thibaut De La Tocnaye, a leading member of France's National Front.

The Europeans were applauded when they advised Japan to reject mass immigration and demands that foreigners be allowed to vote in local elections. Mr Le Pen gave a speech on Islam, which he said had a "long tradition of invading other countries". "In my country they come and demand that they be allowed to build giant mosques. That's political, not religious."

Mr Le Pen waved away criticism of the Yasukuni visit. "These men are war heroes. We used to be enemies but I think we must pay respect to people who had to die for their country."

The BNP's Mr Walker, meanwhile, denied reports this week in The Daily Telegraph claiming that his trip was partly funded by British taxpayers. "The money came from Issuikai. I expect nothing less from The Telegraph. It's just a left-wing rag."

*North Korea has urged Japan to apologise and provide compensation for its harsh colonial rule, days after Tokyo offered an apology to South Korea for annexing the Korean peninsula, without mentioning the North.

North Koreans harbour deep resentment of Japan for using Koreans for forced labour and sex slaves during its 1910-45 occupation of the peninsula. North Korea does not have diplomatic relations with Japan.

Independent

Neo-Nazis No Longer? Marine Le Pen Tones Down France's Far Right

The father of the French far-right National Front Party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a famously Holocaust-minimizing (he called the Nazi occupation of France "not particularly inhumane"), anti-immigrant and anti-European Union leader, is teetering toward retirement. But not before the National Front has yet another phoenix-like return from sworn obsolescence.

Political commentators throughout the middle of the last decade promised that the tough immigration policies of President Nicholas Sarkozy (at times so aggressive they seem pulled directly from the playbook of the extreme right) would siphon off voters from the right-wing margins and bring them under the umbrella of the center-right mainstream. Indeed, Sarkozy's controversial anti-burqa law (and fines that have already gone into affect) is believed to be meant to appease the rabid right wing. But while many far-right voters supported Sarkozy in the last elections, in the regional elections last month, the National Front surged ahead in the French rural areas, dampening any talk of their imminent demise.

Part of that success may be because the National Front has spent the last few years regrouping, reconsidering its position, and gently maneuvering a newer, younger, and, frankly, more beautiful face into the limelight. That new face belongs to Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie, and an elected member of the European Union Parliament for the last six years. "[S]he is widely expected to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the National Front, the persistent far-right party preaching French purity and exceptionalism, opposing immigration and the European Union, and which she wants to bring into the media age. More and more, she is the face of the party in television debates and national campaigning," The New York Times wrote last week. "She sees herself as having a destiny now, if not one so lofty as that of the party's emblem, Joan of Arc, chosen by Mr. Le Pen as a symbol of French sanctity and resistance to invaders."

In fact, Marine Le Pen, 41, has been jockeying for position behind her father for some years now, softening the image of the National Front with support for gay rights, women's rights, and, perhaps more surprisingly, given the history of the National Front, an outstretched hand to the Jewish community. (Whether they shake back is another story.)

As Anton Pelinka, professor of political science and nationalism studies at the Central European University in Budapest, and director of the Institute of Conflict Research in Vienna, told me a few years ago, "Europe has to be much more careful [than the United States] with respect to right-wing extremism, and for that reason, right-wing extremists claim to be something else - they claim to be much more moderate than they are in reality."

About five years ago, Marine began outspokenly condemning attacks on Jews by North African youth. "The French Jewish community, who are increasingly victims of attacks by Islamic radicals, should be able to turn to us for support," she told the Jerusalem Report in January 2005. It was a way of distancing herself from the other potential heir apparent to the head of the National Front, Bruno Gollnisch, a man who openly questioned the numbers of dead in the Holocaust - a means of minimizing the tragedy.

Marine also petitioned to march with the Jewish community of France after Ilan Halimi, a young Sephardi mobile phone salesman, was tortured and murdered by a rogue band of Muslim immigrants in January 2006. At first she was turned down, but some months later she marched alongside mainstream politicians in protest of the murder.

Le Pen's pushing back against the image of anti-Semitism - the British press has reported that Marine was furious with her father for his continued anti-Semitic outbursts - has been a smart move politically. Marine Le Pen knows well that the taint of anti-Semitism can roll back progress for a far-right party. "To be openly anti-Semitic," Anton Pelinka, the Austrian political scientist said, "even in Austria, could be the end of a political career" because of Europe's brutal 20th century history of the Holocaust. It has certainly marginalized her father – and by extension herself. She calls herself a victim of "collateral damage," from fallout around her father and her party's anti-Semitic statements.

Le Pen fille, has also spoken openly against both the hijab, or veil, and the burqa; she often makes what might be called a feminist argument for extreme right-wing politics - even though the far right has roots in conservative gender roles and Marine Le Pen herself - twice divorced and a working woman - is not particularly traditional. Of Muslim immigrants, "They have to adapt to our values," Marine Le Pen told me when I met her in the spring of 2006. We were at the headquarters of the National Front, in a suburb of Paris. "But our Republic must not adapt itself to Islam. Because some values do exist which are, effectively, contrary or opposite to ours. Equality between men and women is non-negotiable." She continued, "There are dozens of countries in the world that apply Sharia. But us, we will not change. You like it, or you don't like it. But you cannot [for example] attack a gay man because he is gay. Those, those are the values of France."

It is the traditional expression of National Front xenophobia on the one hand, and totally mainstream, on the other. Who on the left would argue against the point about gay men? Or equality between the sexes? That said, the context, purposefully, makes many uneasy. But that is the savvy oratory of the younger Le Pen.

"In France," Le Pen said, speaking in rapid French made husky by years of smoking, "our republic, our schools are facing pressure from radical and Islamist organizations. Teachers find it more and more difficult in some places to talk about the Holocaust. They can no longer evoke Darwin. Seriously! We cannot learn English. Because English is the language of imperialism. It is against this that we are fighting and that we accuse the French political class of having left this...to develop. To have done nothing to preserve our Republic and to firmly reaffirm the principles of the French Republic."

Knowing how the far right is perceived in French politics - in other words, badly, at best - Marine has continued to work to better her image. It particularly galled Le Pen the younger, a lawyer by training, as she watched the encroachment of then-interior minister and now-President Nicholas Sarkozy onto the traditional territory of the National Front. "We were the first to raise the alarm on globalization and its consequences," Le Pen told me. "We were the only ones to put in the center of the debate the problem of immigration by saying that the big influx of migrants was going to be the problem of the 21st century," she complained. "Some in the political class are looking to take over the branches of this debate for electoral reasons...I think they are saying the same thing we are saying to prevent us from saying it."

In 2006, Marine Le Pen launched a remake of her identity: by presenting, French style, a book, "A Contre Flots" - Against the Tide - and revealing, Oprah style, a weight loss and a new, more glamorous appearance. She is slim and nearly 6 feet tall. When we met she wore jeans and a filmy silk shirt. It is very unusual for a French politician to be so casually dressed when she meets with a journalist. Politicians are a class of people who favor well-tailored suits.

Marine Le Pen is seen as a softer alternative to the old guard of the far right. But there are those who question her Islamophobia, masked as feminism, and her attempts to modernize what has always been a bogeyman at the margins of French society. As Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right in France and a researcher at the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégique, told me a few weeks after I met Madame Le Pen: "People on the far right say Europe is no longer Europe, it is becoming something new, colonized by Islam and the values of Islam. This is a massive fear, not only on the extreme right, but among average people. This gives fuel to the extreme right." Marine Le Pen draws on that fear, normalizes it, and channels it as she jockeys for position at the helm of the National Front.

Sarah Wildman at Politics Daily

Nick Griffin's foreign fascist festival

Fresh from agreeing to allow blacks and Asians join his party, Nick Griffin is this week embracing a group of men who have funny names and speak foreign languages. Have his regular trips to Brussels and Strasbourg finally brought out the British National Party chief’s cosmopolitan side?

Of course they haven’t. Far from sampling the diversity of Europe, Griffin [shared] a platform with some of the continent’s most narrow-minded politicians in Ghent yesterday (Wednesday).

According to his Facebook fan page, Griffin visited the Belgian city to address a “student symposium”. Yet the poster for the event indicated there will be precious little of the academic chin-rubbing you’d normally expect at a meeting billed as such. The poster depicts a burqa-clad woman standing in front of a European flag studded with minaret spires.

This crass Islamophobia is typical of promotional material produced by the far-right party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), whose de facto youth wing, the National Student Association (NSV), is organising the event. Like the BNP, the Vlaams Belang has had to amend its rulebook in recent years after its precursor, the Vlaams Blok, was banned for flouting anti-discrimination laws.

Frank Vanhecke, the Vlaams Belang leader, also scheduled to speak in Ghent, is not as openly xenophobic as he used to be – he once denounced an Amsterdam mayor who named a square after Nelson Mandela as a “renegade towards his own people and race”. Yet he has no qualms about inciting hatred against Muslims. Women who wear a veil, he has said, have signed a contract for their deportation.

Another guest in Ghent was Bruno Gollnisch, deputy-leader of the French National Front. Gollnisch has been helping the BNP finesse its electoral strategy, according to a story in the Daily Mirror. By turning to him for advice, Griffin evidently no longer appears as keen to emphasise that he is “not” an anti-Semite as he was during his Question Time appearance. In 2004, Gollnisch suggested that the Nazi gas chambers may be a myth.

Griffin is no “gravy train or career politician”, a message directed at his constituents in northwest England recently declared. How then does he explain his use of a budget that is supposed to be reserved for parliamentary researchers and secretarial help to pay his bodyguard? Or his use of the European Parliament chamber to score the most parochial points imaginable? During a debate on the Haiti earthquake in January, he argued that no humanitarian aid should be given to its victims because the disaster had happened “in somebody else’s backyard”. Griffin quoted the Bible to claim that EU governments only had duties to their own citizens. The central teaching of Christianity – “love your neighbour as yourself” – is conveniently omitted when fascists interpret scripture.

It would be comforting if Griffin and his ilk were confined to the political margins. But the truth is that “mainstream” parties and European institutions have happily stolen many of the extreme right’s clothes and invariably wear them with greater ease. For example, Griffin’s wish for boats carrying asylum-seekers to be sunk is not far removed from what Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, is already doing. Last summer this agency helped the Italian authorities force a vessel to land in Libya; in contravention to international law, the people on board it were not granted the possibility to apply for asylum. Frontex is also planning to use pilotless drones – the type of warplanes that have caused numerous civilian deaths in Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan – in future operations designed to prevent migrants entering Europe.

If there is one thing more nauseating than Nick Griffin himself, it is how “respectable” politicians pander to his agenda.

The Samosa (article slightly edited)

French journalists' union calls for Le Pen debate to be scrapped

Union leaders demand cancellation of television debate featuring Marine Le Pen saying it would worsen social tension

French journalists' union leaders have demanded the cancellation of a live television debate featuring Marine Le Pen, the vice-president of the Front National, claiming it would be "a disgrace" for a public broadcaster to provide a platform for the far-right.

In echoes of the controversy over the appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin on the BBC's Question Time in the autumn, the journalists' branch of the CGT union has said the proposed discussion – scheduled for tonight – should be taken off air. It says the clash, which will pit Le Pen against the immigration minister, Eric Besson, on the theme of "national identity", risked exacerbating existing social tensions which had already been aggravated by Nicolas Sarkozy's "big debate" on the same thorny subject.

"[This debate] between the representative of the extreme right and the figure who makes its ideas commonplace can only end badly," said union leader Jean-François Téaldi. A statement from the CGT said Sarkozy's national debate had "nationalistic, islamophobic and demagogic undertones".

However, France Télévisions, the public broadcaster, insisted the event would go ahead as planned. "It is the public service's function to organise debates. We are the only ones who do it," said Nathalie Saint-Cricq, editor-in-chief of the France 2 programme A vous de juger. Another executive insisted the programme would "not be a red carpet rolled out at the feet of Marine Le Pen".

But their assurances cut little ice with journalists. Téaldi said the appearance of the daughter and heir apparent of FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was irresponsible so close to regional elections in March.

"The national identity debate is getting out of control on the internet and in towns and is serving merely to boost votes for the Front National," he said. "A vous de juger will, with this debate, be airing arguments which will aggravate the social divide."

A poll commissioned by Le Monde and France 2 today indicated that, while over three-quarters of those surveyed said they "completely disagreed" with the ideas of the FN, the number of people saying they believed the far-right party to be a "danger" had decreased since 2006. Critics of Sarkozy's national identity debate say he has moved the debate on immigration to the right and made the ideas of Le Pen and his daughter more mainstream than they were before.

Guardian

BNP's European ally Krisztina Morvai axed from London conference after protests

Hungarian neo-fascist MEP Krisztina Morvai blocked from speaking at pro-Palestinian event

A close ally of Nick Griffin, leader of the British National party, has been forced to withdraw from speaking at a London conference in support of Palestine amid mounting fury from anti-fascist groups.

Several politicians due to speak at the conference, organised by the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), were alarmed to learn the background of fellow speaker Krisztina Morvai, a Hungarian MEP and leader of the far-right Jobbik party in the European parliament.

The fledgling party, which recently formed an alliance with the BNP, has attracted fierce criticism for its links to a grassroots militia and the controversial views expressed by some of its supporters towards gay people and and Jews.

But it is Jobbik's attitude towards Hungarian Gypsies that has attracted the most controversy. During this year's European elections, the party blamed the country's Romany population for the decline in Hungary's living standards, and says on its website that "voters have had plenty enough of Gypsy crime".

The Hungarian Guard militia, which is backed by Jobbik, has marched through Romany ghettoes in Hungary, increasing community tensions. Militia members wear uniforms emblazoned with a striped red-and-white symbol, a version of which was used by the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party that ruled Hungary for a brief but brutal period towards the end of the Second World War. Morvai has been photographed wearing the uniform of the militia, an organisation ruled illegal by a Hungarian court and described as "Hungary's shame" by a former prime minister of the country, Ferenc Gyurcsány.

Labour MP Neil Gerrard pulled out of next month's PRC conference after learning of Morvai's background. The Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Tonge, independent MP and former Labour minister Clare Short, and Daud Abdullah, deputy secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, who are all due to speak at the event, were also alerted about Morvai's role in Jobbik.

The conference is promoted by the European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza. A spokesman for the campaign confirmed that Morvai's invitation had been withdrawn following protests. "We did not want to get into trouble, so we decided to exclude her," he said. "We want the conference to be about raising awareness about Palestine."

The move has been welcomed by critics of the BNP, who have expressed alarm about the blossoming relationship between it and Jobbik. Earlier this month the Observer reported how the BNP and Jobbik were forming a new alliance in the European parliament that will include France's Front National and a handful of other far-right groups. Griffin spoke at a Jobbik rally last year and has met several of its senior officials.

"I am pleased to hear the PRC have withdrawn their invitation to Jobbik's Krisztina Morvai," said James Bethell, the director of Nothing British, a group that campaigns against the BNP. "She is one of Europe's leading neo-fascists, a senior member of Nick Griffin's political alliance and an MEP for a revolting party."

Observer

Far-right alliance fails to get EU cash

The European Alliance of National Movements (AENM), the coalition of far-right parties formed last month in Budapest, has failed in its an attempt to get its hands on European Parliament cash, as the jumble of reactionary rightists did not manage to file the application on time.

The alliance, which includes the UK's BNP, France's Front National and Hungary's Jobbik, says it wants its share of the around €11 million that the parliament hands out every year to pan-European political parties, informally known as ‘europarties'. This would have amounted to around €400,000 for the group to carry out advertising, research and campaigning atop the money MEPs already receive.

"Conservatives, socialists, Greens and communists all receive European funds. It is normal that we demand the same on behalf of our electors who have expressed their hopes," Front National MEP Bruno Gollnisch told reporters in the European capital announcing the Brussels launch of the group.

While the cluster of far-righters managed to cobble together the group in Budapest on 24 October, as earlier reported by EUobserver, the cut-off for 2010 funding was 1 November and so if the chamber does ultimately recognise the formation, it will still not be able to access any money until 2011.

Conceding that the group had fumbled the deadline, Mr Gollnish said: "The money is not the main purpose. While we want to get our share back, the share that is due the people who voted for us and sympathise with our goals, the real aim here is the formation of a political alliance where we can support each other."

Europarties vs. European Parliament groups

Pan-continental europarties are structurally distinct entities from the political families of MEPs in the Strasbourg chamber, though at the same time remain linked ideologically.

A grouping in the European Parliament requires a certain number of MEPs from seven EU member states; for a europarty, the rules are more relaxed and national MPs and regional representatives may also count towards the seven-country minimum. There is also no minimum number of deputies.

In the AENM's case, the alliance has had to depend very much on a tiny rightist groupuscules without MEPs: Belgium's Front National, which has one seat in the country's Chamber of Representatives and one seat in the Senate, and Italy's neo-fascist Fiamma Tricolore and Sweden's National Democrats. The former has a single deputy in the Umbrian regional assembly, while the latter has councillors in just two municipalities south of Stockholm. But municipal representatives do not count towards the europarty threshold.

Excluding the Swedes, the group only has deputies from five EU member states.

The BNP's Nick Griffin, however, says that he hopes to soon have on board far-right parties from Spain and Portugal - which have no MEPs either - as well as from Ukraine, but this would not count towards the total, as the country is outside the EU. Nevertheless, he also said that Austria's Freedom Party, which does have substantial support - it won 12.8 percent in the June elections, giving it two MEPs - may soon join.

Whites only

Once the alliance is legally registered, the Bureau of the European Parliament - the chamber's governing body - must rule on whether it meets the europarty regulations, which also demand an observation of "the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law."

"This could present a problem if certain parties are found to continue to refuse membership to certain ethnicities," Federico de Girolamo, a parliament spokesperson, told EUobserver. The BNP was ordered by a London court in October to end its internal whites-only policy.

Mr de Girolamo said however there was still a chance the alliance could eventually access EU funds if they meet all the rules.

"So long as [membership issues] are resolved, then there has to be a really good reason for them to be denied [europarty status]," he continued. "Democracy means including all opinions. We cannot be seen denying them this just because we don't agree with them."

Hungarian vs Slovak nationalisms

A major block to forming a larger group is the inability of the different far-right parties in the European Parliament and beyond, who often adhere to mutually exclusive national mythologies, to get along.

Hungarian MEP Balczo Zoltan, Jobbik's vice-president, angrily told journalists at the press conference that the alliance will never permit the inclusion of Slovak or Romanian nationalists, as their brand of nationalism was exclusionary of the wrong type of people.

"Millions of ethic Hungarians live [outside] Hungary and the Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary will never work together with parties that are not patriotic or nationalist, but instead chauvinist. We will never work with the Slovak National Party or the Greater Romania Party. This is a declaration!"

The SNP does not restrict itself to inflammatory rhetoric about Roma, Jews and gays and lesbians, but also Hungarians. Jan Slota, the party's leader, has in the past said: "We will sit in our tanks and destroy Budapest," and: "Hungarians are a cancer in the body of the Slovak nation."

Greater Romania Party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor, for his part, regularly rails against the alleged anti-Romania conspiracies of ethnic Hungarians.

EUObserver

BNP set to join EU far-right group

Alliance will bring extremist parties major funding from Brussels

The British National party is close to finalising a pan-European alliance with other far-right political parties that would allow them to tap Brussels for hundreds of thousands more euros and greatly increase their power in the European parliament.

Anti-fascist groups have expressed grave concerns about the formation of the Alliance of European National Movements, warning that it threatens to undermine the democratic process.

So far, five far-right parties – Hungary's Jobbik, France's National Front, Italy's Three-Colour Flame, Sweden's National Democrats and Belgium's National Front – have signed up to the coalition, agreeing to abide by a declaration of common goals drafted by the BNP's leader, Nick Griffin. The BNP was due to join last month, but was forced to postpone the move following the furore surrounding Griffin's appearance on Question Time. However, the BNP will sign up within weeks, according to insiders.

Austria's Freedom party, as well as groups from Spain and Portugal, are also poised to join the coalition, which has pledged to oppose "supranational bodies like the European Union which seek to limit the rights of individual countries". If the alliance can muster 25 MEPs from at least seven EU member states, it will be able to garner considerably more influence within the European parliament than the various parties can achieve on their own.

Similar-size groupings in the past have been able to access at least an additional €1.5m in grants and payments from the EU to help cover the cost of extra secretarial and administrative services. They may also be able to appoint a chairman of an influential EU parliamentary committee.

So far, the alliance can boast fewer than 10 MEPs. But if it relaxes its opposition to a number of parties in Eastern Europe joining, or enjoys future success in Euro elections, its ranks would swell. Each of the parties will submit a representative to a presidency body that will co-ordinate decisions. The presidency will then elect a chief, leading to speculation over a role for Griffin.

Observer

Jobbik, BNP move to form pan-European far-right alliance

A clutch of far-right political parties have cobbled together an alliance of convenience to represent their interests in the European Parliament, the leader of Hungary's extreme nationalist grouping, Jobbik, announced in Budapest over the weekend.

Far-right monitoring groups however say that the coalition is made up for the most part of ultra-right wing groupuscules that have no representation in Strasbourg, meaning they will not be able to draw on any public funding for staff or research.

Gabor Vona, the Jobbik party chairman, announced in Budapest on Saturday (24 October) the founding of the "Alliance of European Nationalist Movements," in a declaration of common goals drafted by the British National Party's (BNP) leader, Nick Griffin. Five parties have initially signed the nine-point declaration: Jobbik, France's Front National, Italy's Fiamma Tricolore, Sweden's National Democrats and Belgium's Walloon extremists, the Front Nationalists.

Although the BNP was not in attendance at the launch, the BNP is "100 percent" behind the new grouping, Jobbik's vice-president and one of three MEPs in Strasbourg Zoltran Balczo, told EUobserver. Mr Griffin could not attend the founding meeting in Hungary due to the increased demands on the British group in the wake of the publicity it received from its invitation to a BBC political talk show.

The alliance is currently involved in negotiations with other far-right groups in Spain and Portugal. Austria's Freedom Party (FPO) has also expressed an intention to join, according to Gabor Vona, Jobbik's domestic leader. FPO euro-deputy Andreas Moelzer was also due to attend, but fell ill and could not go.

The declaration rejects "any attempts at forming an EU federal state," calls for pro-family policies and "traditional values" and demands Europe be protected from "religious, political, economic and financial imperialism."

Each of the parties are to submit one representative to a presidency body that will co-ordinate decisions. The presidency will then elect its own chief from the group.

Only Jobbik, the French Front National, the BNP and the FPO have any representation in the European Parliament, missing by some degree the minimum number of MEPs the chamber requires to form an official political grouping and access EU cash. To do so, a political family, as they are known in EU circles, needs to muster a minimum of 25 deputies from at least 7 member states.

While Jobbik won 14.7 percent of the vote in Hungary in the June European elections, giving it three seats in Strasbourg, and the BNP won two, most of the other parties did not even garner 1 percent.

Mr Balczo says that this is only a short-term obstacle. "These rules are just for a faction in the parliament. There are other possibilities: The first step is to found a European party that is recognised by the parliament. This will be done in either Brussels or Strasbourg. For a pan-European party, which is separate from a political grouping within the parliament, the rules are not as strict."

The Liberals in the parliament for example, are in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, while their pan-European political party, the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party, has members from EU and non-EU states.

"It's only the second step that is try to form a faction in the European Parliament, but at some point this too will be possible," Mr Balczo said.

Competing visions of national supremacy have in the past presented a difficult hurdle for forming a far-right group in the parliament. In the last legislature, the far-right grouping "Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty" lasted only a few months before it broke up over Italian members insulting their Romanian colleagues.

Notably, in the new grouping there is no representation from the Greater Romania Party, Ataka, from Bulgaria's rightist extremists or from the Slovak National Party.

"We will not participate in any alliance with any party that is chauvinist towards ethnic Hungarians," said Mr Balczo, "and the Romanians and the Slovaks are very, very strongly against ethnic Hungarians."

Even the friendly relations between Jobbik and the BNP run up against different national perspectives.

"There are some differences over agriculture for example," Mr Balczo said. "Voting [in the parliament] last Thursday on the budget, we and the Front National voted differently to the BNP, because we have a different position on protecting family farms."

The welcoming of the Walloon Front National also precludes bringing on board Belgium's much more popular Vlaams Belang, which while Belgian, is a Flemish nationalist party that opposes the idea that francophones and Flemings can live together in the same country.

"In all probability, this alliance will go the way of its predecessor and implode within months, and this time they can't even form a faction in the European Parliament. It's another Titanic of a group," Graham Atkinson, the European editor of British-based far-right monitoring magazine, Searchlight, told this website.

EUobserver

The BBC's disgraceful BNP stunt

The BBC should not provide a platform for fascism. If Nick Griffin appears on Question Time the only winner will be the BNP

The BBC whose lavish salaries and expenses paid for by the poorest of the land are obsessed with media stunts as they watch ratings slump. Last week, it was Adam Boulton announcing he would "empty chair" Gordon Brown if he refused Sky's pompous demand to debate on Boulton's terms with other party leaders. Now it is the BBC that has staged its publicity coup by inviting Holocaust denier Nick Griffin on to its flagship Question Time Programme.

Is there outrage? No, the liberal world slumps deeper into its armchair having a little moan about how nasty the BNP is, while the mainstream parties meekly agree to appear with Griffin.

Inviting the BNP's Nick Griffin as if he were the same as a senior politician from a democratic party is a stunt too far. The only full-length written work by Griffin – Who are the Mindbenders? – plays on old Nazi propaganda that Jews are the secret controllers of the media. As with Griffin's denial of the Holocaust and the BNP's ideology of hate against Muslim citizens, the core ideas are directly descended from the pre-war fascist era.

Yes, they get votes in low turnout elections from folk concerned about immigration. But not one in 10,000 voters knows Griffin's record. The argument advanced by Peter Preston in the Guardian and Matthew Seyd in the Times , as well as the Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander in the Daily Mirror, is that debating with Griffin somehow exposes him and his loathsome ideology.

If only. Question Time is not about rational debate but a ping-pong of point-scoring and gimmicks for cheap applause. Some of the audience will snarl at Griffin, some will cheer, when he denounces the number of foreigners in Britain or damns the EU. Sunny Hundal has advanced cogent arguments demolishing the myth that this is about a free exchange of views from which the BNP will emerge the loser.

In fact, the only winner will be the BNP vote-bank. French TV journalists went through the same arguments as Jean-Marie Le Pen rose in the 1980s. He and other National Front politicians were elected to Strasbourg, the French national assembly and local town hall. They had MEPs, deputies and mayors. Like Griffin, Le Pen was obsessed with Jewish questions though his main focus was Muslims, other immigrants and pulling out of the EU. But each time he appeared on the French equivalent of Question Time, his votes went up and the other party leaders spent their hour abusing each other as Le Pen just smiled at their political antics.

Today, French TV journalism is wiser. Yes, as an elected politician leading a legal party, Le Pen is reported and awarded a share of time on the election news, just as Griffin has the right to. But given the undemocratic core of his views on Jews, Muslims and immigrants, French TV does not treat Le Pen and the National Front as just another party. British broadcasters should follow suit.

If the argument is made that an electoral mandate confers the right to be boosted by the BBC on Question Time, why not the hundreds of independent councillors, or the other small parties who win seats?

This is not about democracy but about the BBC losing its sense of moral balance and editorial integrity. The BBC, rather than the Daily Mirror and Searchlight, should be exposing Griffin – not boosting his insatiable ego. As he enters his eighth decade (old enough to have been born during Hitler's Reich), David Dimblely should refuse to provide a platform for British fascism.

Gordon Brown should make clear that no Labour minister or MP will appear on Question Time to validate this disgraceful BBC stunt. Alan Johnson has spoken for most, if not all, Labour MPs and activists by making clear he will not help Griffin up the political status scale by appearing with him. Labour MPs will discuss this at the party conference and Labour's high command should listen to those who fight hand-to-hand with the BNP on the doorstep before caving in to the BBC.

David Cameron, too, should remember that when Enoch Powell made a racist speech in 1968, the Tory leader Ted Heath ended Powell's career as a front-rank Tory MP. Heath went on to become prime minister. Cameron and Nick Clegg should be as brave today. All democratic parties should make clear that if Griffin appears on Question Time, David Dimbleby can have him to himself.

Guardian

Who do you think you are kidding...?

On the trail of the BNP as it makes its first, shambolic appearance at the European Parliament in Strasbourg

It is a humid July day in Strasbourg, and inside the Louise Weiss Building it feels like the start of school term. Journalists and politicians, assembled for the opening session of the European Parliament, are greeting each other like old friends outside the main debating chamber, known in a typical piece of EU jargon as the Hemicycle. Here, in the glass and pine atrium of this imposing cylindrical edifice - Britain's signature contribution to which is a garish floral carpet in the staff bar that bears more than a hint of cross-Channel ferry - you might spot Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the ex-revolutionary French Green and the closest thing the EU has to a pop star, strolling around with his entourage of admirers. Or Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (Ukip), as he lambasts the rise of "the European military superpower" in front of assembled TV cameras. The atmosphere here, compared to Westminster, is open and collegiate.

Hidden away, however, at the end of a winding corridor on the top floor of an adjoining administrative block, a strange meeting is taking place. Convened by Andreas Mölzer of Austria's immigrant-hating Freedom Party, it is a meeting of the non-inscrits, the "non-attached" MEPs, from parties that have failed to make it into one of the mainstream coalitions. Aside from a few mavericks, such as Diane Dodds of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, this means the far right - including two of Britain's new crop of MEPs: Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons of the British National Party. Although the BNP is not a traditional fascist party or Nazi organisation, its constitution commits it to "restoring . . . the overwhelmingly white make-up of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948".

Earlier in the day, having travelled across France by car, Brons and Griffin had ­commanded the attention of the British press corps when they made their first, tentative appearance at the Hemicycle. Now they are due at a more furtive gathering. I remove my bright yellow press badge, slip it into my pocket, and watch an international assembly of bigots file into the conference room: Krisztina Morvai of Jobbik, the gypsy-hating Hungarian party with its own private, uniformed militia; the French Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, along with his daughter Marine; assorted podgy members of Belgium's Flemish Interest and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, both of which are anti-Islam.

Then, ambling down the corridor, come Griffin and Brons, accompanied by Simon Darby, the BNP's press officer, Jackie Griffin (wife of Nick) and a large minder in an ill-fitting suit. Outside the conference chamber stand a few men and women wearing tourist passes and speaking in French. One of them, barely out of his teens, clutches copies of a magazine titled Identitaires. This is the in-house magazine of the French sect Bloc Identitaire, which runs a Europe-wide "news" agency called Novopress that distributes far-right propaganda. Griffin walks up and shakes his hand. "We've met before, haven't we?" he says. They make slightly awkward conversation, the young man explaining that his group has "a good relationship" with the Front National. Griffin makes a vague offer to help get the magazine translated into English - "for those of us who are interested in identity", he says, sighing. They then follow the remaining members into the conference room.

The collection of oddballs on the other side of the door is the dirty secret of the European Parliament. In the family of nations that the parliament supposedly represents, the far right has long been the foul-mouthed elderly relative. In a way, Britain has simply caught up with the rest of Europe, which has grudgingly accepted the presence of a few extremists as part of the proportional representation electoral system.

But it is also part of a more disturbing narrative. Lívia Járóka, a Hungarian MEP of Roma origin, is particularly concerned at the support gained by Jobbik, which came third in her country's elections. "[Jobbik's success] has a lot to do with the current economic crisis. People feel very unsafe, so they are ready to accept answers with no real base in fact." She feels the best way to challenge their arguments is to confront them directly. "Rather than ignore the far right, we should try to show that what they are claiming is complete empty propaganda."

Little more than a month since the BNP was elected, its victory looks decidedly hollow. Its negotiations with other far-right parties, conducted at the parliament's other base in Brussels over the past month, have failed to round up enough allies to form an official coalition of MEPs. As a result, they have been denied any extra funding beyond the standard salary (a generous £63,000) and staffing allowance, nor will they have access to any influential positions, such as committee chair or vice-president of the parliament. At most, they will be able to obtain seats on parliamentary committees and use them as a platform to make grandstanding statements - assuming anyone is still listening in six months' time. Griffin, who believes climate change is "bollocks", has already got a seat on the environment committee.

While the BNP and its closest allies remain isolated, however, there has been a wider shift to the right since their electoral successes in June, and some ultranationalist elements have managed to insinuate themselves into the mainstream. This is largely thanks to the actions of two British parties - the Conservatives and Ukip.

Under the direction of David Cameron, the Tories quit the centre-right European People's Party to form a new, Eurosceptic coalition, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). Their main partner is Poland's socially conservative Law and Justice party, which has a well-documented record of anti-gay rhetoric. Its leader in the European Parliament, Michal Kaminski, was a member of the far-right, anti-Semitic National Revival of Poland in the late 1980s. In 2001, the US-based Anti-Defamation League accused him of having attempted to
stop the commemoration of a wartime pogrom against Jewish people in the Polish town of Jedwabne. Despite this, the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan this month described Kaminski on his blog for the Daily Telegraph as "a Thatcherite: a sturdy Polish patriot who is nonetheless, in outlook, almost a British Tory".

Not all of Hannan's colleagues share this view. Edward McMillan-Scott, a committed pro-European Tory MEP of 25 years, respected across the political divide, was expelled from the Tory group on 15 July when he stood against Kaminski in an election for vice-president of the parliament, and won. Kaminski was the ECR's official candidate for one of the EU's 12 vice-presidential posts, which are divided between the coalitions in what parliamentary insiders cheerfully refer to as a "stitch-up". EU etiquette frowns on MEPs who rock the boat by opposing members of their own coalitions.

Describing himself to me as a "loyal Tory", who spent the 1980s working in Poland with reformist groups, McMillan-Scott regrets going against the wishes of his party, but says he was compelled to do so by what he calls "the rise of respectable fascism" in Europe. He sees the alliance as a grave setback for Cameron's attempts to decontaminate the Conservative brand. "This is where the modern Conservative Party has to tread very carefully," McMillan-Scott tells me. "David Cameron has done a remarkable job in repositioning the party on most things. Its attitude to gays, or the environment, for example, has fundamentally changed. There's just the question of these links [to right-wing extremists in Europe] and one can't close one's mind to it."

To the Labour MEP Michael Cashman, this shows a lack of leadership on Cameron's part. "It suggests that Cameron is unable to control his MEPs and has shifted them where they want to go, which is further to the right."

Ukip's new friends are even more unsavoury. The party's major partner in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group, formed at the beginning of this month, is Italy's Lega Nord, which, despite being part of Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition at home, wants autonomy for northern Italy and has a track record of xenophobic and anti-gay statements. Other members of the group - described by Searchlight's Europe correspondent Graeme Atkinson as a "far-right-lite" coalition - include Greek and Slovak extreme nationalists. Nikki Sinclaire, Ukip's first openly lesbian MEP, concedes to having "reservations" about her new allies. "All the parties [of Freedom and Democracy] have signed up to a statement saying they oppose all forms of discrimination. But it is difficult. I think this is going to evolve over the next couple of months."

The Freedom and Democracy coalition is in part a shrewd move to block the more extreme far-right parties, such as the BNP, from forming
a coalition - Lega Nord was initially touted as a possible partner for the BNP. However, it creates a potentially more toxic alternative. Most of the British MEPs are now in alliances with extreme conservatives, with whom they will be seeking a common position on a range of issues, from equality legislation to the Convention on Human Rights.

Labour, meanwhile, faces severe problems. The party has only 13 MEPs left in the parliament - level with Ukip. The corresponding drop in funding (which is allocated according to the number of MEPs elected) has led to redundancies among auxiliary staff. Yet, despite the BNP's electoral success being largely down to a collapse in the Labour vote - even if most core Labour voters wouldn't dream of supporting the BNP, they helped it by staying away from the polls - none of the Labour MEPs I spoke to was willing to look beyond short-term causes. I suggested to Cashman, a former EastEnders actor who now represents the West Midlands, that Labour had lost the support of its working-class base. "Bullshit. The ascent of the BNP, along with the ascent of Ukip, can be traced directly to the timing of the Westminster expenses scandal," he said.

Richard Corbett, who lost his seat in Yorkshire and the Humber, where the BNP's Brons was elected, narrows it down even more. "The final nail in the coffin was Hazel Blears resigning [from the cabinet] the day before the election. It was a kick in the teeth to thousands of volunteers in the party and caused maximum damage - in our case, the difference was only a few thousand votes, so she really made that difference."

The damage now extends beyond the Labour Party. Griffin, Brons and their European allies may have failed to form an official grouping, but they share a strategy of trying to play down the overtly racist rhetoric and to influence mainstream debate. "We are treated like pariahs," Marine Le Pen tells me when I ask her what the Front National has in common with the BNP. "The traditional parties try to give us a completely warped image."

I eventually meet Griffin an hour or so after the majority of Britain's 72 MEPs have gathered for a drinks reception hosted by Glenys Kinnock, Britain's Europe minister. Griffin and Brons were pointedly not invited. The snub evidently hurt: throughout the opening week of parliament, journalists were treated to Griffin's witty riposte: "I would not want to share a drink with Glenys Kinnock. She is a political prostitute, simple as that."

Despite fears that the BNP would try to gatecrash the party, Griffin and Brons stayed away. Instead, they returned for a few hours to their "reasonably priced" hotel on the edge of the city, a low-budget dormitory surrounded by decrepit industrial buildings, where Jobbik's Krisztina Morvai also stayed.

When we meet in a busy lobby back at the parliament, the pair come across as rather shambolic. Brons, a retired teacher who used to be in the National Front, burbles along in conversation, quoting de Tocqueville and Voltaire. Griffin has a gift for the soundbite but in longer conversations tends to stare at the floor and rant circuitously. I get lost for a while during a passionate discourse on the genetic similarities of human beings to chimpanzees - and why this means we're all bound to kill each other one day unless we maintain ethnic purity. What is interesting about his language is the way in which he manipulates the fears of a declining 21st-century industrial society. He talks of shadowy "global businesspeople" (as opposed to a global financial system), presents human cultures as endangered species (rather than as products of our collective activities), and refers to the apocalyptic threat of peak oil (but not, as we know, climate change).

The suggestion that Britain has benefited from immigration is dismissed as "self-hating racism", but to avoid accusations of racism on his own part, Griffin takes cultural relativism to an extreme. He deplores the "Islamification of Britain", but says Muslims are free to behave as they like "in their own countries. We don't have a right to interfere". Indeed, in his maiden speech, given during a parliamentary debate on Iran, Griffin appeared to defend President Ahmadinejad's regime, describing the pro-democracy protests as a cover for "a third illegal and counterproductive attack by the west on the Muslim world".

Although the BNP's view of society makes no class distinctions, Griffin appeals to "working-class Britons" when it suits him. One word that crops up repeatedly in his analyses is "elite" - as in "the EU is an elite project which has no connection with reality". The other place I notice the use of the word that day is in an email to members of the BNP's mailing list, purporting to come from a "Chairman Nick Griffin MEP". It offers readers a chance to make a donation and become a "Gold member". "Gold members are the 'elite' of the Party," the email says. "They go that extra mile and quite rightly display their Gold membership badge with pride at Party meetings and events." The badge "also makes a superb addition to any type of clothing, whether a suit or casual".

Despite his party's commitment to British withdrawal from the EU, Griffin tries to strike a conciliatory tone. "We're going to engage here, because although we believe Britain should be withdrawn, you can't have this many people together and not come up sometimes with something that is actually a good idea."

I had had an insight the previous day into the far right's idea of what it means to "engage" at the meeting of non-inscrits, the aim of which was to nominate one group member who could speak on behalf of the others at official engagements. Waiting outside the meeting, I listened as the murmured voices became louder and more strained. Then a row erupted. It went on and on. A posh English voice filled the corridor, followed by the smoker's rasp of Marine Le Pen, and then that of her father, shouting in French. Le Pen Sr yelled at the chair of the meeting: "You are a civil servant! I am an elected representative!" The chair replied: "Monsieur, if you carry on like this then I will have to close the session."

Soon after that, the voices stopped. A group of interpreters exited from a side door, laughing. As they passed, I heard one say to the others, mockingly, "And they say dictatorship would be a bad idea . . .".

New Statesman