Juan Cole: After Paris attacks, could David Duke style Racist Parties Sweep to Power in Europe?

[marmar]

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) —

Anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia was already raging through Europe before the Kouashi al-Qaeda Cell targeted the staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli in Paris. Although President Francois Hollande insisted that the attacks had nothing to do with the religion of Islam (and rightly so), many Europeans hold a dissenting view.

From an American point of view, where public discourse was profoundly altered by the Civil Rights Movement, the way some European politicians speak sounds eerily like the unrepentant racists in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era. A whole gaggle of politicians not very different in their views from David Duke are poised to take power.

The Dutch so-called “Party of Freedom” already called for all mosques in the Netherlands to be closed. The party is the most popular in the country in current opinion polls. In response to the Paris attacks, POF leader Geert Wilders demanded that immigration be halted altogether. He said he wanted less Islam in his country, and that the attacks were “an act of war.” Wilders not so long ago got a Dutch crowd to chant, “less Moroccans.” He has been indicted for hate speech and will face a trial this spring. He was acquitted of similar charges in 2011 on the grounds that he hadn’t said anything racist, but had only criticized a religion, which is not illegal. But the recent crack about Moroccans is about an ethnic group. Wilders is playing the sympathy card with the public. Will he be the next prime minister of the Netherlands, the country of Spinoza and Erasmus?

In a combative interview, Channel 4 News more or less called Wilders a Nazi.

The Netherlands have about 1 million Muslims in a population of roughly 17 million. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/attacks-racist-parties.html

[DonCoquixote]

1. I will say this and get heat

But if Europe falls into bed with fascism AGAIN, then the next time the Russians come after them, throw them to the wolves. Move our bases out so that we do not have to pay for their security, and let them toy with Ukraibne without a penny of our money. Take in refugees, but let the Russians turn them into USSR 2.0. A lot of these creeps have not apolgized for the holocaust (though they supported Arabs taking the burden of what was THEIR crime.)

[Octafish]

2. Funny how that works.

GLADIO

Bologna Train Station Bombing 1980

"The makings of the bomb... came from an arsenal used by Gladio... according to a parliamentary commission on terrorism... The suggested link with the Bologna massacre is potentially the most serious of all the accusations levelled against Gladio, and comes just two days after the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, cleared Gladio’s name in a speech to parliament, saying that the secret army did not drift from its formal Nato military brief.&quot 35) In November 1995, Neo-Fascists terrorists Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro, members of the Nuclei Armati Revoluzionari (NAR), were convicted to life imprisonment as executors of the 1980 Bologna massacre. The NAR neofascist group worked in cooperation with the Banda della Magliana, a Mafia-linked gang which took over Rome's underground in the 1970s and was involved in various political events of the strategy of tension, including the Aldo Moro case, the 1979 assassination of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who published articles alleging links between Prime minister Giulio Andreotti and the mafia, as well as the assassination of "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi in 1982. The investigations concerning the Bologna bombing proved Gladio's direct influence: Licio Gelli, P2's headmaster, received a sentence for investigation diversion, as well as Francesco Pazienza and SISMI officers Pietro Musumeci and Giuseppe Belmonte. Avanguardia Nazionale founder Stefano Delle Chiaie, who was involved in the Golpe Borghese in 1970, was also accused of involvement in the Bologna massacre(16)(36)

16^ a b Gardais, Pierre (1990-11-29). "Le chef du gouvernement italien a dû reconnaître son existence" (in French). L'Humanité. Retrieved 2008-08-21. "Selon les cas, on excitait ou en empêchait le terrorisme d’extrême gauche ou d’extrême droite"[dead link] (English translation)

35^ Vulliamy, Ed. The Guardian, January 16, 1991. Quoted by (Statewatch 1991).

36^ (in Italian) Bologna massacre Association of Victims, Italy: Stragi

ONLINE: http://justpaste.it/192s

Blaming the leftists for the bombing helped the rightwing in Italy, Big Time.

[suffragette]

3. Both the RW racist parties and the security apparatus pushers are reacting to this as an opportunity

To push for more of what they want.
Very Shock Doctrine: where most of us see a tragedy, they view this as an opportunity.

[bemildred]

4. You can be certain they will try. nt

[pampango]

5. UKIP's leader: "an indictment of what he called policies of multi-culturalism. He also rather

insensitively suggested that the terrorism in Paris was a good reason for Britain to keep its distance from Europe."

Good to see that the UK's tea party is on board with the American right's antipathy towards multiculturalism. And anything that happens is another good reason for the UK to get out of the EU and "keep its distance from Europe". I'm told the sun coming up in the east is another reason for the UK to leave the EU.

After the attacks, LePen called on President Hollande to suspend the visa-free Schengen Zone and to strip French citizenship from terrorists. She said, “Time is up for denial and hypocrisy …The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly.” I don’t think it is just fundamentalism that bothers her.

The Islamophobes and racists on the European Far Right also tend to be Eurosceptics. If they come to power out of public revulsion against the Paris attacks, they may well beging dismantling the European Union. And the discriminatory policies they plan toward Muslims would be a complete retreat from European human rights laws and norms.

It is weird that Europe's far-right hates the liberal EU about as much as Islamic fanatics hate a liberal Europe. And yet the far-right hates the Islamic fanatics and vice versa. It's a case of one group of fascists hating another group of fascists.