Europe’s great shift to the right

Arguably, the more pressing concern for the European Union is the substantial gains made by parties like UK Independence, which doesn’t believe in its model of economic and political integration. Now there is a significant portion of the European Parliament that (much like the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa) is fundamentally at odds with the institution and its goals, actively seeking to reduce its size and powers—hardly the tonic needed to drive up plummeting voter turnout. In large part, the EU has only itself to blame for the increasing sense that it is irrelevant. The economic crisis has hardly been its finest hour. As unemployment soars across the Continent and the banking crisis spreads, member nations have been squabbling about who deserves to be bailed out, with the rich west mostly spurning the poorer former Soviet Bloc. And rather than acting in concert, for the good of Europe as a whole, powerhouses like France, Britain and Germany have been shoring up their own industries (like the deal Angela Merkel cut with Canada’s Magna to save 35,000 German jobs at Opel) and passing laws to protect domestic markets.

It’s the paradox that has long plagued the organization. “By any means the EU is a staggering success. It has contributed to five decades of peace and prosperity. Countries are lined up to join,” says Randall Hansen, director of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. “But there is a mismatch with public perception. People view it as ineffectual and somehow out of touch.” And that public desire to politically rebuke the EU’s elites has been on increasing display since 2005, when voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed European constitution. Efforts to water down the treaty and make it more palatable have also failed, with Irish voters turning up their noses in 2008.

Whether that creeping dissatisfaction, along with the economic angst and immigrant scapegoating, are creating the conditions for fascism to again rise on the continent is now a matter of open debate. Hansen doubts it. “There’s always been a huge degree of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe,” he says. “But this is not the 1930s. There are huge political and social constraints on the far right. In order to achieve power, they have to change the message and broaden their base.”

But in some parts of Europe, the extremists are undeniably gaining popularity. Last fall, in the Austrian election, the far-right Freedom and Alliance for the Future parties captured a combined 28 per cent—one point behind the ruling Social Democrats. In Denmark, the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party remains the third largest political force with 25 seats. British historian David Kynaston says he does see parallels with Germany’s pre-war years, most notably in the economic crisis that threw millions out of work. “The Wall Street Crash took place in 1929, but it wasn’t until January 1933 that Hitler became chancellor of Germany,” he writes on the Guardian’s website. This recession has already seen an uptick in populist anger against bankers, and a declining faith in government. Low voter turnout may just be the canary in the coal mine. “People who, a generation ago, did not used to be cynical about politics now are. Worse still, people are not just indifferent to politics, they are ignorant about it.”