Are the neo-fascists on the rise in Europe?
Fidesz, Hungary’s ruling party, is projected to win in Sunday’s elections with a majority of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. Although with a higher turnout of the voters this time Victor Orban, Hungary’s thrice-elected prime minister, may not keep his party’s two-thirds majority he is expected to form the next government again, his third consecutive one since 2010.
Orban is a known neo-fascist and is opposed to migration of refugees. He is also a bigot. During his annual state of the union in February, Orban claimed that "dark clouds are gathering" over Europe and only his party could defend the continent from "Islamization".
He has argued that a Fidesz
victory is the only way to ensure that the government can “save Hungary” — from
migrants, from EU bureaucrats and from “Uncle George” Soros, a Jewish Hungarian-American financier whom Orban has
cast as a globalist puppet master out to subvert the national interest. Recently erected anti-migrant billboards depict Soros, whose
Open Society Foundations has campaigned against corruption and xenophobia in
the region, embracing opposition politicians as they use wire-cutters to open
the country's
border fence. As part of a vicious election campaign, Fidesz sent leaflets
that were downright obscene and aimed at fomenting anti-immigrant sentiments.
Muslims comprise less than
half a percentage of Hungary’s population and yet Orban and his party routinely
warn of ‘Muslim invaders’ threatening the country. The Roma minority - with
nearly 600,000 gypsies – is also considered to be a threat to national
identity. Orban’s personal attack on philanthropist Soros is full of anti-Semitic
undertones. Soros has rebutted Orban’s attacks by calling the latter ‘the
leader of a Mafia state’.
Orban has undermined the power
of the judiciary and, like many elected illiberal rulers of our time, has
filled most government positions with his loyalists. He has set them loose to
ensure that the opposition remains as small as possible, and thus, manageable,
without posing any danger or threat to his authoritarian rules. The media
outlets are also controlled by his own people who ensure what and how
Hungarians get their news. He has also gone after
human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Hungarian Helsinki
Committee, targeting them with laws that would require NGOs that receive
foreign funding above 25,000 euros to describe themselves as “foreign
entities,” pay heavy taxes on donations and face harsh penalties for
noncompliance.
Orban appeals to a ‘vanished’
white, Christian past and promises to bring it back bigly. Painting a picture of
an Armageddon-like scenario, he proclaimed: "We are those who think that
Europe's last hope is Christianity."
His line plays on a
collective memory of foreign invasion by Turks, Austrians and Russians. “We
also know our own history,” he said in an October 2017 speech at a Danube
regional strategy summit. “Those who wanted to gain a foothold in Europe always
came across this route. And Hungary was the last defensive line, if you like, a
gate to and for the West.”
"The
opposition will turn us into a land of foreigners," Orban told the crowd
at his last rally in Szekesfehervar, 40 miles from the capital Budapest. As reported in the Sky News, the choice of location was likely no coincidence - a town
synonymous with the foundations of Christianity in this country is a potent
place to talk about the clash of civilizations and the dangers of Muslim
migrants entering Hungary.
If elected, Orban’s election
win once again would prove that his populist, xenophobic and fascist messages
are being received loud and clear by his mesmerized supporters.
He has been a driving force
behind the anti-immigrant and esp. anti-Muslim drives in much of Europe. Like President
Trump in the USA, he is unapologetic about building a fence along the country’s
southern border. He envisions a Europe that is culturally and racially
homogeneous without the non-Whites and non-Christians. He is a hero amongst the
neo-fascists in many parts of the world, esp. Europe. Poland’s
ultra-nationalist (or more properly fascist) government has followed Hungary’s
example and challenged the EU rules and norms on migration. With his
presumed victory on Sunday it is not difficult to surmise that Orban’s
populist, anti-immigrant messages will further energize the far-right, fascist parties across the European continent,
particularly in the so-called Visegrad (V4) countries (i.e., the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia).
The results of
the Italian general elections on March 4, 2018 marked the victory of
nationalist, xenophobic, anti-Europeanist, and anti-establishment parties.
Together, they won over 50 percent of the vote. The Five
Star Movement received 32 percent of the votes all by itself, while the Lega of Matteo Salvini, a
xenophobic and anti-Europeanist party, received over 17 percent of the vote. It
is worth noting that Salvini entered the election in coalition with
Berlusconi's centre-right Forza Italia as well as the neofascist
Fratelli d'Italia, and the three parties together got nearly 36 percent of the
vote. “While this was a considerable achievement, it was not enough to reach
the 40 percent threshold required to govern, set by the new Italian
electoral law,” noted Silvia Mazzini in the Al
Jazeera.
In December 2017, the far-right
Freedom Party of Austria became a junior coalition
partner after striking a deal with the right-wing Austrian People's Party.
In the 2016
elections in the Netherlands,
the nationalist party of Geert Wilders won 13 percent of the votes. In 2017
Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front rose to nearly 21 percent in France. Last
October, Germany's AfD won more than 12 percent of the votes, and in Austria, the
leader of the conservative-populist party OVP formed an alliance with the
far-right FPO. “Due to the electoral system in France, Le Pen's results were
put in check by the victory of Emmanuel
Macron. In Germany,
the grand coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD provided a solution, albeit temporary.
But in Italy,
it seems difficult, if not impossible, to find such remedies,” Silvia Mazzini wrote last month in the Al Jazeera.
With probable win of Orban’s
party in Hungary and the aforementioned gains of the neo-fascist forces in many
parts of Europe, it is not difficult to fathom where she is heading. And it is
not a pleasant one! The battle there is often not between
progressive left and conservative right, but between hard-core fascists and
soft-core fascists. We can expect more crackdown on civil liberty, freedom of
press and migration, let alone the rise of fascism with the false pretense of
saving Christianity from invasion of others.
Surely, the memories and
lessons of the World War II are a distant past to the neo-fascists like Orban
and Wilders and their new recruits who seem too eager to join the van wagon of
crass fascism and bigotry that has been responsible for so much of bloodshed
and wanton violence. Old habits die hard!
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