The Extreme Right in Europe

Paul Hainsworth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780415170970
  9780415396820
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134154319
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Extreme Right in Western Europe is a concise introduction to one of the most persistent facets of late twentieth-century history, politics and society.

The legacy of the Nazi era and the increasingly unacceptable face of extremism all militated against the success of far right-wing parties after World War Two. Nevertheless, contemporary problems and the solutions offered to ever more difficult questions such as immigration, unemployment, and law and order have enabled extremist, nationalist and populist movements to emerge.

Focusing on a range of countries including France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Austria, Belgium and the Mediterranean region, Paul Hainsworth:

• explores the concept of right-wing extremism
• discusses the varying success of extreme right political parties in Western Europe
• examines the policies and perspectives of these parties
• analyses the profile of the extreme right's electorate
• assesses the impact of right-wing extremism on aspects of politics in contemporary Western Europe.

This accessible and up-to-date analysis of this enduring movement in Western Europe is a must for courses in history, politics and European studies.

1 Extreme rightism

In this chapter, as a necessary preliminary, the nature of extreme rightism is discussed. First, some of the names and labels adopted by extreme right movements are introduced and commented on. Second, some of the alternative definitions and descriptions of extreme rightism are noted and explored. The overall line taken here is to emphasise that there are different approaches and interpretations available and applied to the (extreme right) phenomena under discussion. It is important to appreciate this reality.

Names and labels

By way of introduction, it is useful to say something about the various names adopted by extreme right movements. From the outset, it is important to state the obvious: that ‘the extreme right’ is not a label that is readily accepted or claimed by the parties and movements (or their supporters) described as extreme right. Indeed, while the term ‘extreme’ is undoubtedly the main bone of contention here, even the locator of ‘right’ is problematical for some extreme right forces. For their own part, the political parties under the microscope prefer self-descriptor terms that incorporate a broad range of titles and key words, with the emphasis—not surprisingly—upon positive and unifying connotations. At this initial stage, therefore, it is worth reflecting upon the following swathe of party names that have been adopted by a range of political movements that can be seen as belonging to the extreme right political family in Western Europe.

At the ballot box, the following parties have been viewed widely as the most successful extreme right movements in Western Europe. In France, the National Front (Front National) (FN) has figured prominently in French and European politics since its 1983–1984 breakthrough and has been seen as a model for some of the other parties. In Italy, the National Alliance (AN) and, to a lesser extent, its predecessor, the Italian Social Movement (MSI) and (again to a lesser, but significant, extent) the Northern League (NL) have constituted the main parties on the extreme right. In Belgium, the Flemish Bloc (VB), which was renamed Flemish Interest (VB) in 2004, has emerged as the dominant extreme right party in Flanders—the northern part of the country. Elsewhere, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) has gathered momentum since the mid-1980s, entering national coalition government a quarter of a century later, but thereafter experiencing schism. In Scandinavia, the key parties of relevance here are the Norwegian Progress Party (FRPn), the Danish Progress Party (DPP) and the Danish People’s Party (DF). Also of note are the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and, fleetingly but dramatically, in the Netherlands, the List Pim Fortuyn (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) (LPF) (the latter named after its high-profile leader).

Some of the other Western European extreme right parties have enjoyed episodic and limited success, but nevertheless they have attracted considerable attention at home and abroad. In Germany, they have included the Republican Party or Republicans (REP), the German People’s Union (DVU) and the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). In Sweden, New Democracy and the Sweden Democrats (SD) have enjoyed modest success, as have the Centre Democrats and the Centre Party ’86 in the Netherlands. The British National Party (BNP) and, to a much lesser extent, its predecessor, the (British) National Front (NF), have been the key, albeit minor, parties in Britain. In the Mediterranean countries that came into the European Union in the 1980s, extreme right parties have been minuscule in recent years—and some relevant developments are noted in Chapter 3.

The above parties are discussed in further detail below. The key point to stress here though is that, as the above panorama of adopted names indicates, the parties of the extreme right tend largely to characterise or imagine themselves in specific ways. Some of the voters and members of these parties might self-locate in the extreme right category—but most do not. The founders and the key movers who have constructed and sustained extreme right parties have tended to portray their movements primarily or variously as fronts or blocks; as forces for freedom, democracy and progress. At the same time, they are promoted and projected as organisations based around and rooted in the nation and the national; as unions and alliances that speak plainly, uniquely and directly to the people; and as movements that serve to unite rather than divide the people. Indeed, some of the above-named movements are even lukewarm about the label ‘party’, sometimes interpreting it as a signifier of division or selfishness. The other, mainstream political parties are portrayed simultaneously in extreme right discourses as institutions that—because they are deemed to be based on class, ideology or (self) interest—serve to divide and betray, rather than unite ‘the people’. Thus they stand accused of failing to properly represent or speak for ‘the people’. This populist narrative in extreme right discourse is important, not least since it helps to characterise a significant component of the style of this political family. Consequently, it is discussed further in the next sections, which endeavour to define the extreme right.

What is the extreme right?

Within the disciplines of the political and social sciences there is considerable debate about what constitutes ‘the extreme right’ and whether some other term or label might be more appropriate. What exactly constitutes right-wing extremism is rather difficult to pin down. A universally agreed description of the term is lacking. According to one authority on the subject, although ‘the term right-wing extremism is today quite current in the social and political jargon, there is no unequivocal definition’ (Mudde 1995: 205). Another key source on the topic recognised problems over the use of terms and language, but adopted the terminology of extreme right as ‘a convenient but flawed shorthand’ (Eatwell 2004: 14). Other analysts have pointed to the overlap between the right and the extreme right as a potential source of confusion here. To some extent, this overlap has been accentuated by the evolution of the extreme right in recent years and the formation in Europe of coalition governments that include extreme right parties (see below). Other observers too have pointed to non-parliamentary forces and, at times, violent movements as constituting a specific case of extreme rightism. When there is overlap on the far right between electoral-focused organisations and violent, non-parliamentary movements, again there is scope for confusion and interpretation.

From the outset, therefore, it must be said that extreme rightism is a slippery and contested label. The terms ‘fascism’ and ‘Nazism’, and then ‘neo-fascism’ and ‘neo-Nazism’, were the language of political and historical researchers until the 1960s. Subsequently, the term ‘right-wing radicalism’ was utilised as a collective term to explain emergent political phenomena, and thereafter the label ‘right-wing extremism’ has been fashionably adopted since the mid-1970s: ‘it was originally used alongside right-wing radicalism and later replaced it. Today, there is broad international consensus regarding the term “right-wing extremism” ’ (Mudde 1995: 205). Mudde may have been prone to some slight exaggeration on this latter assertion—and the same author tends to shift his emphasis in a most recent work (Mudde 2007). Again, Ignazi (2003: 1) puts forward the claim that: ‘Until the 1980s the term extreme right was synonymous with that of neo-fascism.’ This was linked to the status and predominance in Italy of the MSI as the leading extreme right party in Western Europe in the decades immediately following World War Two. The 1980s were a watershed decade for the extreme right: new parties emerged, older ones became innovative in their appeals and both categories won considerable support. Hitherto fascist and counter-revolutionary traditions were more influential, but New Right and neo-conservative ideas became more prominent, with their emphasis upon ideas such as the right to difference, anti-egalitarianism and anti-universalism. Thus, fascism and its variants ‘no longer remained the unique cultural sources’ (Ignazi 2003: 22). Some of these aspects are explored further below.

Staying with the definitional theme, other analysts suggest that the term ‘radical right’ has been used more commonly in the United States of America (USA), whereas academics in Western Europe tend to favour the term ‘the extreme right’. Even here, though, we need to be careful as, within Europe, distinctions have been made between the extreme and radical rights. Backer defines the extreme right in the German context as movements that reject ‘democratic political pluralism in favour of a totalitarian or authoritarian form of government’. Right-wing radicalism is seen to be anti-democratic in orientation and to share the nationalism and racism of the extreme right, without being totally hostile to liberal democracy (Backer 2000: 88). One key reason why ‘extreme right’ took some time to become more broadly acceptable as a descriptor in Western Europe was that there was an assumption or convention that the term signified an advocacy of violence. To some extent, the classification adopted by the post-war (West) German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution perpetuated the equation with violence by differentiating between an anti-democratic and dangerous ‘extreme right’ and a ‘radical’ right that was critical and questioning but not outright dismissive of liberal democracy. However, the distinction between the two terms is not always clear-cut in practice and, significantly, very few parties on the German extreme right have been banned as un-constitutional (Backer 2000; Carter 2005; Eatwell 1998; Stöss 1991).

Mudde (1995: 204–205) also makes the useful qualification that, whereas concepts (or ideologies) such as ‘socialism’, ‘liberalism’ and ‘communism’ have a long history, this is not the case with ‘right-wing extremism’. Indeed, unlike these other ‘isms’, it is largely a post-war and even quite a recent addition to the political inventory. ‘Extreme right’ or ‘right-wing extremism’, therefore, are labels that have been utilised widely to depict the parties and movements discussed in this book. However, in order to categorise the phenomena under observation here, various authors have preferred to adopt from a range of terms. The following labels are some of the main ones that have been used instead to portray the political parties and forces discussed below: fascist, neo-fascist, neo-populist, new populist, radical right, radical right-wing populist, far right, populist, right-wing populist, anti-immigrant and new right.

It is not uncommon for authors to use more than one label from time to time or even simultaneously. The title of an important text by Ivaldi (2004) focuses upon ‘populist and extreme’ right-wing movements in Western Europe, while Rydgren (2004: 8) adopts a similar approach, with his emphasis on ‘extreme right-wing populism’. This coupling and incorporation of populism and right-wing extremism in the same definitional breath represents a persuasive approach in mapping out the subject area. Bell (2000: 127) too depicts the French FN as a national-populist party—that ‘may remain faithful to the values of the extreme right, and to its anti-Republican inheritance, but it is a populist and parliamentary formation’. Again, adopting the term ‘extreme right’ as the most plausible descriptor, Ignazi points usefully to the considerable variation across this political family, ‘from solid ideological imprinting to loosely anti-establishment-populist approach’ (Ignazi 2002: 21).

There is also, in this discussion on the nature of the extreme right, a temporal variable worth considering. Parties and movements are not static in their policies, beliefs and practices; they may and do evolve over time. Thus, Abedi adopts a classificatory system that locates what he calls ‘anti-political establishment parties’ (APEs) both outside and inside the mainstream party political system at varying times and depending on the context. An APE is defined as a party that contests the status quo in terms of major policy and political system issues and operates as a challenger to the mainstream, establishment parties—without necessarily rejecting democracy per se (Abedi 2004: 12). When such a party (on the right or the left or neither) is considered to have fulfilled certain criteria (such as challenging the status quo and the establishment and its policies), it is deemed to qualify for APE status. But when that party fails to meet the criteria at a given time—for instance, because it has joined a coalition government—it is deemed to have lost its APE character.

What emerges from this discussion then is that context—time and place—has consequences for how parties and movements are perceived and conceptualised, and this obviously makes the task of defining and pinning down the extreme right even more troublesome. Indeed, some analysts have preferred terms such as ‘challenger’ (Mackie 1995), ‘protest’ (Fennema 1997) or ‘discontent’ (Lane and Ersson 1994) parties as alternative labels to APEs. The latter organisations seek to enhance their own credibility and legitimacy by pointing to a fundamental divide between the people and the political parties/establishment. The APE parties do not acquire their particular status for life. At times, they may become more integrated into the party political system (via coalitions or through the practice of providing policy-making support to minority governments) and, for better or for worse, thereby lose their standing by doing so. However, we would argue that even within coalition mode, it is not always appropriate to classify extreme right parties as necessarily losing their APE or outsider status. For, whilst their participation would signal an obvious manifestation of compromise and accommodation, this is not to be equated per se with ideological metamorphosis or convergence. Extreme right parties may still remain attached to ideologies and values that lay outside the mainstream and that serve to characterise such parties as still belonging to a certain political family.

In this context, in 2000, when the FPÖ entered coalition government in Austria, it was portrayed widely as ‘the opposition within’, a sort of enemy or pariah party elevated temporarily to insider status in order to achieve a working government, that reflected broadly the verdict of the electorate. The same argument could be applied to the Northern League, when in coalition in Italy, namely it became an ‘insider’ in practice without renouncing its ‘outsider’ personality. In 1996, it even helped to bring the coalition down of which it was a member. The outsider argument is increasingly less applicable to the League’s coalition partner, the National Alliance—in view of the latter’s, albeit incomplete and contested, trajectory towards a post-fascist identity and its greater systemic integration. Again, in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party in recent years can be seen to have collaborated with the mainstream on policy-making more or less on its own terms, without giving up its fundamental, ideological, outsider status. These few examples—discussed further below—suggest that each case needs to be examined closely on its merits

From the above discussion, it is evident already that extreme right parties are not simply parties like the others. An assessment of their ideology, policies and discourse in Chapter 4 will serve to underline and substantiate this point. Like the Greens (albeit from a very different perspective), extreme right parties are a type of ‘anti-party parties’. They portray themselves to the electorate as something qualitatively different from the other parties. Moreover, ‘they are perceived as right-extremist because they unquestionably occupy the right-most position of the political spectrum’ (Ignazi 2003: 2). As such, they are parties that, despite their professed faith in representative democracy, are prone to extremist discourses and positions, that diverge from the values of the political order in which they operate. The espousal of narrow, ethnically based, exclusionary representations of the nation, combined with authoritarian political perspectives serves to render such parties as extremist (Hainsworth 2000b: 7). ‘They are “extreme” not in terms of being against or outside the existing constitutional order but in terms of being extreme within that order (Minkenberg 1997: 84–85).’ They do not reject democracy per se, but have reservations about its actual workings.

However, the liberal-democratic, systemic affection and attachment of such movements should not be exaggerated, for basically they want another political system, another value system. The FN’s well-known leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, for example, has called for the replacement of the existing French Fifth Republic by a ‘Sixth Republic’, a more authoritarian and top-down regime—with inter alia restricted rights for public-sector workers to go on strike in order to pursue grievances. Extreme right parties can be defined as movements of opposition against the values and practices of liberal-democratic societies (Mudde 2000; 2002). They eschew violence and ‘buy’ into some of the trappings and institutions of the liberal-democratic system, but are not comfortable with the whole package. They represent and ascribe to qualitatively alternative visions of politics and society, rather than to the alternation of government office between other, broadly similar, mainstream political parties. For Carter, moreover, right-wing extremism comprises two key anti-constitutional and anti-democratic elements. These are ‘a rejection of the fundamental values, procedures and institutions of the democratic constitutional state (a feature that makes right-wing extremism extremist)’ and ‘a rejection of the principle of fundamental human equality (a feature that makes right-wing extremism right-wing)’ (Carter 2005: 17). Consequently, characteristics such as anti-partyism, anti-parliamentarism and anti-pluralism are seen to stem from the first element here, and features such as nationalism, racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism and exclusionism are associated with the second.

Over a quarter of a century ago, one of the key writers on party politics, Giovanni Sartori (1976), pointed appropriately to the existence of anti-system parties, that in effect do not constitute the ‘loyal opposition’. Indeed, as already intimated above and explored below, there is a disparity between the liberal-democratic pretensions and the illiberal values of members of the extreme right political family. Critics and opponents of extreme right political parties sometimes portray them as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ or as outright fascist. The following section discusses the relationship of the extreme right to fascism.

Fascism and beyond

Many authoritative commentators about the extreme right go back to the fascist heyday period to help locate or ground their subject. This is not surprising since there are continuities, as well as novelties, in the make-up of the post-war and contemporary extreme right. On the one hand, the contemporary extreme right is careful not to be too linked with pre-war extremist parties and their methods. On the other, there are similarities with the latter. Indeed, some of the extreme right forms presented and discussed below have varying degrees of connection with the high period of fascism and its exponents. Similarly, they pursue a discourse that marks them out as parties and movements that are not bound by the usual conventions of liberal-democratic politics (Karvonen 1997: 91–92). In this context, three prominent examples, taken from countries where the post-war extreme right has been relatively successful, serve to illustrate the character of the contemporary extreme right.

The Italian Social Movement (MSI), for instance, was born in the immediate post-war years (in 1946) out of admiration for Benito Mussolini and in sympathy with the late war-time wave of radical anti-capitalist, anti-liberal-democratic and anti-communist fascism. For much of its life, the MSI exhibited a fascist nostalgia and was seen widely as a neo-fascist party, even though in effect it did become more and more integrated, pragmatically and intermittently, into the Italian political system. In the mid-1990s, when the party was refashioned as the National Alliance (AN), there were widespread doubts about the credibility and depth of the organisation’s post-fascist re-imagining. These doubts were not surprising, given the ambiguities, contradictions and personnel that remained at the heart of the party. On the surface at least, the leadership was prepared largely to move towards modernisation, a new image and espousal of liberal-democratic principles. The movement’s middle-level elites (or party cadres) too showed signs of greater openness on social issues such as capital punishment, prison sentencing and homosexuality. However, the party cadres retained a continuing nostalgia and affection for fascism. For instance, according to the results of a survey conducted at the 1995 party conference, 62 per cent of delegates agreed with the statement that ‘notwithstanding some questionable choices, fascism was a good regime’. At the same time, 7 per cent saw it as ‘the best regime ever conceived’, and only 0.2 per cent perceived it to be a ‘brutal dictatorship’. A similar survey carried out at the party’s special ideological conference in 1998 confirmed the ongoing support for fascism as 61 per cent still viewed fascism as ‘a good regime’. Even 55 per cent of post-1994 participants shared this particular point of view, thereby casting serious doubts on the extent of post-fascist renewal and ideological reconstruction within the AN at these moments in time (Ignazi 2004: 148–152; see also Gallagher 2000; Tarchi 2005).

To take another prominent example, the French National Front (FN) began its existence in 1972, and became identified in the 1970s as comprising a motley collection of tendencies and individuals. These included collaborationists (with the Nazi occupation of France), Holocaust revisionists, neo-fascists, neo-...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations of extreme right party names
• Introduction: the extreme right in Western Europe
• 1 Extreme rightism
• 2 Success at the polls: from marginalisation to ascendancy to outcomes
• 3 Fluctuations on the extreme right
• 4 Ideology, discourse and policies
• 5 Voters and voting
• 6 Impact
• Conclusion: past, present and future
• Bibliography