Racism and xenophobia in Europe stemming the rising tide.

• Author: Ford, Glyn

For over two decades, Europe has seen a rising tide of racism and xenophobia threatening to engulf its politics. Increasingly since 9/11, this has become particularized in the form of Islamophobia, coupled with an ideological anti-Semitism propagated by neo-Nazi parties. Since 1984, the political expression of this social disease has been the growth of neo-fascist and far-right parties; the two have fed off each other. Yet, to a degree, it has been held in check by the "historic memory" of the horrors of Hitler's Germany. However, this has begun to change, as recent events have triggered the perception that Christendom is at war with the Dar al Islam, allowing far-right parties to claim a popular resonance and repackage themselves in a way that jettisons much of their historical baggage.

In June 2004, 732 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were elected by 350 million voters in what was one of the world's largest-ever elections. What was the outcome? Parties of power were punished across the continent, except the winners were often not their traditional opponents from the left and right, but right populist parties. In these elections, 25 MEPs from ten neo-Nazi and extreme right-wing parties across seven member States, including three of the recent accession States, were elected to the European Parliament. They were joined by dozens more MEPs who share the rhetoric if not the underpinning ideology. This threatens to further intensify the discrimination against the 12 million to 14 million third-country nationals and the 4 million black Europeans living in the European Union (EU) who already face the threat of physical violence, daily discrimination and verbal harassment--a second-class status with third-class treatment. Following Europe's enlargement into the former Soviet Empire, the far right have new victims in the millions of Roma.

The EU insists on the inclusion of equal rights in the law of all new member States. Yet its practice is threatened by the seductive appeal of the new right-wing parties' innumerate policies on lower taxes and higher public services, while their narrow nationalism strikes a chord with areas of the general public, drip-fed on a tabloid diet of xenophobia. Before the election, the political and media climates were certainly in the new right's favour. For example, the Belgian Vlaams Blok, France's Front National (FN), the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, and the British National Party (BNP) had all performed...