THOMAS Mair, a British citizen, was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life last week for the murder of Jo Cox, a Labour MP. The murder took place last June when nobody in US or outside thought of the possibility of Donald Trump winning the American presidential race. Still, if people connect Mair’s action with an international wave of a far-right, populism which paved the way to Trump’s victory, there is a reason.
Mair was a committed lifelong member of the extreme, white racist right and admirer of Anders Breivik, the white racist Norwegian now serving jail sentence for killing 77 people, including 69 participants of a summer camp on the island of Utoeya in July 2011. As Mair attacked Cox during the EU referendum campaign, he shouted “Britain first”.
In short, he personified a crude sort of nationalism to which US President Barack Obama made reference in his address to the Greek people on his final foreign trip on Nov. 15.
Obama’s fears are well founded. The American people who voted for Trump were only following a disturbing trend that has been evident in Europe for some time now.
Across the continent, parties of the center-left now find themselves embattled, divided and directionless. Overall, the total vote share for the continent’s traditional center-left parties is now at its lowest level since at least World War II.
Germany and Britain best exemplify this decline in the fortunes of the center-left. There was a time when center-left parties dominated the political scene in both countries. No longer. In Germany, which will have a federal election early in the second half of 2017, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a new anti-immigration and anti-Islam party, is likely to win its first seats in the national parliament.
With a possible early election coming next year in Britain, polls indicate that the Labor Party would lose decisively to the ruling Conservatives. In June referendum on the European Union, for instance, working-class voters in traditional Labor strongholds ignored their party’s advice to opt to stay in, and instead heeded the call of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party to vote out.
In France, far-right National Front is smelling victory in the air. If Socialist President François Hollande’s perceived failure to respond adequately to a recent string of terrorist attacks has boosted chances of the Front in the presidential election, his proposal to strip French citizenship from convicted terrorists who hold dual nationality has angered fellow leftists.
In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of the center-left Democratic Party has said he will resign if he fails to win approval for a host of constitutional revisions he has proposed. Chances are he will lose the vote slated for early December. And the beneficiary will be the populist Five Star Movement that is anti-establishment, though less nationalist.
In Austria, Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far right Freedom Party, is likely to win the presidential election on Dec. 4. That would make him the first far-right head of state in the European Union, though the office is largely ceremonial. In March, the Netherlands will hold parliamentary elections in which the incumbent center-right government will face tough challenge from the anti-Muslim Freedom Party.
Even Scandinavia has been unable to avoid the rout of the center-left. Meanwhile, some midsize European countries, Hungary and Poland among them, had elected rightist governments.
Though the resurgence of far-right parties should worry all right-thinking people, Muslim minorities have special reason to worry.
The leading far-right parties in Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands are explicitly anti-Muslim. Opposition to immigration is a cornerstone of their appeal.
In his speech in Greece, Obama said: “We have to guard against... tribalism built around an ‘us’ or a ‘them’.” This means the left and the center-left have to get their act together, and take a united stand against bigotry and narrow loyalties, whatever their differences on specific issues.
