“If you cannot beat them, join them” is a terrible counsel of despair. The rise of Islamophobic bigots in Europe has caused previously mainstream politicians to try and head off the threat of the far-right, by stealing some of their rabid policies. The threat of Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France has seen center right leaders there take increasingly intolerant stances. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s head scarf ban was only the start of what could be an alarming race to the moral bottom, which even some French socialist leaders now appear to be prepared to join.
The latest European politicians to abandon their once strongly-held principles of freedom and justice are the Christian Democrats in Austria.
With their coalition partners, the People’s Party, they have promised to ban the wearing of the niqab and the burqa and also to crack down on migrant labor, particularly from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The fear in Vienna is that the far-right Freedom Party could triumph in next year’s general election. As it was, last December the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer came close to winning the country’s presidential election. The ultimately victorious Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen was sworn in this month. Though the Austrian head of state plays a largely symbolic role, had Hofer won, the symbolism would have been overwhelming and overwhelmingly negative.
And Austria still carries the mark of shame in that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was born in Linz in Austria. The new Nazi poison comes in a phial that is falsely labeled “Democracy”. But those who seek to counter the message of racial and religious hatred by embracing part of it themselves should understand that in the end, they will be the targets of the neo-Nazis. Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 through the ballot box and promptly destroyed all the organs of the Weimar democracy. By the time moderate Germans had woken up to what was effectively a democratic coup and the loss of their freedoms, it was too late.
And though individual neo-Nazi parties profess their support for nationalism and wrap themselves in their countries’ flags, their poison is once again crossing borders. Canadians, still reeling from the horror of this week’s Quebec mosque attack in which six worshippers were murdered by a right-wing terrorist, are no less appalled to discover that the killer, a young French-Canadian student, has confessed that he is a fervent supporter of France’s Marine Le Pen.
There is only one European politician of any stature who has had the moral and political courage to confront this evil. By her welcome for a million mostly Muslim migrants, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shamed her fellow EU leaders. Those Germans who voted for her are understandably concerned at the disgusting behavior of a handful of migrants who have found refuge in Germany. But Merkel’s inspired leadership has led her to condemn without qualification the poison of Islamophobia. She has not wavered in her determination to do what is right. Germans, for all their anxieties, should be proud of such a resolute leader.
The cancer of race hate and Islamophobia has to be cauterized and cut out of European politics. There is no other treatment that will stop it metastasizing.
