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JUST ANOTHER VIEW

The latest in ultra-right story
***The west's monopoly claim over frustrations to express disgust every now and then at what's happening eastward by way of religious extremism looks assailable. It has a glass ceiling that is about to splinter. The rest of the world has its disappointment to vent out, too. Fanaticism by whatever name it is called -religious obscurantism, racial hatred or ethnic intolerance -- is one and the same thing and equally reprehensible. It has to be politically tackled in each country not by any touted ideological superiority.***
T
HE political landscape in Europe features a populist anti-immigrant Far-right
that is fearfully raring to come into the mainstream. There's a sense of gloom and doom about it.
Curiously, the phenomenon is underlined by the assassination of Pim Fortuyn in Amsterdam a week before the Dutch general elections. Within just months of his ultra-right party's inception, it came into reckoning as a favourite for 20 parliamentary seats, even regarded as a threat to the established political parties. In fact, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals were even toying with the idea of working with Fortuyn in a likely coalitional arrangement.
What was so special about him? A sociology professor, he had a flamboyant lifestyle with a gay streak to boot. All that in a country where the royalty is a picture of propriety riding bicycle. Thoroughly opposed to immigration, he publicly criticised Islamic culture as being 'backward,' thereby sending tremors through Muslim immigrant communities.
But the finger of suspicion is not instantly pointed to any immigrant of Turkish, Moroccan or Albanian origins. Fortuyn's supporters liked to ascribe the murder to what they called media demonisation. An 'extreme leftist' from a deeply religious township is the prime suspect in the reckoning of the intelligence services.
The 'martyrdom' of Pim Fortuyn is likely to generate a sympathy wave for his followers in the general election scheduled for May 15. In effect, the anti-establishment
Party's doings. And, its leader Mr. Griffin has been quoted as saying that he wanted the lives of the Asian immigrants difficult.
The isolationist and xenophobic ideology of Le Pen in France may have been rejected hands down in the Presidential election. But can there be any trifling with his support base of 18 per cent among the 43-million-strong electorate? And despite the mustering strong by all political parties to block his chances in the run-off polls, he ended up bettering his showing of
Chirac and a Socialist prime minister it had seen earlier on.
With the Socialists in their lonely furrow after the presidential polls and depending upon how Le Pen's National Front fares in the assembly elections, there could be a change in the equations between the Far-right and the Conservative right as represented by Chirac.
Looking back, Socialist Mitterrands' ability to attract centrist votes won him a second term as President in May, 1988. In a diametrically opposite scenario 14
tion for Hitler's economic programmes and downplaying of Nazi concentration camps as 'punishment camps' made a stupendous headway in the 1999 elections. Coming second in the polls it went on to form a coalition government with the Centre-right People's Party; and although Haider was to resign subsequently, he continued to wield influence with the government.
Germany's National Democratic Party (NPD) has been fomenting violence against the minorities. As
vote could be larger than what the pollsters had originally predicted. That way the assassination might pay a greater dividend to the murdered Far-right leader's cause. What an upshot it's going to be!
In northern Britain the racist British National Party (BNP) has won three seats in the local council elections for the first time in ten years. More than the number of seats, it is the percentage of votes the party has secured that is worrying.
Most of the racial riots in Bangladeshi-inhabited areas have been linked to the British National
the first round.
The broad coalition of forces that made Chirac's resounding victory possible has already broken up going their ways. The Socialists are bent upon avenging their humiliation in the presidential elections through a victory in the legislative elections. The choice of Liberal Democrat Raffarin as the interim Prime Minister with a low ideological profile might not do wonders for Chirac's party at the parliamentary polls.
France may well be looking at the prospect of a repeat of the 'cohabitation' between Centrist
years on, Chirac, the centrist neoGaullist has been re-elected to presidency by virtue of the Socialist vote. But while the power at the top has changed hands between the Socialist and the Conservative, the Far-right has remained the constant third factor. French politics has continuously shifted to the Right since 1981. As part of the process, the impressive performance of neo-fascist candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen is nothing new; it dates back to the elections in late eighties.
In Austria, Jorg Haider's Freedom Party (FPO) with its admira-
such its right to participation in the general elections due in September has become a subject-matter of legal battle launched by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democratic Party. The government's case may have been somewhat weakened by its use of ten spies in the investigations. Pending Supreme Court judgement, the NPD is putting up its candidates for the polls.
Nearly in every country of Western Europe France, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Germany politics of the Right is on the
ascent. This casts a shadow on the fate of ten per cent of the population of the Netherlands who are immigrants, 1.5 million in Italy and seven million in Germany, aside from the Diaspora in other lands. The net new arrival rate being on the rise, according to the views of various Western governments, their immigration and asylum policies are becoming increasingly forbidding.
The xenophobic tendencies feed on the assumption that the process of European integration in particular has subsumed national identities. The decline of nationstates as perceived by the Euroskeptics and the corrupt power and economic structures that exacerbated unemployment among the youth have fuelled ultra-nationalist urges. The post-September 11 developments have also had a part to play in all this.
The west's monopoly claim over frustrations to express disgust every now and then at what's happening eastward by way of religious extremism looks assailable. It has a glass ceiling that is about to splinter. The rest of the world has its disappointment to vent out, too. Fanaticism by whatever name it is called -- religious obscurantism, racial hatred or ethnic intolerance -- is one and the same thing and equally reprehensible. It has to be politically tackled in each country not by any touted ideological superiority.
SH Imam is Associate Editor of The Daily Star.