For those of us watching the situation in Greece, and in Europe more generally, we are faced with the prospect of creeping fascism. In Greece and Hungary, and to a lesser extent Finland, the UK, France, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and a hodgepodge of other countries, fascist parties are emerging. In Greece the Golden Dawn, and in Hungary the Jobbik, have emerged as very important players on the social and political scenes. Fire-breathing nativists, these parties advocate for a kind of xenophobic, racist, politics that has not been heard so clearly for sixty-five years.
The question is why they have arisen. On a certain level, it’s not hard at all to explain. In times of great socio-economic turmoil, the population tends to gravitate to radical views at the far ends of the political spectrum. This has been a recurring pattern throughout modern European history: France in 1789 and again in 1830. Many countries in Europe in 1848, Russia in 1917, Germany in 1919, Italy in 1922, Germany again in 1932-3, the United Kingdom in 1934-5, France again in 1968. These moments have been both to the left (France all three times, Russia in 1917, Germany in 1919) and the right (Italy in 1922, Germany in 1932-3, the UK in 1934-5). So the question is not so much why now, as why the right this time.
In my view, to understand why rabid, fascistic, right wing is rising now, one must look back to the 1990s. Since then, the “mainstream” left has moved dramatically towards the right of the political spectrum (the international political spectrum that is – the American spectrum is so skewed to the right that most of what America calls the left would be comfortably at home on the right wing of the European spectrum). Whatever name or label you want to apply to the change, “Third Way”, “triangulation”, “New Labour”, or so forth, parties of the left abandoned their old critiques of capitalism in part because of the “triumph” of western liberal capitalism over Soviet state socialism and the supposed “end of history” (how’s that end working out for you, Fukuyama?). This left the mainstream left fully co-opted into the system, moving from criticizing it to seeking only to shave off the roughest of corners.
This move to the right has been particularly noticeable in exactly those countries where the far right is now rising. In Greece, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement has moved so far to the right that it is now comfortably in coalition with New Democracy, the political heirs of the pre-junta Greek reactionary parties. The change in the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) is best illustrated by this quote from the Party’s Wikipedia page: “On economic issues, the Socialists have often been greater advocates of liberal, free market policies than the conservative opposition, which has tended to favor more state interventionism in the economy through economic and price regulations, as well as through state ownership of key economic enterprises.” That’s just ridiculous. At what point a party loses the right to call itself anything approaching “left”, I have no authority to say, but surely the MSZP has got to be approaching that point. I won’t explore the other countries in particular detail, but suffice to say, the same pattern exists all over Europe: parties of the left move to the right in the 1990s, stay in the centre in the 2000s, and parties of the far right rise in the late 2000s.
Why does this move to the right by leftist parties in the 1990s account for the rise of far-right parties in the last five years? Because it left a great void. Normally, in times of great social disruption, there have been voices on the far-right and the far-left offering competing explanations for, and solutions to, the problem. What we see in Europe today is that there are relatively few parties of the far-left offering a leftist critique of the causes of the current situation, or offering leftist solutions to the problem. What we are left with is a relatively indistinct mishmash in the centre, with competition between centre-left proposals for stimulus to the economy, but not really anything more than that, and centre-right proposals for cutting away the deficits. But there is also a voice on the far-right, screaming out a frothing anger that reflects the anger that is widespread in many European populations. An anger at a situation that none of the mainstream parties seems to have been able to fix.
Given that this crisis was undeniably caused by the excesses of unleashed laissez-faire capitalism, the field should be wide open for a leftist critique, but the main “left” parties of Europe are so deeply co-opted that they are unwilling to make that argument, and would not be credible if they did. This leaves the hysterical anger on the far-right as the only option being offered that isn’t “more of the same”. It offers an explanation (even if it is a grossly wrong one): that “others”, be they immigrants, “undesirable” racial or ethnic minorities, sexual minorities or religious minorities (the spectre of antisemitism is rapidly growing again) are at fault. That if only they are punished, made to go away, to be “normal”, that the problem will be solved. As a result we see Golden Dawn gaining credibility with its attacks, rhetorical and physical, on immigrants and sexual minorities. We see the Jobbik organizing marches to attack Roma neighbourhoods, and blaming “the Jews” for the economic crisis engulfing the world.
Even where parties on the left are making leftist arguments, as SYRIZA is doing in Greece, they seem to be left unable, or unwilling, to channel the anger people feel. As a result, the only angry voice people hear is the one from the far-right, blaming immigrants, or gays, or “the Jews” for all the problems, and speaking a political discourse that is profoundly undemocratic. Fascism is rising, because the people are angry, and the fascists are the only ones who are showing the same anger. They are rising because the left has let them.
Photo of the Magyar Garda via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped by author.
