Andrea Mammone - Emmanuel Godin - Brian Jenkins - Mapping The Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe - From Local To Transnational-Routledge (2012)

MAPPING THE EXTREME RIGHT IN
CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
In recent years the revival of the far right and anti-Semitic, racist and fascist organi-
zations has posed a significant threat throughout Europe. Mapping the Extreme Right
in Contemporary Europe provides a broad geographical overview of the dominant
strands within the contemporary radical right in both Western and Eastern
Europe.
After providing some local and regional perspectives, the book has a series of
national case studies of particular countries and regions including: Austria, Belgium,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta,
Portugal, Romania, Scandinavia, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland,Turkey, Ukraine and the
United Kingdom. A series of thematic chapters examine transnational phenomena
such as the use of the Internet, the racist music scene, cultural transfers and interac-
tion between different groups.
Drawing together a wide range of contributors, this is essential reading for all
those with an interest in contemporary extremism, fascism and comparative party
politics.
Andrea Mammone is an Assistant Professor of Modern History in the School of

Social Science at Kingston University London, UK.
Emmanuel Godin is Principal Lecturer in French Politics in the School of

Languages and Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK.
Brian Jenkins is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of French at the

University of Leeds, UK. He co-edits the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.
Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy
Series editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and
Matthew J. Goodwin, University of Nottingham
Founding series editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and

Cas Mudde, University of Antwerp-UFSIA
This new series encompasses academic studies within the broad fields of ‘extremism’
and ‘democracy’.These topics have traditionally been considered largely in isolation
by academics. A key focus of the series, therefore, is the (inter-)relation between
extremism and democracy. Works will seek to answer questions such as to
what extent ‘extremist’ groups pose a major threat to democratic parties, or how
democracy can respond to extremism without undermining its own democratic
credentials.
The books encompass two strands:
Routledge Studies in Extremism and Democracy includes books with an introductory
and broad focus which are aimed at students and teachers.These books will be avail-
able in hardback and paperback. Titles include:
Understanding Terrorism in America
From the Klan to al Qaeda
Christopher Hewitt
Fascism and the Extreme Right
Roger Eatwell
Racist Extremism in Central and Eastern Europe
Edited by Cas Mudde
Political Parties and Terrorist Groups (2nd Edition)
Leonard Weinberg, Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger
The New Extremism in 21st Century Britain
Edited by Roger Eatwell and Matthew J. Goodwin
New British Fascism
Rise of the British National Party
Matthew Goodwin
The End of Terrorism?
Leonard Weinberg
Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe
From local to transnational
Edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins
Routledge Research in Extremism and Democracy offers a forum for innovative new
research intended for a more specialist readership. These books will be in hardback
only. Titles include:
1. Uncivil Society? 9. Ecological Politics and

Contentious politics in post- Democratic Theory
communist Europe Mathew Humphrey
Edited by Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde
10. Reinventing the Italian
2. Political Parties and Right
Terrorist Groups Territorial politics, populism and
Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur ‘post-fascism’
Carlo Ruzza and Stefano Fella
3. Western Democracies and the
New Extreme Right Challenge 11. Political Extremes
Edited by Roger Eatwell and An investigation into the history of
Cas Mudde terms and concepts from antiquity
to the present
4. Confronting Right-Wing
Uwe Backes
Extremism and Terrorism in
the USA 12. The Populist Radical Right in
George Michael Poland
The patriots
5. Anti-Political Establishment
Rafal Pankowski
Parties
A comparative analysis 13. Social and Political Thought of
Amir Abedi Julius Evola
Paul Furlong
6. American Extremism
History, politics and the militia 14. Radical Left Parties in
D. J. Mulloy Europe
Luke March
7. The Scope of Tolerance
Studies on the costs of free 15. Counterterrorism in Turkey
expression and freedom of the press Policy choices and policy effects
Raphael Cohen-Almagor toward the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK)
8. Extreme Right Activists in
Mustafa Coşar Ünal
Europe
Through the magnifying glass
Bert Klandermans and Nonna Mayer
MAPPING THE EXTREME
RIGHT IN
CONTEMPORARY
EUROPE
From local to transnational
Edited by Andrea Mammone,

Emmanuel Godin and
Brian Jenkins
First published 2012
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins, selection
and editorial matter. Individual contributions, the contributors
The right of Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mapping the extreme right in contemporary Europe: from local
to transnational / edited by Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and
Brian Jenkins.
p. cm. – (Routledge studies in extremism and democracy; 16)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Political parties – Europe. 2. Radicalism – Europe. 3. Right-wing
extremists–Europe. 4. Right and left (Political science) – Europe.
I. Mammone, Andrea. II. Godin, Emmanuel. III. Jenkins, Brian, 1944-
JN50.M36 2012
324.2’13094 – dc23 2011041922
ISBN: 978-0-415-50264-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-50265-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-12192-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Cenveo Publisher Services
CONTENTS
List of tables x
List of figures xii
List of contributors xiii
Introduction: mapping the ‘right of the mainstream right’

in contemporary Europe 1
Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins
PART I
Local and Regional Perspectives 15
1 Backlash in the ‘hood’: exploring support for the British

National Party (BNP) at the local level 17
Matthew J. Goodwin
2 After colonialism: local politics and far-right affinities

in a city of southern France 33
John Veugelers
3 Placing the extremes: cityscape, ethnic ‘others’ and young

right extremists in East Berlin 48
Nitzan Shoshan
viii Contents
4 Extreme-right discourse in Belgium: a comparative

regional approach 62
Jérôme Jamin
5 Regionalism, right-wing extremism, populism: the

elusive nature of the Lega Nord 78
Giorgia Bulli and Filippo Tronconi
PART II
The Southern European Extreme Right after
Dictatorships 93
6 The Portuguese radical right in the democratic period 95

Riccardo Marchi
7 The Spanish extreme right: from neo-Francoism to

xenophobic discourse 109
José L. Rodríguez Jiménez
8 LAOS and the Greek extreme right since 1974 124

Antonis A. Ellinas
PART III
The Extreme Right in a Post-Communism Context 141
9 The extreme right in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina

and Serbia 143
Věra Stojarová
10 Extreme-right paramilitary units in Eastern Europe 159

Miroslav Mareš and Richard Stojar
11 Extreme-right parties in Romania after 1990:

incumbency, organization and success 173
Gabriela Borz
12 Anti-Semitism and the extreme right in

contemporary Ukraine 189
Per Anders Rudling
Contents ix
PART IV
National and Comparative Perspectives: A Challenge
to ‘Exceptionalism’? 207
13 Challenging the exceptionalist view: favourable conditions

for radical right-wing populism in Switzerland 209
Damir Skenderovic
14 Turkish extreme right in office: whither democracy

and democratization? 225
Ekin Burak Arıkan
15 Scandinavian right-wing parties: diversity more

than convergence? 239
Marie Demker
16 Downside after the summit: factors in extreme-right

party decline in France and Austria 254
Michelle Hale Williams
PART V
From ‘Local’ to ‘Transnational’ 271
17 Rights, roots and routes: local and transnational contexts

of extreme-right movements in contemporary Malta 273
Mark-Anthony Falzon and Mark Micallef
18 Cross-national ideology in local elections: the case of

Azione Sociale and the British National Party 288
Andrea Mammone and Timothy Peace
19 The transfer of ideas along a cultural gradient: the influence

of the European New Right on Aleksandr Panarin’s
new Eurasianism 303
Marina Peunova
20 Trans-European trends in right-wing extremism 317

Michael Whine
Index 334
TABLES
2.1 Voting for the Front National/Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and

Toulon (per cent of valid votes, 1984–2008) 37
5.1 Feelings of geographical belonging of Italian right-of-centre
parties’ supporters in Italy (per cent) 85
5.2 Self placement on the left–right axis in Italy (per cent) 86
5.3 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) agree with more freedom for
companies to fire their employees; (b) agree with limitations on
access of women to the labour market; (c) disagree with
introducing legislation rights for non-married couples 87
5.4 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) perceive immigration as a
threat to employment; (b) would prohibit the building of mosques
on Italian territory; (c) would prohibit gypsies from having camps
in Italian towns 88
5.5 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) do not see any difference
between left and right governments; (b) think most politicians
are corrupt; (c) think the Italian ruling class has failed in the
last twenty years 89
7.1 1977 elections in Spain 113
7.2 1982 elections in Spain 115
8.1 Results in Greek parliamentary elections, 1974–2007 (per cent) 125
8.2 Social profile of LAOS voters (N = 273) 133
9.1 The Croatian extreme right – specific features 145
9.2 Western Balkan political scene – extreme right features 153
11.1 Voters’ trust in parties and party leaders in Romania 181
11.2 Evolution of party membership in Romania 182
Tables xi
13.1 Results of radical right-wing populist parties in national

council elections, 1967–2007 in Switzerland 211
15.1 Swedish attitude towards immigrants, 1993–2009 (per cent) 244
15.2 Attitudes towards refugees among boys and girls (15–19 years old)
regarding ideological attitude in 1999 (per cent) in Sweden 246
17.1 Taxonomic sketch of activity and ideology among the
contemporary Maltese extreme right 274
FIGURES
11.1 PRM electoral mandates by region, 1990–2004 184

11.2 PUNR electoral mandates by region, 1990–2004 185
15.1 Swedish attitudes to receiving more/fewer refugees to Sweden,
1987–2007 (percentage thinking more/fewer is a good suggestion) 244
16.1 Trajectory comparison of the FPÖ and FN 267
CONTRIBUTORS
Ekin Burak Arıkan is an Assistant Professor of Politics in the Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences at Sabancı University, Istanbul (Turkey).
Gabriela Borz is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics

and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen (UK).
Giorgia Bulli is a Researcher in the Department of Political Science and Sociology

at the University of Florence (Italy).
Marie Demker is Professor in Political Science at the University of Gothenburg

(Sweden).
Antonis A. Ellinas is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of

Cyprus (Cyprus).
Mark-Anthony Falzon is a Social Anthropologist and Head of Department of

Sociology at the University of Malta (Malta).
Emmanuel Godin is Principal Lecturer in French Politics in the School of Languages

and Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth (UK).
Matthew J. Goodwin is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Nottingham

(UK).
Jérôme Jamin is Professor in Political Science at the University of Liège

(Belgium).
xiv Contributors
Brian Jenkins is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of French at the

University of Leeds (UK). He co-edits the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.
José L. Rodríguez Jiménez is Professor in Contemporary History in the Faculty of

Communication Sciences and the Centro Ramón Carande of Social and Juridical
Sciences at the Rey Juan Carlos University, Fuenlabrada and Madrid (Spain).
Andrea Mammone is an Assistant Professor of Modern History in the School of

Social Science at Kingston University London (UK).
Riccardo Marchi is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Social

Science, University of Lisbon (Portugal).
Miroslav Mareš is a Head of the Section of Security and Strategic Studies,

Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University,
Brno (Czech Republic).
Mark Micallef is a News Editor with The Times of Malta (Malta).
Timothy Peace is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (UK).
Marina Peunova is a PhD Researcher in International History and Politics at

the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
(Switzerland).
Per Anders Rudling is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of History at

Lund University (Sweden).
Nitzan Shoshan is a Professor of Anthropology in the Centro de Estudios

Sociológicos at El Colegio de México (Mexico).
Damir Skenderovic is Professor of Contemporary History in the Department of

Historical Sciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
Richard Stojar is a Lecturer and Researcher in Military Science and Security

Studies at the University of Defence in Brno (Czech Republic).
Věra Stojarová is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science of

the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic).
Filippo Tronconi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of

Political Science at the University of Bologna (Italy).
Contributors xv
John Veugelers is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology,

University of Toronto (Canada).
Michael Whine is Director, Government and International Affairs at the Community

Security Trust and Director, Defence and Group Relations at the Board of Deputies
of British Jews (UK).
Michelle Hale Williams is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the

Department of Government at the University of West Florida (USA).
INTRODUCTION
Mapping the ‘right of the mainstream right’
in contemporary Europe
Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins
I
Why should we still bother with the extreme, radical, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi or
populist right? Why yet another manuscript when most already seems to have been
said? Since the first significant breakthrough of the phenomenon on French soil in
the 1980s, acres of print have been dedicated to analysing, scrutinizing, labelling,
and at times, warning against this (ultra-)rightist galaxy, from a national or com-
parative, and recently also from a transnational or anthropological perspective.
Yet, right-wing extremism remains a hot topic for the media and public opinion,
and a key subject across the social sciences, as it continues to appear, reappear or
progress in virtually every European democracy and in the remotest corners of the
continent.
When a few years ago we, the editors of this volume, launched a Call for Papers
with a view to selecting half a dozen papers for a special issue on the far right in
contemporary Europe to be published by the Journal of Contemporary European
Studies (JCES), we had every reason to hope that our project would prove timely
and productive. The scale of the eventual response nevertheless surpassed all our
expectations. Proposals came in from more than 60 scholars based in 25 different
countries, exploring every conceivable aspect of the subject across the whole of the
European continent. As a consequence, the JCES agreed to publish two special
issues, the first in December 2008 (‘The Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe:
Cultural and Spatial Perspectives’, vol. 16, no. 3), the second in August 2009
(‘The Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: History, Interpretation and
Performance’, vol. 17, no. 2). Some of the papers published in JCES are repro-
duced in revised form in this volume (and we are grateful to Dr Jeremy Leaman for
allowing their reproduction). Overall, three dozen of the initial papers received will
now appear in this two-volume collection. This first volume, Mapping the Extreme
Right in Contemporary Europe, will be followed by a second edited book, Varieties of
2 A. Mammone, E. Godin and B. Jenkins
Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Europe, which will set out to challenge the
existing literature on the populist nature of right-wing extremist parties, will open
the ‘black box’ of extremist militancy and review how old and new figures of hate
( Jews, Muslims, the European Union and globalization) have been reworked to
galvanize passions.
II
Interest in the extreme right is thus not on the wane. Our present volume therefore
aims to offer something more, something ‘broader’, that other recent works on
this topic – whatever their quality – are not offering: we aspire to map the wider
far-right universe without confining the analysis to a given country, or academic
‘school’, discipline or method. On the contrary, this volume attempts to provide
readers, students as well as non-specialists of the extreme right, with a wide range
of case studies in many different geographical areas and relying on different meth-
odological and conceptual perspectives. Our ‘mapping’ thus stresses the diversity
of the ways in which the phenomenon has been studied while appraising – and
sometimes questioning – the diversity of the phenomenon itself.
Admittedly we, as editors, had initially considered imposing a common lexicon
on contributors focussing on 24 different countries (and we do prefer, as readers
will observe, the label ‘extreme’ to denote the right of the political right): in the
initial phase of this project, the variety of terms used to describe and analyse parties
and movements seemed a perfect illustration of the enduring ‘war of words’ ana-
lysed (and lamented) by Mudde (1996) more than 15 years ago. Some contributors
underline the difficulty of using the appropriate label: for instance, in the context
of the Ukraine, where nostalgia for a strong Communist state competes with ultra-
nationalist tendencies, Rudling argues that different terms like ‘conservatives, fas-
cists or fundamentalists are inadequate to describe … groups which belong on both
extremes of the political spectrum’. Jamin prefers to draw readers’ attention to the
‘acute notional fuzziness’ characterizing such labels and warns, as most contributors
do, against essentialist definitions of such parties and movements. Others, echoing
the early Mudde, indicate that finding the right label is not the most urgent task for
the researcher. For instance, with reference to the Lega Nord, Bulli and Tronconi
argue: ‘Searching for the most perfect label might have deflected attention from
the object itself. And this is much more likely if the object … is characterized
by contradictory features, complexity and frequent shifts, or real U-turns, in policy
positions and alliance strategies’. Finally, others, like Mammone and Peace, make
it very clear that the use of labels is not entirely neutral and has significant politi-
cal implications. The widespread use of the label ‘populist’ today, they argue,
serves to mask the enduring fascist nature of extreme-right parties and plays a role
in their legitimization.1 It is certainly not the objective of this volume to engage in
such debates about definitions and labels, but it seemed important to remind the
reader that the diversity of terms used throughout this volume may reflect different
local interpretations, different intellectual traditions and maybe different political
Introduction 3
perspectives that the editors, in the end, were reluctant to erase. Now, we do have
our own views on the classification of extreme-right parties, as our second volume
will reveal. But, in Mapping the Extreme Right, we are much more interested in the
empirical dimensions of the rightist phenomenon. While this may invite some
criticism, our aim is not to provide fixed definitions or to discuss generic forms of
extremism/radicalism. To borrow from Robert Paxton’s thoughts on the problems
of identifying a satisfactory and useful definition of fascism (probably a thornier
task than defining the post-war extreme right), definitions and classifications
are static and inherently limiting, and they fail to reflect process and complexity
(Paxton 2004: 14–15). As our contributors have amply demonstrated in this volume,
extreme-right parties – perhaps more than other parties – are prone to internal
ideological conflicts, change their positions over time, sometimes quite dramati-
cally, and above all, do not always seek to achieve ideological coherence, if only to
maintain an electoral advantage or to avoid the creation of splinter parties. The
lesson is clear: definitions and classifications may be useful as a starting point if they
help delineate some of the most general traits of a phenomenon but they may well
prove too crude to account for the phenomenon’s complexity and dynamism.
III
Our rationale here is to conceive the extreme right as a European, and a transna-
tional, phenomenon with some common and basic features cross-nationally shared.
This, as will be discussed shortly, makes the many parties and movements analysed
in this volume immediately ‘comparable’ to each other: indeed, within their own
political and national culture, they represent the different permutations of a wider
(transnational/European) ‘extremism’.
It has become clear over recent decades, as sociologist Alain Bihr (2000) perti-
nently suggests, that in the era of globalization – where nation-states are often
perceived to be inoperative and powerless and thus partly contested and dele-
gitimized – decisions seem to be made ‘elsewhere’, by ‘others’, whether by anony-
mous global markets or remote and faceless supranational bureaucracies. In this
context, the resurgence of ‘nationalist movements which put the nation at
the centre of their worldview as a key element in the construction of their
political rhetoric and the development of their policy agenda is the false paradox of
the post-national age’ (Bihr 2000: 10). Naturally enough, many of our contributors
pay particular attention to this point: ‘nations’ did not become neutral containers
with the dismantling of geographical borders, and nationalism, admittedly in
various guises, remains a particularly attractive political option for extreme-right
parties. Yet, Bihr also points to another important, if seemingly contradictory,
political dimension of extreme-right parties and movements: in different ways and
in varying degrees, they claim to be committed to a genuine and distinctive
European agenda, which regards the (white) European continent (but not the
EU) in the same way as it regards the nation, that is, as an imagined (and
racialized) homeland.2
When discussing the extreme right’s enthusiasm for a certain type of Europe,
it is worth remembering that this is not, by any means, a new theme. The history of
post-war Europe is littered with attempts to build up stronger links between
extreme-right parties in Europe: from the Rome (1950) and Malmo (1951) sum-
mits which led to the creation of the European Social Movement, to the ephemeral
formation in 2007 of the Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty group in the EU
Parliament, several extreme-right parties felt the need to move away from narrow
interwar nationalism. Immediate national interests were redefined in the light
of a common international agenda, in an attempt to break the national isolation
into which such parties could easily sink. Thus they promoted a supranational
ideal of Europe, or more precisely a ‘European nationalism’, where ‘Europe’ was
generally perceived as a bastion against both Americanization and Communism
and, more recently, against globalization, US hegemonic power, multi-ethnicity
and Islam.
Since the 1950s, there have been many attempts to build neo-fascist or neo-Nazi
international organizations and networks (Mammone 2011) – including those
promoted by the French Alain de Benoist and Maurice Bardèche, the Belgian
Jean-François Thiriart (founder of the Jeune Europe), Oswald Mosley, the
American-born Francis Parker Yockey (leader of the European Liberation Front),
and the Italian Julius Evola – which sought to promote a supranational political
vision.3 Political theorist Tamir Bar-On provocatively calls this a ‘quest’ for – or
‘dream’ of – a pan-European empire (Bar-On 2008). Naturally, in terms of attitude
towards the EU, extreme-right parties remain critical. Some of them call for a
‘Europe of Fatherlands’ (which is part of classic neo-fascist rhetoric): they do not
seek to reject the nation as a major frame of reference, but argue that a strong
Europe can only rest on the confederation of self-assured European nations (a
model not too dissimilar to the Swiss Confederation). In any configuration,
extreme-right parties insist on the importance of European civilization and cultures
as a redemptive solution to the decadence ushered in by a variety of enemies, rang-
ing from American materialism to political Islam.
This type of political philosophy has historical roots in the much-studied Nazi
New Order (i.e. a völkisch pan-Europe) and in (probably less well-known) Italian
fascist Europeanism. Indeed, historically, some fascist currents did not object to
defining the ideal political community as a non-national one: and in some cases, it
was even defined as ‘universal’ (Cuzzi 2005, 2006; Leeden 1972). Transnational
and even transatlantic links were quite common (Finchelstein 2010; Larson 2001;
Thorpe 2010). This led some scholars to argue for the existence of a global,
universal or transnational fascist ideology able to adapt and change shape in different
geopolitical contexts. Given this conceptual framework, to identify post-war,
extreme-right transnational networks and explain their similarities and connective
structures has become a major task for historians (Mammone 2008). Their work
reveals that the contemporary extreme right has already had a ‘long history’ of
‘commonality’, enhanced by a wide array of exchanges across borders and an intense
cooperation well above and beyond the strict borders of the nation-state.
Introduction 5
IV
As suggested above, the nation has certainly not disappeared from party ideology.
However, it is true that some activists may feel part of a larger community, as some
of our contributors have shown. We argue that this led to the creation of a transna-
tional political space – a ‘transnational European space’ in this specific case – and
we will shortly explain how different contributors have defined its characteristics
and dynamics and highlighted the ‘connective tissues’ which make possible the
creation of such a transnational space. In a globalized world, a political space is not
necessarily a national or local space per se:
Political space does not inevitably correlate with nation-state borders and
territories. In a world characterized by the permanent crossing and transfor-
mation of borders and boundaries, the political, stripped of large parts of its
territorial connotations, is characterized by a heterogeneity and flexibility
which is related to particular spatial conditions, junctions and disjunctions.
However, the transnational character of the political is not a particular
phenomenon of the ‘global age’ …, but can be observed throughout
the existence, and in a certain sense, already before the emergence of the
nation-state.
(Albert et al. 2009: 7)
This volume is grounded in the idea that the extreme right is at the same time a
national, a European and, as indicated further below, a local phenomenon. In other
words, even when it is observed locally, the extreme right can still pertinently be
analysed as part of a large whole.
However, can this ‘larger whole’ be rigorously defined according to any (usual)
social science categorization/classification? In order to ‘map’ the right of the right,
it would seem appropriate to take into consideration the ‘transnationality’ of right-
wing extremism, the exchange and circulation of ideas and strategies across state
borders, and those key features that are shared (albeit to a different extent at differ-
ent times) by all movements, cultures and activists analysed in this volume. To be
more precise, as Jérôme Jamin discusses it in Varieties of Right-Wing Extremism in
Contemporary Europe, the doctrine of the extreme right is based on three pillars:
(a) the idea of inequality and hierarchy, (b) an ethnic form of nationalism linked to
a mono-racial community and, finally, (c) the adoption of radical means to achieve
aims and defend the imagined community. In Mapping the Extreme Right these
extremist ‘traditions’ and ‘permutations’ are examined.
The insistence on the defence of a holistic and mono-ethnic community is today
one of the most evident ‘links’ among the different extremist groupings. Racism in
particular – whether seen as a new variation or as a resurgence of an old (European)
tradition – is a question that is clearly ‘imposed on us by reality, in forms that vary
somewhat from one country to another, but which nonetheless suggest a transna-
tional phenomenon’ (Balibar 1997: 27). In this way, racism and nationalism are
closely linked (i.e. extreme-right ethno-nationalism).4 Immigrants – in particular col-

oured migrants from developing countries – obviously challenge the ‘values’, ‘tradi-
tions’ and millenarian ‘cultures’ of the fatherland, as understood by the extreme right.
As the anthropologist Verena Stolcke rightly pointed out more than a decade ago:
In effect, the political right in Europe has in the past decade developed a
political rhetoric of exclusion in which Third World immigrants, who pro-
ceed in part from its ex-colonies, are considered as positing a threat to the
national unity of the ‘host’ countries because they are culturally different.
(Stolcke 1995: 1)
This reflects the usual extreme-right obsession with the decline of homogeneous
pan-European or Western identities (see also Bar-On 2008), where ‘biological’ is
replaced by ‘cultural’, ‘Jew’ by ‘African’, ‘immigrant’ or ‘Muslim’, where racism is
sometimes hidden, watered down, or given a different name. It is this ‘new rhetoric
of exclusion’ (to use again Stolcke’s expression) that immediately characterizes the
extreme right in the eyes of many Europeans. As will be discussed in our second
volume, Islamophobic campaigns, for instance, have become the new xenophobic
flag of the extreme right throughout Europe and such campaigns not only highlight
the existence of common values among activists, but also provide them with oppor-
tunities to further their cooperation across borders, via Internet sites, music festivals,
sporting events and other rallies (Rosenberger and Hadj-Abdou, 2012). Indeed,
throughout this volume, contributors recognize that the nature of extreme-right
parties is often inferred from what they have to say (‘differentialism’) rather than
from their concrete actions. Several of our chapters deal precisely with these actions,
from the exclusionary cultural policies implemented by the FN in Toulon
(Veugelers) to the sinister support for violent paramilitary actions in Eastern Europe
(Mareš and Stojar).
This raises some important questions about how to study the extreme right and
in particular the credence which should be given to its public utterances. Not all
our contributors agree on how to tackle this issue. Some point out that the search
for respectability has become a major part of the electoral strategy of those parties
which are serious about contesting elections and has led such parties to tone down
what once appeared to be a radical, often overtly racist and inflammatory rhetoric
and to revise their programme accordingly. Whether this alone is sufficient to
ascertain their conversion from a neo-fascist to a new populist agenda (Ignazi 1997;
Rydgren 2005; Mudde 2007) is debatable, and indeed contested by some contribu-
tors. They point out that the nature and content of their discourses still vary greatly
from one public to another: potential voters and party activists are clearly not
exposed to the same reasoning, and the arguments presented to the press are often
at odds with those which are commonly discussed on Internet forums or staged
during ‘choreographed events’ for the benefit of enthused followers (Falzon and
Micallef; Whine). For instance, Arıkan in his study of the Turkish Nationalist
Action Party demonstrates how the party’s discourse on democracy remains highly
Introduction 7
ambiguous, if not contradictory, in order to appeal to different constituencies, while

Mammone and Peace unravel the apparent, but fragile veneer of respectability that
the Italian Azione Sociale and the British National Party sought to achieve in local
elections. Conversely, other contributors, such as Skenderovic, Demker and Hale
Williams argue that new and strong populist tendencies are clearly at work today on
the right of the right. Whether populism is conceptualized as a political, rhetorical
style, with no precise content other than an emotional appeal to the common people
to challenge the legitimacy of the political establishment (Taggart 2000; Abt
and Rummens 2007), or as a fundamentally anti-liberal, authoritarian and nativist
ideology whose conception of a virtuous and homogeneous people opposed to a
corrupt, cosmopolitan, self-serving elite is not incompatible with the formal princi-
ples of democracy (Betz and Johnson 2004; Mudde 2007), it remains an important,
sometimes essential component of most parties presented in this volume. None of
our contributors, however, argue that the object of their research can be easily
defined and conceptualized. As Bulli and Tronconi remind us, parties on the right
of the right are better understood as ‘multifaceted parties’ where different compo-
nents co-exist and where the weight of each component often changes over time.
V
The objective of this volume is therefore to provide the reader with a multi-dimen-
sional map of the extreme right in contemporary Europe. In terms of geographical
coverage, we have included parties and movements from a large number of coun-
tries and we have done so for three reasons.
First, we wanted to provide readers with rich, varied and very often new empir-
ical data: the ‘usual suspects’, such as the French Front National (FN) or the various
representatives of the Italian extreme right, are not at the forefront of this volume;
when they do appear, contributors have presented their findings from innovative
perspectives, such as an insightful local study of the French FN in the city of Toulon
(Veugelers) or an original ‘localistic’ as well as cross-national approach between the
lesser known Italian Azione Sociale and the British National Party (Mammone and
Peace). Likewise, this volume offers a wealth of information about the extreme
right in the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in less-studied countries
such as Portugal, Greece and Malta. Taken together, the chapters included in this
volume provide a vivid, complex and often original illustration of the core issues
identified by the literature on the contemporary extreme right: its ideological
nature, its ambiguous relations with a fascist; Stalinist or communist past, its internal
organization, its electoral performance, its political, intellectual and cultural influ-
ence, including on policy-making, its changing relations with the conservative
right and the uncertain effects of incumbency on its trajectories.
Second, our wide geographical coverage enables us to exemplify how different
spatial perspectives have been used to decipher European right-wing extremism:
local studies are complemented by – and often interlinked with – transnational
analyses, while comparative research often nuances – and sometimes refutes – the
tendency to overemphasize the exceptional features displayed by national case

studies. As such, this volume introduces new methodologies in the study of the
extreme-right phenomenon. This is certainly the case with local, cross-national and
supranational analyses. However, some effort has also been made to embed localist
and national case studies into a wider European context. These different geograph-
ical levels of analysis do not solely reflect researchers’ methodological preferences:
they also offer possible avenues to understand how the extreme right itself concep-
tualizes its identity in relation to a given territory. Under different ideological
guises, the space delineated by the nation-state certainly occupies a primeval and
sanctified place in extreme-right ideologies. Yet, as evidenced in many chapters,
other territories have also been invested with quasi-mythical values: at sub-state
level, the Padania of the Lega Nord’s imagery (Bulli and Tronconi), the ethnicized
Flanders promoted by the Vlaams Belang ( Jamin); at supra-state level, Panarin’s
Eurasia as an alternative to Western decadence (Peunova), or the virtual and global
territory created on the Internet by racist, white supremacist groups in order to
energize and coalesce their dispersed communities across and beyond Europe
(Falzon and Micallef; Whine).
The extreme right is also well aware that the mobilizing power of the nation is
often better felt when strongly embedded in the local fabric (Goodwin; Veugelers;
Shoshan). Local history and local cultures convey in tangible and emotional terms
grand but sometimes distant national narratives, whose overt political logic is not
always attractive to the younger generations, as Shoshan’s anthropological study
reveals. Goodwin and Veugelers stress the importance of local cultures, embedded
in a specific local history and set of circumstances, in providing a more or less fertile
terrain for the development of such parties. Our collection of chapters demonstrates
how complementary (even intricately linked) these different spatial approaches are
and how a change of scale can raise distinctive research questions. Thus, the geo-
graphical map presented in this volume offers different points of entry into the
relations between right-wing extremism and territory, be it from the methodology
selected by the researcher or from the way the extreme right in Europe articulates
its relations with a given territory.
As such, this volume includes different levels of analysis and mobilizes different
disciplines to account for the extreme right in contemporary Europe: the richness
of the phenomenon is assessed through different disciplines and, as previously
suggested, is by no means restricted to a political science approach. For this reason,
we hope that this volume breaks away from narrow parochialism and, when possible,
highlights the aforementioned cross-fertilization and cross-national interactions.
Similarly, in Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe we have been careful
to avoid an approach which would solely consider the extreme right in its party
dimension. As such this volume includes a number of chapters which focus on the
diverse intellectual and cultural expressions of these movements and on forms of
organization beyond the strict remit of the party (see below).
Third, our geographical coverage is large because we wish to illustrate the porous
nature of the continent’s borders. A major theme which runs across many chapters
Introduction 9
is the way in which ideas, people and sometimes financial resources circulate from
one extreme-right party or movement to another.The reader will note, for instance,
the varying influence of the French Nouvelle Droite and its leader Alain de Benoist
on extreme-right parties and movements as diverse as those in Portugal (Marchi),
Ukraine (Rudling), Russia (Peunova), Italy and the UK (Mammone and Peace).
Personal contacts and institutional support both provide invaluable support for
ideological cross-fertilization: for instance, Ellinas shows how personal contacts
between the leaders of the Greek extreme right and the French Front National
helped to redefine, with a degree of success, the ideological orientation of the
Greek National Party, while Rodríguez Jiménez explains how the Círculo Español
de Amigos de Europa (CEDADE, the Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe), an
international network of extreme-right parties and movements, long served to dis-
seminate neo-Nazi propaganda well beyond Spanish borders until its dissolution in
1994. Rudling offers examples of financial support between the Ukrainian extreme
right and Syria, motivated by unremitting anti-Semitism, while Mareš and Stojar
reveal how some German and Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary groups have extended
their physical support to their Croatian and Serbian brethren by fighting on their
side during the Balkan wars. Many more examples can be found throughout the
chapters presented here, but Peunova, Whine, Falzon and Micallef, Mammone and
Peace have made such transnational exchanges the core of their argument. Falzon
and Micallef show the links and interactions of the extreme right in geographically
isolated Malta with their fellow European movements through the use of the
Internet and ‘transnational’ cyber-communities. Peunova charts the paradoxical
eastward transmission of Western European ideas into a type of Russian ultra-
nationalism which violently opposes Western decadence. Whine illustrates how on
each side of the Atlantic extreme-right groups, which had previously failed to
develop a common agenda, are now finding in information technology a powerful
medium to sustain their exchanges and promote virtual communities based on
shared lifestyles rather than strict ideological obedience. As such,Whine also reminds
us that extreme-right transnational trends exist both within and outside Europe.
VI
One of the recurring arguments concerning extreme-right parties is the way authors
have tried to evaluate what is specific to a particular party and what seems to be a
set of common features shared across Europe. This tension between, on the one
hand, what is specific and exceptional and, on the other hand, what is commonly
shared is played out and resolved differently in several chapters. Demker, for
instance, shows that the term ‘Scandinavian’ extreme right is problematic and dem-
onstrates that different opportunity structures explain the relative electoral failure of
the Swedish party when compared with its Danish and Norwegian counterparts.
A comparative analysis leads her to insist on what is specific to Sweden and to explain
how a common issue across Scandinavia – a rising level of immigrants – has not
provided the Swedish extreme right with the same opportunity for electoral success
as has been the case in neighbouring Scandinavian countries. (It is nonetheless

worth noting that the main reason explaining different electoral performance
between Sweden, Denmark and Norway is not to be found in the nature of these
parties’ ideology or in their programmatic orientation). Likewise, Stojarová ques-
tions whether it is possible to study the extreme right in the Balkans using the tools
which have been primarily devised for the analysis of Western extreme-right par-
ties. Whereas her comparative analysis of party ideology has led her to identify a
number of converging points between the West and the Balkans, she is not con-
vinced that it is possible to downplay the specificities of the region – the conserva-
tive political culture, the instability of the party system and the existence of strong
local cultures in the Balkans. On the whole, Bulli and Tronconi reach a similar
conclusion: the Lega Nord naturally shares similar points with other extreme-right
parties across Europe, but it is the ‘cultural, social and economic peculiarities of
the north-eastern regions of Italy’ which best ‘explain the success of the leghismo’.
Similar questions are also raised about the right-wing extremist phenomenon in
Romania (Borz) and in Turkey (Arıkan). Borz presents a nuanced assessment, argu-
ing that the extreme right in Romania shares many common points with its Western
counterparts, but argues that the transition from communism to democracy has
produced a set of specific circumstances which have modulated – rather than sig-
nificantly altered – the logic of extreme-right success: in Borz’s analysis, the figure
of the modernization loser, so common in the West’s imaginary, has morphed into
one of a ‘transition loser’. Arıkan’s assessment is even less ‘exceptionalist’: the ideo-
logical core of the Turkish extreme right, its tactical attempt to present a more
respectable façade, its conflictual and difficult relations with conservative forces,
even its overt politicization of religion echo many themes that are familiar across
Europe at large. Skenderovic devotes his entire chapter to challenging the idea that
Switzerland and its ‘local’ variety of extreme-right politics is exceptional in Western
Europe and concludes that Switzerland, like other European countries, is by no
means immune from this ‘ultra-right virus’ (and, similarly, that the Swiss version of
this ‘virus’ is very much much like the variants to be found in other countries).
Likewise, Hale Williams, comparing the electoral fortunes of the Freiheitliche Partei
Österreichs (Austrian Freedom Party) in Austria and the French Front National,
concludes that their trajectories reveal ‘common factors despite different circum-
stances’. Overall, a number of contributors to this volume see a degree of commo-
nality between extreme-right parties, groupings and cultures in Europe, confirming
our editorial position.This is further illustrated by Mammone and Peace: comparing
the political discourse of the Italian Azione Sociale and the British National Party,
they demonstrate that the two parties are united by a transnational ideology: ultra-
nationalism and xenophobia. They conclude that this degree of transnationalism
indicates that the extreme right today is a ‘truly European phenomenon, just as
interwar fascism was’. Such transnational perspectives invite the reader not only to
assess the circulation of extreme-right ideas and cultures, as exemplified by the
contagion of Nouvelle Droite doctrine from West to East (Peunova) or the tran-
snational exchanges ‘in and beyond’ national borders in the case of Malta (Falzon and
Introduction 11
Micallef), but also to consider their mutation from one context to another and their
capacity to graft themselves, successfully or otherwise, onto local or national cul-
tures (Ellinas; Marchi; Rodríguez Jiménez; Borz).
VII
Most contributors agree that the political weakness of the extreme right is often
offset by its cultural influence. For instance, Rudling explains in detail the leading
role played by the Mizhrehional’na Akademiia Upravlinnia Personalom (MAUP,
Inter-Regional Academy of Personnel Management), the largest private university
in Ukraine, in propagating anti-Semitism through a wide range of publications,
conferences and international research seminars. As Rodríguez Jiménez reminds
us, bookshops and publishing houses sponsored by CEDADE disseminated anti-
Semitic pamphlets, posters and brochures denying the Holocaust well beyond
Spain. Similarly, Marchi contrasts the Portuguese extreme right’s cultural vivacity
with its political impotence since 1974: reviews (such as Futuro Presente), publishing
houses (such as Nova Arrancada) and more recently the use of the Internet have
helped sustain the presence of the extreme right in Portuguese society, a presence
which goes well beyond its political capability. Peunova shows the interesting
(ideological) trajectory of one of the most important thinkers in post-Soviet Russia,
Aleksandr Panarin. His ‘anti-liberal nationalism of the extreme Right’ did not stop
him becoming a maître-penseur of new Eurasianism: a public intellectual and influ-
ential speaker as well as Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science
at Moscow State University with many followers among his students. Peunova
implicitly shows how the influence of the extreme right may extend well beyond
the usual ‘tiny’ circles of sympathizers.
However, as Ellinas notes in the case of Greece, this cultural vivacity is not
without political benefits: the Greek extreme right is well aware that access to mass
media is key to its electoral success. Throughout this volume the reader will find
many examples of significant organizations gravitating, sometimes uneasily, around
extreme-right parties: veterans’ associations in Spain (Rodríguez Jiménez), Portugal
(Marchi), Southern France (Veugelers) and across the Balkans (Stojarová); radical
student organizations in Greece (Ellinas), Portugal (Marchi) and Belgium ( Jamin);
specific groups such as European settlers from Algeria in and around the French
Mediterranean city of Toulon (Veugelers) or loosely connected skinhead commu-
nities across Europe and across the cyberspace (Whine; see also Falzon and Micallef ).
Whether, and to what extent, these various organizations and communities gravi-
tating around extreme-right parties can or will help the extreme right to gain more
votes and respectability is still a matter of debate. However, as some of our con-
tributors show, it is at least clear that the extreme right has (at least partially) escaped
from its political ghetto and has become embedded into the social and cultural
fabric of European societies.
Despite a clear desire to appear respectable and to dissociate itself from blatantly
unsavoury individuals and organizations5, the extreme-right galaxy is still rife
with violence. One of the most striking features of the extreme right in Europe
today is the plethora of paramilitary and vigilante groups particularly active in cen-
tral and Eastern Europe. In this volume, their presence is felt in many chapters, but
Mareš and Stojar provide an empirically rich account of such organizations. They
remind the reader of the inherently violent nature of the extreme right throughout
the European continent. Of course, as Peter Merkl correctly points out, ‘it would
be difficult to overlook the vast preponderance of the unorganized, unpolitical,
and less political outrages against asylum-seekers and other visible foreigners’ (Merkl
1995: 114) – violence often perpetrated by skinheads, football supporters, youth
gangs, or ‘uncontrolled’ neo-Nazis: in this volume, Shoshan’s chapter on young
right extremists in East Berlin conveys the feeling of a latent violence – verbal
and physical – which permeates young extremists’ daily lives: ‘daily friction with
“Turks and Arabs”; a fight at the shopping mall, threats at a court-mandated anti-
violence seminar, or various incidents at the vocational school’.6 Extreme-right
parties (and sometimes, paradoxically, mainstream media) have strongly contributed
to creating a climate of hostility, racial hatred and radicalized ethnic tensions. If it
frequently denounces the rise in crime and more generally the growing sense of
insecurity, extreme-right culture across Europe also promotes the cult of violence
and values physical confrontation. Thus, for example, vigilante squads (the so-called
‘ronde’) to protect citizens against ‘crime’ have been emerging recently in Italy (some
led by an extreme-right group called Guardia Nazionale Italiana close to the new
Movimento Sociale Italiano-Destra Nazionale).7 Similarly, a undercover investiga-
tion by The Guardian into the English Defence League (EDL) revealed that this
new movement:
which has staged a number of violent protests in towns and cities across the
country this year, is planning to ‘hit’ Bradford and the London borough of
Tower Hamlets as it intensifies its street protests; … the group’s decision to
target some of the UK’s most prominent Muslim communities was a blatant
attempt to provoke mayhem and disorder.
According to the newspaper, the EDL is the most active and important far-right
street movement since the National Front, and there are ‘a number of known right-
wing extremists who are taking an interest in the movement – from convicted
football hooligans to members of violent rightwing splinter groups’ (Taylor 2010: 1).8
This also shows that not all extreme-right movements have been involved in a
process of democratization.
To summarize, Mapping the Extreme Right can be read at different levels: it cer-
tainly contains unusual, often original empirical data about extreme-right parties
and movements across Europe and each chapter, taken on its own, provides a com-
plex and fascinating insight into the dynamics of the extreme right. However, taken
together, the chapters project a different image: contributors have used different
disciplines and methodologies to demonstrate the complexity of the phenomenon
under study. This complexity is what we have sought to map.
Introduction 13
Notes
1 For a more detailed criticism of the use of the term ‘populism’, see the first part of the
second volume of this book as well as Mammone (2009b).
2 Obviously these transnational trends (which have similarly influenced other party families
and national political systems and policies) are not strictly confined to the European space,
as regards the rise of the extreme right. An interesting development is ‘the appearance
of a right-wing extremist movement that transcends national boundaries and, indeed,
crosses the Atlantic with as much ease as do E-mail messages on the Internet’ (Kaplan and
Weinberg 1998: 7).
3 Along with the previously mentioned European Social Movement and the Identity,
Tradition and Sovereignty group, it is worth remembering the 1951 Nouvel Ordre
Européen, the World Union of National-Socialists in 1962, the 1962 Conference of
Venice, Europafront in 1963, the 1979 Euro-Right group at the first EU elections, and
the 1987 Manifeste pour la Nation Europe.
4 Interestingly Étienne Balibar suggests that ‘racism is simultaneously universalist and
particularist. The excess it represents in relation to nationalism brings an added dimension
to that nationalism, which tends both to univeralize it, or to correct its lack of universality,
and at the same time to particularize it, to correct its lack of specificity’ [‘le racisme figure
à la fois du côté de l’universel et du côté du particulier. L’excès qu’il représente par rapport
au nationalisme, et donc le supplément qu’il lui apport, tend à la fois à l’universaliser, à
corriger en somme son manque d’universalité, et à le particulariser, à corriger son manque
de spécificité’] (Balibar 1997: 38).
5 In April 2011, Marine Le Pen expelled from the FN Alexandre Gabriac, a young FN
regional councillor who appeared on a photo making the Nazi salute. Having declared
that the FN was not a racist party, she made it clear that there was no room within the
party for skinheads and other ‘nazillons’. Bruno Gollnish, the FN’s second in command,
as well as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the FN honorary president, have publicly condemned her
decision.
6 On racist violence in Europe, see also Bjorgo and Witte (1993).
7 For a brief analysis of the racialist and neo-fascist climate in contemporary Italy, see
Mammone (2009a).
8 In August 2011, during the riots in the UK, EDL members were singled out by Tom
Godwin, Acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner, as having successfully infiltrated
vigilante groups in Eltham, south-east London and Enfield, north London in order to
exploit the situation and inflame racial tensions.
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PART I
Local and Regional
Perspectives
1
BACKLASH IN THE ‘HOOD’
Exploring support for the British National Party
(BNP) at the local level1
Matthew J. Goodwin
Hurrah for Barking’s ancient town,

And fishing population:
May ample gains
Reward their pains,
And help enrich the nation
(Verse from The Song of the Ice, John Frost 1849; cited in Curtis 2006)
Introduction
The extreme right in Britain is typically considered a failure. In contrast to the
performance of similar parties in several other European states, extreme-right
parties in Britain have seldom appeared as more than a minor irritant in the party
system. The failure of parties like the National Front (NF) in the 1970s and more
recent British National Party (BNP) have been traced to several factors: a national
tradition of tolerance, deference to authority and anti-fascism; an electoral system
that hinders minor parties; the positioning of the centre-right Conservatives who
have offered a more credible brand to citizens anxious over immigration; and
an agency-based approach that emphasizes the nature of the extreme right itself.
Seen from this latter perspective, one explanation for the historic failure of this
movement in Britain has been the nature of extreme-right parties themselves and
their overt allegiance to neo-Nazi ideology, namely radical xenophobia, biological
racism and an outright rejection of democracy, parliamentarism and pluralism
(Carter 2005). These features have arguably been especially pronounced in the
absence of strong and charismatic leadership, which might otherwise have minimized
electoral losses.
It is important, however, not to lose sight of an alternative perspective that takes
as its starting point the observation that while the extreme right has failed to achieve
18 Matthew J. Goodwin
a national breakthrough, in particular local enclaves it has rallied significant levels

of support. Despite its extremist origins and organizational weakness, in some areas
in Britain the BNP has built on a longer tradition of public support for exclusionary
campaigns, and among communities that appear especially susceptible to percep-
tions of intergroup competition and threat. At the same time, however, the wider
literature on the extreme right in Europe devotes only limited attention to these
‘local breakthroughs’, and the way in which they are often embedded in a specific
local history and set of circumstances (though see Mudde 2007; Veugelers in this
volume). This explorative chapter aims to sharpen our understanding of the impor-
tance of local context to the emergence of extreme-right parties by investigating
the rise of the BNP in two case studies (and doing so prior to the party’s setbacks
that followed the general election in 2010). While a focus on the local level
limits the level of generalizability, the potential benefit is a richer and more nuanced
understanding of how movements on the extreme right mobilize initial support
amidst particular local environments.
Ethnic competition and local context

In recent years, attempts to explain public hostility toward immigration and – by
extension – support for the extreme right have often drawn on ethnic competition
theory. Seen from this perspective, actual or perceived intergroup competition and
threat is a core explanatory variable for the development of exclusionary behaviour,
whether hostile attitudes toward immigration and asylum or a preference for more
restrictive policies (Ivarsflaten 2005; McLaren and Johnson 2007; Schneider 2008;
Sniderman et al. 2004). Rather than stemming from economic self-interest, these
studies and others trace public hostility to a more diffuse set of concerns over per-
ceived threats to national identity, the unity of the national community and values.
Several studies of support for the extreme right have built on this literature, tracing
the rise of these parties to perceptions among some citizens that resources and inter-
ests are threatened by immigration and rising ethno-cultural diversity (e.g. Gibson
2002; Goodwin 2011; Veugelers and Chiarini 2002). Confronted with these
‘threats’, citizens turn to extreme-right parties as part of an instrumental attempt
to halt these demographic changes, and endorse their claim that the state should be
inhabited exclusively by members of the native in-group while out-groups are
threatening the national community (Mudde 2007: 21–22; also Betz 2007).
In earlier decades, similar arguments were recruited to account for rising support
for the extreme right in Britain. In the 1960s and 1970s, some suggested that a
combination of a new phase of immigration and an economic downturn produced
a strong anti-immigrant and nativist backlash that found expression in support for
the maverick Conservative MP Enoch Powell and, slightly later, the National Front
(Messina 1995: 694). During this period, it was argued that the Labour Party in
particular was ‘vulnerable to losing voters inspired by racist and xenophobic feelings
in marginal neighbourhoods and working-class districts where residents felt eco-
nomically and culturally threatened by the new migrants’ (Kitschelt 1995: 246).
Backlash in the ‘hood’: the BNP 19
Importantly, however, when seeking to explain support for the NF these studies
also drew attention to the importance of idiosyncratic historical experiences and
traditions in certain areas of the country, where members of the working classes
appeared especially susceptible to feelings of intergroup competition and threat.
Aside from the Greater London and West Midlands regions, a more specific exam-
ple was the inner East End of London, where disproportionately high levels of
support for the extreme right were linked to a tradition of economic insecurity
and casualism, which had its roots in the old docklands. Alongside a history of
ethnic homogeneity, the argument was that these local conditions had contributed
to the emergence of a culture that was parochial, combative, and prone to territo-
rial sensitivity and – when ‘threatened’ – oppositional scapegoating and racist
mobilization (Husbands 1983: 143; also Stedman Jones 1971; Whiteley 1979).
The National Front subsequently mobilized support in these areas by appealing
to sensitivities that were deeply entrenched in sections of these working-class com-
munities, and thus found that its appeals had a deep and historically based resonance
(Husbands 1983: 140).2
These arguments in early studies of the British extreme right – and the impor-
tance of local contextual factors more generally – have largely been glossed in the
recent literature on the ‘third wave’ of extreme-right parties that emerged in the
1980s and 1990s. Generally speaking, rather than undertake detailed studies of
(often isolated) local breakthroughs, scholars have devoted more energy to analys-
ing large-scale comparative datasets and aggregate macro-level data. Given recent
methodological and theoretical advances (see Mudde 2007), this approach has
yielded important dividends and insights. Nonetheless, by downplaying local con-
text these studies often lack a rich and nuanced understanding of how these parties
achieve their initial electoral breakthroughs. The next section summarizes the
emergence of the BNP and research on its support, before investigating the party’s
growth in two local areas.
The emergence of the British National Party

Following the demise of the 1970s NF, the BNP was born in 1982 and for much
of the next two decades remained in the electoral wilderness. Since 2001, however,
the party recruited rapidly growing levels of support and became the most elector-
ally successful extreme-right party in British history. Between 1992 and 2010, the
number of BNP candidates at general elections increased from only 13 to 338.
Over the same period, the number of BNP votes at these national elections increased
from 7,000 to over 500,000. This electoral growth partly reflected a change of
strategy, which led the party to invest in targeted and community-based campaigns.
Some evidence of the more targeted strategy was the growing number of deposits
that the party retained at general elections. To contest a parliamentary constituency
each party candidate is required to deposit £500, which is returned only if a
threshold of five per cent of the vote is met. The BNP retained seven deposits in
2001, 34 in 2005 and over 70 in 2010.
Despite these gains in national contests, the BNP essentially remained a phe-
nomenon of local politics. A lack of resources, an unfavourable electoral system and
a strategy that sought to emulate the early local successes of the French Front
National (FN) in areas such as Dreux all led the BNP to focus heavily on contesting
local elections. This strategic shift paid some notable dividends. In contrast to the
National Front in the 1970s, the party obtained a foothold in local government
after electing councillors in areas such as Barking and Dagenham, Bradford,
Broxbourne, Burnley, Epping Forest, Kirklees and Stoke-on-Trent. This momen-
tum continued in May 2008, when the party gained one seat on the Greater London
Assembly. The investment in these local contests reflected the party’s embrace of a
‘community politics’ style of campaigning, whereby it sought to cultivate an image
of legitimacy and electoral credibility at the local level. This led activists to target a
disparate array of local grievances: allegations of ‘anti-white’ racially motivated
attacks in Pennine Lancashire; discontent over a lack of social housing in outer-east
London; or local rumours that Asian gangs were ‘grooming’ young white girls
in West Yorkshire. These campaigns were often delivered through intensive grass-
roots activism that included strong emphasis on encouraging face-to-face contact
with voters. One study of BNP voting in three northern towns suggested that
residents experienced more face-to-face contact with BNP activists than with their
mainstream counterparts ( JRCT 2004; also Wilks-Heeg 2009).
The BNP’s social base of support

Broader research on anti-immigration sentiment in Britain suggests that the citizens
who are hostile toward immigrants and favour more restrictive policies are moti-
vated less by concern over personal well-being than the perception that immigrants
and minority groups threaten British culture and wider society. As noted by
McLaren and Johnson (2007: 715; see also Bowyer 2009), these feelings of inter-
group competition and threat ‘may be rather symbolic in nature and may stem from
concerns about the loss of certain values or ways of life because of the presence of
minority groups and immigrants’. In earlier years, studies of support for the extreme
right similarly emphasized the importance of these concerns. The emergence of
the National Front was traced to skilled manual (male) workers in regions that
experienced higher than average levels of immigration, though mainly Greater
London and the West Midlands, where competition for jobs and social housing
was felt particularly acutely (Harrop et al. 1980; Husbands 1983; Taylor 1979;
Whiteley 1979).
In more recent years, a growing literature on support for the BNP has produced
similar findings, highlighting the importance of immigration-related concerns to
explaining this trend (Bowyer 2008; Cutts et al. 2011; Ford and Goodwin 2010;
Goodwin 2011). The findings in these studies point to the conclusion that the
extreme right performs strongest in areas where deprived and less well educated
members of the working classes feel under ‘threat’ from immigration and, in par-
ticular, Muslim communities of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage. During the
period of its early local gains, analyses of aggregate-level data indicated that the
BNP recruited most of its support in areas where there were large numbers of
skilled and semi-skilled workers, and higher proportions of citizens with no quali-
fications (Cruddas et al. 2005; John et al. 2006). Subsequent and more
sophisticated analysis of BNP support at local elections suggested the party polled
strongest in urban deprived areas, where education levels are low and housing
markets are under strain (Bowyer 2008). This study also examined the impact of
ethnic diversity, providing initial evidence that while the party was most likely
to stand candidates and recruit support in local authorities that had large Muslim
communities of Bangladeshi or Pakistani heritage, support was more heavily con-
centrated among white neighbourhoods within these more diverse areas. The first
individual-level survey of BNP voters by Ford and Goodwin (2010) revealed how
these supporters tended to be older working-class men who lacked educational
qualifications and were profoundly pessimistic about their economic prospects.
Foremost, these voters were concerned about immigration and were also extremely
dissatisfied with the leaders of the three mainstream parties. Compared with sup-
port for the earlier NF, support for the extreme right had shifted northwards and
was more evenly distributed among semi- and unskilled workers. While these stud-
ies shed light on the general drivers of support for the extreme right, they tell us
little about how the BNP emerged in specific local areas. The next section exam-
ines the rise of the party in the two local case studies of Burnley in the North West
of England, and Barking and Dagenham in outer-east London.
Two local case studies

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Burnley and Barking and Dagenham
provided disproportionately high levels of support to the BNP. Interestingly, how-
ever, in both cases the party was a relatively new arrival to local politics. In Burnley,
the local BNP branch was only established in 1999 and at local elections the next
year kept a low profile (contesting only two wards).3 Yet despite this lack of an
organizational presence, at the general election in 2001 the party polled over
10 per cent of the vote and quickly established a significant presence at subsequent
local elections. In 2002, the party benefitted from lacklustre grassroots campaigns
by mainstream party activists and elected three councillors, attracting considerable
publicity in national media.4 At local elections the next year, BNP candidates
averaged 35 per cent of the vote and, in seven of the 16 seats they contested,
were elected onto the council. Albeit for a short period, the party became the
official opposition group on the council. At the next general election in 2005
the BNP retained much of its support, polling over 10 per cent of the vote
and despite competing with more candidates than in 2001. Though the party
was later weakened by the departure of its energetic local organizer, it continued
to perform well in the borough: at local elections in 2006 seven candidates
averaged almost 30 per cent of the vote; and in 2007 10 candidates averaged
almost 25 per cent.5
While making progress in Burnley, the party was also advancing in the outer-
east London borough of Barking and Dagenham. This was especially evident at
local elections in 2006, which saw 12 of 13 BNP candidates elected onto the coun-
cil. As in Burnley, the party temporarily became the main opposition group on the
council, despite not being especially active in the area during the preceding years.
From the late 1990s onward, strategists increasingly shifted the party away from
London towards more deprived areas in northern England. This was partly due to
the ‘virtual collapse’ of its organization in London following the departure of key
activists (Lowles 2005), but also recognition in the party that economic deprivation
and evidence of community tension in northern England (most noticeably during
urban disturbances in the northern towns of Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in
2001) offered new opportunities. This abandonment of the extreme right’s tradi-
tional bastions of activity in London was reflected in trends in Barking and
Dagenham, where at local elections in 2002 the BNP did not contest a single ward
in the borough.
Seen from a broader perspective, however, longer-term voting patterns in the
area told a different story. It had been a parliamentary by-election in 1994 in
Dagenham in which the BNP had polled seven per cent of the vote; the first time
the extreme right had retained a deposit since an election in West Bromwich in
1973. While devoting less effort to London, the party continued to perform well in
the area. At the London Mayoral election in 2000, the BNP polled over five per
cent of the overall vote but surpassed 10 per cent in the constituency that encom-
passed Barking and Dagenham (City and East). At elections to the Greater London
Assembly held at the same time, the party similarly polled almost three per cent of
the overall vote but polled over seven per cent in City and East. The results of the
general election in 2001 likewise pointed toward fertile terrain for the extreme
right in outer-east London. Despite investing little effort into the campaign, the
BNP saw its share of the vote in Barking increase to over six per cent (+3.7 per
cent) and in Dagenham increase to five per cent (+2.5 per cent). Activists then
switched their attention back to contesting a series of local elections, which were
used to build a stronger presence in the borough. At one election in 2004, a BNP
candidate was elected onto the council after polling over 50 per cent of the vote;
it was the first time the party polled so high, and was the first time it had contested
the ward (Lowles 2005). These frequently intensive campaigns laid the ground-
work for the general election campaign in 2005, after which the BNP received over
16 per cent of the vote in Barking (while polling over nine per cent in Dagenham);
it was the strongest result by an extreme-right party candidate in British electoral
history. Having summarized the emergence of the extreme-right in these two areas,
the next sections explore the local conditions that facilitated this rise.
The case of Burnley

Historically, the social and economic development of Burnley was intimately linked
to its status as an important textile base.Though at one point the cotton trade could
be described as the ‘raison d’être of North East Lancashire’ (Pearson 1976: 56), in
more recent decades former mill towns such as Burnley have struggled with the
onset of post-industrialism, stagnating economies and deprivation, and declining
populations. For example, between 1998 and 2002 local employment in the manu-
facturing sector declined by almost 30 per cent and, since 1999, the population of
Burnley declined by three per cent (BAP 2006). At this time, it was also estimated
that one-quarter of the population resided in areas that were classified in the top
10 per cent of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England.
Aside from being heavily dependent on the textile industry, towns such as
Burnley also attracted an early wave of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In earlier years, some argued that as mill towns and their surrounding communities
entered into an economic downturn these newly settled minority communities
were perceived by some citizens as a symbol of community decline (Miles and
Phizacklea 1979: 20). Yet even before the arrival of immigrants in the immediate
post-war decades, the realities of economic competition between British and Asian
manufacturers may have rendered textile workers susceptible to feelings of inter-
group competition and threat. As convincingly argued by Pearson (1976), local
anxieties over immigration in areas that were similar to Burnley stemmed from
their earlier economic experiences, in particular challenges posed by low-cost
imports from India and Pakistan. Pointing towards this economic history, Pearson
contends that the Pakistani migrant worker provided a ‘visible and concrete mani-
festation’ of foreign competition, and ‘a symbol of the problems of a troubled
working-class community’ (Pearson 1976: 60).6
In more recent years, Burnley’s prestigious past and more recent economic
decline has served as an important reference point for supporters of the BNP.
Drawing on interviews with the party’s voters in Burnley, Rhodes (2006: 109)
reveals how explanations for switching allegiance to the BNP often included refer-
ences to the town’s historic status, or in the words of one voter: ‘They used to say
“England’s bread hung on Lancashire’s thread” … it were a completely different
era to what’s gone on now … there’s no boom around here, its one long bust.’
These qualitative accounts hint at the importance of concerns over a perceived loss
of local community and way of life: ‘I just think it’s [Burnley] deteriorated. I think
it’s a poor town compared to what it was and compared to what it should be …
I think poor morally, economically and in every way’ (Rhodes 2006: 110). Pessimism
is a notable characteristic of extreme-right supporters and is also evident in Burnley.
One local survey suggested that while 75 per cent of all respondents agreed that
Burnley had ‘mostly got worse’, the figure for BNP voters was over 90 per cent
(Deacon et al. 2004: 14). More comprehensive and nationally representative sur-
veys have since confirmed that economic pessimism is a notable characteristic of
BNP supporters (Ford and Goodwin 2010).
In these accounts, the decline of a traditional and close-knit working-class
community was often associated with the arrival and growth of minority ethnic
communities. Attracted by employment opportunities in the 1950s and 1960s, these
minority communities established themselves primarily in inner urban wards and
by 2001 represented eight per cent of the local population (up from 4.8 per cent at
the previous census). When urban disturbances occurred in Burnley during the
summer of 2001, subsequent investigations into their causes suggested that percep-
tions of these minority groups as threatening local resources were widespread
among local communities. When asked to identify an important cause of the dis-
turbances, 50 per cent of respondents cited ‘racism by Asian people’ and 40 per cent
cited ‘white communities being treated unfairly’ (BTF 2001).7 Supporters of the
BNP appeared especially concerned about the effects of rising ethnic and cultural
diversity in the town; another survey of the population indicated that 88 per cent
of party supporters ranked immigration and asylum as issues that were influencing
their voting behaviour, compared to 36 per cent of voters overall (Deacon et al.
2004). Interviews with these supporters suggested that they tended to subscribe to
a distinct exclusionary identity that was oriented around the local community, and
which encouraged a view of minority groups as neither ‘belonging’ nor deserving
of the town’s scarce economic resources (Rhodes 2006).
There is also evidence that the citizens who would later shift behind the BNP
became increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of mainstream parties in the
town, though mainly the incumbent and historically dominant Labour Party.
Between 1990 and 1998, turnout at local elections declined by over 20 per cent
while the majority held by the local Labour Member of Parliament slumped from
17,000 in 1992 to 5,778 in 2005. Interviews with BNP supporters provide richer
insight into the nature of this political dissatisfaction. One example is an activist
who recalled his decision to join the BNP as follows: ‘Some would say put a red
rose [Labour’s emblem] on a pig and they would vote for it.’8 Other supporters
expressed their view that the local Labour group had become ‘complacent’, was
no longer ‘listening’, and had ‘failed the people of Burnley’. These supporters
were also more likely than other citizens in the town to disagree strongly with the
statement that ‘Labour represents the interests of the working class’ (Rhodes 2006).
Importantly, during the mid-to-late 1990s these local anxieties over rising diver-
sity and intergroup competition were targeted by a local Independent politician.
Alongside fellow Independent councillors, Harry Brooks proposed a series of cuts
to services that supported minority ethnic communities, such as closing a transla-
tion unit and withdrawing support for a Bangladeshi welfare association. Brooks,
who was a former Labour councillor, railed against the alleged ‘prodigious maldis-
tribution of resources’ and in letters to a local newspaper talked of ‘welfare depend-
ent newcomers’ and criticized the council’s ‘self-indulgent and feeble bureaucracy’
(Brooks 2002: 3–7). He later distributed his own pamphlet around Burnley that
was entitled A Town Betrayed, and contrasted decisions by the council to fund
organizations in Muslim communities with their alleged refusal to support a local
hospice, services for local women and the visually impaired. In the aftermath of the
urban disturbances in 2001, Brooks would later be criticized in official reports for
having condoned a culture of ‘Nimbyism’ in the town (BTF 2001: 59).9 Nonetheless,
under his leadership the Independents attracted considerable local support. At local
elections in 1999 these candidates averaged over 40 per cent, and briefly took
control of the council. The local popularity of Brooks remained evident at the
general election of 2005, at which he polled almost 15 per cent of the vote.
The campaigns by these local Independents arguably cultivated political space
for the extreme right. It was not until after these activities in 1999 that a
re-launched branch of the BNP began to make significant electoral gains. Led by a
highly committed and innovative organizer who already enjoyed notoriety in the
town, a small handful of activists began leafleting in the spring of 1999. By the end
of the year, the branch claimed to have enrolled 200 supporters, a figure that sub-
sequently increased to 350 by early 2000 (Smith 2004: 8). The party’s strategy
focused heavily on targeting local issues through intensive campaigns. In the words
of the local organizer, the aim was to ‘build a wall around the town’ and mobilize
support by focusing on specific local grievances.10 For example, one attempt to
cultivate a more favourable issue agenda in the town led activists to write anony-
mous letters to the ‘comments section’ of the local newspaper, in which they com-
plained about the perceived unfair allocation of scarce resources They also sought
to establish contacts with influential local opinion-makers who could provide
access to wider networks, including factory workers, market stall-holders and
supporters of the local football club:
Public houses, shops, etc., anywhere where there were people who knew lots
of other people, became targets for our literature … we knew that our core
support was … for the most part working class and to a large extent self-
employed. Most, if not all, of these could be found in the Yellow Pages
under the headings of builders, joiners, electricians, mechanics, etc.
(Smith 2004: 53)
From the perspective of those who joined the party, the emergence of the BNP
was not seen merely as a vehicle through which local protest could be registered
but marked an opportunity to enact change and ‘do something’ for the community.
For example, activists explained their views that ‘the time were right
for a change’, that the BNP ‘seemed to care for the people … in Burnley’, and that
their support for the party signalled an attempt ‘to make progress and do something
for the town, something for the ordinary white people who were being put
down’.11
The case of Barking and Dagenham

Historically, extreme-right parties in Britain such as the National Front (NF) focused
heavily on the inner East End of London. Yet since 2001, and while focusing
mainly on areas north of London, the BNP also redirected its efforts toward areas
in outer-London such as Barking and Dagenham. Earlier patterns of migration to
this borough owed much to Barking’s status as an important Victorian fishing port
(Curtis 2006).Yet from the interwar period onwards employment opportunities in
heavy industries such as the Ford Motor plant in Dagenham offered new opportunities.
Combined with slum clearances in inner London, the result was an influx of former
East End residents into the borough. In this way, members of working-class com-
munities from the inner East End were effectively transplanted to outer-London
areas such as Barking and Dagenham, bringing with them a strong sense of com-
munal identity (Thames 2002). In more recent decades, however, the decline of
these traditional industries was followed by increasing rates of deprivation, leaving
Barking and Dagenham in the top 50 of the most deprived local authority areas in
the country. In 2004, this council area was ranked the ninth most deprived in
London and the twenty-first most deprived in the country (in the latter case rising
to eleventh in 2007). While grappling with the effects of deprivation, the borough
also experienced considerable and rapid demographic change. For example, while
in 2001 white British residents comprised 81 per cent of the local population, five
years later the figure had fallen to 75 per cent (ONS Experimental Ethnic Estimates
2006). In fact, areas in southern Barking saw the largest increase in the percentage
of foreign-born residents in the whole of England, rising from 3.5 per cent in 1991
to over 13 per cent a decade later.
It was amid these broader trends that the BNP began to recruit rapidly growing
support. Local surveys suggested that perceptions of intergroup competition and
threat were a key driver of this support. One survey by Goodwin et al. (2010)
indicated that supporters of the party were considerably more concerned than other
residents in the borough about issues of immigration and asylum; 80 per cent of
BNP voters considered these issues important compared to 35 per cent overall.
Supporters of the extreme right were also more likely than average to express con-
cern over the allocation of council housing (47 per cent of BNP voters compared
to 24 per cent overall) and the provision of jobs (35 per cent compared to 26 per
cent overall).12 Additional findings from qualitative focus groups in the borough
shed further light on the nature of these concerns. The conclusion was that a short-
age of available housing combined with rapid demographic change appears to have
fuelled perceptions among residents that some areas of the borough were effectively
being ‘taken over’ by minority ethnic groups (Cruddas et al. 2005: 15).13 In these
focus groups, residents frequently complained that local resources (though espe-
cially housing) were being unfairly distributed to favour newly arrived immigrants.
Reflective of these views was one letter in a local newspaper: ‘[T]he migrants of the
past ten years or more have hijacked our borough until it is hard to believe that we
are still living in England.’14 Supporters of the BNP similarly stressed the impor-
tance of resource allocation when explaining why they decided to become involved
with the party: ‘They [mainstream politicians] don’t know what it’s like to live
cheek by jowl with a Polish person, a Lithuanian person, an African person and
then fight for a job.’15
While concerned over immigration, supporters were also more likely than other
residents to express dissatisfaction with the area as a place to live (Goodwin et al.
2010). This sense of community decline was frequently associated with immigra-
tion. Seen through the eyes of these residents, the high visibility of minority groups
“was associated with the degeneration of the area and falling community standards”
(Cruddas et al. 2005: 15). With various respondents saying that they had ‘taken
over the area with their different culture and languages’ (Cruddas et al. 2005: 15).
Meanwhile, local mainstream parties were criticized for being unable or unwilling
to provide an adequate response. Supporters of the BNP were significantly more
likely than other residents to express dissatisfaction with the council (48 per cent as
compared to 32 per cent; Goodwin et al. 2010). The focus groups similarly revealed
a feeling among residents that local Political Parties ‘had failed them’, were being
dishonest about the scale of immigration and were ‘just not listening’ (Cruddas
et al. 2005: 14).
In this case, the BNP sought to mobilize support by linking nativist appeals to
a distinct local identity and delivering its message through intensive community-
based campaigns. These campaigns often sought to amplify perceptions of inter-
group competition among residents, for example by claiming that Labour intended
to ‘swamp Barking and Dagenham with yuppies and newly arrived Africans’.16
BNP campaign literature similarly sought to embellish feelings of threat by associat-
ing alleged increases in cases of tuberculosis and HIV in the local area to an influx
of ‘health tourists’. It was claimed that local hospitals had become so overstretched
that they ‘can’t look after the native population’ who are ‘being treated as second
class citizens’. In these leaflets, the party was also careful to reference local identities
and traditions, for example encouraging residents to ‘celebrate and preserve our
identity and unique East London/Essex culture’.17 One of the party’s newsletters
that was tailored around local issues (named the Barking and Dagenham Patriot)
invited residents to compare recent pictures of minority ethnic women with a
picture of local (white) women at the Barking and Dagenham 1953 Coronation
Party. Anti-fascists described this particular leaflet as the BNP’s ‘single most effec-
tive piece of propaganda’ (Lowles 2005).18 Similarly, through a local website the
party sought to frame its campaign in a way that resonated with a distinct local
identity:
[W]e’d usually try to end up back on TVE [the Thames View Estate] for
Saturday evening in time for tea and to walk down towards Creekmouth to
the Crooked Billet. In the bar to the right as you went in was the ‘old Joanna’
on which the old pianist would rattle out all the old East End and music hall
songs … ‘Is everybody happy?’, ‘My Old Man’, ‘Cockles and Mussels’ and
loads of other old popular songs had everyone packed into the bar singing
along by the end of the evening … everyone knew them and everyone could
join in. A community spirit that was already dying (or rather, being mur-
dered) in Hoxton and Limehouse and Bethnal Green was alive and kicking
in ‘the new East End’.19
Reflective of the party’s more general embrace of community politics, activists

concertedly sought to cultivate an image of legitimacy and counter portrayals of the
BNP as a single-issue anti-immigrant movement. Rather than focus solely on
immigration, activists targeted a disparate array of issues such as crime, anti-social
behaviour, rubbish collection and pressures on social housing. These campaigns

became increasingly professional: one election was preceded by the local branch
drafting in activists from nearby areas, canvassing voters on at least three different
occasions, distributing nine different leaflets and avoiding contact with Labour
and minority ethnic voters so as not to inadvertently mobilize opposition (Lowles
2005: 6). These campaigns also stressed ‘positive policies’, such as plans for a ‘sons
and daughters’ housing scheme and school policy that were designed to prioritize
native Britons. These attempts to cultivate local legitimacy were arguably given
further impetus when a local Labour MP suggested eight out of every ten local
working-class families were considering voting for the BNP.20
Discussion
While not achieving a national breakthrough, since 2001 the electoral rise of the
British National Party (BNP) challenged the traditional interpretation of the British
extreme right as a case of complete failure. In two local areas – Burnley and Barking
and Dagenham – the emergence of the party owed much to a unique set of local
conditions, and nativist appeals that resonated among sections of working-class
communities. Burnley’s historic status in the textile industry and earlier patterns of
economic competition arguably contributed to the susceptibility of residents to
perceptions of intergroup competition and threat. In more recent years, these were
embellished by local Independents who politicized issues of resource allocation and
immigration and carved out political space for exclusionary campaigns. In Barking
and Dagenham, the decline of heavy industry and subsequent demographic change
appears to have unsettled a close-knit working-class community. In response, some
residents fell susceptible to exclusionary appeals that were rooted in a distinct local
identity and sought to embellish perceptions of intergroup competition and threat.
In both of these cases, the linkages between local context, culture and politics
appear integral to understanding how and why the extreme right was able to rally
support. These cases also warn against a tendency in the wider literature to neglect
detailed research at the local level. Like other types of social movements, those on
the extreme-right wing of the spectrum are ‘necessarily rooted in places’ (Miller
2000: 67; cited in DeLeon and Naff 2004: 694). In order to explain more accurately
why some movements succeed while others fail, future research would be well
placed by devoting more attention to the influence of local context. This is under-
scored by the observation that support for the extreme right is often heavily
concentrated in specific localities, such as support for the French FN in Toulon or
the Vlaams Belang (VB) in Antwerp (Mudde 2007). Yet few studies examine why
this is the case, or why these parties have not polled similarly strongly in areas that
have similar socio-economic conditions.21
A final question concerns whether the BNP will remain, like its predecessors, as
an ideological phenomenon that is concentrated in a handful of localities, or will
translate these local breakthroughs into more durable electoral success. Recent
research points towards a sizeable reservoir of latent support for the extreme right
in Britain (Ford 2010; John and Margetts 2010).The increased salience of immigra-
tion, growing pubic anxiety over the role and perceived integration of Muslim
communities, and dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties will continue to cul-
tivate opportunities for the extreme right. While the BNP has not been active
across the country, in some local areas it has cultivated an image of electoral cred-
ibility and attracted an influx of new recruits. Whether the party will prove able to
achieve further growth will depend less on public demand than internal organiza-
tion and leadership. In the immediate short term, much will depend on the ability
of the party to reconcile signs of internecine conflict between, on one side, grassroots
activists who desire a greater level of professionalism, and on the other, old-guard
activists who remain firmly committed to the underlying ideological tradition.
Notes
1 This chapter was first completed in 2008, prior to the electoral demise of the BNP that
occurred following the general election in 2010. For an earlier version see M.J. Goodwin
(2008) ‘Backlash in the Hood: The Determinants of Support for the British National
Party at the Local Level’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 16(3): 349–63.
2 Subsequent interpretations of an isolated local election victory by the BNP in Millwall
in 1993 returned to the importance of a distinct local culture that rendered local citizens
amenable to feelings of anxiety and threat linked, on one side, to minority ethnic
out-groups and, on the other, nearby ‘yuppie’ development (e.g. Copsey 1996).
3 In the 1999 European elections the BNP in Burnley received just over three per cent
and in the two local wards contested in 2000 the party received 21.5 per cent (in Fullege
ward) and 5.1 per cent (in Gawthorpe). The BNP had sporadically campaigned in
Burnley in the early 1990s but its efforts produced meagre results. In September 1993,
the BNP contested a local by-election (Barclay ward) and received just nine votes (or
0.96 per cent). The BNP also contested two county council elections in the same year,
receiving 2.1 per cent in the Burnley south west division and one per cent in the Burnley
rural division.
4 In 2002 the Conservative Party contested nine of 45 seats while the Liberal Democrats
fielded only 16 candidates.
5 Support for the BNP in Burnley has endured in more recent years. For instance, in 2009
the BNP elected its first seat on an English county council in Padiham and Burnley
West ward in Lancashire local authority. In the 2010 general election, the BNP similarly
polled a respectable nine per cent of the vote (compared to 10.3 per cent in 2005).
6 As noted by Pugh (2005: 138), even in earlier years the same protectionist sentiments of
Lancashire textile workers became the target of the interwar British Union of Fascists’
‘cotton campaigns’.
7 The Burnley Task Force (2001) questionnaire was distributed to 45,000 homes in the
borough between September and November 2001.
8 Interview 1 with former BNP local activist Simon, 20 May 2007.
9 The term ‘Nimby’ is an acronym for ‘Not in my back yard’. According to the Oxford
dictionary, a ‘Nimby’ is a person who objects to the siting of unpleasant developments
in their neighbourhood (accessed online, http://www.askoxford.com).
10 Interview with former BNP organizer Steve Smith, May 2005.
11 Interview 1 with BNP local councillor Sue, June 2006; Interview 1 with former BNP
activist Maggie, May 2005; Interview 1 with BNP local activist George, June 2006.
12 The Goodwin et al. (2010) study included research that was undertaken in Barking and
Dagenham between 19 August and 18 October 2006 and included a base of 1,006 local
residents (122 of whom voted or would have voted BNP at the local elections).
13 Cruddas et al. (2005) carried out two focus groups in Dagenham in March 2005; one
with residents aged 45 and over, the other with participants aged under 45.
14 ‘Our borough has been hi-jacked’, Barking and Dagenham Post, 10 May 2006.
15 Interview 1 with BNP local activist Neil, December 2006.
16 ‘Remember the “GOOD OLD DAYS”?’, available at: http://www.barkingand
dagenhambnp.com (accessed January 2008).
17 Ibid.
18 BNP (2006) Barking and Dagenham Patriot (Romford: British National Party).
19 ‘Remember the “GOOD OLD DAYS”?’.
20 ‘White Voters are Deserting us for BNP, says Blair Ally’, Daily Telegraph, 17 April 2006;
‘Candidates say Hodge helped BNP win Seats’, Daily Telegraph, 5 May 2006. These
comments were made by the incumbent Labour MP Margaret Hodge.
21 For some notable exceptions see, for instance, Coffé et al. (2007); Copsey (1996); and
Thijssen and De Lange (2005).
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2
AFTER COLONIALISM
Local politics and far-right affinities in a city
of southern France
John Veugelers
Introduction
Among the 96 departments that make up metropolitan France, the far right has
performed especially well in the Var. In this department of the south its share of the
vote has been at least twice the national average since 1984. Growing to 5,000
members during the 1990s, the Var section of the Front National (FN) became the
largest departmental section of any party in the country (Var-Matin République,
26 December 1999). In 1995 the prefecture for this department elected as its mayor
a candidate from Le Pen’s party. With 170,000 inhabitants, Toulon thereby became
the biggest city in France – and perhaps any post-war European democracy – with
a municipal council under the far right.
Studying the linkages between local culture and politics in Toulon is a plunge
into the undercurrents of resentment against the Fifth Republic that surfaced when
the FN abandoned its marginal status and penetrated the French party system.
Toulon is a city of sub-cultures with an affinity towards the far right, but until the
early 1980s the affinity remained latent.This chapter traces the history of these sub-
cultures and their interaction with the success of the FN. In doing so, it investigates
the connection between local politics and legacies of colonialism.
My point of departure is the claim that in France ‘postcolonial issues are of
vital concern to the extreme right’ (Flood and Frey 2002: 198). To examine this
claim I treat the Europeans who migrated to France from colonial North Africa as
the carriers (Träger to use the term of Karl Mannheim 1971 [1927]) of a far-right
affinity born out of their experience of imperialism and decolonization.Yet attrib-
uting such an affinity to this category of French society alone would be mistaken.
It can be found among those who served in the navy and the colonial armies that
fought in Indochina and North Africa. In a form diluted into different strengths
since the end of the nineteenth century, this affinity can be found within other
34 John Veugelers
social categories as well (Girardet 1972). As Aldrich (1996: 235) argues, ‘if the
empire was seldom in the forefront of French life or culture, it often lay in the
background’.
In September 1956, nine months after he had been elected to the National
Assembly as a Poujadist deputy, Jean-Marie Le Pen resigned his seat with the hope
of serving with French paratroops in Algeria. Initially his unit was sent to Egypt in
response to the Suez crisis, but early in 1957 it was transferred to Algeria, where
Le Pen served as an intelligence officer. Upon his return to metropolitan France
later that year, Le Pen founded an organization of veterans who supported the
cause of l’Algérie française (French Algeria). By 1960 it became clear the government
had chosen a policy that would lead to Algerian self-determination. Nonetheless,
Le Pen’s sympathies remained with the soldiers and European settlers who opposed
De Gaulle. When the FN was formed in 1972, activists who had fought for l’Algérie
française thus provided a core of cadres for the new party (Birenbaum 1992).
Since then the Pieds-Noirs (‘Blackfeet’), their grievances and their heroes from the
1954–62 war against Algerian independence have been mentioned frequently by
the FN. In turn, the geography of support for the FN in the south of France coin-
cides with the areas of Pied-Noir settlement (Perrineau 1989: 38–49). This pattern
is evident in the case of Toulon.
Toulon and the navy

Toulon is a city surrounded by hills and mountains on the Mediterranean coast
between Marseilles and Nice. The monarchy founded a navy yard there in 1496
and during the following centuries its port and naval facilities grew. Unlike
Marseilles, Toulon was never a centre for the colonial trade and during the nine-
teenth century it also became a garrison town as France expanded into North Africa
and Southeast Asia. At the start of the Fifth Republic its economy relied on the
heaviest spender in the department of the Var, the navy (République-Le Provençal,
14 February 1963). The city contained not only the most important naval base in
France but also the largest dry docks on the Mediterranean. It was the main port for
repairs to the French fleet and the location of a sprawling navy hospital. In addition
to the 23,000 officers and sailors based at Toulon, the navy and its subcontractors
employed 20,000 civilians. Toulon and nearby La Seyne-sur-Mer were also centres
for shipbuilding (Livre d’or Toulon-Var, 1960).
Local newspapers published regular reports of navy activity, with the Naval
Prefect (as well as other high-ranking officers from the army, the navy and the
Foreign Legion) treated as dignitaries in the public life of the city. Invited as guests
of honour to events hosted by the mayor and his council, military men attended
official receptions when politicians visited from Paris. Important events on the
city’s calendar included the military parades that drew crowds on Bastille Day and
the concerts by the navy orchestra at the municipal opera house. Of the 12,000
veterans who lived in the Var, three-quarters had served in the navy and most now
lived in Toulon (République-Le Provençal, 14 February 1963).
After colonialism: southern France 35
In sum, while Toulon was important for the navy, the navy – and more gener-
ally the military – had marked Toulon too. The ties between them nurtured a local
culture the French call cocardière: patriotic, militaristic and chauvinistic. Feeding
these sentiments were peculiarities of the navy, nicknamed ‘La Royale’. The navy
embodied the ‘ethos of colonial life – the idea and practice of conquest, the cere-
monial of parades and flags, the virile virtues associated with overseas life’ (Aldrich
1996: 131). Historically the naval contingent included infantry regiments for colo-
nial defence, and some colonies were run by the navy ministry or captains who
acted as local governors. Many sailors came from Brittany, a region whose reaction-
ary politics still reflected the world of the royalist insurrectionaries (chouans) who
had opposed the Revolution (Dogan 1967: 183). Anti-republicanism could also be
found among the naval officers, who often came from the nobility. As a retired
admiral in Toulon said only a decade ago: ‘Pétain is in no way responsible for what
happened during the Second World War. He did not know what was going
on outside the borders, he supposedly collaborated but he did not know. Not like
De Gaulle, who instead was a coward, a traitor’ (Martin 1996: 188).
The fight for l’Algérie française

The far right is like any other political sub-culture: it cultivates historical myths, the
selective interpretation of facts in a way that removes them from critical scrutiny by
rendering them either transcendent and sublime or subhuman and grotesque (Flood
and Frey 2002: 207). By comparison with Vichy, which is largely stigmatized and
thus not a compelling example of heroism, empire has provided a more workable
source of myth:
whereas Vichy turned its back on the Republic, which had engendered it,
the defence of empire, and particularly Algeria, is easier to represent as fidel-
ity to what had been accepted by successive regimes and nearly all currents of
political opinion up to the moment when it was abandoned for reasons of
expediency rather than conviction.
(Flood and Frey 2002: 208)
During the 1950s decolonization gave the French far right not only a new source
of myth, but also a way of detaching itself from its more compromising roots in
Pétainism and the movements of interwar anti-republicanism such as the fascist
leagues and the Action Française (French Action).
In 1958 a scission within the national association of ex-colonials from Morocco
and Tunisia gave birth to the Association Nationale des Français d’Afrique du
Nord, d’Outre-Mer et de leurs Amis (ANFANOMA, National Association of
North African and Overseas French and their Friends), which supported De Gaulle
under the illusion that he would maintain French sovereignty over Algeria. By
1961 the ANFANOMA had 3,000 members in the Toulon area alone, but differ-
ences among the partisans of l’Algérie française soon spawned yet another national
36 John Veugelers
group, the Rassemblement National des Français d’Afrique du Nord (RANFRAN,

National Alliance of North African French). The leader of this group in the Var
was a retired officer with ties to the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS, Secret
Army Organization), which his group supported at rallies organized with military
men in Toulon and activists from the anti-Gaullist right. By 1962 the RANFRAN
had branches not only in Toulon (where it attracted some 500 to 800 members) but
also in nearby Bandol, Fréjus, Hyères and Draguignan (Bayle 2001: 163–72).
In addition to these national organizations, the Var provided fertile ground for
local groups such as the Union pour l’Algérie Française (UAF, Union for French
Algeria). Founded in 1960, it viewed the Algerian conflict as part of a global strug-
gle between Communism and the West. Likening the fight for l’Algérie française to
the Resistance, the UAF also drew a parallel with the fight against Nazism:
During the last war, some knew imprisonment, torture, Dachau and
Buchenwald. Could they not at least take consolation from the thought that
they were dealing with enemies? Today it is because of people who call
themselves French, under the orders or with the complicity of a government
that calls itself French, that French patriots are suffering or dying in French
prisons. The Fifth Republic is jealous of the glories of the Gestapo. … The
victims in Algiers, the martyrs in the Metropole, will be avenged.
(Bayle 2001: 72)
Just as Pétain had accepted France’s humiliation in 1940, the Evian Accords of 1962
(which set the terms for peace between France and the Algerian rebels) were said
to show De Gaulle’s readiness to betray his country.
Between October 1961 and March 1962, the OAS and another anti-Gaullist
group were responsible for 12 bomb attacks in Toulon. Apart from Gaullists, their
targets were Communists and a neighbourhood inhabited by Algerians (Bayle 2001:
97–100). Graffiti in support of the OAS covered the walls of the city, and police
sweeps of the area in March and April 1962 led to the arrest of 44 Algérie française
activists (République-Le Provençal, 12 April 1962; Gaignebet 1988: 364). The vitality
of groups whose support for l’Algérie française made them enemies of Communism
and Gaullism alike set Toulon apart from most of the country. This vitality shaped
the course of local politics and made the city especially attractive to the settlers who
fled from North Africa.
The European repatriates from French North Africa

By the early 1960s a small community of European ex-colonials from Morocco,
Tunisia and Algeria had settled in Toulon. Joining them in 1962 were thousands
among the 500,000 to 600,000 Pieds-Noirs who left Algeria at the time of inde-
pendence.Years later many of the ex-colonials who settled in France would say the
metropole received them badly. They encountered prejudice: some Frenchmen
exaggerated the wealth of the Pieds-Noirs, treating them as rich colons with
fascistic leanings. In addition, the arrival of the Pieds-Noirs was an unwanted reminder
of conflict and loss, of imperial ambitions gone bad and now abandoned. Abetted
by De Gaulle – who avoided any show of sympathy towards the Pieds-Noirs – the
people of the metropole remained largely indifferent towards the repatriates, if not
hostile (Verdès-Leroux 2001: 381–87).
Toulon was different, a city where many had supported the lost cause of l’Algérie
française and sympathy came readily. Moreover, like Algeria as well as the lands of
many of the Pieds-Noirs’ forebears (not only southern France but also Spain, Italy
and Malta), the climate, terrain and culture of Toulon were Mediterranean. By
1968 Toulon had 20,271 repatriates (88 per cent from Algeria, seven per cent from
Tunisia and five per cent from Morocco) who now made up 11.6 per cent of the
city’s population and as much as one-quarter of the residents in some neighbour-
hoods (Bouquerel 1973: 12–22). More repatriates could be found in other cities of
the metropole but in no other was their share of the population greater.
The arrival of the Pieds-Noirs altered the politics of Toulon. As Table 2.1 shows,
Toulon fits into a national pattern in which support for the far right has been
TABLE 2.1 Voting for the Front National/Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Toulon
(per cent of valid votes, 1984–2008)
Election & year France Toulon
European 1984 11.2 22.3

Parliamentary 1986 9.7 20.3
Presidential 1988 14.4 27.0
Municipal 1989 – 20.3
European 1989 11.9 28.3
European 1994 10.5 24.6
Municipal 1995 – 31.0
Parliamentary 1998 – 39.7
European 1999 5.7 10.7
Municipal 2001 2.0 5.6
European 2004 9.8 15.1
Municipal 2008 0.9 6.6
Notes:
1. Toulon data for parliamentary elections are based on the average for the first and second electoral
districts of the Var (respectively Toulon-Sud and Toulon-Nord).
2. National data on levels of municipal support for the far right are not available for 1989 or 1995.
3. The 1998 result is for a by-election in Toulon-Sud.
38 John Veugelers
stronger in regions with higher concentrations of European ex-colonials from

North Africa (Perrineau 1989: 38–49). Indeed, during the first round of the 1988
presidential election the favourite candidate for the voters of Toulon was Le Pen
(Var Matin-République, 26 April 1988). But in municipal politics until 1995 the far
right had to contend with the loyalty that knitted many of the repatriates to Maurice
Arreckx, the mayor and a politician of the moderate right.
Arreckx intervened on behalf of the Pieds-Noirs when they needed jobs or hous-
ing. He backed their request that Paris provide compensation for property they had
left behind in Algeria. He supported their campaign to obtain an amnesty for the
army officers and OAS members now jailed, underground or in exile because of
their participation in the subversive and violent campaign of 1960–62 against
Algerian independence (Le Méridional, 8 October 1965). In 1966, for example, the
city passed a motion calling on the government to ‘promulgate a law giving a com-
plete and unconditional amnesty relative to offences that, for any reason and at any
time, had their origin in the events in Algeria’ (Conseil Municipal de Toulon
1966). Battles for the repatriate vote thus became an established feature of electoral
politics in Toulon. After Arreckx resigned as mayor in 1985 the relations of patron-
age he had formed with the Pieds-Noirs were upheld by his successor, François
Trucy.
Preparing the ground for the far right

Before it broke through at the national level during the mid-1980s, two men had
led the FN in the Var: René Communal, a Pied-Noir and a veteran of the OAS, was
replaced in 1984 by Bernard Mamy, a former Poujadist who later served in Algeria,
joined the failed putsch against De Gaulle and then went underground. These men
led a section where ‘in spite of their relative isolation, all of the early activists more
or less belonged to political movements, associations, or milieus of repatriates that
had actively defended the idea of l’Algérie française’ (Delmonte 1999: 74). As a result
of power struggles in the Paris headquarters of the FN, in 1986 the party named a
new secretary as head of this department: Yann Piat. Though not a Pied-Noir, Piat’s
pedigree placed her too among the losers of decolonization. Both of her parents
had served in French Indochina, with her father dying at Dien Bien Phu. Succeeding
Piat in 1988 was Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, who had experience with Parisian
politics – including service as the principal secretary of the Secretary of State for
Repatriate Affairs – before jumping to the FN and becoming the principal secretary
of Le Pen. As leader of the FN section in the Var, Le Chevallier recruited new
supporters by infiltrating associations, notably those of repatriates or veterans of
the colonial wars in Algeria and Indochina. He also created patriotic groups and
encouraged parallel organizations that organized women or volunteers engaged in
charitable activity (Delmonte 1999: 53–60).
Against this background of organization and activism, the Arreckx system unrav-
elled during 1994–95. Under the former mayor’s successor and protégé, Trucy,
the city’s financial problems became so serious that plans for a new city hall and
media centre were suspended (Martin 1996). As small businesses closed and real
estate lost value, vacant shops and dilapidated buildings began to take over the city
core. Another threat came from deindustrialization. The nearby shipyards of
La Seyne-sur-Mer had closed in 1989, and by the mid-1990s the rate of unemploy-
ment in the Var reached an unprecedented 17.3 per cent (Var Matin-République,
29 April 1995). The naval contingent at Toulon was only slightly smaller than three
decades earlier, but state plans to privatize the naval shipyards fed fears of more job
losses (Var Matin-République, 29 December 1992, 25 March 1995).
When the FN broke through nationally during the 1980s, politicians of the
moderate right in Toulon reacted to the threat with words and actions whose
paradoxical effect was to validate the party of Le Pen. When Arreckx was the
mayor, he attacked immigration: ‘Toulon should not become the dustbin of
Europe’ (Le Monde, 11 January 1983). For the municipal elections that year, his list
included candidates from the FN (Martin 1996: 91–92). The theme of Trucy’s first
news conference when he replaced Arreckx as mayor in 1986 was ‘Security, the
number one problem’. He also singled out the Maghrebian population:
It has reached a level far beyond what is reasonable – about 5,500 people,
which means a foreign presence of about fifty per cent – so it modifies fun-
damentally the appearance and identity of the core of the city while compro-
mising the conditions for a peaceful coexistence of the populations inasmuch
as their customs and ways of living are so vastly different that problems that
are exceedingly serious will inevitably result.
(Var Matin-République, 27 March 1986)
Later Trucy repeated such views: ‘At this moment there is a race that is chasing
away another, it is like the red ants of Argentina, which have chased away the black
ants of Provence. I am simply in favour of giving Toulon back to the Toulonnais’
(Le Monde, 2 April 1986). Between the rounds of the 1988 parliamentary elections,
a moderate-right candidate in nearby Hyères agreed when Arreckx asked him to
withdraw. As expected this resulted in a win for the FN candidate, Yann Piat
(Le Monde, 15 March 1989). Two years later a neo-Gaullist politician in Toulon
was the first to sign a neighbourhood petition against a Maghrebian couple wishing
to open a grocery store. In his words:
Toulon is a border city and the Mediterranean is a weak obstacle. At the end
of this century, there will be one hundred million inhabitants in North Africa.
All should be aware of the threat this represents. It is urgently necessary to
resolve the problem of immigration. … Now is the time to take the firm
steps needed to protect the French identity.
(Var Matin-République, 8 April 1990)
As the FN rose further it was not unusual for other right-wing politicians to join in
blaming immigrants for criminality and unemployment (Martin 1996: 27–34).
40 John Veugelers
The fall of the moderate right and the victory of the far right
Shortly after Piat was elected as sole deputy from the FN in the parliamentary elec-
tions of 1988, Le Pen stirred up opprobrium by coining a pun (‘Monsieur Durafour-
crématoire’) that associated a prominent left-wing politician with the Holocaust. Piat
made it known that she disliked this play on words. By October 1988, tensions
over this and other matters resulted in her expulsion from the FN. She then moved
to the same party as Arreckx and in the parliamentary elections of 1993 was
re-elected as the representative for Hyères (Birenbaum 1992: 144–52).
In February 1994, Piat was assassinated. Before her death she had confided to
friends that probing into links between organized crime, land speculation and poli-
tics in the department was putting her life in danger. Within days of her death the
police interrogated top members of the departmental council as the Minister of the
Interior launched an anti-corruption campaign in the Var (Var Matin-République,
7 March 1994). Meanwhile the press published a 1993 letter in which Piat named
a handful of people who might welcome her death, including Arreckx and the
presumed head of organized crime in the region.
Le Pen reacted quickly. Alluding at a press conference to the tangentopoli scandals
across the border, he quipped that the Var needed two brigades of Italian judges.
Piat’s death, he asserted, ‘is a revelation of the profound corruption of the political
fabric. It also reveals an unanticipated consequence of state decentralization, which
allows political elements to handle enormous flows of money’ (Var Matin-République,
16 March 1994). In the cantonal elections held later that month, Arreckx lost
his seat in Toulon to the FN candidate. Five months later the former mayor
was arrested and charged with conspiracy, accepting bribes, breach of trust and
possession of stolen goods (Var Matin-République, 2 August 1994).
With Arreckx in jail the press uncovered more examples of local mismanagement
and corruption. Some now reflected badly on Trucy. A large hotel in the city’s new
conference centre proved a failure and was forced to close (Var Matin-République,
26 January 1995). An official inquiry into the construction of an institute of tech-
nology raised troubling questions about how – seemingly with the cooperation
of Trucy and for the benefit of people with ties to Arreckx – administrators had
managed state funds and awarded public works contracts (Var Matin-République,
2 February 1995). A different inquiry revealed the manager of a communications
agency with city contracts was also on the city payroll as the mayor’s principal
secretary. Influence peddling and improper use of public funds were suspected
(Var Matin-République, 24 March 1995). When pre-trial findings about Arreckx
became public, they showed that shipbuilding and public works firms had depos-
ited 6.5 million francs into his Swiss bank account (Var Matin-République, 6 May
1995). A few weeks later his four children appeared in court after it emerged that
4 million francs had flowed from their father’s account into theirs (Var Matin-
République, 1 June 1995). Another court found a friend of Arreckx – who was also
a former vice-president of the Var chamber of commerce – guilty of extortion, false
book-keeping and improper use of public funds (Var Matin-République, 1 June 1995).
Le Chevallier’s section of the FN prepared for the municipal elections of 1995

by sending voters regular issues of its publication, the Patriote du Var, which echoed
the party line by calling for improvements in public housing ‘for those who are
French’ and the restriction of social assistance to ‘French families’ (Samson 1997:
115). In turn, the national headquarters of the party promised that municipalities
run by the FN would combat ‘the effects of insecurity, unemployment, immigra-
tion, taxation and state spending, misery and moral laxity’ (Davies 1999: 168).
While the other candidates in the Toulon elections ignored the far right as they
focused on each other or the city’s political scandals, Le Chevallier and the candi-
dates on his list (which included aristocrats, Pieds-Noirs and retired military officers)
played down the extremism of their party.
The leading lists in the first round of the municipal elections of June 1995 were
those of Le Chevallier (31.0 per cent), Trucy (23.2 per cent) and Christian Goux
of the Socialists (21.7 per cent). Trucy’s share of the vote fell by half compared with
the 1989 municipal elections, but the left lost ground too. Arguing that Trucy’s
tarnished image made him unfit to defeat the FN, Goux called for the mayor
to withdraw from the second round. To prevent vote-splitting within the broad
segment of the electorate that rejected the FN, Parisian leaders of the Socialist Party
urged the candidate from their party to withdraw instead (Var Matin-République,
13 June 1995). Neither Trucy nor Goux backed down, thereby allowing Le Chevallier
to win the second round with 37.0 per cent of the vote (compared with 34.8 per
cent for Trucy and 28.2 per cent for Goux). Political scandals and divisions among
its opponents had allowed the FN to take over Toulon.
A city under the far right

Historically the FN electorate in France has displayed an unusually high degree of
disenchantment with politics. By comparison with other voters, those who support
this party show the least faith in how French democracy works. Among the sup-
porters of Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election, nine out ten agreed that ‘most
politicians are corrupt’ and the politics of left and right were ‘more of the same’
(Shields 2006: 127–29). Although the FN and its leader long had the most loyal
voters of any political party in France, such evidence suggests that support for the
French far right stems more from a dissatisfaction with politics than a strong partisan
identification. Given that negative perceptions of the ability and probity of other
politicians are important motivations behind support for the far right, what happens
when the far right is itself in power?
Le Pen wanted the municipalities his party won in 1995 (Toulon, Orange and
Marignane) to serve as showcases. Thus he asked them to cut services for foreign-
ers as well as funding for associations his party disliked (Var Matin-République,
4 November 1995). Over the following year, however, tensions emerged as
he argued with the newly elected leaders of these cities over the pace of change
and the feasibility of a policy of national preference that entailed illegal discrimina-
tion. In dealing with matters such as city finances, moreover, the approach of
42 John Veugelers
the FN’s elected officials hardly differed from that of the moderate right (Davies
1999: 171–218).
Finding their powers limited, by default the far-right municipalities turned to
the politics of crime, culture and association funding. The municipal police force of
Toulon grew from 23 to 70 officers. The Le Chevallier administration increased
the grants for associations that were royalist, nationalist or catholic traditionalist
while suspending grants for associations that fought poverty, racism or AIDS. After
a special review, the city also blocked welfare payments to dozens of foreigners
whose residency permits were not in order (Var Matin-République, 7 November
1995).
At the same time, voters with nostalgia for empire appreciated the presence on
their city council of Pieds-Noirs and retired military officers. As one councillor said:
‘In Algeria I started my service on 27 January 1954. I left Algeria without any ani-
mosity towards those people. But on the other hand I would like it if they were
sent back to where they came from’ (Samson 1997: 64). Whether as notables or
ordinary citizens, moreover, Pieds-Noirs were prominent at events organized by the
new city council. Given this environment it was at Toulon that Le Pen chose
to announce the FN would form a parallel organization for the military (Samson
1997: 87–95).
Nonetheless, a neighbourhood theatre (Espace Comédia) and a cultural centre
(Théâtre national de danse et de l’image) garnered support from artists, intellectuals and
politicians in Paris by rejecting grants from the new administration (Var Matin-
République, 22 June 1995; Pollard 2000). Toulon’s annual book fair became a
cultural battleground. Citing freedom of expression, the city insisted that far-right
publishers such as Présent be allowed. As Le Chevallier said, ‘It would not bother
me if the memoirs of Hitler were there together with Das Kapital by Marx’
(Var Matin-République, 7 November 1995). His critics accused the city council
of promoting far-right culture. Indeed, at the 1996 book fair the municipality
chose to honour Jacques Trémolet de Villers, not a well-known author but a
royalist and like Le Pen once an associate of Jean-Louis Tixier Vignancour
(Var Matin-République, 25 November 1996). When the political slant of the 1996
book fair became obvious, one bookstore withdrew in protest (Samson 1997:
124–36).
In addition, the economic situation of the city did not improve. As with urban
decay, Le Chevallier had inherited serious problems that needed time to resolve.
The navy remained a pillar of the local economy, but the FN could not stem job
losses at the arsenal. Despite renovations to a run-down neighbourhood near the
docks, stores in the centre closed and more buildings became dilapidated. Plans to
transform the vacant Bourse du travail (trade union centre) into a theatre for the old
town come to nothing (Var Matin-République, 7 November 1995). For a number of
reasons (the departure of top civil servants, the inexperience of FN councillors, the
breakdown of legislative committees, the lack of civility and compromise between
majority and opposition) an experienced observer of municipal politics in Provence
found the decision-making process in Toulon became clumsy: sometimes too hasty
and inattentive to detail, other times slow and bogged down in peripheral matters
(Samson 1997: 17–33).
Meanwhile the FN was losing unity. Le Chevallier’s handling of municipal
policy led to friction with Le Pen, who had entrusted him with a department in
which their party had so much at stake (Var Matin-République, 13 November 1995).
The mayor also quarrelled with a royalist on his council and eventually she and
Le Pen backed each other publicly in their fights with Le Chevallier (Var Matin-
République, 26 September 1997). Nonetheless, when Bruno Mégret (Le Pen’s
lieutenant and the mayor of Vitrolles) left the FN to form his own party, the
Mouvement National Républicain (MNR, National Republican Movement) in
1998, Le Chevallier chose to stay with the FN.
Finally, the FN in Toulon did not escape scandal. State authorities determined
that a local FN politician, Jean-Claude Poulet-Dachary, had broken an electoral
law by organizing the finances for his party’s campaign before joining the city
council (Var Matin-République, 13 November 1995). Poulet-Dachary became the
principal secretary for the new mayor but was murdered after leaving a gay bar late
one night in August 1995. When his homosexuality became public knowledge,
Le Chevallier reacted by trying to shift the focus of attention: ‘This was a political
assassination. Who other than a political adversary could have killed him?’ (Var
Matin-République, 8 November 1995). In 1997 Le Chevallier and three councillors
had to testify in a court investigating the payment of kickbacks in return for con-
tracts with local schools. The following year an associate mayor was found guilty of
rape and sexual harassment (Le Monde, 1 November 1998). The mayor’s wife,
Cendrine Le Chevallier, was also a member of the city council. In 1996 a court
convicted her of slander for calling the organizer of a neighbourhood festival
she had tried to ban on flimsy grounds of public safety ‘an agitator in Islamic
circles’ (Var Matin-République, 3 December 1996). In 1998 another court found
her guilty of political discrimination: she had set aside jobs at city hall for FN sup-
porters. A year later an association she headed was shut down for mishandling
city grants. In 2001, she and her husband were found guilty of creating a municipal
job that paid one of their friends for doing nothing (Libération, 20–21 January
2001). Eventually her husband was found guilty of suborning witnesses, members
of the FN whom he had instructed to withhold information suggesting the
murder of his principal secretary in 1995 was not politically motivated (Libération,
16 December 2005).
Despite these setbacks, Le Chevallier did not fall quickly. In national elections
held in 1997 he again benefited from divisions within the moderate right and its
inability to cooperate with the left in building a barrier against the far right in the
second round: Le Chevallier was elected to the National Assembly, where he sat as
the sole FN deputy. Within a few months, however, his election was nullified due
to improper campaign financing. His wife contested the resulting by-election but
lost to the Socialist candidate (Var Matin, 26 December 1998). His administration
also mishandled a long-awaited but financially complex real-estate project facing
the city’s main square. The FN became more fragmented and Le Chevallier quit
44 John Veugelers
eventually, fighting the 2001 municipal elections as an independent whose list

included candidates from the party of Mégret, the MNR (Var Matin, 3 March
2001). Replacing him as the FN’s mayoral candidate was a newcomer to the
politics of Toulon who attracted only 5.6 per cent of the vote. Le Chevallier did
hardly better: his share of the vote (7.8 per cent) was the smallest of any incumbent
in France (Var Matin, 13 March 2001).
The winner of the 2001 elections was Hubert Falco, a politician of the moderate
right who had replaced Arreckx as president of the general council of the Var. One
of his first decisions as mayor was to cut funding to associations with ties to the far
right (Var Matin, 17 May 2001). Since then the moderate right has reclaimed its
dominance over the politics of the city. Memories of how Le Chevallier and the
FN ran Toulon have helped Falco, who belongs to the centre-right party of
President Nicolas Sarkozy, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP, Union
for a Popular Movement); see Le Monde, 2–3 March 2008. Yet in elections since
Le Chevallier held power the levels of far-right voting among the Pieds-Noirs of this
city have remained well above those for the rest of Toulon and more than twice
the national average (Veugelers 2005).
Conclusion
Although many French people disown imperialism and abhor racism, the strong
traces of orientalism and ethnic stereotyping in their society suggest the cultural and
psychological legacies of conquest and colonization remain alive (Tristan 1987;
Orfali 1990). Apart from the Pieds-Noirs, colonialism engaged and shaped the many
thousands of merchants, missionaries, civil servants and military men who went
overseas. Millions more in the metropole learned about the colonies and what they
symbolized by means of art, literature, photography, cinema, advertising, colonial
exhibitions and their country’s educational system. Although the depth to which
these images and ideas penetrated was never as great as hoped by the colonial lobby,
the imperial imagination was omnipresent nonetheless (Baycroft 2004: 156–57).
The Pieds-Noirs can thus be seen as the carriers of a set of beliefs about race, nation
and history also found, in forms usually more diluted, elsewhere in French society.
As such they resemble other carriers of nostalgia for empire: the Italian veterans and
ex-colonials from Libya and the Horn of Africa whom the neo-fascist Movimento
Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement) recruited in Italy during the 1940s and
1950s; the members of the League of Empire Loyalists who helped to found the
National Front in Great Britain during the 1960s; and the retornados (ex-colonials
from Angola and Mozambique) whom the far right tried to mobilize in Portugal
during the 1970s.
Beyond Toulon this study also offers a key to understanding the FN’s strength
in other municipalities with significant populations of Pieds-Noirs; not only Nice,
Marseilles, Perpignan and Aix-en-Provence but also smaller municipalities that
have actually put the far right in power such as Orange, Marignane and Vitrolles.
The example of Arreckx and Trucy also illustrates why politicians of the south who
do not belong to the FN (such as Paul Alduy, a former Socialist who then became
the moderate-right mayor of Perpignan between 1959 and 1993; Georges Frêche,
a Socialist who was the mayor of Montpellier until 2004; and Jacques Peyrat,
a former member of the FN who became the mayor of Nice in 1995) have some-
times positioned themselves on the reactionary side of the postcolonial cleavage.
In addition, the connection between political scandal and FN fortunes in Toulon
helps to define more precisely the role of corruption in the success of the far right.
For Kitschelt (1995: 161), corruption is a key element of partocracy (‘the fusion of
state, party, and economic elites in politico-economic networks characterised by
patronage, clientelism, and corruption’), a syndrome that has fed support for the
Northern League in Italy and the Freedom Party in Austria. Cross-national research
confirms Kitschelt’s claim as well as showing a similar relationship at work in the
electoral politics of Belgium and France (Veugelers and Magnan 2005: 855).
However, the effect of corruption scandals is ‘not always easy to demonstrate’
(Evans 2003: 89). The example of Toulon is instructive because it not only dem-
onstrates this effect but also suggests a jump in far-right support due to a corruption
scandal may be transitory.
This study confirms that extremism is hard to reconcile with power at the
municipal level. Unlike interwar Europe, liberal democracy is today hegemonic. At
the local level, moreover, the possibilities for deep or radical change are limited.
Municipal legislation that curtails the rights of immigrants runs into barriers set by
national constitutions and higher levels of government. Extremist politicians who
hold power also face tasks that require good management, not a new ideological
twist. As the example of Le Chevallier shows, it is easier to mount a campaign to
‘throw the rascals out of office’ when one is in the opposition. The far right faces a
new difficulty when – like the FN in Toulon – it too has become an incumbent
with dirty hands.
Finally, this study demonstrates the value of distinguishing between the concepts
of culture and politics: doing so raises the question of translation (Sartori 1969).
Having a cultural affinity is not the same as voting (let alone expressing a relatively
coherent set of ideas that promote vested interests). Hence, in the competition for
votes the far right often operates in a hunting ground that overlaps with that of
other parties (Panebianco 1988). Part of the contribution of this chapter is empiri-
cal: showing that in Toulon the competition for the support of an electorate with
nostalgia for empire put the FN into conflict with the moderate right. But this
chapter has also posed an analytical problem applicable to other cases: identifying
the conditions under which a sub-cultural identity with more than one possible
expression in electoral politics becomes translated into actual support for the far
right.
Acknowledgements
This chapter was written while the author was a fellow at the Camargo Foundation
in Cassis, France. It is based on research made possible by funding from the
46 John Veugelers
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The opportunity to

present a preliminary version was provided by the Department of European Studies
and Modern Languages, University of Bath. Thanks also to Jean-Jacques Jordi and
the late Georges Boutigny.
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3
PLACING THE EXTREMES
Cityscape, ethnic ‘others’ and young right
extremists in East Berlin1
Nitzan Shoshan
Introduction
A bony 20-year-old with a brash attitude, Sebastian2 belongs to a clique that
congregates routinely at a small public square in an East German-era high-rise
neighbourhood on the southeastern fringes of Berlin. Living with his mother and
subsisting on the remittances of a mandatory welfare-for-work programme, his
daily life unfolds largely in his neighbourhood, dubbed the ‘Ghetto’ and blatantly
signalling post-reunification socio-economic decline. He and his friends Danny
and Klaus take turns at the slot machines as we sit to chat on an August afternoon
in Little Istanbul, a local Turkish restaurant-bar. Flipping through his wallet,
he exposes an election sticker of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD,
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands) attached to its inner lining and pauses
briefly, as if ascertaining that I perceive the careful provocation. The right extrem-
ist NPD and its current ally, the German People’s Union Party (DVU, Deutsche
Volksunion), have scored significant electoral gains in recent years, winning a
handful of seats in state parliaments and provoking anxious alarm across Germany.
Their successes have crucially hinged upon young disaffected men such as Sebastian.
But the cautiously placed sticker more or less summarizes Sebastian’s formal
political commitments. Some three months earlier he and a friend were chased
‘with carving knives’ and banned from Little Istanbul after rioting and threatening
its owners. Such incidents recur but invariably end with the renewal of amicable
relations, he maintains, exchanging jokes with waiters who serve beers to our table.
Before long we turn to politics. True to form, immigration and foreigners top
his list of grievances: ‘I would start by prohibiting and shutting down all of their
businesses,’ he declares, ‘but sooner or later all foreigners living here should
leave the country.’ I enquire why, considering their views, he and his friends favour
Little Istanbul over nearby ‘German’ restaurant-bars. ‘One simply gets used to it,’
he replies, ‘and besides,’ he adds in a confession all the more astonishing for coming
from a German ultra-nationalist, ‘the beer here tastes better.’
Placing the extremes: East Berlin 49
Sebastian and his peers navigate a shifting, heterogeneous landscape where, even
in the Ghetto, they must constantly live out an inevitable proximity with ‘others’
they perceive as threatening. Far from isolated domains, locally situated right-
extremist milieus present an ambiguous and porous field and a constant intermin-
gling with other, equally diffuse milieus. On the streets of East Berlin it is as if the
boundaries of right extremism3 dissolve into thin air, and the more emphatically so
the more one attempts to fix one’s analytical gaze upon them: individuals and
cliques come and go, Will Smith receives as much veneration as Edward Norton,
and formal political commitments range from disillusioned indifference to extra-
parliamentary militancy, from the NPD or the DVU to the Christian Democrats
(CDU), the Social Democrats (SPD), or even the former Greens party leader
Joschka Fischer who after all ‘was also a hooligan once, no?’.4
Based on ethnographic research with young right-extremist street milieus in
East Berlin, my goal in this chapter is to advance debates in the field by approaching
extreme-right phenomena as intricately embedded both within German society
and within broader contemporary processes. In particular, my focus will be on
the growing proximity to, and proliferating encounters with, alterity in the urban
everyday of Sebastian and his peers. Their senses of place and sensualities of other-
ness, I will argue, weave political significations about ethnic groups into geogra-
phies of difference in the tangible fabric of the multi-ethnic city. Within the
contemporary ethnicization and culturalization of politics and difference at large,
ultra-nationalist subjectivities in Germany crucially hinge upon the singular figure
of an ethnicized collectivity of ‘Turks and Arabs’. Their constructions of this
embodied alterity rely on somatic modalities – visual, auditory, olfactory – that
suture stereotypifying narratives and that shape urban landscapes.
My analysis will draw on semiotic approaches from linguistic anthropology,5
which will reveal the inherent emplacement of embodied alterity and explain how
this emplacement incorporates a constitutive indeterminacy that allows the nego-
tiation of everyday proximity. The ethnographic purview shows especially well
how, at Little Istanbul and elsewhere, ultra-nationalists live out rather than resolve
the contradictions of a bigoted politics. In doing so, it illuminates the limits of
conventional approaches to European racist nationalisms that employ abstract, con-
ceptual categories. And it shows as well how a local empirical focus – in this case on
East Berlin – allows for an analytical depth and complexity that are indispensable
for grasping the intricate logic of racist and xenophobic politics. As I shall discuss at
the end of the chapter, the negotiation of a racist nationalism and a multi-ethnic
landscape among right extremists emulates and ventriloquates far broader German
and European debates on immigration and cultural toleration. This reproduction of
‘mainstream’ idioms breaches the presumed boundaries that ostensibly define right
extremists as a distinct political collectivity.
Landscapes of otherness
Recent worldwide transformations in processes of identity production have been
linked on the one hand with reconfigurations in regimes of production, consumption
50 Nitzan Shoshan
and marketing under post-Fordist or global capitalism (Friedman 2003; Harvey

2001), and on the other with drastic transmutations in idioms of essentialization
through the broad ethnicization of politics (Alonso 1994; Hale 2005).6 Whether as
institutionalized discrimination or spontaneous bigotry, racism has been repackaged
in cultural terms (Pred 2000). Ethnic alterity has been repeatedly encountered as
the material incarnation of the abstract processes, at times with brutal consequences
(Comaroff and Comaroff 2001; Holmes 2000), while throughout Europe the polit-
ical terrain has realigned around the trope of immigration, and more precisely
around a cluster of stereotypifications of ethnicized Muslim minorities (Asad 2003;
Bunzl 2005).
Back at Little Istanbul, Danny gestures towards the Turkish staff as he grumbles
about ‘foreign cultures’. For him and others in his milieu, immigration stands
unquestionably as the most salient political horizon, far beyond the memory of
the Second World War, the eclipse of welfarism, or Jewish conspiracy theories.
It provides the very yardstick by which to assess political difference. ‘Leftists are for
foreigners and rightists are for Germans’ is a common rendering of the political
spectrum. Karl, a fashionably dressed 18-year-old who belonged to a politically
organized right-extremist clique, pronounced that ‘left and right don’t mean
much … actually they’re both the same, only, out of ten opinions both sides have
only one [i.e. immigration] that diverges, but otherwise they’re the same.’
The notion that idle workers abuse the resources of the welfare state haunted
Karl’s world: ‘one can really throw out 95% of foreigners because, well, [only] the
other 5% want to work and accomplish something here’. His take on the EU was
surprisingly upbeat, yet apprehensive about its expansionary vision, and particularly
about Turkey’s membership bid. Karl laid out objections based on economic,
geographical and human rights considerations, yet the subtext underscoring his
position quickly surfaced: ‘if Turkey became part of the EU then anyone could
travel as they wished and then of course they would all come to Germany … and
already more and more [Turks and Arabs] are always coming here.’ Turkey’s
menace for Karl and his peers thus springs less from abstract criteria and more from
situated perceptions of an ethnically heterogeneous here-and-now.
Their ubiquitous talk of ‘foreigners’ expresses a careful differentiation of ethnic
stereotypes. In Karl’s universe, ‘Chinese’,7 ‘Russians’ and ‘Africans’ are ‘quiet’ and
‘always work hard’, in contrast with an ethnically marked Middle Eastern popula-
tion that has become the crux of political identification for German right extremists
today: ‘generally it’s really just these Turks and Arabs who don’t work … [who] are
outside all day … always making trouble, like robbing people or threatening or
stabbing people.’
Cityscape and somatic modalities of alterity

Karl and his peers encounter this population as an undifferentiated group somati-
cally identifiable through sensual criteria.Visual regimes define for them an embod-
ied semiotics of recognition that comprises not only such manifest indices as skin
colour but also the architectonics of bodily demeanours, the stylistics of fashion or
stereotypified perceptual hygienics. Food serves as a trope for organizing sensual
indices of taste and smell, which locate alterities in specific sites in urban space.
Auditory sensibilities territorialize otherness through tropes of foreign language,
unfamiliar music and peculiar sounds.
Even in Karl’s relatively homogeneous neighbourhood, Johannisthal, which
immigrant groups and anti-racist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
often characterized as a ‘fear zone’,8 the gazes of right extremists who congregate
regularly around benches in the public park often enough encounter the figures of
head-covered Muslim women strolling about. The neighbourhood’s central avenue
is dotted with businesses that embed a variety of ethnicized indices into the local
experience of consumption and commodified leisure. Boundaries materialize fleet-
ingly in the arbitrary encounters of an urban everyday and then dissipate, for exam-
ple at nodes in the urban fabric, such as bus and tram stops. The presence of a pair
of persons of Middle Eastern appearance at a bus stop would only exceptionally
draw verbal commentary. But the sensitive observer would not fail to identify the
shifting gazes of bystanders who, in their own external appearance (for example via
a rightist skinhead dress code), radiate a right-extremist identification.
For 21-year-old Uta, who was struggling to pay long-standing debts on the tight
budget of low remittances that she received for a state-funded vocational training
programme, immigration or more precisely ‘those Turks and Arabs and all of that’
similarly topped the list of political concerns. Close behind her worries about
‘wide-open borders’ or foreigners’ abuse of the welfare system stood what she per-
ceived as intolerable levels of criminality. Traceable in her view to juridical leni-
ency and luxurious prisons, criminality conveniently merged for her with the trope
of immigration in the figure of the ‘criminal foreigner’ as the embodiment of
Germany’s woes. Uta complained of widespread institutional bias in favour of ‘for-
eigners’ and against ‘Germans’: ‘Sometimes you get treated like you’re the last piece
of crap … They want to hand everything to the Turks on a silver platter and eve-
rything must be provided for them,’ she grumbled. Idle ‘foreigners’, she claimed,
easily obtained inordinate amounts of welfare money while hard-working ‘Germans’
like herself had to navigate bureaucratic hurdles in order to afford basic necessities.
A minor brawl won her an unusually harsh punishment in her opinion, whereas
violent, drug-trafficking, multiply convicted Turks received unjustifiably lenient
sentences, she said. She resented the public funding of mosques and voiced particu-
lar anger about immigrants who failed to master German and thus, according to
her, created discrimination against native Germans in the labour market, where
employers increasingly favoured multilingual workers.
Through various stories, Uta narrated a daily friction with ‘Turks and Arabs’:
a fight at the shopping mall, threats at a court-mandated anti-violence seminar, or
various incidents at the vocational school. Her narratives form discursive renderings
or ‘spatial syntaxes’ (de Certeau 1984) of the cityscape that authorize a geography of
alterity.The schools she attended, her anti-violence seminar, or the shopping mall mark
areas of the city as ethnically different and, inseparably, as dangerously threatening.
52 Nitzan Shoshan
This territorialization of difference is imbricated in and generated through a web

of somatic modalities that incorporate alterity into material things:
A friend of mine lives also in Neukölln and I’m happy that I have to walk
only 5 minutes [from the train station] to her place and the same going back,
and that’s ok, but I would never settle there, never, it stinks there so badly for
me, when you enter the hallway of her building sometimes it smells like
garlic, sometimes it smells stale, and here it doesn’t stink so bad, perhaps we
cook with different spices, that’s possible, but the Turks, oh no, even when
you walk down the street every kebab place smells differently.
Such evocations of otherness reiterate across sensual domains. Karl, for example,
complained that ‘there are many [Germans] who already start to talk like they
always do, weird sounds like ts ts [tongue clicks] … Or, they make their own
dialect, this Turkish German (Turkdeutsch), that’s quite terrible.’
Indeed, linguistic otherness seems to fuse particularly well with perceptions of
institutionalized discrimination, as the case of Ole illustrates. Tall, large-bodied, and
dressed in hooligan fashion, 19-year-old Ole would cite his relations with ‘foreign’
colleagues at his vocational programme or with a local kebab vendor as an alibi for
his racism, or he would seek to temper the racist undertones of his laments about
Germany’s immigration policy and the vices of immigrants by disavowing hostility
to foreigners who work, pay taxes and speak German. But his gravest concern
revolves around linguistic alterity, a problem he articulated through encounters in
institutional settings of state bureaucracy (e.g. the employment or welfare offices)
where people ‘should be able to talk German and not with their hands and feet,
because many go there and [with] “I no understand” they already win [what they
want]’. Foreign words, broken speech, bodily gestures and the incapacity to speak
German fluently in institutions governing the dispensation of public resources
emerge for him as enabling an unfair access to and abuse of these resources.
Auditory signs interlace with visual markers of otherness in his perception of the
urban landscape: ‘[I dislike Neukölln] first because of the high ratio of foreigners,
many youth gangs that are not of German origin … and also because a lot [there] is
dilapidated, I also see a lot of poverty, and that’s not pretty.’ The visual markers of
embodied alterity intertwine here with an aesthetics of urban form in a manner that
associates immigration, criminality, poverty, unsightliness and threat. At stake for
Ole are not concrete negative experiences but rather a perceptual-aesthetic order-
ing of immaterial, yet clearly evident boundaries: ‘[it’s not that] I was assaulted or
harassed there, which is something that of course could happen anywhere, it’s just
that there’s a border for me there that I don’t like to cross.’
Ole protested against what he considered ‘asylum-shelter Germany’ (Asylheim
Deutschland):
it’s fine if people come, but it can be pushed too far … it shouldn’t stand
open for everyone, which is somehow the way it appears to us right now,
even if the law prescribes something else or says something else or equally
with the statistics, but to people on the street it looks nevertheless different.
His concerns thus revolve not around legal codes, government policies or statistical
measures. Instead, rooted in daily experience, they hinge upon somatic modalities
and decry how foreign presence ‘appears to us’, ‘to people on the street’ – not how
‘people on the street’ think about it but literally how they tangibly sense it.
The spatial configuration of strangeness

For Ole, Karl and Uta, certain geographies of alterity gain life through the sights,
sounds and smells that permeate the city and that become attached to streets, neigh-
bourhoods, offices of state bureaucracy, vocational schools, restaurants, shopping
malls, and so on. Their territorialization of otherness generates multi-layered spatial
ordering through an intricate articulation of regions, sites, boundaries and circula-
tions. At times it appears as a relatively stable classification of bounded territories.
For example, the districts of Kreuzberg and Neukölln invariably surface as the
incarnation par excellence of spatial negativity in the cityscape. Yet the territorial
delimitation of strangeness must always come to terms with the inherent porosity
of boundaries. We therefore find pervasive spatial aversions to areas perceived as
too close to and hence already polluted by Kreuzberg and Neukölln:‘Treptowerpark
is … on the edge of Kreuzberg, it already starts there that different-looking, strange
people come’, says Karl.
A far vaguer geographical imaginary hinges upon an elusive East–West ordering
of the city. Here, Kreuzberg and Neukölln feature as emblematic of the West at
large. Yet the domestication of strangeness through its spatial enclosure becomes at
this point highly precarious. The political frontier once starkly marked by the Wall
has evaporated into a misty, ethereal geography, its precise course a mystery to
virtually all the young people I met in my research. The distinction between East
and West therefore takes on a variety of different outlines that invariably trace inci-
sions to the ‘east’ of where the Wall once stood, though just how far varies greatly.
For many, the East–West boundary resurfaces within their own district, carving
there a fractal recursion (Irvine and Gal 2000) of their imagination of the wider
urban landscape.
Hence for Axel, a clean-cut 16-year-old who used to play a key role in the
local scene of militant, organized right extremists, Neukölln figured as a heart of
darkness whose maladies centrifugally encroached eastward into his own district,
the western fringes of which have already become in his view a nest of ‘Ghetto
people’. But this seeping pollution has meanwhile percolated farther into his own
neighbourhood, Johannisthal, at the district’s centre:
[L]ately I see in Johannisthal too many people running around who make
trouble … who provoke and harass people on the street … [they are] young
bullies who think they’re some young gangsters, like for example they think
54 Nitzan Shoshan
they come from the Bronx in America, they think they have to create
a ghetto here in Johannisthal.
Boundaries appear here as interfaces for flows rather than as restrictive borders.
The substances they filter become, as it were, diluted as they proceed away from
their origin, as in the cascading progression of strangeness from Neukölln to
Johannisthal.
This fluidity of the East–West ordering of alterity revealed itself tellingly one
unusually hot morning as we lingered outside a train-station kiosk on the very
southeastern perimeter of this southeastern district: Sylvia, Robert, Meier, Norman
and Martina, all some 20 years old, and Michael and Kurt, respectively in their late
twenties and mid-thirties. Michael, divorced and father of three, lost his cheerful
composure after Martina disclosed that his current girlfriend had been cheating on
him. He ranted about his misfortunes with women, extolled his fulfilment of
his fatherly duties, and finally complained of the perils of raising children in today’s
dangerous social environment, pointing at the pervasiveness of drug dealing as
particularly worrisome. Here Kurt, a toothless, thin and starkly unkempt regular of
the kiosk, who relocated some years earlier from Berlin to a satellite town a few
train stops further into the Brandenburg countryside, intervened. He described
his abandonment of the city as an exile of sorts, an eastward flight from western
afflictions that have steadily seeped into landscapes once familiar but meanwhile
metamorphosed into alien places. This southeastern corner of Berlin’s southeast-
ernmost district marked for him a last frontier, the western rim of his universe. The
beyond materialized for him as irredeemable and insufferable, traversed by evils and
overpopulated with immigrants.
Nods of agreement greeted his appraisal and an exchange on the idleness, crim-
inality and welfare-dependency of an over-sized immigrant population followed. In
this interactional entextualization (Silverstein 1997) of space (an East–West order-
ing), of time (decline and creeping encroachment), and of difference (women,
immigrants), geography and temporality intertwined with and bound together
toxic social maladies: criminality, idleness, illegal drugs, violence, dependency and
infidelity.
Boundaries and identities

The territorialization of difference in the cityscape thus follows a general schema
while revealing irregular contours. Yet how should we conceptualize the relation-
ship between embodied forms of difference and their territorialization in the urban
landscape? Are they determined as it were externally to their spatial configuration
and generative in turn of boundaries that reflect their flows across the cityscape? Or
else, if spatial forms already insinuate themselves into their process of becoming,
how are they constituted? Such questions appear particularly thorny in the case of
embodied alterity, whose corporeality grants it an irresistible – and insuppressible
(Fanon 1967) – force that reifies it as material presence. The facticity of somatic
sensibilities endows embodied alterity with an ontic compulsion that would appear
to precede any spatial determination.
Anthropological literature has explored the relation between identities and
contexts, and recent writings have especially attended to the manners in which
new regimes of legibility have generated novel uncertainties and inspired ethnic
conflicts. Some authors have argued that it is through the stabilization of contextual
determinations, of the elusive scenery within which indeterminate identities unfold,
that alterity becomes embodied in individuals (Appadurai 1998; Feldman 1991;
Hansen 2002). Others, in contrast, have viewed ethnic violence today as targeting
plainly recognizable others in the struggle over increasingly elusive boundaries
(Friedman 2003). While acknowledging the variety of context-dependent forms
that ethnicized antagonisms take, however, I would argue that, its apparent facticity
notwithstanding, the encounter with embodied alterity always entails an inherent
ambiguity that can only be domesticated tentatively through a situated dialectic of
body and scenery.
In order to understand why this is so, let me at this point consider two moments
of the social constitution of embodied alterity as a form of difference. To begin,
before we encounter particular corporeal markers as alterity they must first become
mobilized as signifiers of otherness and rendered perceptible to our somatic sensi-
bilities. The tongue clicks about which Karl complains or the odours that upset
Uta emerge within socially mediated processes as signifiers of some incommensu-
rable alterity, while other differences remain imperceptible or meaningless to them.
But second, the construction of embodied alterity relies upon semiotic processes
of stereotypification, themselves embedded in uneven social relations, through
which concrete markers, as signifiers, become attached to particular signifieds. In
the constitution of this indexically iconic relation,9 appearances are collapsed into
essence and take the form of an immediate somatic materiality. Yet the semiotic
binding of corporeal markers (as signifiers) and stereotypified tropes (as signifieds)
remains a tenuous, socially mediated and context-driven process.
The contingency of embodied alterity as the enactment of an indexically iconic
relation implies that stereotypification depends upon situated, sometimes interac-
tional interpretations that invoke notions of place, senses of time and ideologies of
difference. Thus, for example, not only for Ole but for many other right extremists,
a particular chronotopic (Bakhtin 1998) articulation of time (working hours), place
(the Turkish eatery) and social roles (an ethnic division of labour) defines ‘Middle
Eastern’ alterity as welcome behind the counter of a kebab stand, where it blends,
so to speak, harmoniously into the scenery. Similarly, in the exchange about immi-
grants at the train-station kiosk, Martina invoked the Bangladeshi owner of a cheap
eatery across the railway tracks to posit a common social Darwinist distinction that
hinged upon place, time and activity between abusers of the welfare system and
those who worked and paid their taxes. And Karl contrasts the upright Vietnamese
whom ‘one sees everywhere during the day but [not] outside in the evenings’
with the parasitical Turks who ‘are outside the whole day’, at once proclaiming
that ‘really any Turk who lives here [in Johannisthal] … works, one has a kiosk,
56 Nitzan Shoshan
the other has his Internet café, a restaurant, a produce shop’. The same material
markers that bind paradigmatic figures of foreigners with social ills stand in other
places and times for industriousness and normativity.
Inherent to recognition, then, is an interpretative gesture that encompasses con-
textual cues that define the terms of encounter with markers of difference. Embodied
alterity emerges as thoroughly imbricated in a tenuous reciprocal constitution of
signs and scenery, identities and boundaries. Borders, Étienne Balibar reminds us,
constitute identities by imposing a forced definition upon them, while themselves
remaining inherently equivocal (2002: 76). But if that which traces the outlines
of identity remains itself always equivocal, ambiguous boundaries and indetermi-
nate identities cannot but go hand in hand, and the very constitution of identity
necessarily incorporates an inherent equivocality.
So far so good: in Neukölln, we are told, Turks are idle criminals while in
Johannisthal they are hard-working citizens, and immigrants who linger about after
working hours cannot be up to anything good. Yet what happens when alterity
appears in ambiguous borderlands or in places where it is not meant to be? The
contingency of alterity upon scenery implies that its signification could become
impossible under certain circumstances: the signifier (somatically perceptible alterity)
could fail to attach to a signified (a stereotypified notion) and remain utterly
indecipherable. Alterity may simply appear ‘out of place’ (Douglas 2002), as, for
example, outside the soccer stadium of a third division team with a reputation
for a right-extremist fan base, where Elsa, a German mythology enthusiast with
intimate links to politically organized right-extremist milieus, myself and a few
others loitered before a match. While her friends chitchatted, Elsa took note
of a nearby group of men who were audibly conversing in Turkish, and I became
captivated by her silent stare, her wide-open eyes and the look of disbelief on
her face. ‘What was that?’ was literally all she could enunciate, loudly and with
flabbergasted distress, after they had walked away. In her everyday routines
there was nothing outrageous about the presence of foreigners for Elsa: they were
simply there as objects of her aversion. But in this eastern corner of the city, outside
the stadium and surrounded by skinheads, the Turkish fans struck her as glaringly
illegible.
Talking immigration
Against this out-of-placeness, Elsa’s distressed astonishment mimicked general
forms of encounter with otherness in Germany and in Europe more widely. As
material signs of religious-ethnic alterity, mosques seem to enter the perceptual
field of broad populations as out of place within it. This became glaringly evident
during the broad protests that accompanied the commencement of construction
work on the first mosque in eastern Berlin in 2006, where right-extremists advo-
cating the immediate deportation of all ‘foreigners’ mingled with mainstream con-
servatives, desperate to appear respectable. According to the newspaper Die Welt,
the leader of the protests proclaimed himself a beacon of tolerance regarding his
lesbian daughter or Nigerian neighbours, but ‘thought it must have been a joke
when he read … in the newspaper that a mosque would be built in his neighbour-
hood’ because ‘no Muslim has ever lived in “his part of the city”’ (Peter 2007). For
him and many others, the struggle centred not on the presence of religious alterity
in the city at large, much less in Germany or Europe, but on its perception as out
of place in their own district, as a sign whose illegibility within their local scenery
triggered incredulous disbelief and accentuated anxieties. Sharia law, arranged
marriages and women coerced into burkas were all cited as possible scenarios for
the imminent future of the neighbourhood. We find analogous outlines in debates
about Muslim women’s head covering as ‘out of place’ in schools or at public
offices (Walzer 1997).
Elsa’s astonishment thus reflects the singularly vital position that immigration has
come to occupy in mainstream contemporary politics in Germany and elsewhere
in Europe. Today’s young right extremists enact broadly circulating discourses
that have forcefully come to the fore in heated debates on immigration and
asylum policies during the 1990s (Halfman 1997).10 Regardless of their legal or
policy outcomes, these contestations propagated discursive topoi that have seeped
as citations into the situated politics of right extremists. Their very vocabulary
already signalled the difficulties of incorporating the other, who persisted as lexical
difference.11
The CDU/CSU, for instance, has especially instrumentalized the question of
Turkey’s EU bid in recent election campaigns. In 2004 Angela Merkel, then
opposition leader, proposed a popular petition against Turkey’s membership. The
idea was swiftly and unceremoniously scrapped, embarrassingly winning its most
enthusiastic praise from the DVU and the NPD, which subsequently put Merkel’s
vision into practice. Karl thus cites public deliberations far broader and more artic-
ulate than the crude rhetoric of extreme-right fringes when objecting to Turkey’s
EU membership, even while the stakes for him centre not on a European future
but on the tangible present of his everyday life.
The trope of ‘criminal foreigners’ has equally reverberated across mainstream
media representations and political idioms ( Jäger et al. 1998). Paradigmatically, the
recent re-election campaign of the CDU governor of the state of Hessen, Roland
Koch, centred on immigrant youth crime and called for more heavy-handed
approaches. Irrespective of its political results, the broad public debate that ensued
already authorized the trope of ‘foreigners’ criminality’ through incessant scandali-
zation (see, for example, Sievert and Bittner 2008; Thorer et al. 2008). Immigration
has saturated public debates also through tropes of labour (and unemployment)
or of demographic anxieties. Both converged marvellously in the CDU candidate
Jürgen Rüttgers’ campaign slogan ‘Kinder statt Inder’ (‘children instead of Indians’)
during the 2000 state elections in North Rhein-Westphalia, which was immedi-
ately picked up by the right-extremist Republican party. On the left, the WASG
(Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative, Labour and Social
Justice – The Electoral Alternative) party leader Oskar Lafontaine commented on
‘foreign workers’ (Fremdarbeiter) threatening Germans’ jobs.
58 Nitzan Shoshan
The electoral value of such strategies notwithstanding, their contours, as we

have seen, resurface in the discourse of young right extremists. They rest not only
upon xenophobic conservatism but equally upon social Darwinist politics that seek
to import hi-tech labour while accelerating the export of deported refugees, and
which abandon and vilify the socially marginalized. They reflect, too, the cultur-
alization of racism. In Germany’s belated and troubled encounter with its hetero-
geneity, difference has become subservient to a vital notion of a German ‘dominant
culture’ (Leitkultur) as the infrastructure upon which ornamentations could be
tolerated (Borneman 2002). And they echo contemporary anxieties about civiliza-
tional incommensurabilities and linguistic diversification that extend far beyond
Europe (Huntington 1997, 2004).
Conclusion
My argument in this chapter has been that such public debates about immigration
seep not only into right-extremist rhetoric, but also into the very manners that right
extremists perceive and construe as a landscape of alterity in their daily habits. As
the paramount screen against which European societies formulate and perform
their differences, discourses about immigration outline schemas that organize the
imagination of boundaries and landscapes, and that structure both the place and the
out-of-placeness of alterity in situated local contexts. Among the right extremists
with whom I worked, the salient political debates about immigration inflect the
daily experience of late capitalist urban heterogeneity. The bigoted political visions
to which they give rise, their claims notwithstanding, do not revolve around abstract
postulates of identity. Theirs is a firmly – if misguidedly – locally situated politics.
It is politics as a sinister rendering – but a rendering all the same – of the everyday
in which they encounter the emergent contours of ethnicized geographies. It is,
hence, politics as a paranoid sense of place wherein strangeness sediments and
encroaches upon the familiar.
Right-extremist Political Parties and ideologues may elaborate categorical plat-
forms and uncompromising visions, but the social milieus to which they appeal and
on which they crucially rely live out in full the seismic contradictions of late capi-
talism in the daily negotiation of their immediate, material worlds. Analytical
understandings would therefore search in vain for a practical resolution of these
contradictions in the habits of right extremists, much less for a conceptual coher-
ence to their insidious politics. It is precisely the ethnographic focus on emplaced
experience that stands to question such understandings, not only in registering
inter-discursive circulations between ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ but also by illumi-
nating the locally embedded unfolding of ultra-nationalist politics in today’s Europe.
Back at Little Istanbul, it was perhaps not gratuitous that Sebastian railed against
‘foreigners’ while praising the beer in his favoured locale, a Turkish restaurant. He
and his peers voice not a party programme but rather various amalgamations
of broadly circulating idioms. These open a space of ambiguity that allows, too,
for precarious modes of (co)existence.
Notes
1 The author is grateful for the generous support provided to this project by the University
of Chicago, the Social Science Research Council, the Hannah Holborn Gray Mellon
Fellowship and the Josephine De Karman Trust.
2 All names have been modified to protect the confidentiality of my subjects.
3 The concept of right extremism constitutes a politically loaded and contentious notion,
which I have examined in detail elsewhere (Shoshan 2008) and will not have the space to
expand upon here. I employ it as a ‘local category’, following its actual usage in today’s
Germany, rather than as an analytical category (for scholarly definitions, see Butterwegge
and Meier 2002; Schubarth and Stöss 2001).
4 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fischer was involved in violent clashes with the police.
5 Informed by the work of Charles Peirce, these approaches conceive of language –
or any medium of meaning – primarily as action and process thoroughly embedded
in socio-cultural contexts, rather than as mere communication or as an abstract system
of arbitrary relations. Salient to them is the Peircean classification of sign-relations:
icons (signification by similarity), indices (signification by proximity), and symbols
(signification by convention) (see Parmentier 1994; Peirce 1960; Silverstein and Urban
1996).
6 Despite its essentializing ontological claims, I view ethnicity as very much a product
and construct of our time, and as a political claim rather than a descriptive category
(cf. Brubaker and Laitin 1998; Calhoun 2007; Tambiah 1996).
7 A label by which he and many others designated an East Asian population, largely
consisting of immigrants of Vietnamese background, who arrived in East Germany as
workers and remained following reunification.
8 ‘Fear zones’ have been used in Germany to designate areas perceived as especially tainted
by right-extremist violence and hence particularly threatening for groups of potential
victims.
9 The notion of indexical iconicity refers to the manner in which particular features
(indices) of a group, for example linguistic or cultural characteristics, become their
iconic representations, ‘as if they somehow displayed a social group’s inherent nature or
essence’ (Irvine and Gal 2000: 37).
10 The ‘asylum compromise’ of 1993 constituted an official endorsement of the narrative of
exaggerated leniency towards refugees. The remainder of the decade witnessed intense
conflicts over reforms to Kaiser-era citizenship laws and National Socialist-era laws
governing aliens (Senders 1996).
11 For example as ‘foreigners with a German passport’ (Ausländer mit deutschen Pass) or,
more collegially, ‘co-citizens’ (Mitbürger).
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4
EXTREME-RIGHT DISCOURSE
IN BELGIUM
A comparative regional approach
Jérôme Jamin
Introduction
From the 1970s a series of constitutional reforms progressively transformed the
Belgian unitary state into a federal one and today, indeed, the first article of the
Belgian constitution stipulates that ‘Belgium is a federal state made up of
Communities and Regions’. As the result of federal reforms, each community and
region has developed a substantially different political culture: the profile of key
political players, the parties in power themselves and the issues which divide them,
the political alliances they formed, all have evolved in different directions. It is not
surprising, then, that the place of extreme-right parties, their profiles and discourses
on the Belgian political stage vary greatly depending on whether one is analysing the
Dutch-speaking Flemish region in the north of the country, the bilingual Brussels
capital region or the French-speaking Walloon region in the south.1
This chapter will compare and contrast the extreme right in Wallonia, Brussels
and Flanders within the context of the Belgian federal state. A brief discussion of
the concept of ‘extreme right’ will be used to frame a study of the main extreme-
right parties in southern and northern Belgium, focusing on their discourse and
their ideology, as expressed in speeches and manifestos. The objective is to question
the nature of their programme and to assess to what extent they can be classified as
extreme-right parties. Finally, the conclusion will explore to what extent different
programmes may account for different levels of electoral support.
Defining the extreme right

Along with the concepts of fascism and populism, the concept of the extreme right
suffers from acute notional fuzziness; yet, even if there is no absolute consensus on
how this concept is to be defined (Backes 2004; Camus 2008; Mudde 2000), it is
Extreme-right discourse in Belgium 63
now usually recognized that, when taken together, some specific ideological
features form an extreme-right ideal-type. Among others, there is the belief in the
inequality between people, ‘races’ and cultures which is a fundamental feature of an
extreme-right ideology. The belief in inequality partly justifies a form of homoge-
neous nationalism as a political project to separate people, ‘races’ and cultures and
to establish a hierarchy between them. A strong state is also perceived to be crucial
for the extreme right in the sense that it provides the nation with the necessary
authority to bring together (within a territory) individuals with supposedly common
cultural and ‘biological’ origins; these origins make these individuals ‘racially’ supe-
rior beings (relative to foreigners and immigrants). Thus, the extreme right’s belief
in the purity and homogeneity of the national group endorses the development of
racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Together, they are all strategies to fight
against the enemies of the homogeneous, white people. Finally, the extreme right is
also characterized by its radicalism, that is to say it addresses the ‘root’ (radix) of the
phenomenon it perceives as the problem, and deploys extreme solutions in its
efforts to give shape to nationalism.
The belief in inequality, nationalism and radicalism encompasses most of the
features found in the existing literature about the extreme right ( Jamin 2009: 123,
124): as such, in this chapter, they will serve as a template to decipher the extreme-
right ideology in Belgium.
The extreme right in French-speaking Belgium

Strictly speaking, there has been no violent, organized and active extreme-right
group in French-speaking Belgium since the end of the 1980s. The lack of racial
violence and the poor electoral results of the extreme right in Wallonia and Brussels
undoubtedly explain why the extreme right has not attracted the same academic
and political interest in this region as in the Flemish part of Belgium or indeed as
south of the border, in France. Indeed, in Belgian and international academic lit-
erature, the attention devoted to the extreme right ‘refers almost exclusively to a
single [Flemish] political party: the Vlaams Belang’ (Delwit 2007: 141). There is
also something enigmatic and elusive about the French-speaking extreme right,
which may explain both its poor electoral results and the lack of academic scrutiny:
it is rife with secrecy and factionalism and its political orientation is notoriously
unstable. Each election reveals squabbles and quarrels between individuals, doctri-
nal divergence and a flurry of condemnations of elected representatives for racism
(Faniel 2009: 13–15). The shadowy atmosphere surrounding the French-speaking
extreme right in Wallonia and Brussels makes it a particularly difficult object to
describe and analyse.
Based on the criteria set out in the first part of this chapter, the following parties
are usually defined as extreme-right parties: the Front National (FN, National
Front), formed in 1985 and led by its once ‘lifetime president’ Daniel Féret until
2008;2 the Front Nouveau de Belgique (FNB, New Belgian Front), a breakaway
64 Jérôme Jamin
from the FN formed in 1996 by Marguerite Bastien; the (Flemish) Vlaams Belang
(VB),3 which courts French-speaking voters in Brussels and the Hainaut region.
The FN, FNB and VB have secured, in varying proportions and geographical areas,
a degree of electoral support and media visibility when compared to other compet-
ing parties and small groups operating on the right of the right of the political
spectrum. With the exception of Agir, an extremist Walloon party formed in Liège
in 1989, which experienced a short-lived electoral success in 1994, there are numer-
ous small extreme-right parties which are not included in this discussion as their
influence is limited to very small geographical areas, such as a district, and are often
unknown outside this area, as is the case in Liège, Brussels or Charleroi districts:
these tiny parties include the Parti Social-Démocrate (PSD, Social Democratic
Party), Intérêts Citoyens Bruxelles (ICB, Interests of the Citizens of Brussels), the
Bloc Wallonie Libre (Bloc WL, Free Wallonia Bloc) and Référendum (REF,
Referendum Party) (Blaise 2004: 152–55).
The FN, FNB and other small district-level parties are together characterized
by leadership feuds, fratricidal battles, ‘micro-disputes and micro-disagreements’,
ideological and doctrinal disagreements, opportunism and lack of charismatic
leadership (Delwit 2007: 148; Faniel 2009: 13–15). This means that the French-
speaking extreme right has no framework, no project, no organization and,
while not vacuous, no coherent programme. It is also an extreme right which
has no real, easily identifiable electoral base with the exception of the FN (Alaluf
1998; Delwit 2007). Sharing the same name, and the same acronym as its powerful
French counterpart, the Belgian FN has managed to stand out a little from the
crowd for the past ten years, and more specifically since the June 2004 regional
elections. For this reason, we shall focus specific attention on Daniel Féret’s Front
National.
From 1995 to 2004, the French-speaking extreme right was electorally weak.
Indeed, in purely electoral terms, ‘it experienced a significant downturn in the
1995 legislative elections and the 2000 local elections, followed by a sharp surge in
the 2003 federal elections, despite its near-total absence from the electoral cam-
paign’ (Blaise 2004: 174). A number of small, weak and fragmented extreme-right
parties disappeared between 1995 and 2003, and Daniel Féret’s Front National has
become the only extreme-right party in French-speaking Belgium not to be a
splinter group, a defunct party or an empty shell. ‘Within this shifting landscape of
fragmented groups, … since the end of the 1980s Daniel Féret’s Front National has
constituted the leading figurehead of the French-speaking extreme right’ (Alaluf
1998: 101).
The most recent figures from local, regional and national elections in 2004 and
2007 confirm the FN as the main extreme-right party in southern Belgium. With
more than eight per cent at regional level in 2004, and in 2007 between five and
eight per cent at the national level (lower and upper house), notably in some
districts such as Liège (4.51 per cent), Hainaut (7.87 per cent) or Namur (4.97 per
cent) (Service public fédéral de l’intérieur 2009), FN remains the main radical
actor in southern Belgium.
The Front National’s programme

Since the party’s creation in September 1985, the Front National’s programme has
been a deliberate – and confirmed as such – copy of the French Front National’s
programme. The newly created party’s aim ‘was clear: to benefit from the media
coverage given to the French National Front following [its electoral breakthrough
in] the European elections of 1984’ (Delwit 2007: 145). Article 4 of its statutes
unambiguously specifies that one of the party’s objectives is ‘to favour the dissemi-
nation of the arguments, opinions and publications of the French Front National
political party’ (Rea 1995: 38). As Art explains, ‘Féret made no attempt to hide the
fact that he was copying the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, taking the
French party’s name along with many of its symbols and slogans’ (Art 2008: 430).
Indeed, the objective was to create within a united Belgium a party equivalent to
the French FN. This new party, according to Alain Sadaune (Walloon FN Member
of Parliament) in La Flamme (December 1995), would be able to ‘protect’ the
Belgian nation and its white population not only against immigration and ‘its disas-
trous consequences’ in terms of security and employment, but also against ‘those
traitors who are opening the gates of our beautiful, peace-loving country to the
barbarian hordes who come to pillage the land of our ancestors and our grandchil-
dren’s inheritance’ (quoted by Abramowicz 1996: 45). However, most authors
who have tried to analyse the doctrinal content of the Belgian FN’s programme
agree that the various versions published since 1985 have lacked precision and
consistency (Alaluf 1995, 1998; Delwit 2007; Delwit and De Waele 1998; Rea
1995, 1996). It is nonetheless possible to highlight three policy sectors which pro-
vide some clues about the ideological nature of the FN. These policy sectors are
immigration, security and the state of the Belgian economy (including taxation and
employment policies).
From the outset, according to Rea (1996: 197), ‘the FN has made the fight
against immigration a policy priority and the sole answer to two social problems:
the fight against abuse of welfare provisions and the fight against insecurity, in the
name of a political imperative – the defence of a national identity’. Whereas
anti-Semitism and revisionism are still very much prominent in the arguments
developed by the FN, Rea has shown that xenophobia and racism against (non-
European) immigrants appear by far to be the party’s priority. He adds that the FN
has put forward two solutions to respond to the perceived threat of immigration:
‘repatriation of non-European immigrants and national preference’, a simple and
effective way, for the FN, of reducing unemployment, the cost of poverty, welfare
spending and insecurity (Rea 1996: 197). The FN’s different policy treatment of
immigrants according to whether or not they are of European origin, in particular
its obsession against non-European immigrants from the Third World and ‘Muslim
fanatics’, is not new and has been well documented (Brewaeys et al. 1992: 27–28).
Foreigners from France, Germany or Italy have never been considered by the
FN in the same way as non-European foreigners. Abramowicz argues that for the
FN ‘in contrast to Italians, Spaniards etc., it is not possible to integrate extra-European
66 Jérôme Jamin
foreigners due to their contrary culture, religion and history, and also because there
are “too many of them”’ (Abramowicz 1996: 46–47). In general terms, the litera-
ture highlights that the FN’s rejection of foreigners is even stronger when they
come from Africa and/or a Muslim country. Today, the party’s programme
still advocates ‘a very tough stance on law and order, and never fails to denounce
loudly the damaging effects of immigration and multicultural society’ (Delwit
2007: 146).
Alongside immigration, law and order constitutes the second pillar – the second
tangible doctrinal element – of the Belgian FN’s programme. If over the past decade
or so, most mainstream parties have sought to increase the visibility of their law and
order policy in their programme, as a tough stance on rising crime and violence
usually brings many electoral rewards, the relationship between immigration and
insecurity still remains an indisputable trademark of the extreme right. The FN
always plays the ‘crime card’ in a way which deliberately associates immigration and
insecurity, ‘thus maintaining the deliberate confusion between delinquency and
immigration’ ( Jamin 2005: 21). From 1985 onwards, supported by dubious statis-
tics and unproven causal links, the FN has systematically sought to demonstrate that
there is a link between immigration on the one hand, and insecurity, delinquency,
criminality, prostitution and drug trafficking on the other.
The literature contains numerous examples of stigmatization and demonization
of immigrants by the FN. On each occasion, ‘various sources are used to establish
a relationship between immigration and insecurity’ and particularly to talk about
the ‘Lebanonization of our country’. The 1991 violent confrontation between
the police and young people from the poor district of Forest, a district with
a strong Moroccan population, is often used as an example to demonstrate a
correlation between immigration and insecurity, glossing over the socio-economic
roots of discontent affecting all youngsters in Forest, regardless of their origins
(Vandemmeulebroucke and Haquin 1991). Indeed, the 1991 riots happened in poor
boroughs and have been analysed as a claim for social and political recognition by
young migrants (Rea 2002). Likewise, the FN asserts that ‘it is no coincidence
that the eight high-risk municipal districts (of Brussels) are those with the highest
concentration of immigrants’ (Rea 1995: 44–45). The denunciation of ‘communa-
utarisme’ by the Belgian FN – that is, a denunciation of multi-cultural policies – is
made with explicit references to the assimilationist version of the French republican
model. Here again, the Belgian FN follows the French FN when it asserts the
French republican model is ‘under attack’. In light of the above, it is not surprising
to learn that the FN proposes application of the death penalty for terrorists and
criminals, emergency repatriation of criminal delinquents, ‘de-naturalization’ of
immigrant delinquents and improved status for the police (Rea 1996: 198). The
FN explains unambiguously how it intends to restore internal security: ‘We’re
not ashamed to say that we prefer policemen to hooligans, young people to drug
dealers and victims to murderers’ (quoted by Brewaeys et al. 1992: 28).
The FN also devotes a substantial part of its programme to socio-economic
issues, including taxation policy and the fight against unemployment. In two
contributions to collective works on the extreme right, Alaluf (1995, 1998) focuses
on the FN’s socio-economic programme. For a long time, this programme remained
embryonic, poor and vague, but it has gained some substance over the years, nota-
bly as the FN intended to sharpen its profile in electoral contests (Alaluf 1998:
102). With respect to employment, Alaluf explains that for the FN, ‘it is the repa-
triation of immigrants that will free up jobs for Belgians and Europeans to whom
priority will have been restored’ (1998: 103). Via full employment, this approach
will enable the rate of income tax to be reduced; a parental salary to be established
for those wishing to have children and take time off work to look after them;
and, among other measures, policemen and prison guards to be better paid. Today,
the FN’s socio-economic programme is still structured around those policies
(Alaluf 2008).
In social terms, it is the inversion of migratory flows that will enable immigrants
to be sent back to their own countries and budgets intended for their integration to
be used for ‘destitute compatriots only’. On this subject, the FN’s programme
explains that detention centres for ‘illegal’ immigrants will make decent homes for
poor Belgians. The inversion of migratory flows will also serve to put an end to
unfair competition between Belgian workers and (illegal) immigrants. Ultimately,
the FN proposes to implement a welfare chauvinist programme by setting up a
special, separate social security fund for immigrants. Taken together, the above
proposals, the FN argues, would solve the major problems of poverty, exclusion
and unemployment in Belgium.
Finally, with respect to taxation, the FN’s programme advocates a form of
ultra-liberal protectionism (Alaluf 2008: 53), proposing to reduce taxes and free
up the economy and, at the same time, to protect Belgian businesses against
unfair competition from non-European countries. This supports Rea’s contention
that the FN’s social and economic programme ‘reflects the party’s two ideological
influences, one national-populist and the other ultra-liberal’ (Rea 1996: 198).
A deep analysis of the latest version of the FN’s programme (3 September 2011)
does not show a significant evolution in terms of content. If the socio-economic
issues have not changed through the years, some changes need to be highlighted
in the field of migration in relation to the Muslim population in Belgium. As in
most of its neighbouring countries such as Holland and France ( Jamin 2011:
43–45), immigration appears in the 2011 programme through the ‘Islamic threat’.
Uncontrolled immigration, ‘failed integration’, ‘fake refugees’, ‘foreign influences’
and ‘communautarismes’ are common features, but they are rehashed to reflect
a growing importance of Islamophobia in the discourse of the extreme right:
references to Islam as a cultural (polygamy) and security threat (terrorism and
law and order) are now common and seek to alert Belgians against all forms of
‘Islamic invasion’. On numerous occasions, the FN and its members have been
sued for racism by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or public institutions.
Thus it is hardly surprising that the FN intends to review the anti-racist legislation,
arguing that it inherently limits freedom of speech (Programme of the Front
National 2011).
68 Jérôme Jamin
The Front National as an extreme-right party

We have seen at the beginning of this chapter that the inequality between people
and races, nationalism and radicalism are three useful qualities to identify the ideol-
ogy of the extreme right.The inequality between races and cultures appears implic-
itly in the so-called incapacity of migrants from Muslim countries to integrate into
Belgian culture and society. If this inequality is never described or conceptualized
very clearly, the way the FN conflates in one single group migrants, Islam, funda-
mentalism and terrorism reveals the Manichean nature of its position. In terms of
nationalism, the exclusive and emotive view of the nation and the sacrosanct status
ascribed to the white race are seen in all the FN’s provisions aiming to reverse
migratory flows in order to save the ‘racially superior’ Belgian people and protect its
‘ancestral’ culture. Racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism and now Islamophobia
– both as a reaction to and as a strategy against the enemies of the people – form an
integral part of the FN’s programme, pamphlets and flyers. Such publications are
crammed with caricatures, insults and attacks on immigrants, particularly those of
African origin (from Third World and Muslim countries). Such a radical racist dis-
course relies on the exaltation of inequality as a means to protect the nation.
Likewise, the desire to establish an authoritarian regime of ‘absolute law and order’
is another form of radicalism which is at the heart of the FN’s project: from increasing
the power given to the police forces (and improving its members’ pay and working
conditions) to the reintroduction of the death penalty, the FN reveals its aversion to
the principles of liberal democracy and its taste for authoritarian values.
The extreme right in Dutch-speaking Belgium

In northern Belgium, there is some overlap between the Flemish movement,
Flemish nationalism and the Flemish extreme right (De Witte and Spruyt 2004:
127), and this often tends to cloud the analysis of what is happening on the Flemish
political stage. There are, of course, some crucial differences between these three
political strands. The Flemish movement seeks social, cultural and economic eman-
cipation; it is a pluralist movement which, since the creation of Belgium in 1830,
attracts members and supporters from a wide range of political, cultural and socio-
economic backgrounds. Flemish nationalism represents the political arm of the
Flemish movement. Its main political demand is the emancipation of the Flemish
people in the Walloon region as well as the continuous federalization of the country.
Again, the defence of Flemish interests through political action accommodates a
degree of political pluralism and Flemish nationalism attracts a huge variety of actors
from different backgrounds and with different ideas and programmatic objectives.
Both the Flemish movement and Flemish nationalism support democratic princi-
ples and practices and both seek to promote a reformist agenda to further Flemish
interests.
The Flemish extreme right, for its part, has historically had strong links to
Flemish nationalism even if the latter cannot be reduced to this specific political
ideology (De Witte and Spruyt 2004). As Art explains, in Flanders, ‘the postwar far
right was incorporated into a mainstream nationalist movement that dates back
over a century’ (Art 2008: 421). But in 1978, the Vlaams-Nationale Partij (VNP)
and the Vlaamse Volkspartij (VVP), both nationalist and radical, merged to form a
new party called Vlaams Blok (VB). With the years, Vlaams Blok has become a
well-organized party with important electoral success. Since the 24 November
1991 general election, now remembered as ‘Dimanche noir’ (Black Sunday) which
led to the emergence of the VB on the political scene when it won 10 per cent of
the votes,‘there [is] no doubt that the party had consolidated its place in the Flemish
party system’ (Art 2008: 429). Between 1991 and 2010, the party never stopped
gaining new voters. In the 2003 general election, the VB won 11.3 per cent of the
votes. In 2004 at the regional election, it raised 24.2 per cent of the votes. In 2007
during the general elections, its score reached 12 per cent of the votes (Service
public fédéral de l’intérieur 2009).This rise seems likely to be arrested by the arrival
of the popular and nationalist NVA (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie) which gained 17.4
per cent of the votes during the general elections of 2010, recovering many electors
from the VB through its effective non-racist nationalist discourse, and reducing the
VB to 7.76 per cent.
Vlaams Belang’s programme

While French-speaking Belgium’s Front National openly draws its inspiration from
the French Front National, the situation is very different with respect to VB, whose
nationalism differs radically from that of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party. Studied by
De Witte and Scheepers,VB’s ideology ‘gives priority to the conception of a nation-
alist organisation of the State, which views the people as an ethnic “community”
with hereditary links’. In this way, ‘the concept of nationality is founded on “bio-
logical consanguinity”’ and ‘since the structure of the State must follow the “natural
ethnic structure”, [the party] opts for an organically and hierarchically ordered
Flanders’. De Witte and Scheepers conclude that the emphasis placed on ‘a State
organisation founded on ethnic nationalism also implies that the State must be
monocultural and monoracial’ (De Witte and Scheepers 1998: 100–101). Comments
from VB’s main leaders, including those of former party leader Filip Dewinter,
tend to confirm this analysis: ‘If we want an independent Flanders, we must ignore
the laws of Belgium. I remain convinced that democracy is only possible in the
context of homogeneous ethnic communities. There is no democracy in Belgium’
(Dewinter 1995).
Ethnicity is perceived by VB as defined by cultural, racial, linguistic and identity
characteristics. It rests on biological inequality between given ethnic groups and
requires the promotion of a vigorous form of nationalism to protect the interests of
the superior ethnic group. As De Witte and Scheepers point out,VB supports both
ethnic nationalism and state nationalism, as revealed by its discourse and pro-
gramme. First, the VB conceives the Flemish people as ‘an ethnic community with
hereditary links’ united by ‘biological consanguinity’. The Flemish people is driven
70 Jérôme Jamin
by ‘a natural ethnic structure’ which requires each member of the community to

found a large family, favour monogamous marriage and categorically reject other
types of relationship (De Witte and Scheepers 1998: 103). Within VB’s discourse,
national interests are more important than individual ones, and everyone must
submit to ‘the organic whole’. Second, the VB ascribes a specific role to the ‘nation-
alist State’: it exists to support the ‘natural, ethnic structure’ and to protect the
Flemish ethnic group against potential enemies; it advocates an independent
Flanders, rejects immigrants who threaten the cultural integrity and biological
homogeneity of the Flemish people and condemns ‘the political mafia’ and
traditional parties who encourage immigration and favour the development of
corruption.
Most authors who have tried to analyse the doctrinal content of the French-
speaking Belgian FN’s programme agree that the various versions published since
1985 have lacked precision and consistency. It is, however, much easier to analyse
the VB’s core policies. These include opposition to immigration, an attachment
to the idea of hierarchy, recognition of inequalities between ‘races’, peoples and
cultures and the need to set up a system of segregation. These points have multiple
consequences, particularly in relation to VB’s conception of work and the place of
workers in Flemish society.
On reading the party’s flyers and electoral programme, it is clear that what
concerns Filip Dewinter is not so much foreigners from Eastern Europe but immi-
gration from Africa and the Maghreb, or what is referred to in the VB’s jargon as
‘Muslim’ immigration. This immigration threatens the cultural and ‘racial’ integrity
of the Flemish people by introducing into Flanders individuals who are foreigners,
refugees, fundamentalists and potential terrorists. Leaders of VB have spoken out
very clearly on this subject: ‘Only prostitutes leave their doors wide open. We have
no wish to turn Flanders into a public brothel open to all the foreigners of Africa
and Asia.’ In a country with 400,000 unemployed, as they have often explained,
‘it is irresponsible to maintain a small army of unemployed foreigners’, since immi-
grants ‘come to our country to take advantage of our social benefits’.4 Vlaams
Belang’s programme in relation to immigration contains multiple attacks on the
European Convention on Human Rights. Its discourse sets out extreme measures
against immigrants and challenges some of their fundamental rights. Thus, ‘freedom
of association must be restricted for foreigners, as must the right to family reunifica-
tion’, the right to ownership and to (racial) non-discrimination. The programme
proposes ‘separate education and social security systems’ for foreigners, restrictions
on the right to family allowances and the right to collect unemployment benefit,
as well as taxes on companies which hire foreigners (Swyngedouw and Ivaldi
2001: 15).
The extreme right’s discourse is also built on the fundamental claim that racial
and biological inequality is a structuring and hierarchical factor, conditioning access
to political, economic and cultural rights and resources. The Flemish VB fits into
this conception of the world, making use of a highly developed ethnic, cultural
and racial hierarchy (Van Craen and Swyngedouw 2003). Within its propaganda,
the Flemish sit at the top of the racial pyramid, followed by the Dutch, the white
Afrikaners of South Africa (VB long gave its unconditional support to the South
African apartheid regime), then the French-speaking Flemish of Brussels, Wallonia
and French Flanders (in France), who are inferior but nevertheless share some traits
with the Flemish. Foreigners of European origin are next on the hierarchical list,
above foreigners of non-European origin, who no longer have any relationship to
the Flemish people and are at the very bottom of the pyramid. Adamson and Johns
have for their part established a list of ‘negative others’ who might complete with
new examples the hierarchy and the pyramid. Those ‘others’ are to be contrasted
with, and indeed set in direct opposition to, the nation in the VB ideology. The list
of ‘negative others’ include Belgium, Wallonia, the European Union, bureaucracy
and bureaucrats, the ‘political establishment’ and immigrants (Adamson and Johns
2008: 137).
The hierarchy above and the list of ‘others’ point to the idea of inequality.
According to Swyngedouw and Ivaldi,VB thinks that ‘egalitarianism is fundamen-
tally wrong and goes against the laws of nature’ (Swyngedouw and Ivaldi 2001: 6).
Inequality justifies the unequal distribution of wealth, and it is within this context
that the slogan ‘our people first’ and the principle of national preference acquire a
particular salience. This principle illustrates both the centrality of inequality within
extreme-right discourse and the consequences of such discourse on individuals’ and
groups’ access to rights and resources within the extremists’ programme. The prin-
ciple of national preference postulates, and presents as legitimate, access to funda-
mental rights and the redistribution of wealth according to ethnic, cultural or racial
criteria.
In terms of the economy, Swyngedouw and Ivaldi show that the idea of
‘working humanity’ was fundamental, for VB, to human kind. For the extreme right,
they explain:
there is neither the right to be lazy nor homo ludens. Service is an obligation
determined by each individual’s position or role within the natural commu-
nity. Rights may only be obtained through productive work, and individuals
need to be trained primarily on the basis of a feeling of responsibility towards
the community.
(Swyngedouw and Ivaldi 2001: 6)
‘The lack of a right to be lazy’, which lies at the heart of VB’s discourse, takes
on particular significance within the context of the Belgian State, which is charac-
terized not only by strong cultural and linguistic cleavages, but also by important
socio-economic disparities. Indeed, while linguistic and cultural cleavages have
provided the VB with a powerful political opportunity to disseminate its message
and make its own part of the traditional Flemish nationalist separatist discourse,
social and economic disparities over the Belgian territory have also enabled the
party’s leaders to praise the resilience of Flemish workers in the (now) prosperous
north of the country whose hard work is undermined by the laziness of the Walloons
72 Jérôme Jamin
in the largely rusty, de-industrialized south, thus opposing Belgian citizens on a

social and economic basis (jobs, unemployment, benefits, etc.). For Filip Dewinter,
the wealth of ‘his’ people is threatened by what he perceives to be the ineffectual
and largely corrupt Belgian federal state. Within VB’s rhetoric, the Flemish people
is threatened by socialist, communist and leftist Walloons who run the country and
distribute wealth to Muslims and foreigners (for their mosques) and to their unem-
ployed, lazy, decadent, inactive Walloons. For a former VB leader, ‘it would be
unthinkable for the Stalinist socialist party to lay down the law to Flanders. Or for
[a Walloon leader of Belgium] to continue stealing billions of Euro from the the
Flemish. Let’s be clear about this: it is we, the Flemish, who keep the Walloons
alive’ (quoted in Le Soir 2004).
Vlaams Belang and French-speaking Brussels

The Parliament of the bilingual ‘Région de Bruxelles-Capitale’ is composed of 89
regional representatives. They are elected under universal suffrage for a period of
five years in a single constituency by all the voters living in one of the 19 districts
composing the territory of the region. Candidates who wish to register for the
elections need to apply on different lists according to language. They issue a state-
ment which notifies in which linguistic group they want to apply and then join
either the French linguistic group or the Flemish linguistic group. We saw above
that the FN has no real opponent in Wallonia. The situation is different in Brussels
where only the VB, through its French-speaking propaganda, is in a position to
challenge the FN (Faniel 2009: 15).
In terms of ideology, targeted research into the place of Islam and Muslims
within VB’s French language publications between 2000 and 2004 (Alves Dos
Santos 2004) reveals an increasingly systematic hounding of the Arab-Islamic com-
munity by the party. Drawing on a systematic analysis of Vérités Bruxelloises, VB’s
French language magazine edited by Johan Demol (former chief commissioner of
the Schaerbeek police), Alves Dos Santos has been able to show the extent to
which Islam and Muslims are systematically likened to unemployed, profiteering
delinquents at best, and to religious fanatics and terrorist criminals at worst. Relative
to other minorities and categories of foreigners, ‘Arab-Islamics’ seem to be the
monopoly target for stigmatization and demonization within VB’s discourse: ‘the
recurrence of attacks against Islam is quite blatant. Over four years, there is not a
single publication that fails to take up this theme.Yesterday it was immigrants who
were coming to steal jobs from the Belgians; today it is Muslims’ (Alves Dos Santos
2004: 99). Likewise, recent data from the VB website show that the persistence of
a ‘Muslim threat’ is a major, recurrent theme.
Nevertheless, if the VB has a specific discourse about Muslims directed at
French-speaking voters, articles from the VB directed at Flemish voters in Brussels
reveal some differences. As an example, an issue of The Flemish Republic explained in
2008 that ‘half of the Brussels population … is no longer Belgian but foreign. Many
are Europeans, others are Muslims of North African or Turkish origin, who also
prefer French to Dutch. …The islamification of Brussels is driving many Belgians

out of the city’ (The Flemish Republic 2008: 2). Since the article was written with
Flemish voters in mind, the ‘Muslim’ threat appears to be two-fold: first there is the
islamification of Brussels and second, Muslims are more likely to vote for French
rather than Flemish parties. As such, ‘Brussels might become a French-speaking
Muslim city’.
The Vlaams Belang as an extreme-right party

‘The Vlaams Belang will remain what it is: a Flemish-nationalist party defending
family values and morality, standing for sound economic principles and for the
introduction of direct democracy in an independent and free Flanders’ (The Flemish
Republic 2008: 3). If this quotation from the new chairman of the VB, Bruno
Valkeniers, sounds like a support for democratic practices, at an ideological level
the VB remains a traditional extreme-right party, with strong fascist tendencies.
First, the political socialization of most VB leaders and active members is
instructive: historically their early career is often influenced by their involvement in
the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO), a private militia, the Voorpost, a paramilitary
group, the Nationalistische Studentenvereniging (NSV, an extreme-right students
union), and even in pro-Nazi organizations, which manage gatherings of former
Second World War collaborators or their nostalgic supporters. For instance, the
founder of the Vlaams Blok, Karel Dillen, openly supported the Nazi invasion in
1940 and claimed that during the German occupation, he was ‘a strong supporter
of what we called l’Ordre Nouveau [New Order], because I hoped that the eman-
cipation of Flanders was about to be finally a reality’ (quoted by Gijsels 1993: 206).
Dillen, who died in 2007, is still an important symbol for the VB, as testified
by the number of articles written about him and his career in the VB press.The VB’s
programme also reveals an enduring nostalgia for the Second World War: proposals
to secure the amnesty of former collaborators still figure prominently in the VB’s
programme.
The programme also encompasses themes which chime with a fascist ideology:
proposals are made to promote an ethnically pure, independent Flanders (Flemish
and white) while supporting strong anti-immigration policies. It praises inequality
between races, peoples and cultures and it repeatedly targets foreigners, who are
held responsible for criminality and insecurity. Within VB’s Brussels propaganda,
stigmatized foreigners have gradually given way to immigrants from Muslim coun-
tries, and subsequently to ‘Arabs’ in a very general sense (De Witte and Spruyt
2004: 130–4).
Today, because of the permanent threat of a conviction for racism, the VB rep-
resentatives have significantly changed the words they use against foreigners ‘invad-
ing’ Flanders (Erk 2005). As an example, the current manifesto of the VB only talks
about ‘reversing the erroneous multicultural policies’: inspired by its concern to
defend and protect the cultural identity of the Flemish people, the VB rejects the
tenets of the multicultural ideology. Likewise, and logically, the VB is also a strong
74 Jérôme Jamin
supporter of the abolition of the Belgian Anti-Racism Act of 30 July 1981 which is
at the origin of the permanent threat seen above.
Conclusion
What are the common points and the differences between the VB and the FN in
terms of ideologies and discourse today? The VB’s ethno-nationalism is the most
significant feature of the Flemish extreme-right party and appears to be the most
striking difference when the VB is compared to the French-speaking FN. In its
introduction, the FN’s manifesto makes it clear that it intends to promote what it
calls unitarism: ‘We, men and women, belong to the same nation, we share the same
habits and customs, a similar way of thinking and the same essential values. We
have a common heritage with its roots in the Greek and Latin but also German
culture’ (FN Manifesto 2011). While the VB directs its programme against ‘unem-
ployed lazy Walloons’ from the south, the FN’s manifesto does not seek to polarize
Flemish and Walloon communities by drawing attention to potential socio-
economic disparities between the north and the south of the country or by ascrib-
ing to each community different ‘ethnic’ values. As a result, the VB and the FN do
have a different perception of Islam: if both perceive Islam to be a threat, the VB’s
ethno-nationalist nature compels it to reject Islam as a threat to its own quest for an
ethnically homogeneous Flemish community. Conversely, the FN’s rejection of
Islam is framed by an integrationist stance, inspired by the French republican model.
This model claims that, irrespective of their origins, all immigrants can integrate
into a given national community and repudiate their cultural values to embrace
those of the community in which they intend to live. The FN argues that the
prescriptions of the Qur’an make this integration process impossible, as Belgian
values are incompatible with Islam.
Despite such differences, the discourses of the VB and the FN also reveal some
significant similarities. First, several of the VB and FN representatives have been sued
for incitement to racial hate under the 1981 Act: as a consequence, both parties have
readjusted their rhetoric to avoid further sanctions (Erk 2005). Today, they fight less
against ‘races’ than against what they perceive as the disastrous consequences of a
‘multicultural society’, and behind it, against the danger that religion (mainly Islam)
poses to a society. Both parties display a common and growing opposition to Islam
and migrants from Muslim countries, and it is not without a degree of irony that
both parties openly demand the abrogation of the 1981 Act in the name of freedom
of speech.
Second, both parties have toned down, if not stamped out, their anti-Semitic
rhetoric, at least in their public discourse. For instance, the sort of revisionist argu-
ments, once developed by Karel Dillen, and which had gained a certain visibility
in the VB press have now all but disappeared (Gijsels 1993: 182–92). On the
contrary, the VB is courting the Jewish vote, notably in Antwerp: as an electoral
strategy, its pro-Israeli stance, for instance, is key in seeking to attract Jewish voters,
as much as its insistence in denouncing Islam and the Arab worlds as the physical,
cultural and political threat. For example, Filip Dewinter, the VB’s previous chair-
man, gave an interview to the New York-based Jewish Week (28 October 2005)
explaining he was not racist but Islamophobe: what he intended to demonstrate was
Jews and the VB shared the same fear of Islam in both Europe and the United
States. The FN has also changed its rhetoric. Its huge support of Jean-Marie
Le Pen’s revisionist outbursts (as was the case in 1987 when Le Pen declared that
the ‘gas chambers were a detail’ in the Second World War), has now disappeared
and the FN now promptly condemns such statements: when Le Pen reiterated his
revisionist views in the European Parliament on 25 March 2009, the Belgian FN
was quick to express its disapproval. It is also true that any anti-Semitic stance may
now bear a significant political cost: in 1995, Belgium passed a law prohibiting the
negation or the trivialization of the Holocaust.
Is there any correlation between the discourses and programmes of each party
and their respective electoral success? Why is the VB doing so much better than the
FN? The classical way to explain such differences in terms of electoral support rests
on the poor internal organization of the FN: behind the label, there is no real party.
The FN is first of all characterized by its numerous ‘micro-disputes and micro-
disagreements’ between individuals and its lack of leadership, often decimated by
legal actions against its main leaders. Yet, the nature of the each party’s ideology
may also be an important factor in explaining diverging electoral fortunes.
Nationalism is not as important in the FN’s rhetoric as it is in that of the VB. The
sort of nationalism which prevails in the VB is part of a broader Flemish nationalism
which lends it a degree of legitimacy both within the population and among
the political elites. If nationalism is part of the FN’s programme, it does not raise
the same interest among voters as it does in northern Belgium, particularly in the
Flemish movement. The nature of each party’s ideology might also have had an
impact on the way the FN and VB managed or failed to build strategic relations
with other traditional parties. While parties in the south have clearly isolated the
extreme right from all participation and ostracized its political ideas since the 1990s,
parties in Flanders have isolated the extreme right by means of a political cordon
sanitaire but there is a degree of porosity between the ideas and policies of the VB
and that of other parties. Questions linked to Flemish identity, Islam, migrants and
the refugees have become part of the public debate in Flanders whereas in the
south, a consensus has led the traditional parties to avoid controversies on such
issues (Delwit and De Waele 1998: 243). This difference has been reinforced by the
way the media have chosen to present the extreme right: whereas in the name of
democracy, the media from the north have defended the VB’s right to make its case
in newspapers and on television, the media in the south have used the 1981 law,
which prohibits racist rhetoric, to justify the eviction of the FN from the television
studios.
A final reason may explain the different electoral fortunes of extreme-right
parties in Belgium. As Delwit explained, for the FN, ‘the issue of exercising respon-
sibilities is nowhere on the agenda; neither in the party nor outside it as a theme
of the programme whereas several extreme-right parties in Europe have now
76 Jérôme Jamin
exercised responsibilities at different levels’. The FN, Delwit argues, ‘does not have
either the means or any real ambition to develop possible niches of competence in
local public life. It cannot even act as a Tribune in the council …, in such a context,
the question of power … simply does not arise’ (Delwit 2007: 147, 152). The atti-
tude of the FN regarding the access to and exercise of power has nothing in
common with the VB and its longstanding fight to access power. This attitude
might also have an impact on the choice made by the potential voters.
Notes
1 There is also a German-speaking community located within the territory of the Walloon
region in the south. This community is not relevant to this chapter.
2 The FN is led today (in September 2011) by Patrick Cocriamont.
3 Once named Vlaams Blok, the party became Vlaams Belang in November 2004 within the
context of a change of legal status in order to avoid legal charges for racist speeches. We
will keep the new name for this chapter.
4 Extract from comments by Filip Dewinter at Vlaams Belang’s Fête de la Famille (Celebration
of the Family) in 1991, in Baas eigen land (April 2000) and at the ‘Confronting the Foreign
Invasion’ organized by Bruxelles-Identité-Sécurité (BIS, Brussels-Identity-Security) on
2 December 1998, respectively. Based on an assessment by the anti-fascist centre
Résistances: http://www.resistances.be.
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5
REGIONALISM, RIGHT-WING
EXTREMISM, POPULISM
The elusive nature of the Lega Nord1
Giorgia Bulli and Filippo Tronconi
The question about the ‘real’ nature of the Lega Nord (LN) has always triggered
disputes among international scholars.The LN has actually been classified according
to two major criteria: (a) systemic and (b) territorial.
The systemic interpretation of the party has underlined its ideological component
of right-wing extremism (Eatwell and Mudde 2004), or right-wing radicalism
(Minkenberg 1998; Norris 2005) on issues such as immigration, law and order
and on the authoritarian traits of the party members’ personalities. The regionalist
interpretation takes into account the peculiar territorial roots of the LN and its
‘obsession’ with its heartland (Taggart 2000), the so-called Padania.
A further label – a sort of cross-assessment of the style and the means used by the
party to exploit its most popular issues – refers to the populist nature of the LN (Betz
1994; Tarchi 2003) and to a general anti (political)-establishment character shared
by a substantial number of European parties (Schedler 1996).
In this chapter, we aim to contribute to the discussion about the nature of the
LN by looking at it from different perspectives. As stated by Cento Bull and Gilbert,
‘there are three aspects that need to be taken into consideration when studying the
LN: structural factors, the party’s programme and its evolving worldview, and the
nature of its electorate’ (Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001: 65).
Following the suggestion of these authors we will try to define the LN’s
nature through: (1) a description of the historical evolution of the party since its
first appearance in the late 1970s; (2) an investigation of the evolution of the party’s
political platform, with particular attention to the elements that contributed to its
electoral success: federalism, immigration, law and order, the European Union;
(3) an analysis of attitudes shown by LN’s voters on a number of issues in the last
available post-electoral survey, carried out by the ITANES research group in 2006.2
Our conclusion will then be that the LN is best understood as a multifaceted
party, where elements of localism and regionalism are present alongside traits of
The elusive nature of the Lega Nord 79
populism and characteristics common to other European far-right parties, especially

as far as immigration policy is concerned. Indeed, we believe that any attempt to
characterize this party on the basis of just one of these definitions, inevitably leads
to a weak and partial understanding.
The historical evolution of the Lega Nord

The first successful regionalist league of northern Italy was the Liga Veneta (LV),
‘the mother of all Leagues’, which originally presented itself as a protector of the
cultural traditions and dialect of the Veneto region. Though ethno-regionalism
represented at that time the most visible ideological platform of the party, the LV
also claimed that a new form of taxation should apply to northern regions, stopping
the flow of money from the wealthier areas of Italy to the central government in
Rome. The success of the LV in presenting itself as a defender of regional interests
opened up the first rifts in the traditional stronghold and attracted for the first time
substantial numbers of voters who were dissatisfied with the politics and policies
of traditional parties. In a short time, these issues would rapidly spread to other
northern regions.
With the birth of the Lega Autonomista Lombarda (then Lega Lombarda, LL)
in 1982, promoted by the action of Umberto Bossi, the issues at the centre of the
success of the LV gained more and more support, while insistence on the use of
dialect was soon abandoned.
The reasons for the rise of the LV as the first expression of the phenomenon of
leghismo lay in the crisis of the catholic subculture, in the secularization process of
Italian society that had started in the 1960s, and in the growing distance between
the changing needs of north-east regions – reshaped by an unprecedented industrial
development – and the central administration in Rome.
The politicization of the centre–periphery cleavage was the distinctive feature of
this party from its first appearance. To be sure, the strong socio-economic imbal-
ances along the North–South divide were not something new, as they have always
been a concern for the ruling class ever since the unification of Italy in 1861. The
novelty was the perspective from which the centre–periphery cleavage was seen
and the claim to protect the wealthy industrial North against the Italian state.
From the very first years, the defence of the northern periphery took the form
of cultural protection, through a rediscovery of the dialects which later on became
a real ‘invention of traditions’. All the mythology about the Celtic origins of the
Padanian peoples must be read from this angle. The notion of Padania itself as a
historical and geographical entity finds no confirmation in historical records
(Machiavelli 2001: 131).
The regionalist and localist claim of the LN was also soon defined on economic
grounds. In this respect, the protection of the peripheral community assumes a
negative trait: not just setting off the values of the community’s culture, but defend-
ing it against outsiders. It is at this point that the political discourse of the LN incor-
porates populist traits into its original regionalist ideas. The enemy, from now on,
80 Giorgia Bulli and Filippo Tronconi
is first and foremost the Italian state, perceived as a corrupt and inefficient bureauc-
racy pouring the wealth of industrious northern workers into the pockets of
southern parasites. According to this view, the territorial dimension (the North
against the South) mirrors the anti-establishment one (the people against the state
machinery).
The LV succeeded in getting parliamentary representation (winning one seat)
for the first time in 1983. Subsequent years have witnessed a constant increase
in popular support for the Leghe, while the centre of gravity of the movement
progressively moved from Veneto to Lombardy, under the growing influence of
Umberto Bossi’s charismatic leadership.
A decisive push for the electoral consolidation of the party (8.7 per cent of votes
nation-wide in the 1992 general elections) must be found in the turmoil of the
beginning of the 1990s that led to the disappearance of the post-war party system
and to the birth of the so-called Second Republic. The shock of Tangentopoli (kick-
back city) and the discovery of a widespread system of corruption involving – in
different measures – all governing and opposition parties and the consequent crisis
made the LN a legitimate political actor. The political vacuum produced by the
crisis of the elder parties opened new possibilities for the LN.
The entrance into politics of Silvio Berlusconi and the birth of Forza Italia
(1994) contributed to changing the situation. On the one hand, the new party
launched by the television tycoon represented a competitive alternative for the
disillusioned and frustrated Italian electorate, not only in the centre and southern
Italian regions, but also in the northern cities where the Lega had its strongholds.
On the other hand, the success of Forza Italia obliged the Lega to open a political
dialogue with it. This is why, notwithstanding its inherent scepticism towards cen-
tralistic parties, the party entered a coalition with Forza Italia in the 1994 general
elections.The campaign strategy of the new party led by Berlusconi was centred on
the idea of a variable coalition: in the North Forza Italia was allied with the LN,
in the South with the successor of the MSI, the Italian post-fascist and strongly
nationalist party Alleanza Nazionale (AN).
Having obtained a very favourable distribution of candidates in pre-electoral
negotiations with Forza Italia, the LN, with a stable 8.4 per cent of the votes, got
an unprecedented 19 per cent of the seats and highly visible positions in the follow-
ing Berlusconi cabinet.
The wide governing coalition in which the LN was included – Forza Italia, CCD
(Centro Cristiano Democratico, which had split from the Christian Democrats)
and AN, which in principle disagreed with federalism – was a short-lived one. In
fact, the cohabitation with Forza Italia and AN soon proved to be very difficult for
a party that had always presented itself as the real incarnation of opposition to the
traditional party system. The tensions among the allies in the government became
so deep that, after only eight months, LN announced its withdrawal, condemning
the first Berlusconi government to failure.
The general elections in April 1996, with the LN deciding to run alone after the
troubled coexistence in the centre-right coalition, represented the best result ever
(10.1 per cent), though this success had no influence in determining the composi-
tion of the centre-left government coalition.
The years between 1996 and 1998 were also important for the strengthening of
the party as an organization, with the birth of the main instruments of propaganda:
the party newspaper (La Padania) and the party television and radio stations
(Telepadania and Radio Padania). Beyond this, a number of initiatives were under-
taken aiming to reinforce the linkage between the leadership and militants. Among
these were the establishment of the ‘parliament of the North’ in Mantova, the
annual rallies in Venice each September since 1996 and a self-organized referendum
on secession in May 1997.
The exclusion from government, and the possibility of presenting itself once
again as the only alternative to centralized power, put the LN in a favourable position
to exploit issues ranging from immigration and law and order to territorial claims.
As a matter of fact, immigration and security represented at this point core issues
for the party. In 1999 the LN organized a referendum against the centre-left
government law on immigration, which, in the opinion of the party, opened
up Italian frontiers to an ‘invasion’ of illegal immigrants. It is these hard-line cam-
paigns on immigration, along with occasional contacts with representatives of
the European radical right, that convince scholars and observers of the extremist
nature of the party.
On the other hand, the LN expressed in the years 1996–2000 the strongest ever
opposition to the Italian state. Not only did the party focus its initiatives on
the issue of secession, but, in order to give substance to this utopian exit, it set
much store by the creation of a sort of paramilitary force designed to protect the
territory of Padania.
The insistence on secession proved to be unsuccessful. Although the party had
tried to exploit this ultimate aim, secession did not represent a real option for a large
part of the northern population (Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001: 116–17). Padania
thus seemed to be an imaginary, rather than imagined community (Albertazzi 2006:
23). In the 1999 European elections, the party received only 4.5 per cent of the
votes. This result, along with other disappointing performances at the local level,
showed the necessity of abandoning the secessionist strategy and forced the party to
re-open cooperation with its former ally, Forza Italia.
The LN accepted the alliance in the regional elections 2000 and in the general
elections 2001. Here, the 3.9 per cent of votes represented the lowest result ever
for the Lega. But this time ‘the Lega did not only manage to survive in the second
Berlusconi government, but it also succeeded in presenting itself simultaneously as
both the opposition in government and a driving force behind high profile areas of
government policy’ (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2005: 953).
During five years of government (2001–6) the LN was not able to realize the
federal reform the party had always aimed at. The constitutional revision that was
supposed to modify the previous federal reform of the centre-left government (with
the opposition of the LN) did not pass the confirmative referendum to which it had
been submitted in October 2006.
Despite this, the party succeeded in being perceived by the electorate (even
through the framing action of the media) as the main proponent of severe legislation
on immigration and law and order. The approval of the new law on immigration
(the so-called Bossi-Fini law, after the two party leaders most interested in the
restriction of immigration flows) was presented as a step forward in the fight against
illegal immigration.
The end of the centre-right legislature left the LN with an unclear balance.
Despite this, after the short and troubled experience of the centre-left government
led by Romano Prodi, the general elections of 2008 represented a real electoral
triumph for the party. With 8.3 per cent of votes at the Chamber of Deputies
and 8.7 per cent at the Senate, the LN almost doubled its previous electoral result
(4.6 per cent, 2006), confirming itself to be essential for the centre-right to win the
northern constituencies. In the XVI legislative term, the party was thus back in
government. A federal reform of the fiscal system was again the flagship of the
government’s programme. This was finally achieved in 2011, but its full implemen-
tation would certainly require many years, making it unlikely that the LN would
obtain immediate electoral returns on this issue. In the meantime, in 2010, regional
elections were held in thirteen of the twenty Italian regions. The result was once
again an excellent one for Bossi’s party, and to a certain extent even a historic one.
The LN overcame the already brilliant performances of 2008, becoming the most
voted-for party in Veneto and consolidating its presence in the other northern
regions and in the leftist strongholds of Emilia-Romagna and Toscana. More
importantly, and for the first time, its representatives won the executive leadership
in two influential northern regions (Piedmont with Roberto Cota, and Veneto
with Luca Zaia). By virtue of these results, a re-balance in the rightist alliance in
favour of the ‘minor’ coalition partner was thus evident: while in 2008 there were
3.9 PDL voters for each LN one, in 2010 this ratio decreased to 2.2 to 1. If we
consider only the three main northern regions, the two parties are more or less
equal: there are 1.1 PDL voters for each LN voter.
Highs and lows are frequent in the electoral history of this party, and even this
time no one would bet that these levels of support will be confirmed in the near
future. However, the 2001–10 decade will certainly be remembered as a golden age
of the LN, in which it moved from a situation of possible decline (surviving the ill-
ness of its charismatic leader in 2004, which took him away from politics for about
one year) into one of unprecedented relevance in the Italian political system.
We can now turn our attention to the main issues covered in the manifestos of
the party, before looking at some characteristics of its electorate.
Party platforms
The most striking feature of the party’s manifestos3 is their territorial dimension.
Most of the proposals contained in the party programmes refer to a sub-national
level composed of the northern regions (sometimes indicated as Padania, some
others actually lacking any territorial identification).
The introduction of the 1996 party manifesto underlines its regionalist and anti-
systemic attitude. It comprises six paragraphs,4 which directly or indirectly refer to
the northern economic situation and to possible ways to improve it. However, the
party is not just interested in the economic scenario. Immigration is the next fun-
damental topic.
What stands out in the programme is the LN attempt not to be perceived as a
racist party. In the party’s interpretation, the northern regions have a limited capac-
ity to absorb immigrants. Furthermore, immigrants must have ‘normal access
to our cultural forms’.5 This formulation reveals a form of anxiety related to the
preservation of the cultural traits of the northern community, namely Padania.
Such anxiety is more evident in the 2001 party programme, where the party affirms
that ‘the crisis of the family (…) has weakened our societies, over which immigra-
tion waves can have a destructive effect until its definitive transformation and
destruction’.6
Immigration is interpreted as the cause for the collapse of the traditional values
of family and marriage.7 The same perspective is evident in the 2001 party
programme, where the centre-left government law on immigration is severely
criticized.
Immigrants are described as lazy people living on the back of the state. This
particular description underlines a welfare chauvinist attitude, which is a typical
feature of 1990s right-wing populism.
With regard to immigration, the 2008 party manifesto has two pillars. The first
is the refusal of the idea that immigrants should be given a right to vote in the
administrative elections. The second is strong opposition to the amendment of
the law on citizenship, which would allow immigrants to be granted citizenship
after five years of residence.
Moreover, the manifesto opposes the possibility of turning the right to citizen-
ship from ius sanguinis to ius soli. The LN actually proposes to maintain the ius
sanguinis principle and the ten-year-term citizenship request. In order to highlight
the necessity of preserving a homogeneous community in the northern regions, the
party stands for the introduction of the so-called citizenship test, which would
verify the basic knowledge of immigrants on subjects such as the Italian language,
culture, history and institutions.
In keeping with its anxiety to preserve Western values, the LN totally rejects the
entry of Turkey into the European Union, underlining the necessity of introducing
a specific reference to ‘Christian roots’ in the European Treaty,8 and strongly
opposes the building of mosques on Italian territory.
Immigration is not only perceived as a threat to the integrity of the community
(Padania), but as a vehicle of criminality and disorder. In the 2008 party manifesto,
the LN states its firm opposition to the ‘pardon law’ allowing the liberation of pris-
oners for specific crimes or a reduction of their sentences. In the party’s opinion,
this decree does not represent a solution to overcrowded Italian jails. It is actually
perceived as the parties’ traditional refusal to listen to the ‘chorus of the honest
people victim of criminality’.9 There is no doubt, in the LN’s view, as to the
sources of such criminality. Since 38 per cent of detainees are immigrants, the LN
asks for their repatriation into prisons in their own countries.10
An ambivalent position emerges from the study of the LN manifestos in relation
to the European Union. In the years prior to the introduction of the Euro,
the position of the party towards the EU was not negative, though the LN was
mainly interested in the economic development that could have been promoted
through regional integration. At this time, the party defined itself as the ‘most
pro-European among all the parties’ (Tarchi 2007: 190). In the 1996 party
manifesto, the party speaks of a ‘Europe of the peoples’ as an antidote to the emer-
gence of a European bureaucratic state. The EU should promote the right to self-
determination for all peoples and the defence of local autonomies. The creation of
a ‘Senate of Regions’ as the second Chamber of the European Parliament is also
suggested.
When Italy made its entrance into the Euro-zone, the situation changed dra-
matically. LN scepticism towards Europe became evident. The European Union is
now described as the seat of a parasitic bureaucracy. The 2004 party manifesto
for the European elections goes further as the party asks for the protection of
the northern community from the threat deriving from the European Union: the
economic enlargement to Eastern countries, the Euro, the opening of a dialogue
with Turkey.
The party refuses the idea of a ‘super neo-centralistic State, led by politically
irresponsible technocrats’. The party’s populist nature clearly emerges from the
statement that
the People must consciously express the will of their own destiny: an
imposition of choices such as the institution of the Euro is not tolerable.
A European Union that does not consider how to protect its people from
external attacks (be they terrorism or forms of commerce leading to the
failure of local business) is not acceptable.11
The LN thus proposes a new European Union as the ‘Europe of the sovereign
peoples, of the valorisation of territories as the inalienable seat of identities, cultures,
values and traditions’.12
The position of the LN on immigration and its attitude towards the European
Union do not automatically make it an extreme-right party. The party’s economic
platform reveals the differences more clearly. Since the 1996 party manifesto,
the LN has called for reforms in terms of fiscal federalism. This is by far the most
dramatic sign of their opposition to the unitary conception of the state (normally an
article of faith for extreme-right parties). This fiscal federalism, sometimes violently
expressed, does not refer to the entire country, but exclusively to the rich and hard-
working regions of the North.
The 2004 party manifesto keeps the economic interests of Padania as a crucial
feature of its policy profile. This time, though, the LN identifies another enemy for
the northern territory: the Eastern European countries and China as producers of
low-cost goods (the cost being low because of disloyal ‘practices’) invading the
domestic markets. The LN thus demands protectionist measures such as anti-
dumping laws, a general strategy for the defence of local goods, and the introduction
of custom duties.13
The attitudes of supporters

Survey data give us a perspective on the ideological positioning of the LN that is
linked to, but at the same time distinct from, the one we get from party official
documents. The opinion of party supporters is obviously influenced by the party
leaders’ positions on a variety of issues, but not necessarily identical. In the follow-
ing pages we will analyse some of the answers to a post-electoral survey conducted
in April 2006 by the ITANES research group through a systematic comparison
between LN voters and the supporters of the other two main right-of-centre par-
ties, Alleanza Nazionale and Forza Italia. Through this comparison we will bring
the abstract debate over the ideological positioning of the party back to a more
concrete dimension, anchoring it to a comparison with the closest competitors
(and allies) of the LN.
On the regionalist dimension, as one could easily predict, there are few doubts
about the location of the LN. The percentage of supporters showing a strong local
identity is about 12 per cent higher than the overall Italian average, and about 10
per cent higher than the two other rightist parties. These figures do not change
dramatically when we refer to ‘local identity’ in a broader way, summing up
municipal and regional identities (Table 5.1).
When it actually comes to the most debated dimension, the left–right one, the
picture is more blurred. When asked to locate themselves on this axis, most LN
voters choose the right side of the spectrum, but this figure is lower than the corre-
sponding one for FI and AN voters (78 per cent against 87 per cent and 94 per cent
respectively). Even if one considers only those who define themselves as extreme-
right, the LN scores halfway between FI and AN. One could look at the problem
from the opposite perspective: if we accept the position of those claiming that
TABLE 5.1 Feelings of geographical belonging of Italian right-of-centre parties’ supporters

in Italy (per cent)
My My Italy Europe The Don’t Total (N)

town region World know/NA
Lega Nord 36.6 12.2 39.0 4.9 7.3 0 100 (41)

Forza Italia 26.9 16.9 42.9 3.7 9.1 0.5 100 (219)
Alleanza Nazionale 25.4 11.5 46.7 9.0 6.6 0.8 100 (122)
Italy 24.0 13.3 42.1 6.6 12.7 1.4 100 (1,258)
Question wording: To which of the following communities do you feel to belong most: the town where
you live, the region where you live, Italy, Europe, the whole world?
the LN cannot be located on this dimension, because it competes on the centre-

periphery one, we should find an outstanding number of party supporters refusing
to position themselves as rightist or leftist. This option is in fact chosen by some 10
per cent of party supporters, significantly more than for FI and AN supporters. On
the other hand, the LN figure is strikingly close to the overall national average
(Table 5.2).
Summing up, from the question about auto-collocation of voters on the left–
right dimension, we do not find any clear evidence to answer our initial question,
one way or the other. LN supporters can certainly be classified as right-of-centre
individuals, but this positioning is, if anything, less clear than the positioning of AN
and FI supporters, and certainly does not, on its own, allow us to define the LN as
a far-right party.14
This technique of party positioning, though very straightforward, is not exempt
from methodological shortcomings. The first objection is that people attach differ-
ent meanings to the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’. Thus respondents positioning them-
selves in the same category might actually be referring to very different values and
policy orientations. The second objection is specific to Italy and to the derogatory
meaning that many people associate to the term ‘right’, as a long-standing legacy of
the fascist dictatorship. It is, without any doubt, a decreasing phenomenon since the
legitimization of the AN as a governing party, but still it is plausible to think some
respondents are reluctant openly to declare themselves as rightist. This is why it is
advisable to turn our attention from a general and necessarily generic left–right
positioning to more specific issues, choosing the ones that are generally thought to
characterize organizations belonging to the extreme-right party family.
In his influential 1995 volume, Herbert Kitschelt points out some defining char-
acteristics of an ideal-typical ‘master case’ of a New Radical Right political party.
These include a strong pro-market orientation, a paternalistic view of family and
gender relations and an exclusionary definition of citizenship rights based on cul-
tural homogeneity of the people residing in the considered territory (Kitschelt
1995: 19–21). In Table 5.3 we look at the first two dimensions. As far as the labour
market is concerned, the voters of the LN show by far the most extreme position,
TABLE 5.2 Self placement on the left–right axis in Italy (per cent)
Left Centre-left Centre Centre-right Right None Don’t Total (N)

know/NA
Lega Nord 0 0 12.2 43.9 34.1 9.8 0 100 (41)

Forza Italia 0 1.4 4.6 66.5 20.6 5.5 1.4 100 (218)
Alleanza 1.6 0 0.8 52.5 41.8 2.5 0.8 100 (122)
Nazionale
Italy 14.7 30.7 9.9 22.8 11.0 9.0 2.9 100 (1,257)
Question wording: From a political point of view, how would you position yourself: on the left, on the
centre-left, on the centre, on the centre-right, on the right, or none of these definitions fits you?
TABLE 5.3 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) agree with more freedom for
companies to fire their employees; (b) agree with limitations on access of women to the
labour market; (c) disagree with introducing legislation rights for non-married couples
(a) (b) (c) N
Lega Nord 75.6 32.5 30.0 41

Forza Italia 56.9 47.7 47.2 218
Alleanza Nazionale 66.1 40.1 38.0 121
Italy 36.5 36.4 35.9 1,256
Question wording: I will now read some common statements about economics and politics. For each
one of them, please tell me how much you agree or disagree: (a) Companies should have more
freedom in hiring and firing employees; (b) In conditions of scarcity, men should have more right to
get an employment than women do; (c) Some couples decide not to get married and stably live
together. Bills have been presented in Parliament to extend to these couples some of the rights married
couples enjoy. Would you favour or oppose such a law?
Note: Figures report the sum of those responding ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ (columns a and b), and
the sum of those responding ‘somewhat oppose’ and ‘strongly oppose’ (column c).
with three respondents out of four supporting more freedom for companies to fire
their employees, while the same position is held by about two-thirds of AN and
even fewer FI voters. These data are even more impressive if we bear in mind that,
according to many researches, a sizeable share of LN supporters are to be found
among blue-collar workers and even among union members (Mannheimer 1994;
ITANES 2006).
On family issues we observe a completely different picture. In this case the LN
displays attitudes that are far less extreme than the other two right-of-centre parties.
Only around 30 per cent of LN voters are in favour of limitations on women’s
access to the labour market in conditions of labour scarcity, a percentage that is
even lower than the overall national average. By contrast, 40 per cent and 48 per
cent of AN and FI voters respectively support such a position. Similar findings can
be observed on the hypothesis of introducing legislation specifically targeted to the
protection of non-married couples,15 even though this time the figures must be
read in the opposite direction: 30 per cent of LN supporters oppose more liberal
legislation on family relations, a percentage that is significantly lower than the other
two parties, and even lower than the national average.
In Table 5.4, where we reach the third of Kitschelt’s dimensions, the crucial
issue of immigration and multiculturalism is addressed from different perspectives.
The first question points to opinions about immigrants as competitors on the labour
market, the second and the third refer to Muslim and Roma communities, and to
the issues of cultural homogeneity and security. The answers, however, are both
straightforward and nuanced. They are straightforward in the general and uncom-
promising perception of immigration as a threat: in all of the three aspects consid-
ered here the LN shows the highest percentages of respondents displaying negative
attitudes towards immigrants. The distance separating LN values from those of
TABLE 5.4 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) perceive immigration as a threat to
employment; (b) would prohibit the building of mosques on Italian territory; (c) would
prohibit gypsies from having camps in Italian towns
(a) (b) (c) N
Lega Nord 78.1 78.5 92.8 42

Forza Italia 58.7 75.3 85.4 219
Italy 48.5 61.9 78.5 1,257
Question wording: I will now read some common statements about economics and politics. For each
one of them, please tell me how much you agree or disagree: […] (a) Immigrants are a threat to
employment; (b) It is right to allow Muslims to build Mosques in Italian territory; (c) It should be
forbidden for gypsies to have their camps in our towns.
Note: Figures report the sum of those responding ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’.
the other two conservative parties, however, is not constant. On the labour market
issue, the percentage of those feeling worried about immigration is some twenty
points higher among LN voters than among FI and AN voters. This distance is
reduced to less than ten points on the other two issues. This difference could rea-
sonably be attributed to a sort of ‘ceiling effect’, namely the more figures approach
the theoretical maximum of 100 per cent, the more they are inevitably flattened
around an average value. On the other hand, it is also possible to hypothesize that
the different occupational profile of the respective electorates plays a role here, and
that a prevalence of non-specialized workers among the LN voters is more sensitive
to this issue than other social strata might be.
It has been claimed in political science literature that ‘populism’ is a keyword in
understanding the political discourse of the LN (Tarchi 2003, 2007), and our previ-
ous analysis of party official documents has contributed to reinforcing this belief.
In Table 5.5, we present more evidence in the same direction.
This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the defining features of pop-
ulism. However, most interpretations of this elusive phenomenon point more or
less explicitly to the minimum denominator of a society fundamentally divided
between the ruling class and the ruled. The latter are the ‘common people’,
described as honest, industrious and virtuous; the former are the holders of power,
inevitably corrupt, selfish and inept. Furthermore, populist discourse does not leave
space for any distinction within the members of the ruling class; on the contrary,
ideological divisions are seen as a façade behind which politicians are always ready
to find agreement when it comes to defending their own interests and privileges.
The questions we analyse in Table 5.5 concern the degree of agreement with
respect to three beliefs about the ruling class: the distinction between left and right,
corruption, and an overall judgement about political élites in the last two decades.
In all three cases the result is unquestionable, the LN supporters emerging as the
TABLE 5.5 Percentage of Italian respondents who: (a) do not see any difference between
left and right governments; (b) think most politicians are corrupt; (c) think the Italian
ruling class has failed in the last twenty years
(a) (b) (c) N
Lega Nord 78.1 78.5 92.8 42

Forza Italia 58.7 75.3 85.4 219
Italy 48.5 61.9 78.5 1,257
Question wording: Can you tell me how you would comment on each of these statements: (a) No
matter who is in government between the left or the right, things do not change; (b) Most politicians
are corrupt; (c) In the last twenty years, the Italian ruling class has completely failed.
Note: Figures report the sum of those responding ‘it is quite true’ and ‘it is absolutely true’.
most resolute detractors of the whole political class. If we cannot consider this a
surprising finding in absolute terms, the comparison with the other two parties, and
especially with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is once again remarkable.
Conclusion: the elusive nature of a multi-faceted party

What is finally the image, or what are the images, emerging from party manifestos
and from the attitudes of LN supporters? The most immediate conclusion is
that this party does not easily match up with the classical attributes of right-wing
extremism.
To begin with, the regionalist nature of the party, and the paramount impor-
tance of this territorial reference throughout its history, is a fact that can hardly be
questioned. Our analysis confirms, from this point of view, the claims of a wide
literature (among others: Diamanti 1993, 1996; Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001)
insisting on the cultural, social and economic peculiarities of the north-eastern
regions of Italy to explain the success of the leghismo.The growing distance between
this area and a central government incapable of understanding its needs and meet-
ing its expectations is often underlined. In this sense the LN has made its fortunes
from understanding (well before the collapse of the old party system in 1992) that
the Christian Democrats were losing their function of linkage between this periph-
ery and the centre of the system in Rome.
On the other hand the LN shows, both in its electoral platforms and in the views
of its supporters, clear traits of a xenophobic party, and this is the major single
reason to assimilate it into the far-right party family.
The key words that describe the party’s position on immigration can be found
in the formulation ‘Everyone must be the master in his own house’ contained in
the 2001 party manifesto. These words identify in the document the relationship
between the state and the northern regions, but they also underline the prevalence
of the ‘homogeneity principle’ intended as the typical protection of the heartland

(Taggart 2000), which the party labels Padania.
Immigrants, mainly immigrants from Asia and Africa, are perceived as at the
roots of unemployment, of the breakdown of traditional values, and of criminality.
The main interest of the party lies indeed in the protection of the traditional values
of community and of its prosperity. From this point of view it is interesting to note
that it is exactly in those regions where small and medium business thrives and
the LN has its own strongholds that the necessity of immigrant labour is strongest.
This somewhat paradoxical situation reflects what has been called the hysterical
attitude of Italy towards immigrants: it needs them in order to make industry and
other economic sectors work, but it does not want to see them walking around.
Bossi’s party strategy clearly reflects this attitude. With the rejection of any
kind of multicultural society and the proposal of the introduction of a citizenship
test, the LN stresses its selective exclusion principle. Integrated, or rather, assimi-
lated immigrants can become part of the productive community. Other forms of
immigration, on the contrary, are not tolerated.
Populism – or identity populism (Tarchi 2008: 89), an expression underlying the
relentless reference to its geographical and cultural roots – is another inescapable
perspective for understanding the nature of the LN. The survey data we have pre-
sented are clear enough on this point. Appeals to the ‘people’ (as an idealized
community of honest and virtuous individuals, opposed to the vices contaminating
the ruling class) are frequent and likely to take root in a fertile soil of generalized
distrust in institutions and politicians. A distrust, to be sure, that is not unique to the
LN voters. On the contrary, negative sentiments towards democratic institutions
and the way democracy works are widely diffused and long lasting in Italy’s
‘dissatisfied society’ (Morlino and Tarchi 1996), but they reach their peak in the
northern areas of the country and, as shown, among the followers of the Lega. For
its part, since the mid-nineties Bossi’s party has continuously invested in the issue
of defending the interests and values of the ‘peoples of Padania’ against internal and
external aggressors, at different times identified with southern immigrants, Muslims,
European Union bureaucrats, the Italian state and its Roman cliques.
For these reasons, taking sides in the never-ending ‘war of words’ (Mudde
1996) about the labelling of the LN and its position in the constellation of European
party families, does not appear to be the most urgent concern. Searching for the
most perfect label might have deflected attention from the object itself. And this
is much more likely if the object, as in this case, is characterized by contradictory
features, complexity and frequent shifts, or real U-turns, in policy positions and
alliance strategies.
Notes
1 This chapter is the result of a joint effort of the two authors. For bureaucratic purposes
only, the final draft of sections 1 and 2 may be attributed to Giorgia Bulli, and the final
draft of section 3 to Filippo Tronconi. The Introduction and Conclusion have been
written jointly.
2 ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) is a network of scholars promoting a

research programme on voting behaviour in Italy since the early 1990s. We thank
the coordinators of the research group for kindly allowing us to use the ITANES
dataset. ITANES data are available upon request through the website http://www.
itanes.org.
3 We will analyse the party manifestos for the 1996, 2001 and 2008 general elections,
as well as the 2004 European elections. In the 2006 elections, the LN did not issue
a real manifesto, but only a document containing generic indications of the themes
(defence of Christian roots of Europe, fiscal federalism, fiscal bonus for traditional
families, fight against illegal immigration, explicit commitment to the support of the
referendum on constitutional territorial reform) which should be incorporated in
the wider programme of the Casa delle Libertà (the coalition in which the party was
included). It is important to underline that these documents differ from each other in
terms of length, specificity and ‘radicalism’. The 1996 manifesto is the longest and most
articulate one, while the 2001 programme represents, in the party’s words, only a ‘guide
for candidates’. The 2004 manifesto is the short programme for the European elections
and the 2008 programme is called ‘The ideas of the Lega Nord’.
4 (1) Mantova (referring to the ‘Parliament of the North’ that is based there); (2) Economics
and debit balance: the North can do it; (3) The enterprise in the economics; (4) Federalism;
(5) Immigration: the Lega is not racist; (6) Occupation and old-age pension.
5 Lega Nord party manifesto 1996.
7 ‘Multi-cultural and multi-religious society generates cases which seriously damage the
institutions of family and marriage’, Lega Nord party manifesto 1996.
8 Lega Nord party manifesto 2008, ‘Le idee della Lega. Le nostre radici cristiane’. In the
same document, the LN asks for a binding referendum to decide upon the acceptance of
Turkey in the EU, wishing to ‘give voice to the people’.
9 Lega Nord party manifesto 2008, ‘Le idee della Lega. Certezze della pena e atti di
clemenza’.
10 Lega Nord party manifesto 2008, ‘Le idee della Lega. Penitenziari’.
12 Ibid.
13 Lega Nord party manifesto 2008, ‘Le idee della Lega. Le misure anti-dumping’.
14 Other comparative studies adopt a different research strategy to position parties on the
left–right continuum, by means of surveys among ‘experts’, which normally means
political science scholars. The most recent ‘expert surveys’ were conducted by Marcel
Lubbers in 2000 and by Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver in 2004. In the first case
the LN got an average score of 7.5 in a scale ranging from 0 to 10 (Lubbers 2000).
In the second case it was scored 16.9 in a 0–20 scale (Benoit and Laver 2006). From
this evidence it is equally difficult to label the LN as an unquestionably extreme-right
party.
15 During the past legislature this issue has been at the centre of vehement debates for
months, after the Prodi cabinet had passed a bill (which was in turn the result of endless
negotiations between the catholic and secular components of the majority coalition)
introducing some benefits for non-married couples, following the model of the French
Pacte civil de solidarité.
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Cento Bull, A. and Gilbert, M. 2001. The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian
Politics. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Diamanti, I. 1993. La Lega. Geografia, storia e sociologia di un nuovo soggetto politico. Roma:
Donzelli.
—— 1996. Il male del Nord. Roma: Donzelli.
Eatwell, R. and Mudde, C. 2004. Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge.
London: Routledge.
ITANES 2006. Dov’è la vittoria? Il voto del 2006 raccontato dagli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Kitschelt, H. 1995. The Radical Right in Western Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Lubbers, M. 2000. Expert Judgement Survey of Western European Political Parties 2000.
Department of Sociology, University of Nijmegen.
Machiavelli, M. 2001. ‘La Ligue du Nord et l’invention du “Padan”’, Critique internationale,
10(1): 129–42.
Mannheimer, R. 1994. ‘La natura composita dell’elettorato leghista’, in R. Mannheimer
and G. Sani (eds), La rivoluzione elettorale. Milano: Anabasi, pp. 117–48.
Minkenberg, M. 1998. Die neue radikale Rechte im Vergleich. USA, Frankreich, Deutschland.
Opladen – Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Morlino, L. and Tarchi, M. 1996. ‘The Dissatisfied Society: The Roots of Political Change
in Italy’, European Journal of Political Research, 30(1): 41–63.
Mudde, C. 1996. ‘The War of Words Defining the Extreme Right Party Family’, West
European Politics, 19(2): 225–48.
Norris, P. 2005. Radical Right:Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Schedler, A. 1996. ‘Anti-Political-Establishment Parties’, Party Politics, 2(3): 291–312.
Taggart, P. 2000. Populism. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Tarchi, M. 2003. L’Italia populista. Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino.
—— 2007. ‘The Conflicting Foreign Agenda of the Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord’,
in C. Schori Liang (ed.), Europe for the Europeans. The Foreign and Security Policy of the
Populist Radical Right. Burlington: Ashgate, pp. 187–208.
——. 2008. ‘Italy, a Country of Many Populisms’, in D. Albertazzi and D. McDonnell
(eds), Twenty-first Century Populism.The Spectre of Western European Democracy. Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 84–99.
PART II
The Southern European
Extreme Right after
Dictatorships
6
THE PORTUGUESE RADICAL RIGHT
IN THE DEMOCRATIC PERIOD
Riccardo Marchi
Introduction
In May 2007, Antonio Jose de Brito, Portugal’s most renowned fascist intellectual,
bitterly defined the national radical right as ‘residual’, part of ‘folklore’ (Brito 2007).
It has, in fact, proved itself incapable of conquering space in the young Portuguese
democracy’s institutional political life, just as in Spain and Greece, where the legacy
of authoritarianism has also proved fatal (Casals 1998: 143–47). The tactics chosen
by the Portuguese radical right during the period of democratic consolidation have
also shown themselves to be significant in respect of its current marginalization.
The years of transition to democracy

Inaugurating the third wave of democratization in Europe, the military coup d’état
of 25 April 1974 put an end to almost half a century of authoritarianism. The
political longevity of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1932–68), the swift deterioration
of Marcelo Caetano’s consulate (1968–74) and the lightning success of the military
initiative meant the regime change was one of rapid rupture. The part played
by the armed forces in this process is as much a consequence of the weakness of
civilian anti-Salazarist forces as it is of the inability of the New State’s political class
to find a solution to the difficult problem of the wars in Africa. The almost com-
plete absence of any resistance to the coup was symptomatic of the New State’s
decomposition, as the regime’s political police (PIDE-DGS) remained inert, just
like its paramilitary organization (the Portuguese Legion) and the Salazarist ultras.
Thus, 25 April 1974 became the watershed separating the ‘before’ from the
‘after’. All that was identified with the former regime was politically labelled ‘of the
right’, while all that was recognized in the revolution is identified as ‘not of
the right’ (Pinto 1996: 235). Stripped of their political citizenship during the period
96 Riccardo Marchi
of transition, the members of the elite most compromised with the deposed regime
were subjected to the first wave of purges. The New State’s paramilitary and repres-
sive structures were quickly dismantled and their leaders imprisoned. The Salazarist
barons were forced into exile by the Junta de Salvação Nacional ( JSN, National
Salvation Junta), which was headed by General António de Spínola, and which did
not wish to subject them to revolutionary justice (Pinto 1998: 1682). The sudden
disappearance of the former regime’s leaders was the first serious blow to the radical
right, as it lost the personalities around whom it could organize. They were thus
forced to unite around secondary figures of the deposed regime.
In the most heterodox area of the Portuguese radical right, the role of protago-
nist was taken by a young generation of nationalist students of the 1960s and 1970s
who had experienced their political awakening and had been radicalized following
the outbreak of the wars in Africa (1961) and during the wave of anti-Salazarist
protests in the universities of Lisbon and Coimbra (1962 and 1969). Grouped
in small combative organizations, which were relatively autonomous from the New
State, these radical students demonstrated their militancy through their intransigent
defence of the Portuguese empire that was being contested by the domestic extreme
left, the international community and by African guerrillas. These young right-
wing radicals did not represent orthodox Salazarism. Since 1945 the Portuguese
radical right had always demonstrated a degree of frustration with the New State’s
cultural and ideological conservatism. With the rise of Marcelo Caetano, however,
it began openly to criticize the neo-liberal reformers and technocrats in the new
government, accusing them of wanting to end Portugal’s presence in Africa.
Defining themselves as national revolutionaries (with sympathies for French and
Italian neo-fascist movements), these students formed a ‘right-wing opposition’ to
Caetano’s government, in alliance with the purist fascist intellectuals of the first
post-war generation, gathered around the review Tempo Presente (1959–61), the
Salazarist catholic traditionalists of the review Resistência, and the monarchists and
anti-Salazarist republicans – all of whom were engaged in the integrationalist battle
to defend the empire (Marchi 2009).
In the first few hours following the coup, this variegated front came together to
analyse the situation and to determine a common strategy. There was an immediate
breakdown that centred around two different approaches to the new political pan-
orama. The minority view, supported by the more openly fascist intellectuals
Florentino Goulart Nogueira and Rodrigo Emílio, rejected any form of adherence
to the new political situation, either in terms of the legitimacy of the constituted
powers or through an acceptance of the values proclaimed by the revolution. This
group founded the Movimento de Acção Portuguesa (MAP, Portuguese Action
Movement).
The majority group, however, accepted the coup as a consummated and irre-
versible fact, and rejected any utopian a priori ‘restorationist’ temptations. The
protagonists of this strategy were the neo-fascist leader José Valle de Figueiredo,
who was a link between the civilian right and the Spínolist military right, and
the national-revolutionary leaders from Coimbra’s law faculty, united around
The Portuguese radical right 97
the anti-Salazarist nationalist, Fernando Pacheco de Amorim. On 3 May 1974,

this group registered the Movimento Federalista Português (MFP, Portuguese
Federalist Movement), the most important radical-right party in the aftermath of
the revolution.
Despite divisions over the acceptance of the revolution, both factions agreed on
the over-riding need to save pluri-continental Portugal. The success of the revolu-
tion, which was confirmed by the popular support it received, meant the African
question remained open. The programme of the Movimento das Forças Armadas
(MFA, Armed Forces Movement), the group that had planned the coup, supported
the principle of self-determination for the African populations, without excluding
the possibility of retaining institutional links with Portugal. During this phase,
however, the radical right had some room for manoeuvre in the battle for the
future institutional structure of Portuguese Africa. The federalist option adopted by
the MFP proved to be more realistic than the integralist purism of the MAP, par-
ticularly since the former group’s position enjoyed the legitimation offered by
General Spínola, who had been appointed president of the republic in May 1974.
The MFP and MAP were the most durable radical movements from the doctri-
naire political point of view. However, between May and July, other parties, less
structured and less radical, emerged on what may be considered the extreme right
of the political spectrum by virtue of their overt anti-Marxism and their support for
Spínola in the defence of ‘African Portugal’.
The Salazarist catholic radical right founded the Partido da Democracia Cristã
(PDC, Christian Democratic Party), while the catholic traditionalists of António da
Cruz Rodrigues established the Movimento Popular Português (MPP, Portuguese
Popular Movement). The right-wing monarchists formed the Partido Liberal
(PL, Liberal Party), while the Partido Trabalhista Democrático Português
(PTDP, Portuguese Democratic Workers’ Party) and the Partido Social Democrata
Independente (PSDI, Independent Social Democrat Party) assumed the guise
of social-democratic anti-Marxism. Finally, the Partido Nacionalista Português
(PNP, Portuguese Nationalist Party) was founded by a small group of former
members of the Portuguese Legion. At the same time several decidedly right-wing
party newspapers appeared, such as the MFP’s Tribuna Popular, the PL’s Tempo Novo
and the independent Bandarra.
It will be superfluous to highlight the ideological differences that existed between
all these small right-wing parties, which were largely the product of initiatives by
small groups of friends, often active before 25 April, but without any territorial
roots or representation. With the exception of MAP, these parties attempted to win
legitimacy by declaring themselves faithful to the liberal, democratic and Western
political project of the revolutionary military’s moderate wing, which was strug-
gling against the Marxist faction for control of the MFA. This resulted in the pro-
duction of an often surrealist political discourse, in which convinced Salazarists
declared themselves to be anti-fascists or even leftists.
This leftist syndrome infected all of the parties to the right of Mario Soares’s
Partido Socialista (PS, Socialist Party), which led them to present political
98 Riccardo Marchi
programmes that were to the left of their leaders, who in turn were more to the left
than their electorate (Pinto 1996: 237). The Partido Popular Democrático (PPD,
Popular Democratic Party), which was founded by the New State’s Liberal Wing
(Ala Liberal), attempted to capitalize on the reputation of this semi-opposition to
Caetano’s government by presenting itself as a centre-left party that was engaged in
constructing socialism in Portugal. To correct the inequality on the left of the
political axis, the anti-Marxist faction of the MFA had no faith in the extreme right
as a viable interlocutor. Instead, it concentrated its efforts on the more moderate
elements of the deposed government, those who were least compromised with
the dictatorship, sponsoring the birth in July 1974 of the Centro Democrático
Social (CDS, Social Democratic Centre). The CDS described itself as a moderate,
liberal-conservative, social-catholic and anti-Marxist party of the centre.
With the panorama of parties existing in the summer of 1974 complete, the
embryos of the radical right engaged in the establishment of their respective party
structures with a view to competing in the elections to the constituent assembly in
April 1975: the guarantee of their definitive institutionalization. To this end, in July
1974 the MFP transformed itself into the Partido do Progresso (PP/MFP, Party
of Progress), which, with the PL and the PTDP, promoted an electoral coalition
named the Frente Democrática Unida (FDU, United Democratic Front). The
central thesis of the FDU’s programme was to support Portuguese Africa’s self-
determination, as was proposed in the MFA programme, but which was threatened
by the independentist offensive of Marxist officers allied to the PCP.
Conscious of their marginal status, the radical right attempted to strengthen its
role by becoming the political arm of the Spínolists in the internal political struggles
of the MFA. Thus, on 28 September 1974, anti-communist officers appealed to the
‘silent majority’ to support President Spínola against the PCP’s maximalism. With
the exception of the anti-Spínolist MAP and the PP/MFP, which thought the
demonstration would give the PCP its chance to denounce the fascist threat and to
justify repression, the organizations of the ‘extreme right’ all supported the appeal.
The PS, PPD and CDS immediately dissociated themselves, judging that this
was an attempt to recreate in Lisbon, under the noses of the military, De Gaulle’s
late May 1968 manoeuvre in Paris, when he successfully confronted the pre-
revolutionary movement, with the support of the armed forces and the mass
mobilization of the centre-right.
Both the PCP and the civilian and military extreme left made easy work of
neutralizing the Spínolist faction, accusing it of being counter-revolutionary. On
28 September the headquarters of the PP/MFP, MAP and MPP were occupied
and the parties dissolved, along with the PL and PTDP, with hundreds of the
members of these organizations being arrested. This was the second coup against
the Portuguese radical right. Only the PDC survived and, in order to ensure its
continued existence during the months that followed, it appointed to its leader-
ship José Sanches Osório, one of the leaders of the 25 April coup and a member
of the first provisional government. The leadership of Sanches Osório made the
PDC the only party of the right able to compete in the election campaign to
the constituent assembly. He managed to obtain for the PDC observer status in the
European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), guaranteeing it international
protection. The success of the February 1975 rallies gave the impression that the
PDC’s electoral campaign could unite the more conservative anti-communist
voters. Many former Salazarists and supporters of the radical right joined the party.
Fearing the PDC’s electoral competition, the CDS asked the EUCD to pressurize
Osório into forming a coalition (Amaral 1995: 333).
The role that the Salazarists demonstrated they could still play on the right wing
of the CDS provoked an extreme-left reaction. On 11 March 1975, rumours of an
imminent communist attempt to eliminate active right-wing groups resulted in a
coup attempt by a group of Spínolists, which was easily defeated by the MFA.
Sanches Osório’s involvement in this attempted coup and his subsequent flight into
exile led to the PDC being banned, leaving scorched earth to the right of the CDS.
The 11 March 1975 uprising represented the third and final coup in the strategy for
the institutionalization of the radical right.
At the first democratic elections (25 April 1975), the extreme-right electorate –
which included between 1 per cent declared fascists and 2 per cent conservatives,
with perhaps a further 8 per cent of potential voters from the moderate right
(Bacalhau 1994: 34) – had no official representation, and gave its ‘useful vote’ to the
CDS, the PPD and the PS, which were considered the most secure bulwarks against
the PCP’s advance (Jalali 2007: 73).
For the radical right this opened, once more, the road to exile or clandestine
action. In neighbouring Francoist Spain, the Salazarist, neo-fascist and Spínolist
factions reorganized themselves into two clandestine formations: the Movimento
Democrático de Libertação de Portugal (MDLP, Democratic Movement for
the Liberation of Portugal) and the Exército de Libertação de Portugal (ELP,
Portuguese Liberation Army). The MDLP was led by Commander Alpoim Calvão
and presided over by General Spínola. The radicals from the PP/MFP played an
important role in this organization, forming its political commission. The ELP had
a more clandestine structure, constructed by elements from the Portuguese Legion,
the PIDE and former regime supporters, assisted by members of the Spanish secret
service and European neo-fascist refugees who were living in Spain, such as the
Italians of the Avanguardia Nazionale (AN, National Vanguard).
Through these two autonomous and clandestine movements, the Portuguese
radical right developed its anti-communist campaign between May and November
1975 with propaganda activities – including armed actions – in Portugal.The north
of Portugal was the most fertile territory for their activities, due to the general
insurrectional and anti-communist climate that during the ‘hot summer’ of 1975
resulted in a number of assaults on, and the destruction of, the offices of the PCP
and other left-wing organizations. The ‘northern revolts’ were led by the catholic
hierarchy and by old caciquista networks that had profound social roots in the north,
a part of the country that consisted of small farmers, artisans and shopkeepers
who were increasingly concerned with the extreme left’s collectivization policy.
The parties of the anti-communist front (PS, PPD and CDS) were the chief
100 Riccardo Marchi
political beneficiaries of this offensive. The operative role played by the clandestine
MDLP and ELP was remarkable, but absolutely secondary from the political point
of view.
The years of normalization

The anti-communist offensive ended on 25 November 1975 when the dynamics
of coup and counter-coup led to the defeat of the PCP and the extreme left.
One important Portuguese radical-right intellectual notes how from that day a
climate of instability, reminiscent of the German Weimar Republic, hung over
Portugal (Pinto 1996: 239–40); a climate that could have offered some opportuni-
ties to the radical right: the permanent state of PCP revolutionary mobilization,
despite the events of 25 November; the political and psychological reinforcement
of the anti-communist front; the presence of a large group of people who were
unhappy with the revolution, and who mainly comprised victims of the political
purges, those who had been economically expropriated and the almost one million
returnees from the former colonies.
The gradual normalization of the revolutionary process enabled the return of
many radical right-wing exiles, who once more wondered what they could do
given their extremely limited margin for manoeuvre. From the political point of
view, the anti-communist struggle became a definitive attribute of the PS-PPD-
CDS front, whose strongly pro-April and anti-fascist discourse blocked any possi-
bility for radical-right expression and legitimation. From the military point of view,
the obvious inability of the military right (both MFA and Salazarist) to lead a coun-
ter-revolutionary project rendered any praetorian pretensions unthinkable from
1976. For a number of reasons, the more lucid of the radical-right groups did not
believe the creation of a political party was a viable option. Any such party was
highly likely to be banned (the PCP retained a powerful presence in the state
apparatus); there was a shortage of economic and political support; the electorate
was marginalized owing to the propensity of the sociological right to cast their
anti-communist vote for the PPD and the CDS; the Salazarist barons were unwill-
ing to lead a radical party; the centre-right parties (PPD and CDS) had co-opted
the most promising of the young radicals who had passed through prison and
clandestinity.
The only sensible option seemed to be the formation of a pressure group that,
through cultural activities, could influence the non-Marxist parties. The room for
manoeuvre in the cultural arena was, in fact, greater. Since 1976, the ‘left syn-
drome’ of the anti-communist actors of the transition was considerably reduced.
The PPD gradually positioned itself in the centre of the political spectrum, support-
ing the creation of a Western, liberal and free-market democracy. Consequently,
the CDS moved to occupy the moderate and liberal-conservative right that was
inspired by social-catholicism. In the media, there emerged two right-wing publi-
cations, Rua and Diabo, which enjoyed good circulation and public support.
Militants of the radical right united around these two weekly newspapers according
to their editorial stance. Diabo was noted for its denunciations of the excesses of the
revolutionary period, and for its outspoken support for the centre-right coalition,
Aliança Democrática (AD, Democratic Alliance) formed in 1979 by the Partido
Social Democrata (PSD, Social Democratic Party), the new name for the PPD
since 1977, CDS and the Partido Popular Monárquico (PPM, Popular Monarchist
Party).1 The radical right that supported this operation opted for a strategy of ‘entry-
ism’ into the institutional party system. This strategy guaranteed a remarkable
capacity of action also in radical right-wing youth circles, represented by students
from the Progress Party, from clandestinity and from the violent confrontations
with the extreme left in the schools and universities. In 1976, these youths organ-
ized themselves into the Movimento Nacionalista (MN, Nationalist Movement),
the most important of the radical right-wing youth movements until the beginning
of the 1980s, which was famous mainly for its 10 June commemorations (the
anniversary of the restoration of Portuguese independence from Spain in 1640),
which was also a day of nationalist and anti-communist pride for the centre-right.
The weekly newspaper Rua was founded by Manuel Maria Múrias, a New State
journalist and anti-communist polemicist during the transition, who became the
spokesperson for the most anti-revolutionary, anti-systemic and pro-Salazarist
radical right. Rua was constantly critical of the centre-right, and of the CDS in
particular, despite the CDS having sponsored the newspaper in order to free itself
from the sensitive accusation that it represented the extreme right of the political
spectrum.
At the beginning of 1977, a new right-wing anti-system movement made its
appearance: the Movimento Independente para a Reconstrução Nacional (MIRN,
Independent Movement for National Reconstruction). MIRN was founded by
General Kaúlza de Arriaga, an important figure among Salazarist officers, who had
been chief of the armed forces in Mozambique during the colonial wars and had
been the organizer of the illusory coup d’état of March 1974 that sought to over-
throw Caetano and move the regime to the right. Arrested on 28 September 1974,
Arriaga spent sixteen months in prison where he assumed in right-wing circles the
image of a martyr of the revolution. Arriaga immediately demonstrated his limits as
a political leader, introducing himself as a man of the ‘social-democratic right, anti-
Marxist and anti-extremist’, interested in creating a consensus in the national inter-
est that would extend from the extreme right to non-Marxist social democracy. In
this way, MIRN managed to appeal to one part of the ultra-nationalist militant
youth that was on the lookout for new stimuli, but it held no appeal for the more
mature sections of the radical right.
The marginality of the radical right was demonstrated by the constant refusal of
the AD to include it in the centre-right coalition. This ostracism impelled the
radical right towards electorally disastrous strategies. The PDC, while reformed
with some difficulty after 11 March 1975, stood alone in the 1976 legislative elec-
tions, winning only 0.54 per cent of the votes (29,874 votes). In the 1979 elections
the PDC lists included six extreme-right independents, headed by Manuel Maria
Múrias, and the party share increased to 1.21 per cent (72,514). Despite having
102 Riccardo Marchi
existed for two years, MIRN did not participate in the 1979 elections. In the
run-up to the October 1980 elections, and in order to undermine the AD’s ostra-
cism, the PDC, MIRN (which, for the occasion, renamed itself the Partido da
Direita Portuguesa (MIRN/PDP, Party of the Portuguese Right) and the Frente
Nacional (FN, National Front), which was an ad hoc creation of Múrias and the
businessman Bernado Guedes da Silva, decided to contest as an independent coali-
tion called the Direita Unida (DU, United Right). However, the coalition was
never able to create a right-wing consensus. The DU’s results were disastrous,
obtaining 0.4 per cent of the votes (23,819). In electoral terms, the coalition
received one-third of the votes won by the PDC in 1979 (which was considered a
foundation upon which the right could build) which was also less than it had
received in 1976. The frustration within the radical right was well expressed by
Múrias who said, ‘the right has ceased to exist (or it never even existed)’ (Múrias
1980). The 1980 elections were to be the radical right’s final electoral foray for
many years. Only the PDC retained a presence during the subsequent years, with
its support ranging from 0.69 per cent (39,180) in 1983, to 0.72 per cent (41,831)
in 1985 and 0.56 per cent (31,667) in 1987.2
The years of democratic consolidation

With the electoral failure of the coalition, the radical right dispersed into a galaxy
of small militant youth groups, the most important of which at the beginning of
the 1980s were the MN and Ordem Nova (ON, New Order), which was founded
by Zarco Moniz Ferreira, a leading figure in Portuguese neo-fascism since the
1960s.3
During this period, the radical right’s most notable results were achieved in the
‘cultural struggle’. In 1980 the magazine Futuro Presente, edited by Jaime Nogueira
Pinto, first appeared. The editorial staff was made up of 1960s militants, activists
who had straddled both regimes, and youths who had been radicalized in the uni-
versities during the transition and who mainly belonged to the MN. The publica-
tion aimed to be the Portuguese mouthpiece of the European new right that, at that
time, was enjoying some success in the international media. The model that it fol-
lowed was Alain de Benoist’s Nouvelle Droite in France and its ‘gramscism of the
right’ project that sought to modernize the imagination and the political vocabulary
of the radical right. To this model, however, Futuro Presente added its interest in the
Anglo-Saxon new right led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Through
these two antithetic currents of right-wing thought, Futuro Presente sought to com-
bine the tradition of conservative realism with the attempts at neo-fascist renewal,
translating them into a Portuguese formula that rejected both Anglo-American
hypercapitalism and French paganism. Despite achieving a certain degree of suc-
cess, and admiration from its adversaries, during its first years of publication, Futuro
Presente did not manage to realize its project for cultural hegemony. After almost
thirty years of existence, the magazine has lost its impetus, despite some of its
founders now being important Portuguese opinion-makers. However, the magazine
still remains to this day the radical right’s most striking cultural experiment in
democracy and represents the boundary between the old and the new radical right
in Portugal.
The boundary between old and new radicalism

In the mid-1980s Portuguese radical nationalism experienced changes in line with
the transformations of the European extreme right.4 In 1985 a group of youths
from the Lisbon suburb of Amadora founded the Movimento de Acção Nacional
(MAN, National Action Movement) (Marchi 2010). This movement rejected
democracy (which it labelled ‘partyocracy’), liberal-capitalism and communism; it
was based on an organic conception of justice and of order in the nation-state, and
called for an anti-systemic ‘third way’. During the first two years of its existence,
MAN developed an ethno-nationalist identity, based on the defence of racial
homogeneity against the dangers of immigration (which was increasing from
the former colonies) and miscegenation. This ethno-nationalism broke with the
traditions of the Portuguese radical right that always emphasized the empire’s
multiracialism and multiculturalism. From 1987 MAN’s membership increased,
primarily as a result of the influx of skinheads, a movement that had only recently
arrived in Portugal and which was being watched by the media. MAN sought to
attract, organize and politicize neo-Nazi fashion through its own publications,
Acção and Ofensiva, and through other more outspokenly racist publications, such as
Ultimo Reduto, and the skinhead fanzines Combate Branco (White Combat) and Vento
do Norte (North Wind). Its ever closer links with the skinhead movement gave
MAN a much wider territorial appeal that extended beyond Lisbon and into the
north of the country. The increase of its activity during 1989 and 1990 corre-
sponded with an increase in political violence that the Portuguese media blamed on
MAN’s neo-Nazi members that its leaders could not control. It was largely because
of the acts of violence registered during this period, which culminated in the death
of an extreme-left leader, in October 1989, that the authorities mounted a series of
interceptions, house searches and interrogations that led to an official hearing into
the organization under article 46 of the 1976 constitution, which deals with
the legality of fascist organizations. The media and judicial campaigns against the
movement and the consequent tensions within its membership convinced MAN’s
leadership to dissolve the organization at the beginning of 1991. The process deal-
ing with its non-constitutional nature continued until January 1994, when the
Constitutional Court noted the movement’s self-dissolution. It was the first, and so
far only, case in Portugal of an investigation into a political movement based on
legislation dealing with fascist parties.
Thanks to the increase in ultra-nationalist mobilization that MAN encouraged,
the radical right refocused on its objective of creating a true political party. Some
initiatives that were set in motion in this respect did not achieve the 7,500 signa-
tures required by law. One of the main figures in this initiative was António da
Cruz Rodrigues, a historic leader of the ultra-Salazarist catholic traditionalists.
104 Riccardo Marchi
In 1995 he founded the Aliança Nacional (AN, National Alliance), which was sup-
ported by the publishing house Nova Arrancada. Its aim was to reactivate some of
the radical right’s moribund parties, such as the PDC.
It was not until 1999 that the operation had any success, thanks to the support
of José Luís Paulo Henriques, the former leader of MAN and now member of
the AN, who, with militants from across the radical galaxy, took control of the
Partido Renovador Democrático (PRD, Democratic Renewal Party) that had
been founded in 1985 around the figure of the country’s then president, General
Ramalho Eanes, and which at its launch had registered strong electoral success, fol-
lowed by rapid electoral decline. Reduced to a ghost party, the PRD fell easily to
the radical right who appointed Rodrigues as its leader. The party was restructured
during 2000 and given a new name (Partido Nacional Renovador (PNR, National
Renovation Party)), new statutes and a new symbol (a red and blue flame).
The radical right’s new beginning

The PNR’s creation brought into focus the problem of control, with a clear divi-
sion existing between the old ultra-Salazarist nationalists who supported Rodrigues
and the more recent and much more radical ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist
elements. The victory of the latter in June 2005 resulted in José Pinto Coelho
(a former member of MN and Futuro Presente) becoming the party’s leader. Coelho’s
leadership opened a new phase in the life of the party that aligned itself with the
more recent evolution of the European radical right.
From the point of view of the radical right’s roots, the PNR reclaimed the
anti-revolution nationalism of the Portuguese radical right without, however, its
nostalgic and revanchist aspects. It recognizes the legitimacy of the democratic
system, while also defending the New State’s contribution to the defence of tradi-
tional Portuguese values and the figure of Salazar as the greatest Portuguese states-
man of the twentieth century. In this way, it has succeeded in translating the
historical radical nationalism with neo-fascist tendencies into a discourse and a
political image consistent with the national populism and radicalism of the most
modern parties of the European extreme right.
While accepting the need for strengthened economic links between European
states, the PNR rejects any project, such as European Union (EU) political integra-
tion, that diminishes national sovereignty. It recognizes Europe as Portugal’s natu-
ral cultural setting insofar as it is synonymous with the catholic West. Thus it has
abandoned the Euro-African inclinations of the older Portuguese nationalism,
opposed Turkey’s accession to the EU and called for Portugal to leave NATO,
which it viewed as an instrument of the United States. It blames most of the prob-
lems currently affecting the country – from the crises in key economic sectors
(agriculture, fisheries and small and medium enterprises) to the recent massive wave
of immigration – on Portugal’s acession to the EU in 1986.
The party’s discourse on immigration is ethno-nationalist, describing it as an ‘inva-
sion’ which threatens cultural identity, jobs, national commerce and public safety.
For this reason, it has called for the suspension of the Schengen Treaty, the repa-
triation of illegal immigrants, a block on family reunifications and it also opposes,
in the name of jus sanguinis, the principle of jus soli that inspired the socialist govern-
ment’s 2006 nationality law. Defence of the national community is, for the PNR,
achieved by protecting the traditional family as the nucleus of society threatened
by the depenalization of abortion and the gay rights movement (Zúquete 2007:
183–86).
In recent years, the PNR has become very active in the media, the attention of
which has been stimulated by the radical, anti-system identity it has claimed
for itself and for its polemical anti-immigration initiatives, such as the adverts on
billboards in central Lisbon inviting immigrants to return to their countries (April
2007 and October 2008) and the Internet-promoted June 2005 demonstrations that
were attended by more people than the radical right had been able to attract since
the 1970s. However, its high media profile has also raised some problems, mainly
as a result of the links the party maintains with the Portuguese Hammerskin chap-
ter, whose leaders (some of whom are leading members of the PNR) are frequently
arrested and imprisoned.
The PNR’s public face is the result of the careful restructuring of its hierarchy
and their competences, and in the promotion of Coelho as the ‘party’s official face’,
despite his lack of personal charisma (Zúquete 2007: 189). Despite its continual
appearance in the mass media and in the political debate, the party has yet to obtain
appreciable results at the electoral level. In its first electoral competition, the 2002
legislative election, it managed only 0.09 per cent (4,712 votes), 0.16 per cent
(9,374 votes) in 2005, 0.20 per cent (11,503 votes) in 2009 and 0.31 per cent
(17,548 votes) in 2011. At the European elections it obtained 0.25 per cent (8,405
votes) in 2004 and 0.37 per cent (13,214 votes) in 2009.
The party failed to attract the protest vote that contributed to the high level of
abstentionism (42 per cent) in 2011. While the PNR’s status as a ‘non-system party’
may be a point in its favour as far as the anti-system electorate is concerned, its
willingness to open up to the more extreme right – both nationally and internation-
ally – does not seem likely to attract the ‘mass of discontented’ who have not yet
rewarded the most moderate populist party Nova Democracia, which was founded
by the CDS’s former leader Manuel Monteiro, and which obtained only 0.21 per
cent (11,806) in the 2011 elections. The Portuguese system of proportional repre-
sentation appears not to help small parties, as evidenced by the fact that only five
parties have parliamentary representation, and only two of these, the PS and PSD,
with 70 per cent of the electorate, will ever form a government.
The PNR also suffers from a lack of territorial roots. In local elections in Lisbon –
which are an important indicator in a highly centralized country such as Portugal,
in which Lisbon has a large proportion of the country’s population and, hence,
political power – the PNR obtained 0.09 per cent (877 votes) in 2001, 0.17 per
cent (1,641 votes) in 2005 and 0.13 per cent (1,204 votes) in 2009.
Despite the considerable increase in its media exposure and the more moderate
increase in its electoral results, we are far from being able to speak of a ‘Le Pen’
106 Riccardo Marchi
effect in Portugal. Symptomatic of this is the fact that the PNR has recently escaped
being dissolved on account of its having fewer than the legally required 5,000
members – it was saved only as a result of the Constitutional Court’s intervention
to protect small parties.
Conclusion
The roots of the Portuguese radical right’s weakness can be found in its elitist
nature, obvious since the beginning of the twentieth century and confirmed during
forty-eight years of authoritarianism.
Integralismo Lusitano (IL) (1914–32) was the first coherent expression of right-
wing radicalism and was the fruit of the intellectual abilities of a small group of
traditionalist monarchists who had no interest in creating a mass movement during
the turbulent years of the First Republic. In turn, the groups influenced by the
fascist revolution during the 1920s and 1930s were late in expressing a common
political project (1933) – National Syndicalism – a project that was swiftly crushed
by Salazar.
The radical right’s expressions remained, therefore, minority realities, marginal,
when they were not marginalized, within Salazarism, the pillars of which have to be
sought in authoritarian conservatism, in social catholicism, in counter-revolutionary
monarchism and in conservative republicanism rather than in the radical and revo-
lutionary proposals of the right.The radical right survived in the shadow of Salazarist
paternalism and the New State’s main currents of thought. The relationship varied
between declared opposition to the New State during its early years, through criti-
cal collaboration during the consolidation of Salazarism to pseudo-opposition
during Caetano’s government.
The price of this dependence was extracted following the regime’s downfall.
The Salazarist right evaporated politically: if on the one hand they could not reclaim
the authoritarian practice of Salazarist government as a doctrine per se (Pinto 1996:
185), on the other hand, they did not want to assume the legacy of a regime that
had fallen into decadence a long time before. Consequently, they were diluted into
the parties of the centre-right upon which the model of Christian democracy, lib-
eral conservatism and the Bonapartism of some of the leaders compensated, under
democracy, for the absence of Salazarist paternalism. For its part, the radical right
that was, between 1945 and 1974, animated by a few intellectuals and student
organizations united around the myth of the empire, had neither the consistency,
the experience nor the equipment with which to play an important role in the new
political milieu. As a result they fragmented into small groups of hard-liners, who
denied legitimacy to the new political actors, and soft-liners, who attempted to
capture the sociological right’s consensus on the new rules of the game and thus
to participate in it (Pasquino 1993: 54; Morlino 2003: 150).
The political inconsistency within the radical right revealed itself both in its
tactics and in its aims. In terms of aims, these were wrapped around the monothe-
matic struggle to defend the empire, which lost all reason with the conclusion of
the decolonization process (Pinto 1996: 235). In terms of tactics, the network of
different attitudes resolved into self-subordination to the military (the Spínolist fac-
tion of the MFA) and the civilian apparatus (the PS-PPD-CDS anti-communist
front), which resulted in a negative cost–benefit balance for the radical-right and
the dissipation of its ability to act independently, as was demonstrated in the imme-
diate post-25 April period.
From the beginning of the 1980s to the end of the twentieth century, the
Portuguese radical right can be characterized thus: its more active memberships,
born politically during the former regime, moved from being ‘functional democrats’
to ‘cultural democrats’ (Pridham 2000: 179). On the one hand, this enabled them
to obtain visibility within the young Portuguese democracy, while on the other, it
removed from the radical right its capacity for political expression, both at the elec-
toral and at the extra-parliamentary levels – a position of marginality that has not
been resolved by its indisputable, albeit limited, successes in the cultural field.
A politico-cultural fracture enabled a new generation of activists to emerge,
militants who introduced both the radical youth sub-cultures and the racist
discourse of the more extreme movements of the European right. Despite this,
however, it did not lead to any ideological or cultural renovation in Portugal to
compare with what was achieved by similar groups elsewhere in Europe, reinter-
preting themes that belonged to the New Left, to the Latin American ‘third-way’
or to national-Bolshevism and so on.
The PNR’s attempt to exploit the crises of post-industrial societies (mistrust of
politics, immigration, precariousness of employment, pauperization of the middle
class), eventually introduced the innovations of the European radical right, but this
has yet to produce any appreciable results. The new course upon which the party
has set is too recent for us to be able to reach any conclusion; however, the signs
that have emerged (strategy and electoral feedback) suggest the radical right in
Portugal at the dawn of the new millennium faces a difficult future.
Notes
1 PPM was founded by anti-Salazarist monarchists and led by Rolão Preto, the former
leader of the fascist-inspired Nacional-Sindicalismo (NS, National Syndicalism).
2 In 2004 the PDC was wound up by the Constitutional Tribunal for inactivity. MIRN was
wound up in 1997.
3 Zarco Ferreira was the leader of the most important neo-fascist organization of the 1960s:
Jovem Portugal (Young Portugal, 1961–65).
4 However, there remained active formations of the traditional right, such as New Monarchy
National Force (FN/NM, 1983–91), which split from the PPM.
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Lisbon: MTD.
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pp. 8–9.
Casals, X. 1998. La tentación neofascista en España. Barcelona: Plaza & Janés.
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—— 2010. ‘At the Roots of the New Right-Wing Extremism in Portugal: the National
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of Southern European Experience’, in G. Pridham (ed.), Securing Democracy. London:
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Transition to Democracy (1974–76)’, in S. Larsen (ed.), Modern Europe after Fascism,
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43(3): 179–98.
7
THE SPANISH EXTREME RIGHT
From neo-Francoism to xenophobic discourse
José L. Rodríguez Jiménez
The division of the political class in the Francoist crisis:

the emergence of neo-Francoism
As is well known, General Franco proclaimed himself the winner of the Civil War
that ravaged Spain between 1936 and 1939. His victory implied a change of
regime, the liquidation of political democracy and the start of a personal dictator-
ship. The revolt against the Second Republic was promoted by a coalition of mon-
archists and the authoritarian Catholic right who were charmed by fascism. For this
reason, and because of the help given by the fascist powers to the rebel government
during the Civil War, the first Franco governments were composed of a coalition
of different factions from the anti-liberal and fascist right. Although Franco was not
a fascist, his regime had fascist characteristics during its first stage (one-party state
with a fascist party, Falange; Rodríguez 2000; Thomàs 1999) and collaborated with
the fascist powers during the Second World War. However, Germany’s defeat
obliged Franco to tone down its totalitarian impulses and to reduce the areas of
power allocated to the fascists in favour of the authoritarian Catholic right and the
monarchists.
Like other Mediterranean states in Europe, Spain was a backward country in
comparison with Western and Northern European states. Moreover, Francoist
economic policy was a failure. It was not until the 1950s that recovery began.
At the end of that decade, the regime changed its economic policy, replacing
autocracy with the partial liberalization of economic activity. This change, in a
context of pronounced growth in Western Europe, gave rise to an accelerated
modernization and a highly marked, albeit very unevenly distributed, increase in
material welfare. In return, this economic development during the 1960s provided
the regime with new social support.
110 José L. Rodríguez Jiménez
In contrast to the civic groups that had upheld the military uprising of July 1936,
the new middle classes did not identify with the thinking of the extreme right.
However, at the outset, they scarcely showed any interest in questioning the polit-
ical system. Part of them even identified the economic development with Franco’s
leadership. Nonetheless, the process of industrialization and development opened
the door to a series of cultural changes and shifts in mentality.These changes eroded
the hegemony of national Catholicism, which was the ideology imposed by the
political groups making up the Franco regime and by the two institutions support-
ing the dictatorship, the Army and the Catholic Church. This development was
important, because it had the potential of favouring a democratization process
(Capistegui 2006).
Then, during the 1970s, two very important questions emerged. First, there was
the division of the pro-Franco political class into reformists or soft-core supporters
(called blandos) and hard-liners (called duros); these latter were to form the basis of
the future extreme right-wing parties. Second, there was the question of succession
in the leadership of the state, since Franco turned 78 in 1970. These were related
questions. The division of the political class of a regime has a lot to do with the
crisis of succession that rears its head at a given moment in time, as well as with
other situations that arise in that context. In the Spanish case, these situations were
as follows: increased rejection of the regime as the result of economic and cultural
changes; an upsurge of social conflict; the growing strength of the forces of the
opposition; and the deterioration of relationships between the Catholic Church
and the state (Maravall and Santamaría 1985; O’Donnell et al. 1989). The reform-
ists then backed the opening up of the political system and attempted to win sup-
port from the moderate anti-Franco opposition. Gradually, and as they felt
increasingly besieged by the hard-liners, they showed themselves willing to run
greater risks: to negotiate with a part of the left-leaning opposition and accept a
reform that would lead to a democratic regime. On their side, the hard-liners felt
that the increase in social conflict was eroding the regime. As a result, they accused
the reformists of being traitors and demanded an energetic reaction against the
opposition groups from the government – that is, an out-and-out defence of the
dictatorial system. It should be borne in mind that the hard-liners were represented
in government, and that in many matters they had the support of the Head of
state – general Franco – and of the Vice President and later Government President,
Admiral Luis Carrero.
In addition to their presence in government and in diverse agencies of the State
Administration, the duros created several associations. They took this step to better
air their ideas and criticize some government decisions independently. These asso-
ciations (not Political Parties, which were prohibited) were grouped according to
two tendencies: neo-fascists1 and neo-Francoists. The neo-fascists vindicated the
first period of Franco’s regime (1936–42), when the fascist party had an important
representation in the coalition government, and in addition they were against
the Law of Basic Principles of Movement, which in 1958 had finally replaced
the fascist one-party by the ‘Movimiento’, representing the pro-Franco coalition.
The Spanish extreme right 111
The neo-Francoists vindicated the first period and particularly the second period of
Franco’s regime (1943–57), when the extreme-right coalition predominated in the
government and the hegemony of national Catholicism was complete, without any
opportunity for cultural changes. However, these tendencies were differentiated
more by personal rather than by ideological questions and often collaborated closely.
The neo-fascist tendency was represented by Círculos Doctrinales José Antonio
(José Antonio Doctrinal Circles, named in honour of José Antonio Primo de
Rivera, founder of the most important Spanish fascist party) and the Falange
Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE-JONS, the Spanish
Phalanx of Units of the National Syndicalist Offensive, a recasting of the principal
Spanish fascist party). The neo-Francoist tendency – more important both at the
time and in the future – was represented by Fuerza Nueva (New Force, founded in
1967) and the National Confederation of Ex-combatants (1974). This latter organ-
ization was led by former Labour Minister José Antonio Girón, a Phalangist, and
grouped together the associations of pro-Franco ex-combatants of the Civil War
formed between the end of the 1950s and the beginnings of the 1960s. The first
article of the by-laws of the Confederation established the following as its purposes:
‘to coordinate and reinforce the activities of the different Brotherhoods and
Associations of Ex-Combatants in the common ideal of the survival and solidity of
the Principles of 18 July’, and ‘to attempt to transmit these to the new generations
as the most prized legacy’ (Rodríguez 1994; Casals 1998).
The neo-Francoist organizations specialized in accusing not only the reformers,
but also the government of being traitors. This was what happened when, after the
assassination of the head of the government, Admiral Carrero, by the terrorist
organization ETA in December 1973, Franco appointed Carlos Arias as the new
government head. Arias, who was one of the regime’s hard-liners, initiated a tenu-
ous opening up of the political system, and was then lambasted as a traitor, for sup-
posedly allowing the regime to be infiltrated by its enemies.The extremist right-wing
– defined by the reformers as the Francoist bunker2 – used this label for the reformists
occupying positions in the State Administration and who worked in public compa-
nies. Its language hardened during the following months, as international events
called its plans for the future into question: a left-leaning military coup in Portugal
in April 1974 put an end to the government of Marcelo Caetano, the heir to
Salazar’s ultra-conservative dictatorship. Two months later, a new military coup –
this time in Athens – provoked the downfall of the dictatorship in Greece.
During the following months, neo-Francoism managed to scuttle some of the
government bills pending in the Cortes, the legislative assembly. In addition,
with the support of the neo-fascists, it mobilized its partisans through a series of
political assemblies held throughout the national territory, always for the purpose
of exalting the figure of Franco and the spirit of the Crusade of 1936. In these
activities, it had the support of sectors from the Army and the various secret services
existing at the time, the Organización Sindical, the sole Francoist trade union,
and a series of government-dependent political and social agencies, since neo-
Francoism was then strong and influential.
The neo-Francoist extreme right during the phases

of democratic transition and consolidation (1976–82):
from a position of power to opposition
Electoral strategy
Franco died on 20 November 1975, and two days afterwards, the man whom the
dictator had designated to succeed him as Head of State, Juan Carlos de Borbón,
was crowned King of Spain. Thus, the still-powerful Spanish extreme right, par-
ticularly the neo-Francoists, mobilized for a double purpose: to render homage to
its caudillo and to try to prevent the change in the leadership of state from resulting
in a change of regime. From then onwards, the changes occurred in rapid succes-
sion. The difficult situation of the country, bogged down in an economic and
political crisis, gave rise to a pact between the reformist sector of the pro-Franco
political class, headed by the King, and the anti-Franco opposition. In 1976, a proc-
ess of democratization began and, in 1977, the first democratic elections since 1936
were held. During this process, the extreme right lost a significant part of its
support and was progressively isolated. When Political Parties were legalized, a
substantial part of its political cadres joined the conservative and centre-right par-
ties. The sole significant remaining support for the extreme right was to be found
in the Army.
If the truth be told, the weakness of the extreme right was one of the surprises
of the transition process to democracy. Its programme was of the neo-Francoist
type, with some components proper to neo-fascism. This programme does not
seem to have been adequate for these circumstances, since now the purpose was not
to defend a regime, but to construct an alternative. In order to understand this situ-
ation, we have to bear in mind that in Spain the ideology and programme of the
extreme right had not been revised since the end of the Civil War in 1939. Likewise,
those in favour of revision were in a minority for several reasons: first, because
of the four-decade participation of the extreme right in power-sharing, a factor
that was not conducive to renovation; second, due to the very essence of its
ideology, based as it was on Manichaean formulations and contrary to any sort of
change; and third, the long duration of the dictatorship favoured the survival
of national Catholicism and fascism as references for the new organizations that
were created during the final stage of the regime, after the legalization of Political
Parties in 1977.
The extreme right failed the test of the 1977 elections. It must be borne in mind
that these groups provoked a generalized rejection among voters, who identified
them with the pro-Franco repression and the more reactionary ideas of the dicta-
torship. Likewise, the extreme right offered a stagnant programme – the rehabilita-
tion of the Franco regime. Also, its forces were divided into three neo-fascist parties
and the neo-Francoist party, Fuerza Nueva (New Force). In addition, the accept-
ance of political reform by a portion of pro-Franco politicians was damaging to the
strategy of the extremists. The principal party acting as a federating force among
the pro-Franco political cadres who were partisans of limited reform was the Alianza
Popular (People’s Alliance). In that regard, the fact that this party accepted the
project for democratic reform prepared by the new government backed by the
King and headed by a man who had exercised various responsibilities in the previ-
ous regime – Adolfo Suárez – was to be a very significant factor in the consolidation
of democracy (no such factor was present in the case of the Second Republic). It
was also significant that it accepted the Constitution approved by the new Cortes
in 1978 (although this threatened to produce an internal crisis), since the step taken
by the People’s Alliance party implied that the greater part of the pro-Franco social
bases placed confidence in the strategy marked out by politicians from the Francoist
side and were accepting democracy as normal. Even the National Confederation of
Ex-combatants recommended voting for People’s Alliance.
For the elections held in June 1977, the parties New Force and Spanish Phalanx
formed a coalition under the title Alianza Nacional 18 de Julio (National Alliance
of 18 July, the date of the military uprising in 1936). This notwithstanding, agree-
ment did not hold for all of their electoral factions and, moreover, other groups of
neo-fascist ideology did not join this coalition. The votes obtained by the different
organizations are reported in Table 7.1.3
With a combined total of less than 1 per cent of the votes, the extreme right was
relegated outside the legislative assembly. In other words, the programme and slo-
gans chorused in extreme-right political rallies, such as ¡Franco resucita, España te
necesita! (‘Franco resuscitate, Spain needs you!’) and ¡Suárez dimisión, por perjuro y por
masón! (‘Suárez resign, for perjury and freemasonry!’) found scant acceptance
among the citizenry. In contrast, People’s Alliance, a party composed of members
of the pro-Franco political class who had accepted political reform, although it did
not satisfy them completely, obtained a million and a half votes (more than 8 per
cent). To this must be added the fact that the governingt party, the Unión de
Centro Democrático (Union of the Democratic Centre), composed of members of
the pro-Franco political class who had backed political change, and members of the
moderate anti-Franco opposition, had won the elections, accounting for more than
six million votes (34.44 per cent). The second political force turned out to be the
Socialist Party, and the third, the Communist Party.
TABLE 7.1 1977 elections in Spain
Number of Percentage of
votes received votes received
1. Alianza Nacional 18 de Julio 67,336 0.37

2. Falange Española de las JONS Auténtica 46,548 0.25
3. Falange Española de las JONS 25,017 0.14
4. Asociación Círculos José Antonio 8,184 0.04
5. Asociación Política Fuerza Nueva 5,541 0.03
6. Falange Española Independiente 855 0.00
The legislative elections of 1979, held after the approval of the 1978 Constitution,
resulted in a similar situation. Nonetheless, the extreme right improved its election
results. The ultra-right-wing coalition, named Unión Nacional (National Union),
now grouped together the parties New Force, Spanish Phalanx (of Units of the
National Syndicalist Offensive), José Antonio Doctrinal Circles, the National
Confederation of Ex-combatants and the Agrupación de Juventudes Tradicionalistas
(Union of Traditionalist Youth). The image of unity, greater economic resources,
the support given by the newspapers El Alcázar – the voice of the Confederation of
Ex-combatants – and, more importantly, of the recast El Imparcial, combined with
a decrease in support for People’s Alliance, made it possible to obtain 378,964
votes, accounting for 2.11 per cent of the vote. The truth is the coalition expected
more votes, owing to the crisis of People’s Alliance, but the 110,730 votes obtained
in Madrid gave the coalition its only seat in the legislative assembly for New Force
leader, Blas Piñar. He is the sole Member of Parliament ever to have been elected
from the extreme right since the re-establishment of democracy. In proportional
terms, the extreme right should have obtained a greater number of representatives,
but Spanish electoral law is designed to give large groups the priority and to make
access to Parliament difficult for small parties of a national scope. Four other
neo-fascist organizations obtained derisory results.
The coup strategy: downfall

The right-wing extremist leaders tried to justify the results by saying that voters had
been deceived, or that they were anaesthetized by a plethora of organizations and
communications media, behind which the hand of freemasonry lay concealed.
Or – even worse – the hand of international Judaism, always very active, it was
said, in multiple forms. However, deceived or not, what was clear was that
voters did not place their confidence in anti-democrats. Thus, the extreme right
understood that the sole possibility of seeing their aspirations fulfilled lay in a
coup d’état.
Evidently, the idea of liquidating democracy by means of a military coup had
been in the heads of leaders like Girón, Piñar and journalists of El Alcázar, such
as Antonio Izquierdo, for some time back. In laying their plans, they held some
trump cards. Their main advantage was the fact that a significant number of key
positions in the armed forces were still in the hands of officials who had been
very loyal to Franco, and who were against the Constitution; their objections cen-
tred on the territorial organization of the state, chiefly in the granting of political
autonomy to the regions. Besides they thought that the government was not
deploying the means necessary to counter the terrorist organization ETA, which
employed armed struggle in its attempts to achieve the independence of one of the
regions, the Basque Country. For this reason, these military officials did not require
a lot of encouraging to conspire against the democratic regime. This notwithstand-
ing, the extreme-right press (El Alcázar, El Imparcial, Heraldo Español, Fuerza Nueva)
undertook an important campaign against democracy. Its message was that the
Franco regime was a time of peace, employment and economic progress, and that,
in contrast, democracy was a disastrous system, responsible for the problems that
Spain was experiencing: 14 per cent inflation, 16.5 per cent unemployment, the
increase in ETA terrorist attacks, aimed largely against the military, and a crisis in
the government party, the Union of the Democratic Centre. Moreover, they
pointed out that Spain, because of decentralization and the granting of autonomy
to the regions, was about to disappear. In a word, extreme-right politicians and
journalists manipulated the information, used false data to provoke anti-democratic
sentiments among right-wing voters, and presented existing problems as though
they were phenomena exclusively found in democratic regimes. This relentless
effort to make the public believe that there was widespread support for the
re-establishment of an authoritarian regime was the main task performed by right-
wing extremists. It was executed with a certain success, thanks to the seriousness of
the problems affecting the country.
At the beginning of 1981 there were two projects for a coup d’état under way.
Politicians, military figures and journalists writing in the extremist right-wing
organs of communication collaborated in preparations for the failed coup attempt
of 23 February 1981, which signified the convergence of the two different coup
projects, with the participation of military and civilian figures (Cernuda et al. 2001;
Medina 2006). The failure of the coup d’état of 1981, and of a new coup attempt
in 1982, indicated that the Army was divided. But the government gradually took
control of the situation by replacing the commanding officers. In addition, the
failure of the coup plotters and their arraignment in court inoculated the armed
forces against this sort of malaise. What had happened also discredited the extreme
right with respect to the voters of the conservative right. The greater part of the
votes lost by People’s Alliance in 1979 to the advantage of the extreme right
returned to the conservative fold in 1982. The Socialist Party won the elections
with an absolute majority. It is of interest to observe the division of the extreme
right into several parties, and even the emergence of new organizations, as shown
in Table 7.2.4
TABLE 7.2 1982 elections in Spain
Number of Percentage of
votes received votes received
1. Asociación Política Fuerza Nueva 108,746 0.52

2. Solidaridad Española 28,451 0.14
3. Movimiento Falangista de España 8,976 0.04
4. Falange Española de las JONS 2,528 0.01
5. Falange Española Independiente 1,862 0.01
6. Movimiento Católico Español 1,694 0.01
7. Falange Asturiana 532 0.00
The extreme right would never recover. The party Fuerza Nueva accepted
defeat and announced its dissolution. Nonetheless, during the years to come, the
extreme right would continue to be divided and would pursue the renovation of its
programme to a very limited extent. If in France, the Front National gave impulse
to a new extreme right, or at least adopted a more modern visage and less-overtly
fascist strategy, in Spain the different parties continued to be bound to the model of
the old extreme right.
Spanish neo-Nazis: a printing press for the denial

of the Holocaust
During the period between 1982 and 2008 the political relevance of extreme-right
organizations was nil. Nonetheless, during the 1980s and 1990s there was a devel-
opment that should be underscored in relation to political extremism. We are
referring to the activities of a neo-Nazi organization, the Círculo Español de
Amigos de Europa (CEDADE, the Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe), which
was founded in 1965 and dissolved in 1994 (Casals 1998). There are two things that
attract our interest about CEDADE: first, that it set up a wide network of interna-
tional relations with associations, parties and even governments of non-democratic
states; and second, that its members set up several publishing houses and bookshops
that acted as centres of dissemination for neo-Nazi propaganda, above all pamphlets
and books denying the Holocaust.
The economic support provided by Nazi refugees in Spain, Arab governments
and members of the organization was used to set up several publishing houses.
A significant part of their production, drawn up in different languages, was exported
to European and American countries, above all to those with laws prohibiting
Nazi and fascist parties, Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial. CEDADE offered
neo-Nazi groups and individuals the possibility of publishing pamphlets, posters,
brochures and books in Spain. For instance, two Austrians, Gert Honsik and
Walter Ochsenberger, published the German-language magazines Halt (Stop) and
Sieg (Victory) in Barcelona during the 1990s. When CEDADE was dissolved, its
principal leader, Pedro Varela, founded the Librería Europa. Incidentally there is a
neo-fascist bookshop in Rome called Libreria Europa.
In 1995, the Penal Code was reformed. The new code considers the dissemina-
tion of ideas or doctrines aspiring to destroy an ethnic, racial or religious group, or
pursuing the rehabilitation of regimes that support these forms of behaviour by any
means, as a crime. In 1998, this was applied to Varela, accused of inciting racial
hatred and defending the Jewish genocide. The material on sale at the Librería
Europa was confiscated, the bookshop closed, and Varela sentenced to five years’
imprisonment for the defence of genocide. Nonetheless, Varela, who appealed the
sentence, has continued to distribute neo-Nazi material from Distribuciones
Europa, which operates from the same bookshop through a PO box in Barcelona.
The shop reopened to sell books and host conferences given by personalities such
as David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, in November 2007 (suspended at the
last minute), and David Irving, a Holocaust revisionist writer, in December 2007.
It does not seem that Varela is going to have problems in continuing to disseminate
racist propaganda, since at the beginning of 2008, the Constitutional Court issued
a judgment establishing that the denial of Jewish genocide is not a crime. And fol-
lowing this, in March, the High Court of Barcelona reduced Varela’s sentence to
seven months.
Bidding for the xenophobic vote (1995–2008)
The making of a new extreme right?

The Spanish right-wing extremists very belatedly began a process to revise their
programme. As is already known, some extreme-right European parties substituted
the explicit rejection of democracy with a formal acceptance of democracy and a
xenophobic discourse centred on the rejection of immigrants, while at the same time
upholding an ultra-nationalist line (Pérez Ledesma 1997; Antón 2002; Rodríguez
2004). This evolution, which would eventually give rise to the emergence of a new
extreme right, is also perceptible in Spain and, since the mid-1990s, the various
existing parties have been grouped into three tendencies: neo-Francoists, neo-fascists
and national populists. However, there are three differences from other European
countries.
First, the neo-Francoist and neo-fascist parties are the dominant extreme-right
tendencies in Spain today.These groups keep alive the historical memory of Spanish
fascism, the Civil War and the Franco regime. This was perceptible in the names
of several organizations, four of which continued to use the denomination of ‘pha-
lanx’, like the fascist party founded in 1933. The same may be said with respect to
organized political events.The most significant revolves around 20-N, 20 November
of each year, when homage is paid to Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de
Rivera, the founder of the Phalanx, both deceased on the same day, in 1975 and
1936, respectively. Every 19 November, the Phalangists organize a march from the
Parque del Oeste in Madrid to the basilica in the Valle de los Caídos, located in
the Guadarrama Mountains, 58 kilometres from the capital. They start out at night
and arrive at daybreak. Afterwards, they hear a mass for Primo de Rivera. For its
part, the National Confederation of Ex-combatants organizes a mass in the same
basilica on that day for Franco and Primo de Rivera and, on 20 November, a rally
at the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid. This rally is supported by the Francisco Franco
National Foundation, Fuerza Nueva magazine, and the parties that succeeded the
dissolved party of that name, such as the Movimiento Católico Español (Spanish
Catholic Movement), the Frente Nacional (National Front, revamped Fuerza
Nueva) and the Alternativa Española (Spanish Alternative), this latter founded
in 2003. During the last few years, attendance at the 20 November events in
Madrid has been very thin: between 1976 and 1981 there were always more than
200,000 people, but this later dwindled markedly to between 1,500 and 3,000
participants. These groups organize other events in different locations in Spain.
The most important is that held on 12 October, a holiday in the Catholic religious
calendar that coincides with the Hispanic Day, commemorating the discovery of
America and the cultural ties uniting Spain to the countries of Central and South
America. On that day, neo-Francoist groups pay homage to the Spanish flag in Sant
Jordi square in Montjuic (Barcelona). Attendance does not usually exceed 200.
Nowadays parties such as Nación Joven (Young Nation), Juntas Españolas (Spanish
Assemblies) and Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Alliance for the National Unity),
founded in the 1980s and 1990s, have disappeared, but the neo-Francoist and neo-
fascist tendencies are now represented by Alternativa Española and several parties
named Falange.
The second difference lies in the fact that in Europe several contemporary
extreme-right xenophobic groups have experienced a marked growth, whereas in
Spain they continue to obtain very bad electoral results.The outcomes of legislative
elections have always been lower than those obtained in 1982. In 1986, 1989,
1993, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008, several extreme right-wing candidacies were
presented, and the sum total obtained by the parties has never exceeded 0.3 per
cent of the votes. Thus, the evolution of events is completely different from that of
other European states, where the rise in immigration has given way to a growth in
right-wing extremism. In Spain, immigration has greatly increased during the
last decade, progressing from a million immigrants to more than four million
on the census (4,169,086 official data in June 2008), or 10 per cent of the total
population. The total figure is actually higher, since more than half a million illegal
immigrants are not on the census. However, the extreme right have been unable
to capitalize on either the increase in immigration or the modernization of their
programmes.
The third difference lies in the insufficient effort made by national populists to
construct a new extreme right.The most evident case is that of the party Democracia
Nacional (DN, National Democracy). It was founded in 1995 to give some unsuc-
cessful experiments from previous years a new name. This was a party founded
by middle-aged persons who had held positions of responsibility in CEDADE
and some neo-fascist organizations. In spite of the past of its leaders, DN seeks to
portray itself as a party of the ‘national right’, a moderate image, to attract the
most conservative of right-wing voters, while still addressing social and economic
problems which interest those sections of society who have been hardest hit by
the recessions at the end of the 1990s and today. DN accepts the constitutional
rules, while declaring its willingness fundamentally to reform the Constitution.
However, its model of political organization refers to a system opposed to parlia-
mentary democracy (‘the opening up of reforms of political participation close to
citizen, and outside the structures of Political Parties’), with clear limits imposed on
individual freedoms (‘recognizing responsibilities before rights’), beginning with
restrictions on the freedom of the press, the total prohibition of abortion and the
punishment of ‘immoral conduct’, to which must be added the traditional view
of the role of women, that is, suggested measures to enable them to ‘choose, for
their own personal development, to stay and look after the home and children’
(Nuestra Propuesta (Our Proposal ), April 1995). In addition, this is the party which
has most used immigration as a mobilizing theme. Its xenophobic content is con-
sistently inspired by the work of the French Front National: The French first here
becomes ‘Unemployment + immigration = Delinquency. Stop the Invasion. The
Spanish first’. The programme also includes ultra-nationalist content exalting Spain
and denying political autonomy to the regions. Likewise, there is rejection of
globalization and supranational organizations such as the European Union and
NATO, coupled with disdain for democracy, expressed through the condemnation
of the entire political class and institutions. With a view to the legislative elections
held in March 2000, DN formed the so-called Plataforma 2000 (Platform 2000),
which enjoyed the support of Le Pen’s man in Spain, Alain Lavarde. During the
following years, the party split into two groups: Democracia Nacional and España
2000 (Spain 2000). This latter is directed from the city of Valencia by two business-
men, former Phalangist José Luis Roberto and former member of New Force,
Salvador Gamborino.
Despite these changes, it is clear that the neo-Francoists and neo-fascists as well
as the extreme right-wing parties that have most thoroughly revised their pro-
grammes have remained stagnant, as well as being divided. During the March 2008
elections, they (eight parties) achieved an abominable result, fewer than 0.05 per
cent of the votes. Several possible reasons may be cited to explain this situation.
Evidently, the association that the greater part of public opinion has established
between extreme right-wing groups and political violence (Sánchez 1993) has
something to do with it. This has been so since the years of transition to democ-
racy, when extreme right-wing terrorist organizations carried out a series of attacks.
Afterwards, during the 1990s, young right-wing extremists committed acts of
aggression against the activists of leftist organizations, homosexuals and immigrants
– mainly Africans – resulting in several deaths. Two types of issue are emerging in
the first years of the new millennium.
On one hand, the extreme-right parties stimulate violent attitudes in those places
where there have been outbreaks of racism against immigrants. Occasionally, they
have not only encouraged aggression, but scenarios have occurred where groups of
citizens protested due to the rise of immigration or the competition for jobs. The
calls were launched over the Internet. For example, during the xenophobic inci-
dents of Terrassa (Barcelona) in July 1999, activists of the Catalonian neo-Nazi
group European National State participated in them and distributed a leaflet justify-
ing the ‘racism of the poor’, asking the inhabitants of one district of the town
(Ca n’Anglada) to react against ‘people of the illegal Moorish collective’. The same
thing occurred regarding several acts of racism in El Ejido (Almería), where, during
the last few years, Moroccan immigrants working on farms have suffered beatings
with iron bars at the hands of small organized groups. The party Platform 2000
has called its followers several times to this town with the intention of inciting
altercations and aggression. The rally was convoked over the Internet under the
title ‘Almería burns’, accompanied by the wish: ‘I hope that tonight Almería is
reminiscent of Ulster’. Once again, in September 2005 there were demonstrations
in Elche (Alicante), in which racist cries were heard at shoe shops and warehouses
owned by Chinese. The shoemaking sector, which had always been significant in
the area, now displays a high unemployment rate, and Spanish businessmen and
workers complain that Chinese manufacturers ride roughshod over labour, tax and
environmental laws to bring prices down while the administration fails to remedy
the situation. Having said this, it must be pointed out that while extremist right-
wing parties encourage racist acts, these almost always have the profile of spontane-
ous protests by low-income social groups. When the extreme right took the step of
organizing demonstrations against immigration starting in 2007, it failed com-
pletely. One of the most recent examples was the rally called by National Democracy
in Madrid in January 2008, under the motto ‘This is no way to live. Let us recover
Madrid’. The number of participants was fewer than 180.5
On the other hand, it must be pointed out that xenophobia is increasingly taking
the form of Islamophobia, due to the rise in the number of immigrants subscribing
to the Muslim religion, which amount to over a million, and to the 11-M terrorist
attack in Madrid perpetrated by a group of Islamic fundamentalists in March 2004.
The outbreaks of Islamophobia have taken the form of graffiti, threats and damage
wrought upon mosques, halal butcher shops and Islamic cultural centres, as has
occurred in some cities: Soria, Madrid, Valencia, Ceuta and in several Catalonian
towns. Mention must also be made of violent acts against persons, almost always
immigrants with limited economic resources, and local indigents. The perpetrators
are almost always sympathizers of the organizations cited (neo-Nazi skinheads
frequent National Alliance and National Democracy sites) and activists of illegal
white supremacy groups inciting racial hatred: Blood and Honour, which copies
the name of a British neo-Nazi association; Volksfront (People’s Front), which
in this case takes the name of a group that emerged in Oregon (USA) advocating
white supremacy; and Hammerskin, the oldest group formed in Dallas (Texas)
during the 1990s that has taken root in some European states through Hammerskin
Nation sections.
In sum, it is clear that the extreme right provokes rejection, because it is
associated with violence, marred by internal divisions and bereft of an
undisputed leader, endowed with the same chairsmatic personality as Jean Marie
Le Pen.
The emergence of extreme right-wing formations at local level

Another key element in its weakness is the fact that the greater part of the people
sympathizing with its ideas vote for another party. First, they voted for People’s
Alliance, and now the party that has emerged from its recasting, Partido Popular.
They do so because they know that voting for the extreme right means weakening
the only right-wing formation with any possibility of success.This situation has not
changed. This was what happened when Partido Popular was in opposition at the
beginning of the 1990s; also when the right was in power, between 1996 and 2004;
and once again when it returned to opposition.
This situation has given rise to two movements within the extreme right: the
movement to specialize in anti-Islamic discourse, as has happened in other European
states, and note must be made of a new electoral strategy. Since the parties of
national scope have failed, some political cadres have undertaken to create parties
at local level, centred once more on the exploitation of xenophobia. And this chan-
nel seems to present the possibility of a certain growth in some geographical areas,
specifically Catalonia and the regions of Valencia, Andalusia and the Canary Islands.
The most outstanding example of this is Plataforma per Catalunya (Platform for
Catalonia), led by Joseph Anglada, a former activist of New Force, which managed
to place councillors in several towns at the last municipal elections: El Vendrell,
Cervera and Manlleu. The party Spain 2000 is taking the same route with less
success in the region of Valencia, but the Grup d’Acció Valencianista (Valencian
Action Group) has obtained several councillors. Last, we note a very significant
recent development. At the end of 2005, Coalició Valenciana (Valencian Coalition),
a party founded in May of that year under the leadership of lawyer Juan García
Sentandreu (involved in the Spanish Phalanx and in Spain 2000), was reinforced
when a regional assembly member from the Partido Popular, Francisco J. Tomás
(the mayor of L’Ancora between 1993 and 2003), crossed over to join its ranks.
From then on, the Mixed Group of the regional parliament has been open, giving
this party a voice. As regards the composition of these parties, they are made up
of middle-class university youths, and older people who occupy the posts of
leadership and contribute the experience of several years of political activism and
frustration, as well as contacts with other domestic and foreign organizations
(Rodríguez 2004: 226–86; Gallego 2006). This includes the activism proper to the
neo-Nazi groups, a mixture of young and very young manual workers, working-
class and lower middle-class people, and the unemployed.
Conclusion
Spain forms part of the very short list of European nations where extremist right-
wing parties enjoy very little institutional representation. The extreme right has still
not recovered from its rout at the 1982 elections, a defeat capped by the break-up
of New Force, the largest of the active extreme-right organizations over the last
thirty years. Most of these groups, hostile to the entire system of standards and
values enshrined in the political system, place themselves outside it, and continually
criticize the existing order. Some of them have continued to feed on nostalgia for
Francoism and fascism in Spanish history. The newer parties have tried to design a
more contemporary programme, and nationalist discourse is based increasingly on
xenophobia and opposition to the EU and NATO. However, the revisions to their
programmes, for the time being, have yielded scarce results.
Nonetheless, as in Britain, politicians who have their own ideas about the ultra-
conservative right wing are emerging in the ranks of the principal right-wing
party. The extreme right was not able to make electoral capital out of anti-
Communist demagoguery during the political transition to democracy, because the
Communist Party played the card of moderation, and had a limited, and falling
level of representation, while the Socialist Party, which took office in 1982, has not
implemented a truly left-wing raft of policies. From another perspective, the dura-
tion of the socialist period in office until 1996 and the disintegration of the centrist
parties, eventually resulted in the consolidation of People’s Alliance, then the
Popular Party, in its role as the only possible alternative to the Socialist Party.
Moreover, to expand its electoral base and not lose votes and seats on its right, the
Popular Party admitted formulas straying from what is understood as the centre or
centre-right. More recently, when surveys revealed a vertiginous increase in the
predisposition to reject immigration, the Popular Party turned the immigration
question into one of the principal items on its political agenda during the 2008
general elections.
This makes the advance of the right-wing extremists harder, as also happens
with respect to rejecting immigration. This notwithstanding, the growth of region-
based parties specializing in rejecting immigration is foreseeable, both in the sense
of Spanish ultra-nationalism and those fighting for specific regional identity.
Notes
1 There is not enough agreement between specialists about the terminology (extreme
right, extrème droîte and Rechtsextremismus, but also radical right, neo-fascism and populist
right), about what the extreme right is, or about the classification of such parties and
movements (Rydgren 2007; Betz 1999). In this chapter neo-fascism will be proposed
as an extreme-right ideology, the most modern (up to the 1980s) and the most radical,
and with a proposal for a New State, less dependent on religion than other Spanish
extreme-right factions (always ultra-Catholic).
2 The expression Francoist bunker appears in the news media of the reformers, such as Cambio
16, in 1974–75, to refer to the neo-Francoist iron determination to keep the institutions
under firm control and, by these means, to thwart any political change after Franco’s
death.
3 Compiled by the author from the database of the Ministry of the Interior.
4 Compiled by the author from the database of the Ministry of the Interior.
5 El País, 21 January 2008, sets the figure at ‘less than 180’. El Mundo, 21 January 2008:
‘some 150 persons’.
Bibliography
Antón, J. (ed.) 2002. Orden, jerarquía y comunidad. Fascismos, dictaduras y postfascismos en la
Europa contemporánea. Madrid: Tecnos.
Betz, H.G. 1999. ‘Contemporary Right-Wing Radicalism in Europe’, Contemporary European
History, 8(2): 299–316.
Casals, X. 1998. La tentación neofascista en España. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés.
Caspistegui, F.J. 2006. ‘Los matices de la modernización bajo el franquismo’, in A. Mateos
and A. Herrerín (eds), La España del presente: De la dictadura a la democracia. Madrid:
Asociación de Historiadores del Presente, pp. 251–70.
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Foca.
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Síntesis.
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a la consolidación de la democracia (1967–1982). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
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–––– 2004. La extrema derecha europea. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
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de Hoy.
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8
LAOS AND THE GREEK EXTREME
RIGHT SINCE 1974
Antonis A. Ellinas
Introduction
The Greek extreme right has largely escaped the avalanche of academic interest on
the European extreme right.Apart from a few articles (Dimitras 1992; Kapetanyannis
1995) and some brief references in the international literature (e.g. Ignazi 2003;
Mudde 2007), little is known about the multiple extreme-right groupings that
competed in Greek elections in the past three decades (but see Kolovos 2005).
Given the voluminous literature on the extreme right, this scholarly indifference
might be somewhat surprising, but a quick glance at the electoral record aptly
explains it. For, apart from a brief electoral spurt in 1977, the extreme right has
failed to make a mark on the Greek electoral landscape, receiving less than 2 per
cent in all subsequent national legislative elections until 2004. Some of the most
authoritative studies on the extreme right have attributed the marginality of the
Greek extreme right to a developmental ‘lag’ of recent Mediterranean democracies
(Kitschelt 1995) and to the bitter memories of authoritarianism (Ignazi 2003).
Indeed, until recently these analyses went some way to accounting for the failure of
the Greek extreme right. But the recent advances of the extreme-right Popular
Orthodox Rally (LAOS) create the need to re-examine the conventional wisdom.
Set up in 2000 by a maverick politician of the conservative New Democracy
(ND), LAOS shocked the political establishment with its performance at the 2002
municipal elections, receiving 13.6 per cent in the most populous ‘super’ prefecture
of Athens-Piraeus. The party got 2.2 per cent in the legislative elections in March
2004; 4.1 per cent in the European elections in June 2004; and 3.8 per cent in
the legislative elections of September 2007 (see Table 8.1). Most observers consider
the last result to be an important breakthrough for LAOS because it gave the party
ten seats in the national legislature. Like previous political formations that sought
to challenge the dominance of ND on the right, LAOS came into being after
TABLE 8.1 Results in Greek parliamentary elections, 1974–2007 (per cent)
1974 1977 1981 1985 1989J2 1989N3 1990 1993 1996 2000 2004 2007
New Democracy 54.4 41.8 35.9 40.8 44.3 46.2 46.9 39.3 38.1 42.7 45.4 41.8
PASOK 13.6 25.3 48 45.8 39.1 40.7 38.6 46.9 41.5 43.8 40.5 38.1
Communist Party1 9.4 9.4 10.9 9.1 4.5 5.6 5.5 5.9 8.2
Coalition of the Left 13.1 11 10.3 2.9 5.1 3.2 3.3 5
National Dem. Union 1.1
National Camp 6.8
Progressives’ Party 1.7
Nat. Pol. Union (EPEN) 0.6 0.3
National Party 0.1 0.1 0.2
Party of Hellenism 0.2 0.1
Front Line 0.2
Hellenic Front 0.1
Popular Orthodox Rally 2.2 3.8
Others 21.5 16.7 3.5 3.7 3.2 2.1 4.1 6.3 9.3 4.5 2.6 3.1
Source: Greek Interior Ministry, Athens (Ελληνικó Υπoυργεío Εσωτερικών, Αθήνα).
Notes:
1 1974: EDA, KKE, KKE Interior.
2 J = June.
3 N = November.
126 Antonis A. Ellinas
George Karatzaferis’s departure from the conservatives, with which he was voted
MP in Athens in 1993, 1996 and 2000. But unlike previous ND challengers, LAOS
is directly comparable with Western European extreme-right parties sharing their
nationalist ideology and populist rhetoric as well as their anti-immigrant, xenopho-
bic and anti-Semitic appeals. LAOS also has distinctive characteristics that reflect
certain Greek particularities, like its emphasis on ‘national issues’ and, as its name
suggests, its explicit religious appeal.
The purpose of this chapter is to sketch the trajectory of the Greek extreme right
since 1974. The first section traces the evolution of the various extreme-right par-
ties that surfaced in the post-authoritarian period. These parties shared a notable
attachment to the old regime and a strong antithesis to post-1974 policies towards
the king, the communists and the junta. The second section uses primary party
documents to show the gradual transformation of the extreme right in the 1990s
through the adoption of an explicitly nationalist ideological platform. The transfor-
mation of the Greek extreme right prepared the ground for the appearance of
LAOS in the 2000s. The third section uses evidence from party documents and
from interviews with party officials to discuss the ideology of LAOS. It also uses
election and survey data to analyse the party’s electoral base. The fourth section
seeks to account for the rise of the party, examining both demand and supply fac-
tors. With regard to the demand factors, it points to the existence of favourable
socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions for the rise of the extreme right. On
the supply side, it notes that the difficulty New Democracy has in dealing with
‘national’ or national identity issues created opportunities for the rise of LAOS. It
also highlights the communication resources made available to the party by the
mainstream media. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the future of
LAOS. It asks whether the party will follow the short-lived trajectory of previous
ND challengers or whether LAOS will become a permanent force in Greek party
politics.
The post-authoritarian extreme right

As in post-war Europe, the transition of Greece to democracy in 1974 left behind
a segment of the population that was still attached to the old regime and refused
to accept the new political realities. This group, made up of ex-army officers,
ex-officials of the Greek Colonels’ regime and die-hard anti-communists, became
the core of the various extreme-right parties that appeared in the late 1970s and
1980s. They were largely led by older politicians who belonged to the pre-1967
political establishment. Rooted in the historical cleavages that shaped modern
Greek party politics, the programmatic appeals of the post-authoritarian extreme
right were largely a reaction to the policies set in place after 1974, especially those
relating to the treatment of the Communist Party, the king and ex-junta officials.
Unlike the contemporary Greek extreme right, which is more directly comparable
with the European, the parties representing the post-authoritarian extreme right
were not explicitly nationalist. Their programmes included implicit nationalist
LAOS and the Greek extreme right 127
references, but more as a reaction to leftist internationalism than as a positive

identification with the Greek nation. Their programmatic emphasis was on moral
conservatism and, to a lesser extent, on economic liberalism.
The first party that came to be associated with the post-authoritarian extreme
right was the National Democratic Union (NDU). It was formed in 1974, imme-
diately after the transition to democracy, in reaction to the way the prime minister,
Constantine Karamanlis, handled the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the communists
and ex-junta officers. Unlike most contemporary European extreme-right parties,
the party supported Greek membership in international organizations. It was criti-
cal of the decision to withdraw Greece from NATO and it supported Greece’s
entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). Moreover, the NDU
rebuffed the ‘indiscriminate persecution of large numbers of nationally-minded
citizens as well as the ruthless staining of reputations and the humiliation of the
armed and security forces’ (Dimitras 1992: 261). Like all extreme-right parties
during this period, the NDU was also morally conservative, pledging to protect the
Helleno-Christian tradition. Although the leader of the party, Petros Garoufalias,
was quickly branded as extreme-rightist by his political opponents, he insisted that
his party was against any form of dictatorship and stressed his democratic credentials.1
In the November 1974 elections, the party got only 1.1 per cent of the national
vote, as the majority of the Greek populace rallied behind Karamanlis’s conservative
New Democracy.
It was only after 1974 that reactions against prime minister Karamanlis started to
gain ground. Such reactions intensified after the Greek populace voted overwhelm-
ingly against the monarchy in 1975, to the consternation of many conservative sup-
porters. Along with Karamanlis’s legalization of the Communist Party and the
handling of Greek foreign policy, dissatisfaction with government policies led to the
creation of another extreme-right party, the National Camp.The party proved much
more successful than the NDU, presenting a considerable challenge to the ND.
Apart from its fervent anti-communism, the party pledged to free jailed junta lead-
ers, to achieve Greek membership into the EEC and to rid the economy of state
interventionism.2 The party benefited from extensive and favourable press coverage
from the Greek dailies Estia (Εστία) and Eleftheros Kosmos (Ελεύθερος Κόσμος),
which were critical of Karamanlis’s policies. Despite his efforts to brand the party as
‘neo-fascist’,3 the National Camp capitalized on popular dissatisfaction with the
government and received 6.8 per cent of the 1977 vote. According to one study, the
party was over-represented among younger males, manual workers and farmers in
small- and medium-sized towns (Tsokou et al. 1986).
By 1981, though, most of the National Camp’s members returned to the con-
servative ND. The remaining members took refuge in the Party of the Progressives,
a conservative grouping that managed to get 1.7 per cent in the national elections
and 2 per cent in the European elections, winning a seat in the European Parliament.
Like its two predecessors, the party demanded the release of jailed junta leaders and
emphasized the importance of classical and Christian education for the revival of
the Great Idea, a reference to older irredentist claims.4 Moreover, the party rejected
the government’s social and nationalization policies pledging, instead, to limit

state intervention in the economy and to strengthen private initiative. The party
was replaced by the National Political Union (NPU), a party nominally led by
the imprisoned colonel and former dictator, George Papadopoulos. Fiercely anti-
communist and socially conservative, the party centred its programmatic appeal on
the release of its jailed leader.5 Unlike its predecessors, the NPU contested several
elections, those of 1985 and June 1989, and it won a seat in the European Parliament
in 1984. But its otherwise dismal results led to mass defections from the party and
to the formation of a new one, the National Party (NP).
The transformation of the post-authoritarian extreme right

The founding of the NP in 1989 by a thousand NPU members set the stage for the
ideological shift of the Greek extreme right.6 The most distinctive characteristic of
this shift was the emphasis on nationalism. Realizing the need to broaden its appeal
beyond the backward-looking claims of its post-authoritarian predecessor, the new
extreme right discarded its earlier programmatic fixation on the release of impris-
oned junta leaders. Instead, it fully embraced nationalism as the supreme value and
the essence of its ideology. One of the most fervent advocates of this change was
the leader of NPU’s youth group (and since 2007, a LAOS MP), Makis Vorides,
who considered nationalism to be the missing link between the party and society.
As he recalls:
Towards the late 1980s, I realised the need to change the demands of our
movement [NPU]. We had demanded the release of the army officers who
were involved in the junta, the return of the King, and the rehabilitation of
the anti-communist struggle of 1945–49. All these smelled like mothballs to
me! The King himself did not want to return! More importantly, our demands
were historical, not social. I told NPU that we must move on. The legal
discussion of whether General Papadopoulos should be in prison or not is
interesting but it does not really concern the society in general. The demands
about the past blocked our future.7
The ideological shift of the extreme right was evident in the programme of the NP,
which called for the subordination of individual rights to the interest of the nation,
from where they are supposedly derived. The party asserted the right for ‘self-
determination’ for Greek populations abroad and advocated the secession of non-
liberated Greek homelands. More importantly, the party paid close attention to
developments in the rest of Europe, where extreme rightists started making signifi-
cant electoral advances by capitalizing on anti-foreigner sentiment. Following the
example of the French National Front – with the leaders of which NPU had a
long-standing relation – Greek extreme rightists gradually extended their national-
ist appeals to immigration.8 The NP introduced anti-immigrant statements into its
1990 programme, calling for the repatriation of foreign workers. Moreover, blending
the moral traditionalism of its predecessors with anti-Semitism, the party blamed
‘world Zionism’ for corrupting ‘Helleno-Christian traditions’.9
For nearly a decade, the transformation of the ideological profile of the Greek
extreme right did not alleviate its electoral misfortunes. The NP failed miserably in
the 1990 election, receiving 0.1 per cent of the vote. In the early 1990s, when the
Macedonia issue broke out, nationalists had new opportunities to revive their
waning political fortunes. Amid the nationalist fervour that swept Greece over the
Macedonia issue, Political Spring, an ND-splinter party that adopted a maximalist
position on the matter, staged a significant breakthrough in the 1993 elections.
Avoiding the traditional emphasis of the Greek extreme right on ‘Helleno-Christian’
values, the party built its credibility by insisting that the name ‘Macedonia’ is exclu-
sively Greek. But besides this issue, Political Spring failed to establish a distinctive
ideological profile and by the mid-1990s, when the salience of the issue started to
wane, the party collapsed. Its early success had revitalized extreme-rightist efforts
to gain electoral prominence. In 1994, Vorides and former members of earlier
extreme-right groupings formed the Hellenic Front, identifying themselves as
Greek nationalists and seeking to fight ‘national decadence’ and illegal immigra-
tion.10 Initially the party was inactive and it was only in 2000 that it started parti-
cipating in national elections. Along with Front Line, a party headed by the
unrepentant Holocaust-denier Kostas Plevris, the Hellenic Front received 0.2 per
cent of the vote. The two parties faced competition from Sotiris Sofianopoulos,
a former host of a local TV programme in Argolida and a fervent nationalist. Initially
founded in 1981, his Party of Hellenism called for a return to ‘Hellenic roots’ and
presented ‘Hellenism’ as a substitute of capitalism, socialism and communism.
Sofianopoulos revived the dormant party in 1996 and ran in the national legislative
elections, receiving 0.2 per cent of the vote. In 2004, the Party of Hellenism and
the Front Line joined LAOS, lured by the access Karatzaferis could grant them to
his marginal TV station, Teleasty, and to his weekly newspaper, Alpha 1. In 2005,
the Hellenic Front also joined LAOS.
LAOS
The transformation of the post-authoritarian extreme right in the 1990s laid the
foundations for the emergence of LAOS in the 2000s. Founded in September 2000
in the midst of a political row over identity cards (explained below), the party shares
many of the basic attributes of the Western European extreme right. But it also has
a number of distinct characteristics that reflect Greek particularities. Like most
extreme-right parties in Europe (see e.g. Mudde 2007), LAOS is explicitly nation-
alist, seeking to protect ‘the Nation, the Genus, the Faith, the History and the
cultural identity’ of the Greeks.11 In its most recent programme, LAOS emphasizes
the ‘Helleno-centric’ and ‘patriotic’ nature of the party. It states that its policies are
inspired by ‘the Hellenic spirit, the Hellenic values and the Hellenic culture’.12
This ethnocentric worldview is the basis for the party’s anti-immigrant, anti-
American and anti-Semitic appeal. According to LAOS, illegal immigration is the
biggest ‘wound’ in Greek society, undermining national security, increasing unem-

ployment and causing crime.13 Angrily replying to questioning about her views on
immigration, a candidate of the party for the 2004 national legislative elections put
this quite succinctly: ‘I do not want an Albanian neighbour, but a Greek one.
I prefer neighbours who will enter my house through the door at 6pm, not those
who break into my house through the windows at 3am. If this makes me a extreme-
rightist, then I am!’14 In his rhetorical outbursts, Karatzaferis reinforces such xeno-
phobic claims by asking: ‘Compare and choose: a Greece of Greek Christians?15
Or, a Greece of Albanian illegal immigrants?’16 The anti-immigrant profile of the
party has been bolstered by the absorption of the Hellenic Front in 2005, which
was the most vocal opponent of immigration before it merged with LAOS.
Nevertheless, recent years have witnessed increased moderation from the party on
the issue, in part because immigration has stayed on the sidelines of the mainstream
debate. In its 2007 programme, the party rejects ‘the solution of the multi-cultural
society’ and the welfare policies that ‘benefit Muslims and Gypsies by allowing
them to live without the need to work’. LAOS argues that Greece should use its
cultural heritage and Greek education to make immigrant children ‘become Greeks
in soul and in spirit’.17
The party is not only against immigration but it is also suspicious of foreign
powers, especially the United States. Its first programme maintains that the ‘party
was founded because foreign powers want to impose a new situation on our people,
foreign and extraneous to the traditions of our race’. Seeking to tap into widespread
anti-American sentiments among the Greek populace, Karatzaferis accuses the two
main parties of ‘slave-like’ behaviour towards the US, which is leading the country
‘into a situation that is going to be worse than Nazism’. Not surprisingly, the party
is sympathetic to those who stand against the US. Karatzaferis boasts of having a
picture of Fidel Castro in his office and to being an admirer of Hugo Chavez. He
is also sympathetic to China, ‘the only power that can pose a credible bulwark
against American hegemony’.18 As he reassures his followers, ‘I have not suddenly
become a Communist but Fidel is the symbol of resistance against the Americans,
and the Americans are those plotting everything against Greece.’19
The party’s suspicion of Western powers is connected with its fervent anti-
Semitism. Its proclamation asks the party’s supporters to say ‘no’ to ‘the puppets of
foreign and domestic Zionism’. Such views are consistent with those of its leader,
who in 1996, as an ND MP, tabled a formal question in the Greek parliament about
the Jewish descent of the deputy foreign minister, Christos Rozakis. In May 2000,
he claimed on his TV show: ‘We live in a country run by Jews. The prime minister
is of Jewish descent. His grandfather was Aaron Avouris. George Papandreou has
his grandmother, Mineiko, who was a Polish Jew. The entire government is run by
Jews.’20 In private discussions, members of the party go even further than their
leader: ‘Six million deaths. This is overblown! Hitler, a Jew, surely persecuted the
Jews. But such numbers are exaggerated.’21
While the primacy of nationalism in the party’s programme makes it comparable
with the Western European extreme right, LAOS has a number of characteristics
that reflect Greek particularities and distinguish it from most of its Western European
counterparts. The first distinction relates to its explicit religious appeal. Given the
historical association between the Greek nation and Greek religion, ‘faith in
Orthodoxy’ constitutes one of the ‘founding stones’ of the party’s ideology. In his
televised speeches and public appearances, Karatzaferis makes frequent reference to
Orthodoxy and to the Greek Church, which he considers the ‘mother of the
modern Greek state’.22 He is known to have had a close relationship with the late
Greek Archbishop Christodoulos, with whom he agreed on issues like the name
of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and the revision
of history books. Due to the status and role of the Church in Greek politics,
Karatzaferis often uses this relationship as a source of legitimacy for his ideas. While
setting LAOS apart from other Western European extreme-right parties, the
religious appeal brings LAOS closer to the post-authoritarian extreme right’s pre-
occupation with Helleno-Christian values. The second distinction relates to the
emphasis LAOS places on foreign policy, especially on relations with Turkey,
Albania and FYROM. Tension with each of these countries has been a source of
nationalist mobilization in the 1970s and 1980s (with Turkey over Cyprus and the
Aegean) and in the 1990s and 2000s (with Albania over the rights of the Greek
minority and with FYROM over its name). The party seeks to capitalize on the
high public resonance of these issues by holding hard-line positions on foreign
policy, especially over Cyprus and Macedonia. In recent years, these ‘national’
issues have become the signature issues of LAOS, putting a lot of pressure on the
conservative ND to take them into consideration.
Like most of its European counterparts, LAOS combines its nationalist ideology
with strong populist and anti-systemic appeals. The party rejects the term extreme
right, insisting that the placement of parties on a left–right scale is outdated. When
asked, Karatzaferis rarely misses an opportunity to stress that ‘the party is on the
Right on national issues and on the Left on social issues’.23 LAOS makes a signifi-
cant effort to appeal to leftist voters, especially low-earning workers, through
fierce populist attacks on globalization, foreign chains and commercial banks. The
emphasis the party places on social issues is sometimes reminiscent of left-wing or
anti-plutocratic populism. In his first appearance in the Greek parliament in
September 2007, the leader of LAOS asked the government to combat banks,
which record the ‘biggest profits’ in Europe. ‘This is not the product of labour but
the product of theft. Bankers are thieves, Mr Prime Minister, and you must send
the attorney in to check on them,’ he said.24
Like many European extreme-right parties, the party supplements these populist
outbursts with strong anti-systemic rhetoric. The party’s 2007 programme begins
with a call for the ‘overthrow of the rotten establishment that oppresses our coun-
try, leading it to gradual de-Hellenization and enslavement’.25 Moreover, the party
programme refers to the form of Greek government as ‘prime-ministerial dictator-
ship’ and calls for various forms of direct democracy.26 The 2007 programme also
proposes setting up an institutional mechanism for determining ‘political fraud’.
Through this mechanism the party wants to ensure that party politicians meet
their electoral promises and intends to penalize them with the retraction of their
parliamentary status if they do not.
Electorate
As is the case with many of the smaller Western European extreme-right parties,
the limited size of LAOS’s electorate makes it difficult to analyse its social
base. Some evidence about the composition of LAOS’s electorate comes from the
geographical distribution of its votes in the 2007 legislative elections. The party
managed to increase its share of the vote in all prefectures, an indication of its
stable growth across the entire country. LAOS exceeded its national average of
3.8 per cent in twelve out of the fifty-six prefectures, receiving more than
5 per cent in the first and second prefectures of Salonica, Piraeus and Athens, as
well as in Greater Attica. In these seven urban prefectures the party won eight of
its ten seats, and more than half of its 271,763 votes. The party underperformed in
Crete and in parts of Western Greece. The overproportionate support for LAOS
in urban prefectures is comparable with that for Western European extreme-right
parties but contrasts with the 1977 results of the National Camp, which had received
less than its national average in all seven prefectures.
An exit poll of 7,498 voters at the September 2007 elections provides further
analytical insights into LAOS’s voter profile (see Table 8.2). According to the
poll, the electorate of LAOS bears significant similarities with the general profile
of extreme-right voters in Western Europe (Betz 1994; Betz and Immerfall
1998; Kitschelt 1995; Norris 2005). LAOS’s voters are predominantly young
males, albeit more educated than their Western European counterparts. In terms
of their occupational profile, there is an over-representation in LAOS’s constitu-
ents among small-business owners, entrepreneurs, the self-employed and private
sector employees and an under-representation among farmers, the first-time unem-
ployed and retirees. Moreover, LAOS supporters are over-represented among
late-deciders and among those placing themselves on the right of the left–right
spectrum or dismissing left–right categories as meaningless. Like the other two
small parliamentary parties, the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and the Coalition
of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), LAOS is grossly over-represented among protest
voters.
Like most extreme-right parties at a comparable stage of development, the
advent of LAOS in the 2007 elections harmed the moderate right more than any
other political party. According to this exit poll, nearly 40 per cent of those who
voted for the party in the 2007 elections had voted for the conservative New
Democracy in the previous legislative elections, held in March 2004. Another
11 per cent had voted for the socialist PASOK and 17 per cent had not voted or
had voted for the rest of the parties. Interestingly, nearly a third of LAOS’s voters
in the 2007 elections had also voted for the party in the 2004 elections. Indeed,
additional data show that the party kept 74 per cent of its 2004 voters, losing most
of the rest to New Democracy. While this figure suggests that the party might be
TABLE 8.2 Social profile of LAOS voters (N = 273)
Sex %
Male 5
Female 3
Age group
18–24 3
25–34 6
35–44 5
45–54 4
55–64 2
Over 65 2
Occupation
Employers/Entrepreneurs 5
Farming 2
Self-employed 5
Small-business owners 9
Public sector employees 4
Private sector employees 5
First-time unemployed 2
Unemployed (worked before) 4
Housewives 3
Public sector retirees 3
Private sector retirees 2
College students 3
Actual result 3.8
Notes: Margin of error was 1.1%.
Total sample: 7,498 voters.
Source: Public Issue/VPRC, exit poll, 16.09.07.
gaining a stable electorate, the percentage of loyal voters is lower than that of the
three biggest parties.
The rise of LAOS: possible explanations

In line with the now voluminous literature on this topic, an attempt to under-
stand this phenomenon needs to begin with a consideration of demand factors
(e.g. Kitschelt 1995; Mudde 2007; Norris 2005). This necessitates an examination
of the basic socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions that are often thought
to affect electoral behaviour and voter support for the extreme right. In the case of
Greece, there are a number of such conditions. In repeated polls, for example,
Greece scores the highest in aggregate measures of xenophobia in Western
Europe. According to Eurobarometer, almost seven out of ten Greeks think that
immigrants are a threat to their way of life, by far the biggest percentage among the
fifteen older member states of the European Union.27 Moreover, 11.7 per cent of
Greeks think that a dictatorship could be preferable to a democracy while another

7.7 per cent think that it does not matter whether there is a democracy or a dicta-
torship (Vernardakis 2000: 317). In combination with one of the worst corruption
records in Europe, this mix of xenophobic, nationalist and authoritarian attitudes
among the populace would seem to feed extreme-right support. Socio-cultural
attitudes aside, Greece has also had socio-economic conditions that are thought to
favour the rise of such parties. Until recent years, Greece had stagnant growth, high
inflation and one of the highest unemployment levels in Europe. Since the late
1980s, the country has also witnessed a sudden inflow of immigrants that now make
up more than 8 per cent of the population.28 For those viewing voting behaviour
as a function of economic interests, the combination of high unemployment and
high immigration would seem to make Greece an ideal candidate for extreme-right
advances.
Socio-cultural attitudes and economic conditions provide the structural setting
for the recent advances of the extreme right, but the electoral spurt of LAOS
cannot be fully understood without a consideration of the broader political envi-
ronment within which the party operates. Much of the work on the extreme right
considers the availability of opportunities in this environment to be an important
determinant of extreme-right performance (e.g. Kitschelt 1995). In Greece, the
availability of such opportunities relates to the difficulty of the conservative party in
effectively addressing the signature issues of the extreme right. Since the early
2000s, there have been a number of such issues. One of the most notable ones was
the political row in 2000 over the removal of references to religious affiliation from
national identity cards. Although the conservatives initially supported Church
mobilizations against this, by the 2002 local elections, LAOS managed to present
itself as the most fervent defender of the Church’s position (Ellinas 2007).The party
was rewarded with 13.6 per cent of the vote in the closely watched election of the
Athens-Piraeus super-prefecture.
The return of ND to government in 2004 after eleven years in opposition pro-
vided further opportunities for the electoral growth of the extreme right. While in
opposition, the conservatives had more flexibility to manoeuvre on the issues that
feed extreme-right support. But once in government, they became compelled to
balance their electoral motivations with their governmental responsibilities. The
tension between the two became obvious only weeks after the new government
took office, in April 2004, over a UN plan for the reunification of Cyprus. Whereas
the socialist PASOK was unambiguously supportive of the plan, ND avoided taking
a clear stance on the issue, leaving LAOS as the most vocal defender of a ‘patriotic’
no to the UN proposal, only a few weeks before the European elections.29 Another
issue was the resurfacing of a dispute with the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia (FYROM) in 2007 over its claim to what the Greeks consider to be
an integral aspect of their national identity, the name ‘Macedonia’. In fear of
international isolation, the conservative government sought to avoid a hard-line
stance against its northern neighbour, stressing the need for a ‘realistic’ solution to
the problem and preparing the ground for political compromise. This left LAOS
defending a maximalist position with a relatively high public resonance, especially

in northern Greece. The party’s 2007 programme insisted that the new name
should not include the word ‘Macedonia’ at all and that Greece should veto
FYROM’s EU accession if this condition is not met.30
The most important opportunity for the party was probably the political contro-
versy that broke out in 2007 about a new history textbook for twelve-year-olds.
Introduced in September 2006, the new textbook sought to eliminate the national-
ist overtones of the previous textbook, especially in its references to Turkey. But
the textbook soon came under fierce attack by the Church and by some conserva-
tives for minimizing the suffering incurred by the Greeks under the Ottomans and
during the flight of the Greeks from Smyrna (modern-day Izmir, in Turkey) in
1922. The critics considered the revisionist views presented in the textbook to be
unpatriotic and pointed to historical inaccuracies, questioning the credentials of its
authors. The issue divided the conservative camp between those who demanded
the immediate withdrawal of the book and those who rejected this on institutional
grounds. Among the former were prominent members of New Democracy, like
the Salonica prefect, Panayiotis Psomiades and the ND MP, Yiannis Ioannides.
Responding to this criticism, the conservative government asked various academic
bodies to send comments to the drafters of the textbook to be taken into consid-
eration for future revisions. But the ND education minister, Marieta Yiannakou,
refused to give in to pressures for the withdrawal of the book. Her insistence gained
Yiannakou sympathy among the left but aggravated certain members of her party,
who felt that the government was supportive of an unpatriotic view of history. The
ambivalence of the conservative government over the textbook issue allowed
LAOS to emerge as the sole defender of an unequivocal demand to withdraw
the book.
The difficulty ND had in dealing with these issues presented opportunities for
the rise of LAOS, but the party might not have been able to capitalize on these
opportunities and enter the political system had it not enjoyed excessive media
exposure. As mentioned before, LAOS has had a significant advantage compared to
previous extreme-right groupings in Greece, because its leader owns a national,
albeit minor, TV channel that he uses to give the party wider visibility than its
finances could otherwise afford or its thin organization would otherwise allow.
More importantly, though, the party received considerable exposure from the
mainstream media, especially during 2007, when the textbook and Macedonia
issues became salient. So much was the publicity granted to LAOS, that it raised
suspicion among political commentators that the party was patronized by socialist-
controlled media. This suspicion was later vocalized and reinforced by the Greek
Communists who accused the Socialists of ‘directing’ certain media to give LAOS
over-proportionate exposure.31 While the Communists did not present any evi-
dence to substantiate these claims at the time, subsequent data show that the national
media gave much more attention to LAOS than its electoral standing would have
justified. In the last month of the 2007 legislative elections, Karatzaferis received
9 per cent of all TV and radio references to political leaders; in the last week,
Karatzaferis got 11 per cent of all references, more than the leaders of SYRIZA and
KKE (Media Metrix 2007).
The future of the Greek extreme right

The electoral breakthrough of LAOS in 2007 can potentially transform the
Greek political landscape. In the past few decades, parties like LAOS have consoli-
dated their presence across a number of European countries, changing the basic
contours of the political discourse and, in some cases, bringing about important
policy changes. Will the extreme right become a permanent and sizeable force
in Greek party politics like the Austrian FPÖ, the Flemish Vlaams Belang and
the French Front National? Or will its recent breakthrough prove as short-lived as
that of the German Republikaner, the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List and the Swedish
New Democracy? There are a number of factors suggesting that LAOS might
prove to be a transient phenomenon, and disappear from the electoral map
as quickly as it appeared. A number of other factors, though, suggest the exact
opposite: that LAOS will consolidate its presence in Greek politics and become a
credible contender for the conservative vote. It is worth considering both sets of
factors.
Greek electoral history may be instructive for the future trajectory of the Greek
extreme right. The two major formations that came to challenge the dominance of
ND on the right – the National Camp in 1977 and the Political Spring in 1993 –
failed to sustain their initial bases of support and quickly collapsed. After its notable
1977 breakthrough, the leadership of the National Camp was quickly co-opted by
the conservatives and joined the ND ticket for the 1981 elections (Kapetanyannis
1995: 136). Similarly, the advances of Political Spring in the 1993 legislative elec-
tions and in the 1994 European elections proved to be ephemeral. By the 1996
legislative elections, party support collapsed sharply along with the salience of the
single issue that brought the Political Spring to existence – the Macedonia issue. On
both occasions, ND was able to recapture the political space and win back most of
the constituencies lost to the two splinter parties. In line with this previous experi-
ence, it is tempting to view LAOS as a temporary party that is likely to be absorbed
by ND in the coming years, just as the National Camp and the Political Spring
were. Like these parties, LAOS still lacks a solid organizational structure that would
help it sustain and extend its initial electoral gains, and it continues to rely on the
persona and the communication resources of its leader. So far, the party has relied
largely on the media to communicate with voters, setting aside the important task
of organizational growth. Seven years after its foundation the party still lacks the
necessary structures to mobilize voters and to disseminate its newly gained resources.
It also lacks the mechanisms to resolve intra-party conflicts. Unless the party builds
its organizational capacity it will become vulnerable to conservative co-optation
strategies and fall victim to infighting between its radical and more moderate mem-
bers. Without solid organizational roots LAOS might simply replicate the short
trajectory of other ND challengers.
While recent history points to the ephemeral nature of efforts to challenge ND’s
dominance of the right, a number of reasons suggest that LAOS might prove to be
more enduring than its predecessors. The first is ideological. Unlike previous ND
challengers, LAOS has a comprehensive nationalist worldview through which it
filters its programmatic positions on both foreign policy and domestic issues. This
has helped the party establish credibility on ‘national’ and ‘national identity’ issues
that would make it hard for ND to trespass onto its programmatic territory.
Nationalism is also the unifying theme that currently connects its somewhat
heterogeneous parliamentary group. The second factor relates to the favourable
opportunity structure LAOS confronts. The re-election of New Democracy in
government with a very thin majority seriously hampers its capacity to manoeuvre
in the competitive space and to recapture the electorate lost to LAOS in the 2007
elections. As long as ND stays in government, it will find it difficult to effectively
address the signature issues of LAOS, without alienating its more moderate con-
stituencies or, in the case of Macedonia, its international allies. Unlike ND, LAOS
can move freely in the competitive space and take tougher programmatic stances
than the government on ‘national’ and ‘national identity’ issues. Moreover, the
party has the potential to become a net beneficiary from the popular dissatisfaction
with the government and from the disarray of socialist opposition. A third factor
relates to its growing visibility in the mainstream media. This visibility might
become a serious threat for the mainstream parties should LAOS choose to put
immigration on the political agenda. Due to the high public resonance of the issue
and widespread Greek xenophobia, this issue can provide the basis for the party’s
future support.
Notes
1 Εθνική Δημοκρατική Ένωση, ‘Εργασία – Εθνική ισχύς – ευημερία οι πρωταρχικοί
στόχοι της Ε.Δ.Ε.’, Ελεύθερος Κόσμος, 23 Οκτωβρίου 1974, σελ. 3, 7. [National
Democratic Union, ‘Employment – National power – Prosperity, the primary aims of
NDU’, Eleftheros Kosmos, 23 October 1974, pp. 3, 7.] I am thankful to Yiannis Kolovos
for making available various documents of some extreme-right parties of the post-
authoritarian period.
2 Εθνική Παράταξη, ‘Διακήρυξις της Εθνικής Παρατάξεως προς τον Ελληνικόν Λαόν’,
Ελεύθερος Κόσμος, 9 Οκτωβρίου 1977, σελ. 3. [National Camp, ‘Proclamation of the
National Camp to the Greek People’, Eleftheros Kosmos, 9 October 1977, p. 3.]
3 ‘Καραμανλής: ΝεοφασιστικόΚόμμαη ‘ΕθνικήΠαράταξη’, Ελευθεροτυπία, 22 Οκτωβρίου
1977. [‘Karamanlis: The National Camp is a Neo-Fascist Party’, Eleftherotypia, 22 October
1977.]
4 Κόμμα Προοδευτικών, ‘Αι Θέσεις της Πολιτικής του κ. Σπύρου Μαρκεζίνη και η
Ανασύστασις του Κόμματος των Προοδευτικών’, Εστία, 5 Νοεμβρίου 1979, σελ. 6.
[Estia, Party of the Progressives, ‘The political positions of Mr Spyros Markezines and the
reconstitution of the Party of the Progressives’, Estia, 5 November 1979, p. 6.]
5 ΕΠΕΝ,‘ΗΠολιτικήμαςΠρόταση: ΕΠΕΝ, ΈφτασεηΏρα!’, 1989. [(Party programme) EPEN,
‘Our political programme: EPEN, The time has arrived!’ 1989.]
6 Even before the appearance of the National Party, the United Nationalist
Movement attempted to make nationalism the most distinctive characteristic of the
Greek extreme right. The party clearly identifies itself as nationalist and seeks to turn
Greece into a nationalist state through revolutionary action. ΕνιαίοΕθνικιστικόΚίνημα,

‘ΕΝΕΚ: 15 ΙδεολογικέςΑρχές’, άγνωστηημερομηνία. [(Party programme) ENEK: 15
‘Ideological Principles’, n.d.]
7 Interview with author, Athens, February 2004.
8 Several interviews with leaders of the National Party’s successor party, the Hellenic
Front, Athens, February–March 2004.
9 Εθνικό Κόμμα, ‘Εθνικό Κόμμα: Πολιτικές Αρχές’. [(Party programme) National Party,
‘National Party: Political Principles’, n.d., p. 2.]
10 Ελληνικό Μέτωπο, ‘Πολιτικό Πρόγραμμα: Αποφάσεις Ιδρυτικού Συνεδρίου’, Αθήνα,
9–10 Απριλίου 1994. (Party programme.) The party was initially dormant but began
functioning in 1997.
11 Programme of the Popular Orthodox Party (2001) LAOS, ‘For a Greece that belongs to
the Greeks’, Athens: LAOS (in Greek).
12 LAOS, ‘Framework of Positions’, August 2007, Athens, pp. 3, 7 (in Greek).
13 Ibid.
14 Interview #5, Athens, February 2004.
15 This was one of the slogans of the Greek junta (Ελλάς Ελλήνων Χριστιανών).
16 http://www.iospress.gr/ios2002/ios20021020a.htm (accessed 28 September 2007).
Ios is a group of investigative journalists who have written extensively on the extreme
right and who have been interviewed by the author.
17 LAOS, ‘Framework of Positions’, August 2007, Athens (in Greek).
18 Discussion with the author, Limassol, Cyprus, July 2006.
19 Λ. Σταυρόπουλος, ‘Ο ‘κόκκινος’ κ. Καρατζαφέρης’, Το Βήµα, 4 Νοεμβρίου 2007, σελ.
Α22. [L. Stravropoulos, ‘The “red” Mr Karatzaferis’, To Vima, 4 November 2007, p. A22.]
20 Ιός, ‘Ο Αγών του’, Ελευθεροτυπία, 20 Οκτωβρίου 2002, Ios, ‘His struggles,’ Eleftherotypia;
20 October 2002.
21 Interviews in the party’s office with a high-ranking party official and a self-identified
historian, Athens, February 2004.
22 Programme of LAOS, 2001.
23 Meeting with the author, February 2004, Athens.
24 Official Parliamentary Minutes, ‘Continuation of the discussion on the Programmatic
Statements of the Government’, 29 September 2007, p. 195 (in Greek).
25 LAOS, ‘Framework of Positions’, August 2007, Athens, p. 2 (in Greek).
26 Ibid., p. 13.
27 For example, Eurobarometer 199, Autumn 2003, p. 28.
28 Eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_
PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006_
MONTH_05/3-19052006-EN-AP.PDF (accessed 5 March 2008).
29 The Greek communists also rejected the UN proposal, albeit for different – anti-
American, anti-imperial – reasons. On the day of the referenda in Cyprus over the UN
plan, the official newspaper of LAOS, Alpha 1, proclaimed that the (Greek) Cypriots
‘stamp with their NO the refusal of Hellenism to unconditionally surrender to the plans
and the demands of Americano-Zionists’. See ‘Greeks are still in existence’, Alpha 1,
p. 1 (‘Υπάρχουν ακόμα Έλληνες’, Άλφα 1, σελ. 1).
30 LAOS, ‘Framework of Positions’, August 2007, Athens, pp. 21–22 (in Greek).
31 For example, ‘Ενίσχυση ΛΑΟΣ από ΠΑΣΟΚ καταγγέλλει η κ. Παπαρήγα’, Καθημερινή,
6 Ιουνίου 2007. [‘Papariga accuses PASOK of Reinforcing LAOS’.]
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Press.
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and Movements in Established Democracies. London: Macmillan.
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Dimitras, P. 1992. ‘Greece: The Virtual Absence of an Extreme Right’, in P. Hainsworth
(ed.), The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA. London: Pinter, pp. 146–68.
Ellinas, A. 2007. ‘Playing the Nationalist Card: Mainstream Parties, Mass Media and Extreme
Right Breakthroughs in Western Europe’, PhD dissertation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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11(2): 1–18.
PART III
The Extreme Right in a
Post-Communism Context
9
THE EXTREME RIGHT IN CROATIA,
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA AND SERBIA1
Věra Stojarová
Introduction
With the rise of extreme-right parties in Western Europe and the lifting of the Iron
Curtain, researchers turned their focus to the countries in the former Eastern bloc.
In so doing, a major question arose: is the extreme-right family in Eastern Europe
comparable to that in Western Europe, and in particular, does it have similar
ideologies? This chapter is an introduction for research into extreme-right parties
in the Balkans and seeks to chart the core issues and problems surrounding research
into the extreme-right party family in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia.2
Debates about the nature of extreme-right parties and controversies about what
exactly constitutes their core ideological features have been examined time and
time again (Betz 1994; Ignazi 1995, 2003; Merkl and Weinberg 1997; Ramet
1999). In order to ascertain to what extent parties on the right of the right in
the selected Western Balkan party systems since 2001 can be defined as extreme-
right parties, this chapter will use the minimalist framework defined by Mudde
(2000b: 179). In this framework, the ideological core of the extreme right rests on
a combination of strong state, welfare chauvinism, xenophobia and nationalism.
This latter feature is particularly problematic within the Balkans, as the delineation
between nationalism and ethno-regionalism is difficult to ascertain. Mudde claims
that ‘regionalism is best limited to groups that call for more autonomy of a region
within a larger state structure’ while interpreting ‘nationalism in a holistic way
including both civic and ethnic elements’ (Mudde 2007: 29, 17). For the purposes
of this study, we understand nationalism in terms of internal homogenization
(by assimilation, genocide, expulsion, separatism) as well as external exclusivity
(bringing all members of the nation within the territory of the state by means of
territorial expansion or, e.g., population transfer).
144 Věra Stojarová
One of the major issues when assessing the nature of parties in the Balkans is the
fact that the party system is not yet consolidated: parties frequently emerge and
disappear. Further, the nation-building process is not yet complete in this region.
It is equally difficult to associate nationalism exclusively to the right of the right. In
Serbia, for instance, the war against NATO means that nationalism, understood as
staunch opposition to Euro-Atlantist integration, permeates the entire political
spectrum. Finally, the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo have had
an adverse impact on economic stability and living standards, and socio-economic
arguments developed by mainstream parties are not clearly different from those
found on both extremes of the political spectrum. As such, it is also difficult to
distinguish clearly between parties of the left and the right.
The extreme right in Croatia

Even though more than a decade has passed since the end of the war in Croatia, the
post-war setting and inter-ethnic relations are far from being ‘normalized’. A more
or less stable two-party system has emerged, structured around the polar opposition
between the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ, Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica)
and the Social Democratic Party (SDP, Socijaldemokratska Partija Hrvatske) and
their respective minor allies. There seems to be a consensus about the future orien-
tation of Croatia with the relevant parties supporting rapid integration into the
EU. The leading post-war party, HDZ,3 has transformed itself, striving to become
a standard centre-right conservative party. Even though HDZ wishes to appear as
pro-European and pro-democratic, it retains some relics of its nationalist past.4
Further to the right, the Croatian extreme right is clearly fragmented, between
the Croatian Party of the Right (HSP), the Croatian Bloc (HB) and many
other extreme-right parties which remain without political representation in
parliament. Some core themes cut across the Croatian right from the HDZ to the
most extreme parties, with varying degrees of salience: the desire to build a Greater
Croatia, Tuđmanism, the dignity of the patriotic war, a negative stance towards
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), anti-
Serbianism, a negative stance towards the EU and NATO, a positive stance towards
the Independent Croatian State (NDH, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska). Most parties
also promote compulsory military service (see Table 9.1).
Some issues recur on a regular basis in Croatian extreme-right discourse, in par-
ticular the importance attached to a Croatian ethnic space and the protection of
Croats abroad. The most extreme parties5 would like to see the unification of
Croatian ethnic space and creation of a Greater Croatia, while other parties seek to
promote equality of rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina between Croats, Serbs and
Bosniaks, that is, their right to form their own political entity – a Croatian republic
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Of course, most parties demonstrate strong anti-Serbian
feelings. Another controversial issue on the Croatian political scene is attitudes
towards the first president of independent Croatia – Franjo Tuđman. The parties of
the right admire him, since he succeeded in gaining independence for Croatia and
TABLE 9.1 The Croatian extreme right – specific features
HDZ HSP∗ HSP-1861 HČSP HIP HB HP-HPP HPB
Greater Croatia − + Croats in BiH as + Protection of + + Protection of

equal entity Croats in BH Croats in BiH
Tuđmanism + + anti + + + + +
Dignity of Patriotic War + + + + + + + +
Negative towards ICTY − + + + Prosecution + Depolitisation + +
vs.Tribunal
Anti-Serbianism − + + + N + + N
Negative towards EU − + Referendum Referendum − − + +
Negative towards NATO − + Referendum Referendum − + + +
Positive towards NDH − + − + NK NK NK −
Compulsory military service + + − + NK NK − −
Abbreviations: HDZ, Croatian Democratic Union; HSP, Croatian Party of Right; HSP-1861, Croatian Party of Right 1861; HČSP, the Croatian Pure Party of Right;
HIP, Croatian True Revival; HB, Croatian Bloc; HP-HPP, Croatian Rightists – Croatian Rightist Movement; HPB, Croatian Rightist Brotherhood.
Notes:
+ party demonstrates the feature.
– party does not demonstrate the feature.
N not an issue for the party.
NK not known.
∗ The HSP used to be more radical. Currently it is moving more to the centre, abandoning the NDH, Ustasha ideology and other ultra-nationalistic features. Some
statements give clear signals the party is reconsidering its position towards integration with the EU.
won the patriotic war; on the left, he is sometimes denounced as authoritarian and
lacking in respect for the Serbian minority.The only party on the right which stands
in opposition to Tuđmanism is HSP-1861. Whereas the so-called Patriotic War has
become a controversial issue for society at large, for the extreme-right parties their
stance is clear: one must protect the dignity of the war and stand against the ICTY,
a political institution. The stance of the parties towards the EU is becoming less
negative, since such parties tend to promote EU membership, subject to approval in
a referendum, recognition of the right to withdraw, and a guarantee that Croatian
national values will be protected.The position of the parties towards NATO is more
negative, either demanding a referendum on NATO membership or demanding
military neutrality for the country.
Among all existing extreme-right parties, the case of the Croatian Party of the
Right (HSP) is interesting in many respects. It is the only extreme party which
regularly has representation in the Croatian Assembly. In the early 1990s, it belonged
to the extreme end of the extreme right, but it has recently attempted to modernize
its image. Its former vice chairman and current leader, Anto Đapić, was one of those
who organized the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS, Hrvatske Obrambene Snage),
one of the first militia formed at the onset of the Croatian war, later absorbed into
the Croatian army. The party has around 15,000 members (Buljan and
Duka 2003: 52) and traditionally its electoral base has consisted of voters from
areas impacted by the war, along with neo-Nazis. Party members used to present
themselves with black shirts, openly wearing Ustash symbols and commemorating
the Ustashi leader, Ante Pavelić, once leader of NDH, the puppet state set up by
Hitler and Mussolini in 1941 after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was attacked by
the Axis forces. Typically infused with nostalgia for a fascist past, the party has
nevertheless attempted to change its image and reframe its discourse in a way
which would indicate a desire to appear as a modern conservative party, including,
sporadically, pro-European stances.
After approximately 2000, the party started to reform and presented itself as a
modern (sometimes even pro-European) conservative right-wing party similar
to the CSU in Germany. In place of controversial issues like the ICTY and the
patriotic war, the party began to deal with legal issues of state, protection of
the environment, pollution of the Adriatic and the use of genetically modified
food (Pleše 2003). Ecological topics were the domain of party vice-chairman
Tonči Tadić, a nuclear physicist who had studied in Japan and was considered
to be the chief specialist in these areas. However, Tonči Tadić left the party and with
the election of a new chairman in 2009, the party reverted to a focus on
issues to do with nationalism – for example, the Vukovar declaration (on the role
of Serbs in Croatia) or the Open Letter to the Prime Minister (on the role of
Serbia in the international community) (HSP 2010a; HSP 2010b).
The modernization process is, of course, ambiguous and is a source of intra-
party tensions. Some party representatives may present themselves as pro-European,
but the programme still contains anti-European components,6 and there is certainly
no support for European supranationalism. If the party has abandoned its revisionist
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia 147
stance on the Ustash past, the HSP still presents itself as an ethno-nationalist party,
even if its earlier external exclusive nationalism – seeking the inclusion of all mem-
bers of the Croatian ethnic community within a single Croatian State Party – is not
as central as in the past. Xenophobia, mainly directed against the Serbs, remains a
core feature of the party. The HSP leadership may today be interested in promoting
a more moderate image: having won eight seats in the 2003 parliamentary elections,
the HSP parliamentary representation was reduced to one seat in 2007.There would
be a strategic advantage in presenting a more moderate image and promoting a
series of populist policies with a wider electoral appeal. As such, slogans and policies
aimed at the creation of a Greater Croatia and the expulsion or assimilation of
the ethnic Serbs have been toned down, but the HSP’s right-wing credentials
are maintained through its support for welfare-chauvinist policies, tough law and
order policies, and recurrent outbursts of nationalism against organizations such
as the EU or NATO, which are perceived to undermine Croatian national
interests.
Most of the features used by Mudde to define an extreme-right party are to
be found within the HSP, with a varying degree of intensity. Yet, not only
are these features changing but they are also often contradictory: it would be
hard to find a perfect ideological coherence in the HSP programme, whose contra-
dictions reflect internal divisions. It is unclear which tendency within the party
will win: the leadership is now distancing itself from nationalism and xenophobia
and is looking for different issues, such as ecology. As such, the HSP reflects
tensions, in terms of both ideology and electoral strategy, common to most
extreme-right parties, in Croatia and beyond. What is clear it that today the
Croatian extreme right remains electorally marginal with only one party (HSP)
represented in parliament.
The extreme right in Bosnia-Herzegovina

It is fairly difficult to assess the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH) since the
main parties which were present at the outbreak of war are still in power and they
are still based on ethnic and national cleavages. The political system is very compli-
cated and elections take place almost every year. The Party of Democratic Action
(SDA, Stranka Demokratske Akcije) is a Bosniak party which has been striving for
a single, united BH. Even though the party claims to be open to other nationalities
(e.g. the electoral slogan ‘we are the party for beer drinkers too’), its electoral base
is made up mainly of Bosniaks. The party defines itself as a party of the centre,
aiming to create a national identity which would be at a higher level than,
but complementary to, the Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak identities (SDA 2005).
The Croatian Democratic Movement BiH (HDZ BiH, Hrvatska Demokratska
Zajednica BiH) seeks to revise the Dayton Peace Agreement and to establish a
new constitution for BH, since HDZ BiH disagrees with its present federal arrange-
ments which, in its view, tend to marginalize Croatians to the advantage of Serbs
and Bosniaks.7 The party seeks integration into the EU and NATO; it further
wishes to have special relations with Croatia and would like to see dual citizenship
for inhabitants of these two countries. The party declares that it is open to anyone
regardless of ethnicity (HDZ BiH 2007). Finally, the Serbian Democratic Party
(SDS BiH, Srpska Demokratska Stranka BiH) defines itself as a Serbian national
party. Due to its staunch nationalism, the party has obstructed the peace process in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and has continually dreamt of integrating Republika Srpska
(RS) with Serbia. Its recent programme underlines the special relationship between
Republika Srpska and Serbia, as well as the right of RS to self-determination, once
the Dayton Peace Agreement reaches its term (SDS 2007). As the state-building
process in Bosnia-Herzegovina is not yet finished, most of these Political Parties
include strong nationalist features, and seem to be at odds with the mainstream par-
ties,8 which are seeking to establish a multi-ethnic Bosnia and do not promote
either internal homogenization or external exclusivity.
Within the Bosniak context, the HDZ BiH is the main representative of the
Croatian ethnic but is surrounded by a series of small parties, often born out of
earlier ideological and strategic splits.9 If the vast majority of them display national-
ist and xenophobic features, nearly all of the ethnic Croatian Political Parties seek
to revise the constitution, redrawing the institutional organization of Bosnia-
Herzegovina. All agree that the Dayton Peace Agreement must be nullified, as it
does not provide Croats with a territorial entity with its own legal, executive and
judicial powers, as granted to Serbs (Republika Srpska) and Bosniaks (Federation of
Bosnia-Herzegovina). BH’s multi-ethnic configuration does not allow the devel-
opment of an extreme-right rhetoric based on the exaltation of a strong state;
on the contrary, Croatian parties in BH can only advocate a stronger regionaliza-
tion of the state, without necessarily agreeing on what such regionalization entails.
For instance, the Croatian National Community (HNZ, Hrvatska Narodna
Zajednica) strives for a sovereign, independent, united and decentralized BH,
where the Croats would enjoy a degree of regional autonomy similar to Bosniaks
and Serbs, so as to avoid their marginalization within the state (HNŽ 2005). On
the other hand, the New Croatian Initiative (NHI, Nova Hrvatska Inicijativa)
promotes regionalization of BH as a prelude to further collaboration, if not
integration, with Croatia (Bilic 1998). As for the Croatian Party of Rights in
Bosnia-Herzegovina (HSP BiH, Hrvatska Stranka Prava), both regionalization
and support for EU – and even NATO – integration, would serve vital Croat
interests: indeed, integration into the EU is also seen as the re-integration of all
Croats into one supranational state. In the particular case of the Croatian extreme
right in BH, the notion of Croatian nationalism, indubitably at the heart of such
parties, functions nonetheless in an unusual fashion and its varied nuances must
be charted in more detail.
Almost all ethnic Serbian political parties in BH display a high level of national-
ism, xenophobia, and clear support for a strong state and welfare chauvinist poli-
cies.10 The Serbian Democratic Party, mentioned above, together with what is
currently the largest player in Serbian politics in BH – the Party of Independent
Social Democrats (SNSD, Stranka Nezavisnih Socijaldemokrata), led by the former
prime minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, are the key players. The
SDNS programme points to the artificiality of BH as a state, essentially understood
as the outcome of a series of international agreements. Recently, its leader has
repeatedly supported the organization of a referendum on the independence of
Republika Srpska (SNSD n.d.). Using a variety of arguments, these two parties, as
much as the plethora of smaller extreme-right parties,11 display clear nationalist and
xenophobic features (SNS RS 1997). In 2006, three parties organized a delegation
to the Russian Duma,12 seeking support for the Serbian people, declaring that ‘the
Serbian nation in BH has the right to decide via referendum with whom it would
like to live in one state, and so to fulfil its national interests without harming the
national interests of others’ (RS RS, SS RS, SNS RS 2006). As already noted, in
the Balkans the study of extreme-right parties tends to confirm and at the same time
nuance our understanding of the various ways in which the extreme right articu-
lates nationalist ideas, as much as its ambiguous support for the development of a
strong state.
As the state-building process is not yet complete in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the
situation is quite difficult to assess.The political scene continues to be divided along
ethnic lines, with most parties lobbying for their own ethnicity, while the core
subject of controversy is the Dayton Peace Agreement and the continued involve-
ment of the international community in Bosnian state affairs. Most of the parties
wish to rewrite the agreement which ended the Bosnian war. But each ethnicity
has a different vision. The Bosniak parties wish to abolish the entities and create a
centralized BH. The Croats wish to create a third entity within BH and thereby
have one federal state composed of three republics. The Serbs wish to have stronger
centralization at the entity level and the right to leave the federation. The Serbian
political parties seem to be most nationalistic, with some of them talking openly
about an independent Republika Srpska tied to Serbia, while the Croatian political
parties seek only the creation of their own entity within BH, a Croatian Republic
of BH, with links to Croatia.
The extreme right in Serbia

The extreme right in Serbia is represented by three parties – the Serbian Radical
Party (SRS, Srpska Radikalna Stranka), the Party of Serbian Unity (SSJ, Stranka
Srpskog Jedinstva)13 and the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS, Srpska Napredna
Stranka).14 Even if many parties demanded the unification of Serbian territories at
the beginning of the 1990s, and thus demonstrated strong nationalistic features,
such as for instance, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS, Demokratska Stranka
Srbije), they cannot easily be defined as extreme-right parties: this sort of national-
ist claim was shared throughout the Serbian party system and has not been the sole
preserve of the Serbian extreme right.
Quite interestingly, the SRS is usually lumped together with the Socialist
Party of Serbia (SPS), created in 1990 by Slobodan Milošević (Goati 2001: 179;
Stojiljković 2006: 193). They share similar views on a variety of subjects, such as
‘criminal usurpation of the country’, ‘the spread of anarchy’, the desire to see
a return of ‘national-patriotic politics’ based on a ‘system of law, work and responsi-
bility’ (Komšić 2006: 175).Voters of this red-black pole, in contrast with DS voters,
identify themselves much more with the nation, do not like Americans, tend towards
authoritarianism, are traditional, patriarchal, passive, anti-Western, against privatiza-
tion, against giving rights to minorities, and against the membership of Serbia in the
EU (Mihailović in Lutovac 2006: 158). During the regime of Milošević, the Serbian
Radical Party was partially in opposition and partially backing the regime in formal
coalitions with SPS. Since 2000, the party has been very successful in attracting
voters, and in both elections (2003, 2007) it gained more than 27 per cent of votes.
The Serbian Radical Party seeks the unification of all Serbian territories and
protection of all Serbs; this therefore entails the unification of Serbia, Republika
Srpska, Republika Srpska Krajina,15 Montenegro (SRS does not talk about the
Montenegrin nation), Kosovo of course and, if possible, Macedonia as well. The
programme of the Serbian Radical Party is negative from the outset, when it states
that the Serbian nation is divided between three states thanks to Serbia’s traditional
enemies – Croats and Muslims; it demands the return of refugees and unification of
the Serbian territories (SRS. n.d. Program Srpske radikalne stranke: article 7).
The high turnout for SRS in the elections shows the high frustration of Serbs,
who for almost twenty years have lived in isolation and economic crisis due to their
previous leadership. Even the bloc of democratic parties has not been able to
get Serbia out of isolation or, better put, out of the vicious circle of Kosovo. The
never-ending story of Kosovo is far more comprehensible to the average voter
than is privatization, inflation, the indebtedness of the country and so on: the
simplistic slogans of the radicals (e.g. ‘Serbia is like a Nokia, it is getting smaller and
smaller’) work very well. It is highly possible that the radicals could gain the major-
ity of votes in a future election and (if pressure from the international community
is not strong enough), they would form a coalition government with the national-
ist Democratic Party of Serbia. However, whether this nationalist government
could last more than a single term is an open question. There are still open sores in
Serbia which (together with strong populist leadership) could attract nationalistic
voters, and these relate above all to the issue of cooperation with the ICTY: in
the words of the radicals, ‘the chief culprit for the dreary political and economic
situation of the country [is] the West’. SRS demonstrates all features – nationalism
(Greater Serbia), xenophobia (against almost anyone non-Serbian), law and order
(strong state providing security to its citizens) as well as welfare chauvinism (selling
of Serbian lands and properties).
In 2008, a new player made its presence felt in Serbian politics, the Serbian
Progressive Party (SNS, Srpska Napredna Stranka), created by former SRS Deputy
President Tomislav Nikolić and his supporters, because of internal disagreements
over party direction with the party’s leader, Vojislav Šešelj. Probably the chief
difference is that the party promotes the accession of Serbia to the EU and its
nationalism has been softened. The party says it does not wish to create a Greater
Serbia, nor does it wish for any region to be annexed. Its only claim is to Kosovo,
which it sees as an integral part of the Republic of Serbia. The relationship with
Serbs in Croatia and BiH is to be defined by economic unity with Republika
Srpska. The party’s programme also calls for ethnic and religious tolerance, military
neutrality on the part of Serbia and a fight against crime and corruption. Its eco-
nomic policy leans left on issues to do with social justice and the welfare state. The
SNS is becoming very popular with the Serbian public and it has begun to call for
early elections. Opinion polls in February 2011 showed that 34.4 per cent of voters
would vote for SNS and its allies,16 29.1 per cent would vote for DS, 7.1 per cent
for the SPS, 6.1 per cent for LDP, 5.7 per cent for DSS, and SRS would struggle
to get past the 5 per cent threshold (Trećina Gradjana za Prevremene Izbore 2011).
If voters in the upcoming elections behave as the opinion polls suggest, there
would be a complete shake-up of the currently stable political party system and new
configurations would emerge. SNS is also very unpredictable as a new political
player, something which might lead to lack of commonality with the EU during the
accession process.
Conclusion
The primary aim of this chapter has been to present those parties which are suppos-
edly on the extreme right of the political spectrum. The criteria put forward by
Mudde prove to be a useful tool, a good starting point to discuss, rather than define,
the nature of the extreme-right family in the Western Balkans. Immigration is still
not an issue in the region and racism, stricto sensu, is not very common. Instead of
that, we may observe strong nationalism accompanied with xenophobia, often in
the guise of hostility to the West and welfare chauvinism (tied to EU accession and
sale of properties to foreign firms). Anti-Semitism is pervasive, and historical revi-
sionism is to be found in Croatia, where nationalism has been strongly tinted by its
historic association with the Nazi regime. Across the board, nationalism is a core
feature: the extreme right in the Western Balkans strives for the creation of mono-
ethnic states, requiring support for expanding borders as well as xenophobia towards
local ethnics.
However, the Balkans also form a specific context which makes it more difficult
than elsewhere to decipher and define what makes such and such a party an extreme-
right party. First, conservative and traditional values remain strong across the entire
political spectrum: subjects such as same-sex marriages, euthanasia and abortion,
as much as discourses about the protection of traditional values, are part of the
programme of most Political Parties (Milardović et al. 2007: 43–61). Likewise, con-
spiracy theories, anti-globalism and populist anti-party sentiments are themes used
by a wide variety of parties: in no way can they be solely identified as specific fea-
tures of the extreme right in the Western Balkans. Similarly, enthusiastic support
for charismatic leadership goes well beyond the boundaries of the extreme right.
Second, the party systems are still very much in flux. There is now a degree of con-
solidation in Croatia and Serbia, but this is not the case in Bosnia-Herzegovina and
as such, research is far more difficult. Third, the Western Balkans do not form a
homogeneous entity: strong national traditions mean that extreme-right parties in

this region are also characterized by their differences. For instance, as a rule, the
position of such parties towards the West and globalization differs – if the West has
sided with their nation, then the nationalist formations tend to support integration
into Euro-Atlantic structures, whereas if the West has stood against their nation, the
formations are often against the EU, NATO and ICTY.
Of course, the reality is even more complex. The Croatian Political Parties
remain divided in their relation towards the Euro-Atlantic integration of Croatia.
HSP, HP-HPP and HPB clearly oppose the integration of Croatia into the EU as
well as NATO while HSP-1861 and HČSP condition membership to approval
through referendum. If HB is negative towards NATO, it does not demonstrate a
negative stance towards the EU and HIP does not seem to be negative towards
either of those supranational organizations. But all these parties have a rather nega-
tive stance towards ICTY, with a softer approach adopted by HIP which supports
prosecution, though through domestic courts, while HB promotes depoliticization
of ICTY. Conversely, all Political Parties in BH support the integration of the
country into the EU and NATO while most of the ethnic Croatian and ethnic
Serbian parties are against the ICTY as they see it as a politicized institution lacking
the sense of justice. Here, the Euro-Atlantic rhetoric is not yet on the agenda
(most important is the new constitution for BH). In Serbia, the Serbian Radical
Party under Vojislav Šešelj was clearly against the accession of Serbia into NATO
and the EU. The new leader Tomislav Nikolić, representing the party while Šešelj
has been in The Hague, did support accession to the EU but was forced to resign.
The SRS clearly stands against any cooperation (collaboration) of the Serbian state
with the ICTY, a politicized institution.
As we have seen, most of the parties manifested strong nationalism during the
1990s in terms of internal homogenization as well as external exclusivity. At present,
the parties tend to be more realistic, though dreaming about uniting their nation
under EU auspices. The hardest stance is clearly presented by the Serbian parties
which have not abandoned the idea of a Greater Serbia. Given the strong presence
of the SRS in the Serbian parliament, this position remains at the core of the
Serbian agenda. Conversely, the idea of a Greater Croatia has been progressively
marginalized within the Croatian polity, given the weaker electoral success of par-
ties with such an agenda in Croatia. Further, some extreme-right parties in Croatia,
such as the Croatian Party of the Right, are now moving away from policies which
support nationalist hatred. In Bosnia, nationalism is still very high on the agenda.
Croats would like to see a different configuration of BH and strive for their own
entity within the state, which would have the right to be more closely attached to
Croatia. Serbs seek more powers to be devolved to their community and the right
to be closely associated to Serbia; some parties champion referenda concerning the
incorporation of RS into Serbia (see Table 9.2).
Eatwell claims that when right and left occupy the centre there is space for
formations to emerge at the extreme of the political spectrum (Eatwell 2003).
The case of the Balkans shows it works only in some places and within certain
limits. In Croatia, there is a consensus about integration into the EU; the two largest
TABLE 9.2 Western Balkan political scene – extreme right features
Nationalism Xenophobia Strong state, Welfare chauvinism

law and order
HSP1 + + + +
HB + + + +
HDZ BiH + + NK NK
HSP BiH Ðapić-dr. Jurišić + – + NK
HB BiH + + NK NK
NHI + + NK NK
HNZ − − NK NK
SDS BiH + + NK NK
SNSD + + + −
SRS RS + + + +
RS RS + + + +
SNS RS + + + +
SNS (U) + + + +
SNP + + + +
SRS + + + +
SNS2 + − + NK
Abbreviations: HSP, Croatian Party of the Right; HB, Croatian Bloc; HDZ BiH, Croatian Democratic
Community of BiH; HSP BiH Ðapić-dr. Jurišić, Croatian Party of the Right in BiH; HB BiH, Croatian
Bloc in BiH; NHI, New Croatian Initiative; HNZ, Croatian National Community; SDS BiH, Serbian
Democratic Party; SNSD, Party of Independent Social Democrats; SRS RS, Serbian Radical Party of
RS; RS RS, Radical Party of RS; SNS RS, Serbian Progressive Party of RS; SNS(U), Serbian National
Union; SNP, League of People’s Rebirth; SRS, Serbian Radical Party.
Notes:
+ party demonstrates the feature.
− party does not demonstrate the feature.
N not an issue for the party.
NK not known.
1 HSP has dichotomous and diverse opinions but is slowly moving from the extreme right to the centre.
2 The position of the SNS (Serbian Progressive Party) is also unclear. It was provisionally assigned to the
extreme right because of its links with the SRS, but this could change over time, particularly if the party
succeeds in future elections and ends up playing an important role in setting up the government. In addition,
the party profiles itself more on social populism than on national issues. Further developments regarding EU
accession will also have great impact on the further position of the party within the party system.
parties both have very much the same programme. There is consensus in society
about the direction of the country as well, and the extreme right remains marginal.
The extreme right currently seems so factionalized that unification of the extreme
right family in Croatia cannot be expected and its electoral future is very much in
doubt. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the main parties are nationalistic and therefore there
is not enough space for a clear extreme right to emerge on the fringe of the politi-
cal system. In Serbia, there is great polarization concerning the country’s direction:
the extreme right and the extreme left share many common traits, such as ultra-
nationalism, xenophobia and traditionalism, and are willing to cooperate. In a way
labels such as left and right are rather difficult in the Serbian case. The political
scene, as well as society, is polarized (modern pro-Western vs. traditional nationalist):
the level of consensus about core issues is weak, but extreme-right parties are
remarkably strong.
As we have seen, research in the area of the Western Balkans is complicated due
to the incomplete process of state- and nation-building, and an unconsolidated
political (party) system. Most of the parties analysed here have an ideological core
made up of nationalism, xenophobia, law and order as well as welfare chauvinism.
Notes
1 This chapter has been undertaken as part of the Research Project ‘Conceptualization of
security and the application on the Western Balkan region’ (GAČR 407/08/P268).
2 The text focuses on the Serbian party system but excludes both the Vojvodinian and
Kosovar party systems.
3 The Croatian Democratic Union was set up in 1989 in Zagreb and became the major
party in Croatia during the 1990s – it ruled from 1990 to 2000 and has been in power
again since 2003. In the 1990s, party – that is to say government – policies were heavily
influenced by the war in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina and therefore heightened
nationalism was the dominant philosophy.
4 To cite an example taken from the HDZ programme:
‘HDZ was an endeavour of the Croatian national and democratic movement in the last
decade of the last century, led by the salvation idea of reconciliation of the Croatian
national entity, established and then divided during the political and military storms
of the 20th Century, the idea of the unity of inland and extraterrestrial Croats, that
Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina are an indivisible part of the united Croatian national
entity’.
Nevetheless, the current standpoint of the party is protection of the Croatian minority
in Bosnia-Herzegovina and promotion of their rights to become a third entity; the
party promotes the right for active as well as passive voting for the Croats living abroad
(HDZ 2002).
5 For example, the Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Pure Party of Rights, Croatian Bloc
and Croatian Rightists – Croatian Right Movement.
6 The main issue is now the unresolved question of the Slovenian–Croatian border and
the EU member Slovenia is seen as an obstruction affecting Croatian membership; HSP
sees EU membership as involving the sacrifice of Croatian national interests.
7 Bosnia-Herzegovina is a federal state made up of two entities: Republika Srpska (not to
be confused with the neighbouring Serbia) and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
(not to be confused with Bosnia-Herzegovina).
8 SDA (nine mandates out of 42 in the House of Representatives at the federal level and
28 out of 98 at the FBiH level in 2006), SBiH (eight mandates out of 42 in the House of
Representatives at the federal level and 24 out of 98 at the FBiH level in 2006) and BPS
(one mandate out of 42 in the House of Representatives at the federal level and 4 out of
98 at the FBiH level in the 2006 elections).
9 Electoral coalition HDZ-HNZ (three mandates out of 42 in the House of Representatives
at the federal level and eight out of 98 at the FBiH level in 2006); HDZ 1990 and its allies
(two mandates out of 42 in the House of Representatives at the federal level and seven
out of 98 at the FBiH level in 2006).
10 SDS HDZ-HNZ (three mandates out of 42 in the House of Representatives at the
federal level and eight out of 83 at the RS level in 2006); SSND (seven mandates out of
42 in the House of Representatives at the federal level and 41 out of 83 at the RS level
in 2006); RS (two mandates out of 83 at the RS level in 2006).
11 Serbian Radical party of RS (SRS RS, Srpska Radikalna Stranka Republike Srpske),
Radical Party of RS (RS RS, Radikalna Stranka Republike Srpske), Serbian National
Union (SNS, Srpski Narodni Savez), League of People’s Rebirth (SNP, Savez Narodnog
preporoda), Serbian Progressive Party of RS (SNS RS, Srpska Napredna Stranka
Republike Srpske).
12 The SNS formed an electoral coalition with Radical Party of RS and the Serbian Party
of RS (SS RS, Srpska Stranka Republike Srpske).
13 SSJ was led (until his assassination) by Željko Ražnatović Arkan and later on by Borislav
Pelević; its aim was the unity of the Serbian nation (Komšić 2006: 172–74). The SSJ
merged in 2007 into the Serbian Radical Party. (For further details, see e.g. Komšić 2006:
171–75.)
14 In 2008, SRS split due to internal disagreements concerning Serbian accession to the
EU and the acting party leader formed a new party with other MPs – the Serbian
Progressive Party (SNS, Srpska Napredna Stranka). Although the party never ran an
election campaign, it is represented in parliament; the SNS focuses on social populism
and is currently one of the most popular political parties in Serbia.
15 Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK) was a self-declared and unrecognized republic in the
territory of Croatia during the war at the beginning of the 1990s. The self-declared
government in exile of RSK still resides in Belgrade.
16 The Strength of Serbia Movement (PSS, Pokret Snaga Srbije), New Serbia (NS, Nova
Srbija), Socialist Movement (PS, Pokret Socijalista). The only parliamentary party is the
monarchist NS, while PS emerged only in 2008 and PSS a year later. A possible coalition
partner in terms of ideology might be DSS.
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10
EXTREME-RIGHT PARAMILITARY
UNITS IN EASTERN EUROPE1
Miroslav Mareš and Richard Stojar
Introduction
The development of the extreme right in post-communist Europe has been accom-
panied by the existence of non-state paramilitary subjects. In contemporary Eastern
Europe, in comparison with Western Europe, the activities of paramilitary units
are a much more important part of extreme-right politics. Despite the growing
Europeanization of the political spectrum in some post-communist European
countries, the presence of paramilitary tendencies is still a characteristic feature of
the extreme right, including the new EU member countries. Research into the
phenomenon of paramilitary units calls for a multidisciplinary approach (including
security studies).
In this chapter we will first define paramilitarism for the purposes of research
into right-wing extremism, before briefly describing the traditions of extreme-
right paramilitary units in East Central Europe, and then analysing the role of
extreme-right units in armed conflicts in the post-communist era and contempo-
rary paramilitary units oriented towards vigilantism. In conclusion, we will evaluate
the general potential of extreme-right military units in Eastern Europe, and explain
the importance of paramilitarism for constructing extreme-right identity in Eastern
Europe in the context of the political culture in this area.
Definition of paramilitarism
‘Paramilitarism’ is a frequently used term. In the most general sense ‘paramilitary’
means ‘organized like an army (and possibly armed)’ (Bowyer 2004: 174). However,
such a vague definition means it can be used to label very different activities
(Dasgupta 2004). For the purpose of research into right-wing extremism in Eastern
Europe only some of these are important.
160 Miroslav Mareš and Richard Stojar
This chapter is aimed mainly at two types of paramilitary organization: combat-

ant paramilitaries in armed post-communist conflicts, and the vigilante paramilitary
formations (mostly with racist orientation) of Political Parties and movements.
There has been much activity on the part of young extreme-right activists
(mostly members of the skinhead sub-culture). These can be characterized more as
children playing soldiers than real paramilitaries. The public visual presentation of
some paramilitary units sometimes has only a propaganda effect. On the other
hand, paramilitary units have a real capability of influencing the political situation
or political culture in some countries or regions, and paramilitary activities are
currently, as they will be in the future, a threat to public order and inter-ethnic
relations in East European countries.
The tradition of extreme-right paramilitaries in

Eastern Europe to 1989
Central and Eastern Europe

The extreme-right paramilitary units in Eastern Europe were inspired by a combi-
nation of many factors. Determinant factors for their genesis were national tradition,
state support or state suppression. The roots of the units in Eastern Europe can be
found in the nationalist movements of the second half of the nineteenth century,
which are regarded by present groups as their predecessors in defending national
interests. A prominent role in this respect was played by national groups founded
on an ethnic basis, and standing in opposition to state institutions and to other
ethnic groups – for example, in Eastern Europe the Czech organization Sokol
(Falcon) had an impact on the emergence of similar movements in the Austro-
Hungarian empire and in the Slavic states outside of the monarchy. Sokol was
founded in 1862. Unlike other existing sports groups having an elite character,
Sokol was nationally all-inclusive, and for this reason not politically defined; the
main idea was Czech nationalism and pan-Slavism. Sokol was inspired by two
external actors – the volunteer groups from the Risorgimento era Camicie Rosse
(Redshirts) of Garibaldi, and the German national gymnastics group Turnverein
(Gymnastic Union). Sokol accented (in accord with the romanticism of the period)
the ideals of classical Greece, including physical prowess and battle readiness, and
the ideal of a classical Greek education (Waldauf 2007: 7). During the building of
Czechoslovakia, Sokol provided voluntary military groups, which were actively
engaged in combat against the Hungarian Bolsheviks in Slovakia. These traditions
were part of the programme of Czech fascist organizations in the period between
the two wars, and their legacy is claimed by the contemporary extreme right as it
fulfils its: ideological criteria as well as the combat tradition.
A couple of other groups that could meet the criteria for extreme-right
paramilitary units emerged in interwar Czechoslovakia. The creation of the
Czechoslovakian state was carried out by the national ambitions of Czech society,
thus minimizing the potential for local nationalism. Sokol declined somewhat,
Paramilitary units in Eastern Europe 161
with the existence of national armed forces eliminating its raison d’être as a parallel
national army; thus it fully transformed itself into a social, cultural and sports organ-
ization identifying with the democratic ideals of the new state.The failure of Czech
fascists to infiltrate Sokol led them to form their own paramilitary units such as
Fašistická Omladina (Fascist Youth) and Junák (Hero) (Pasák 1999: 118).
In Slovakia in the 1920s, Rodobrana (National Defence), a paramilitary organiza-
tion of clerical and autonomist tendencies, became very influential. After five years
this group was officially dissolved, and its successor was Hlinkova Garda (Hlinka
Guard), which in 1938–45 came to be a military branch of the Slovenská Ľudová
Strana (Slovak People’s Party), which backed the fascist regime during the Second
World War. Its functions were laid down in a series of government decrees:
it was supposed to be a paramilitary wing of the party, fostering love of country,
providing paramilitary training, safeguarding internal security, counterbalancing
the Slovak army, and last but not least fighting against the anti-fascist guerrilla
movement.
Even though Sokol influenced other Slavic nations in the framework of the
Habsburg monarchy, these were not as successful as their Czech counterpart. In
Poland it was the national movement Strzelec (Rifleman) that provided real
military training for the planned conflict with Russian units in Russian Poland.
As in the case of the Czech Sokol, its members formed the nucleus of the Polish
Legion that took part in the Second World War. The organizations from the
pre-First World War era could be taken as examples for the extreme right because
of their nationalistic character and their real military significance. The ideological
purpose of extreme-right paramilitary units could be seen in the interwar era, when
nationalistic and fascist organizations in Eastern Europe were striving to form their
own units. A great inspiration for them was the successful model of Benito
Mussolini’s squadristi (i.e. the fascist squads and the blackshirts), but they also drew
on local traditions and specific national contexts.
In Hungary the first paramilitary unit with fascist ideology was formed as early
as 1919. An extreme group of Hungarian radicals within the nationalist army
formed Szeged which became known as Szeged Fascists, and later developed into
the Magyar Országos Véderő Egylet (Hungarian National Defence Association).
This group was from the beginning sharply politically profiled against the leftist
Marxist groups. Its primary idea was revision of the Trianon peace treaty, and the
restoration of a Greater Hungary. Later on another group emerged in Hungary
called Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom (the Arrow Cross Party), which
was completely under the influence of Nazism. It opposed Marxism as well as the
nationalist conservative groups which were dominant during the post-war era in
Hungary. The ideology of the movement was based on extreme nationalism,
extreme Catholicism, anti-capitalism, anti-communism and militant anti-Semitism.
This party formed paramilitary units, training of which was supervised by party
sympathizers from the army as well as the police. During the 1938 Czech–German
conflict, the paramilitary unit carried out a couple of relatively large armed attacks
against Czechoslovak forces on the Slovak–Hungarian frontier.
Paramilitary formations were also created in the Baltic States, during the period
when these nation-states were being founded and did not have any regular units.
For example, the nationalist Lietuvos Šaulių Są junga (Union of Lithuanian
Riflemen) was supported and directed by the state. Later Soviet dominance of
Eastern Europe and the dominance of communist ideology resulted in the suppres-
sion of all forms of political resistance and divergence. The extreme-right organiza-
tions in exile were therefore the only groups sustaining nationalist ideals. The
decline of the Eastern bloc brought revival, and the return of some of them, some-
times in a different shape and form.
South Eastern Europe

While the Versailles system fulfilled many of the regional nationalistic ambitions left
over from the nineteenth century, it created many new sources of conflict. The
formation of paramilitary organizations was often secretly supported by the coun-
tries that were defeated in the First World War, because the strict demilitarization
incorporated in the peace treaties limited the ability to maintain state military
forces. These paramilitary units were without exception strongly nationalistic with
fascist elements (nationalism, strong state, cults of unity and purity, militarism),
aimed at revision of the post-war settlement in Europe. In Bulgaria, the former
guerrilla formation Vnatrešna Makedonska Revolucionerna Organizacija (Internal
Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) took part in the liquidation of left-
oriented governing bodies in the 1920s. Later it succeeded in forming a parallel
state with its own military units in the so-called Pirin region of Macedonia. Its units
were eliminated by the Bulgarian government in the 1930s.
A paramilitary fascistic organization linked to national mythology and religious
mysticism was created in Romania in 1927. Initially it was called Legiunea
Arhanghelul Mihail (Legion of the Archangel Michael); in 1930 the name was
changed to Garda de Fier (Iron Guard), also known as the Mişcarea Legionară
(Legionary Movement). Its activists carried out several high-level political assassina-
tions in the interwar period. After 1935 it operated as a political party as well, and
in 1940–41 it took part in the government. Due to its links with Nazi Germany and
its aggressiveness, it was a source of intrastate disruption for the Romanian govern-
ment; its influence was eliminated by repressive action. The group also had a strong
impact on the mythology of neo-fascists in Western Europe.
The traditions of extreme-right paramilitary units in Serbia are mostly based on
formations called četnici (Chetniks) with origins in the wars of the twentieth
century. Many paramilitary units pertained to distinct ethnicities, and their
Political Parties and ideological currents were active in the interwar period in
the Yugoslavian kingdom. In the 1920s in Croatia it was the Hrvatska
Nacionalna Omladina (Croatian National Youth); its counterpart in Serbia was
Srpska Nacionalna Omladina (Serbian National Youth). A special case was the
Organizacija Jugoslavenskih Nacionalista (Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists),
whose main goal was maintaining a strong unitary Yugoslav state and fighting
against any form of domestic ethnic separatism, communism and Italian fascism.
From the mid-1930s, the main Croatian political force, the Hrvatska Seljačka Stranka
(Croatian Peasant Party), formed two paramilitary units: one in the countryside and
one in the cities. Their aim was similar to the previously mentioned Czech organi-
zation Sokol: to form a parallel and independent national force in a multinational
state dominated by other ethnic groups, and in this case also to compete with the
illegal, armed, fascistic Ustaša (Insurgent, Ustasha) movement.
Extreme right paramilitaries in post-communist

armed conflicts
Extreme-right paramilitary units played an important role in the post-Cold War era
in some of the ethnic and ideological conflicts in Eastern Europe. They were heav-
ily engaged in the conflicts following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. This was
due to many factors: the extreme right was founded on the traditions of the local
movements during the Second World War, and was therefore not perceived by
society in negative terms. In some cases these local movements compromised them-
selves by collaboration with the occupation regime and fascist ideology. In the
post-war era they were part of the authoritarian ideology of the Yugoslav
Communist Party, and were perceived as the bearers of national identity striving for
the realization of legitimate national interests.
The continuity provided by a strong exile community that provided extensive
propaganda on their behalf was another factor in maintaining the importance of
these groups. Then there was the potential for conflict and future military confron-
tation in the ethnically mixed territories.The limited military potential of the newly
formed successor states led to the formation of paramilitary units on a larger scale;
for the new states the participation of these units in the conflict was a temporary
necessity. In 1991 the Yugoslav federal army disintegrated; its main remnant with-
drew to Serbia and the territories controlled by the Serbs. Though they were
engaged on the Serbian side, the army was distrusted by Serbian moderate national-
ists for its ideological indoctrination with communist ideology, and blamed for its
inability to protect Serbian national interests ( Jovanović 1994: 141). Generally, par-
amilitary units in Yugoslav conflicts acted in symbiosis with the official armed forces
of the different entities, but were largely infiltrated by criminal elements (Stojarová
2007: 85) (see Serbian organizations below).
The Hrvatske Obrambene Snage (HOS, Croatian Defence Forces) was the
Croatian counterpart of the Serbian paramilitary units. The HOS was formed by
the Croatian Party of Rights, and was based on the traditions of the fascist Ustaša
movement. Its political affiliation, and the fact that it was not under the full control
of the Croatian governing bodies, was the reason for its gradual liquidation (Jerman
2001: 262). Many Western European extreme-right volunteers, mainly from
Germany, fought in the ranks of the HOS.
The radical Serbian nationalists refused to serve in the federal army, and entered
the voluntary paramilitary units. The Srpska Garda (SG, Serbian Guard), the armed
wing of the opposition nationalist party Srpski Pokret Obnove (SPO, Serbian
Renewal Movement), played a significant role at the beginning of the Serbo-
Croatian conflict. It was the first Serbian armed paramilitary formation to become
a mobilizing factor in Serbian society, and it had ambitions to become the basis for
a national Serbian army which would replace the federal army under socialist con-
trol (Mičković and Višnjić 1992: 78). The regime of Slobodan Milošević was intim-
idated by its initial popularity, and so it started to support other paramilitary units
in order to minimize the potential power of anti-communist Serbian nationalism.
After the initial euphoria SG lost its strong position and perished. Another signi-
ficant Serbian nationalist paramilitary unit was the Beli Orlovi (White Eagles),
formed in 1991–92 during the initial phases of conflict in Croatia and Bosnia. The
name White Eagles refers to an anti-communist, pro-fascist paramilitary unit that
was formed during the Second World War, also known as the Srpski Dobrovoljački
Korpus (Serbian Volunteer Corps). Soon it became totally autonomous, and sev-
ered connections with the opposition parties it had cooperated with before. Many
other small paramilitary units which were completely independent from the origi-
nal structures or organizations were conducted under the name of SG or White
Eagles during the war, or made use of their symbols (Valeckij 2006: 33, 47).
The Serbian unit that became best known was the Srpska Dobrovoljačka Garda
(SDG, Serb Volunteer Guard), formed by Željko Ražnatović Arkan in 1990. The
nucleus was initially made up of radical soccer hooligans from Belgrade, and it
claimed over 10,000 fighters, though this number is probably overstated. Known as
the Arkan Tigers, it was initially tied to the Serbian secret service.There was specula-
tion about the extent of its contacts with the Milošević regime. Some authors even
concluded that the SDG was the military wing of the Party of the Yugoslavian Left
of Milošević’s wife Mirjana Marković (Thomas and Mikulan 2006).
The SDG cooperated with the Serbian regular military forces operating in the
territory of Croatia and Bosnia that were populated predominantly by Serbs during
the first half of the 1990s. It also cooperated with the Russian extreme-right party
of Vladimir Žirinovskij with whom it shared a never-implemented plan of engag-
ing his party’s paramilitary unit in the Bosnian conflict. Though the unit was never
present in the Kosovo conflict, news of its engagement there was very often
presented to the public (Lopušina 2002: 123).
Regarding the Kosovo question, a new extreme-right paramilitary unit emerged
in Serbia called the Garda Svetog Cara Lazara (Saint Tsar Lazar Guard), founded by
the nationalistic political party Movement of Veterans of Serbia, uniting former
Serbian veterans from the Yugoslavia wars. The aim was to convert it into a
Christian militia in Kosovo in the event of any military conflict with Kosovo’s
Albanian community. The United Nations Interim Administration Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK) banned the activities of the Guard in Kosovo, and the illegal
guerrilla organization Armata Kombëtare Shqiptare (Albanian National Army)
declared its readiness to prevent any penetration of the Guard into Kosovo terri-
tory. One spokesman for the Guard rejected the interpretation of the group as an
armed paramilitary unit, presenting it instead as an organization that could assume
the character of police, army or gendarmerie. The number of its members probably
ranges from several dozen to a maximum of a hundred people, although its leader-
ship speaks of more than 5,000 activists; its ranks include Kosovan as well as
Macedonian Serbs. Its relationship with the Serbian authorities is negative, as it
accuses the Serbian state of ‘insufficiently protecting the territorial integrity of the
nation’ and using repressive methods against its members. The leader of the Guard,
Milić, said in this regard that state repression cannot restrain its activity, and regard-
less of the position of the state authorities, the paramilitary unit would fight for the
liberation of Kosovo from Albanian separatists and terrorists. Serbian security expert
Dragišić questioned the Guard’s ability to bring the Kosovo conflict to the boil
(Dragišić 2007), and events confirmed his opinion as to the Guard’s declared poten-
tial. In June 2007 the Guard wanted to infiltrate Kosovo and demonstrate its power
on the Kosovo battlefield, but was prevented from doing so by UNMIK. It called
upon the Serbian parliament to intervene militarily in Kosovo, and planned a
couple of large demonstrations on the Kosovo–Serbian border. However, these
demonstrations did not attract the desired level of support. After the declaration of
an independent Kosovo in February 2008, the Guard instigated unrest on the
administrative border, and its activists even attacked some buildings on the border
and vehicles of the UN mission.
Finally, as in the former Yugoslavia, many nationalist paramilitary units emerged
out of the conflicts following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The revival of
latent nationalist tensions opened up space for the activation of such units, though
to a lesser extent than in Yugoslavia. Because of the 70-year-long communist dom-
ination, the extreme right had no tradition, and the newly emerging organizations
proclaimed the traditions of the older pre-revolutionary nationalistic and xenopho-
bic movements, into which they imported elements taken from Western European
right-wing extremism. Paramilitary units of this type included the formations of
volunteers and Cossacks who were actively engaged in the conflicts in Abkhazia
and Transdniestria. The ultimate representative of the Russian extreme right is
Russkoye Natsionalnoye Edinstvo (RNE, Russian National Unity), founded in
1990. This group was based in Russia, but also operated in former Soviet republics
with large Russian-speaking populations − the Baltic countries, Belarus and
Ukraine. During 1991–93 the RNE developed a wide network of regional organ-
izations, which practised military drills, martial arts and tactical training. During the
constitutional crisis in autumn 1993, RNE supported the Russian parliament against
then-president Yeltsin, and its units took part in defending the Russian parliament
against Yeltsin’s troops, and probably in the raid on the Ostankino TV transmitter
(Lichačev and Pribylovskij 2005: 187). For this reason, RNE had to work illegally
for several months after Yeltsin’s victory, and its leaders were arrested. But state
repression meant only a temporary weakening; in subsequent years membership
grew enormously, and the movement reached its high tide at the end of the 1990s.
By autumn 1999 local police forces were asking the local RNE for help during the
Russian anti-terrorist operation Storm targeted at Caucasus immigrants (Lichačev
and Pribylovskij 2005: 188).
The actual contribution of the paramilitary units in these conflicts is a very

contentious issue. In the initial phases of the conflict, their actions were quite sig-
nificant; however, after the formation of the national forces they became more of a
burden, and came under criticism. When paramilitaries presented a potential threat
to the governing elites, they came under attack and were liquidated by the state
apparatus.
In conclusion, it is also worth mentioning the Ukrainska Natsionalna Asamblea –
Ukrainska Natsionalna Samooborona (UNA-UNSO, the Ukrainian National
Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defence) which played a similar role to the
Russian RN, but on the Ukrainian side and against Russia. Indeed, its radical
Russophobe activists initiated many clashes with the Russian minority in Kiev and
Crimea, and after the disintegration of the USSR its activists fought in the various
conflicts of the post-Soviet region.
Recruitment and organization of volunteer units for foreign

conflicts: some brief reflections
Individuals from UNA-UNSO actively took part in the conflicts in former
Yugoslavia, fighting on the Serbian side as well as the Croatian side (Valeckij 2006:
29). Many Western European extreme-right volunteers, mainly from Germany,
fought in HOS ranks. Some neo-Nazis from post-communist countries in the
first half of the 1990s were probably members of the 1. Gardijska Brigada ‘Baron
Trenck’ (1. Guard Brigade ‘Baron Trenck’). This was a unit of extremists from
German-speaking countries that fought in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Landesamt für
Verfassungschutz Hamburg 2001: 108–9). Of the Russian volunteers, most of
these fought on the Serbian side in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nevertheless, the
small neo-Nazi unit Werewolf from Moscow was engaged in the mid-1990s on
the Croatian side (Laqueur 1997: 292).
Anti-Russian attitudes in Ukraine led to the recruitment of volunteers in con-
flicts which took place in Chechnya and Abkhazia. UNA-UNSO units operated
mostly during the first Chechen war and in the second half of the 1990s. In the
new century they have expressed propaganda support for the Chechen struggle;
however, not for acts of terrorism (McGregor 2006). It is interesting that this
organization uses Islamophobic motives in its propaganda, but anti-Russian feeling
was in this case probably stronger (Laryš 2008: 16–17). In the second half of the
1990s some Polish nationalist volunteers also declared their intention of fighting in
Chechnya against the Russian army, but there is no relevant information on their
actual participation.
A specific activity in relation to Eastern European extreme-right paramilitarism
is the recruitment and organization of volunteer units in Middle Eastern armed
conflicts. In this respect, both anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism (sometimes
masked as anti-Zionism) have become the ideological basis for the engagement
of extreme right-wing activists in the Middle East. In 1993 the leader of the extrem-
ist Liberalno-Demokratisheckaya Partija Rossii (LDPR, Liberal Democratic Party
of Russia) Vladimir Žirinovskij created a small diversionary unit to help the Saddam
Hussein regime in the fight against the Americans, in view of the declared friend-
ship between the LDPR and the Iraqi state-party Baath. However, this unit prob-
ably only flew for a short visit to Jordan, and never actually fought for the Iraqi
regime (Frank 1993). Similarly in 2003, a limited number of members of the
Natsional Bolshevistkaya Partia (National Bolshevik Party) from Russia declared
their willingness to fight for the Saddam Hussein regime, and later some of them
visited Iraq for propaganda reasons; however, they were probably not involved in
military actions (Mesopotamskij 2003).
Finally, in 2006, 41 activists of the Czech neo-Nazi organization Národní Odpor
(NO, National Resistance) sent a letter to the Czech president with a request for
permission to serve in the Iranian army (Bezpečnostní informační služba 2007).
This was a reaction to the Hizballah–Israel conflict and the threat by the United
States against Iran because of its nuclear programme. However, no real action fol-
lowed. Inside the NO this action led to disputes, as some of the activists rejected
the idea of supporting Islamism, and wanted to use Islamophobic motives in their
propaganda. However, Iranian president Ahmadinejad managed to maintain con-
siderable popularity among some rightist militants because of his denial of the
Holocaust and his anti-Americanism (Mareš 2008: 4).
Vigilante activities by extreme-right paramilitarists

in Eastern Europe
Paramilitary units in Eastern Europe in the post-communist era are also linked to
vigilante activities.Vigilantism is, at least in theory, a traditional feature of extreme-
right thinking. The typical ‘law and order’ demands are often connected with the
idea of self-preservation. The recent case of – now institutionalized – ‘ronde’ in Italy
is, in this sense, quite symptomatic of this approach. Further, vigilantism is usually
closely linked to intolerant nationalism and racism, as other ethnic or
religious groups are usually regarded only as ‘potential criminals’.
In Eastern Europe such extremist racist propaganda is aimed mostly against the
Roma and immigrants from third world countries. In Russia propaganda is applied
against people from Caucasus – while in the Balkans and the Central European
countries it is aimed mainly against the Albanians. Recently, Islamophobia is also
on the rise in this area, because the Muslims are presented in extremist materials as
terrorists and criminals.
Vigilantism also targets people from the same ethnic group and nation as the
perpetrators, mainly leftist activists, alternative youth, drug users, criminals, home-
less people and homosexuals. These all stand condemned as asocial or decadent.
People from the above-mentioned groups are often attacked by individuals or small
non-organized rightist groups.
It is important to mention that only some of this extreme vigilante activity
is carried out by paramilitary units. In some parts of post-communist Europe,
paramilitary vigilantism was initially associated with elements from a racist skinhead
sub-culture. This sub-culture came from the West to some regions of Eastern
Europe, first to countries strongly influenced by Western culture (East Central
Europe) at the end of the 1980s, and later in the 1990s to various other parts
of Eastern Europe. At that time skinheads were generally racially oriented. Later,
non-racist groups of skinheads also appeared.
Some skinheads tried to establish the whole skinhead sub-culture as a paramili-
tary structure (as part of an imaginary ‘European Skinhead Army’). However, such
plans were unrealistic because this sub-culture attracted many primitive and undis-
ciplined people. The more consistent skinhead elite organizations were likewise
unable to conduct effective paramilitary vigilante activity; thus ad hoc hate crimes
in the street were more typical. This applies to the East European organizations of
the Hammerskins Nation or Blood and Honour/Combat 18.
Vigilante tendencies are also typical of contemporary modern neo-Nazism in
Eastern Europe in connection with ‘warriors and weapons fetishism’. In some
regions of East and Central Europe (mostly in the Czech Republic and Slovakia)
the concept of ‘free nationalism’ (the decentralized cell-structure of the neo-Nazi
scene) created by the German model has become popular. In this concept an
important role is played by ‘free liberated national zones’. It means that in parts of
towns, villages or certain places, these national-socialist activists in fact exercise
power, and are able to conduct community policing. Among the groups involved
in this free nationalism are the National Resistance, Free Nationalists and Auto-
nomous Nationalists. They sometimes organize paramilitary training; some small
groups specialize in these activities. However, so far such tendencies (in the sense
of quasi-military training, paintball and airsoft games, survival, etc.) have not led to
real consistent action against the political enemies of the national-socialists in a
paramilitary form. Some short-term projects have appeared; for example, the anti-
Roma home guard organized by the National Resistance of Silesia, but this was
active only for a few days in 2005.
On the other hand, national-socialist paramilitarism with vigilante and some-
times terrorist tendencies (aimed mostly against people from Caucasus and Central
Asia) is on the rise in Russia. In the 1990s the RNE (see above) was very active. In
contemporary Russia, organizations like Russkaya Natsionalnaya Sotsialistisheckay
Partia (RNSP, Russian National Socialist Party) tend towards paramilitarism.
Vigilante activity without declared racist prejudice has also been connected with
some traditional nationalist organizations in the Baltic States, for example Jaunoji
Liuetva (Young Lithuanians). In May 2001 the uniformed militia of this group
was registered with the city of Kaunas, with the goal of helping law enforcement in
the fight against drug dealers and hooligans. Paradoxically enough, the risk here is
that ‘these musclemen in uniform might be used for purposes related to politics’
(Kiaulakis 2005: 136). Paramilitary groups were also active in Slovenia (Peace
Institute and Trplan 2005).
Relatively consistent paramilitary training is typical of neo-fascist or nationalist
organizations from East-Central Europe. In the second half of the 1990s the most
active in this sense were organizations connected with the International Third
Position (ITP), mostly the Romanian Noua Dreapta (ND, New Right), the National
Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (NOP, Rebirth of Poland), Slovenská Pospolitost’
(SP, Slovak Community) or Hnutí národního sjednocení (HNS, Movement for
National Unification) from the Czech Republic. The declared goal of their para-
military training is to counter crime, mostly crime by immigrants or ethnics (Roma).
However, real participation by these groups in vigilantism is very limited.
A dangerous escalation of inter-ethnic tensions threatened Slovakia in 2004. In
February 2004 a sizeable portion of the Roma population in Eastern Slovakia was
involved in social riots (particularly the ransacking of supermarkets) because of new
restrictive social measures by the Slovak government. In reaction, the leader of the
right-wing extremist Slovak Community Marian Kotleba declared that ‘Slovaks
have the right to use the gun for the protection of their lives and property’ (Kotleba
2004). Some racist skinheads in Slovakia were prepared to attack the Roma rioters.
However, due to quick action by Slovak security forces, vigilante activities by the
SP or other rightist groups were forestalled.
An organized anti-Roma attack was carried out by racist skinheads in
Bulgaria in the summer of 2007 during riots by the Roma in Sofia.The small ultra-
nationalist Bulgarski Natsionalen Soyuz (BNS, Bulgarian National Union) declared
in August 2007 that in response to these riots it would create the vigilante Bulgarska
natsionalna gvardya (BNG, Bulgarian National Guard) (Bulgarski Nacionalen Sojuz
2007). This situation, like that in Slovakia three years before, was calmed after
several days of escalation. The founding of the BNG is part of a new trend of
paramilitary activities in East-Central Europe, which since 2007 has focused prima-
rily on acquiring media attention, and the adoption of the tactic by the new rising
extra-parliamentary right-wing extremist parties of seeking to blend into society.
Some of these units are also engaged in current border disputes.
The most important representative of this trend is the Magyar Garda (HG,
Hungarian Guard). This is a relatively new organization founded by the extreme-
right party Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom (Movement for a Better Hungary)
in 2007 for the purposes of ‘physical, mental and spiritual self-defence’. According
to its leader HG is ready to defend the Hungarian nation in time of war. The refer-
ence to the Hungarian nation implies the Hungarian minorities in Slovakia,
Romania, Ukraine and in Serbian Vojvodina as well. This paramilitary unit could
become engaged in possible national conflicts beyond Hungarian borders. Local
chapters of the HG were also formed in Hungary. In 2008 HG planned to initiate
a new campaign against the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, including the revival of the
Justice for Hungary campaign from the interwar period that aimed for cultural and
territorial autonomy for Hungarian minorities living abroad. Currently the HG
tries to make headway in domestic politics by blaming the governing socialists for
sympathizing with communism, globalization, and trying to ‘whitewash’ the prob-
lem of crime by the Roma community, which makes up 10 per cent of the
Hungarian population.
The Hungarian Guard, though unarmed, has clear paramilitary features: a hier-
archical structure, and members wearing uniforms and organizing exhibitions
and training. Unlike other European extreme-right organizations, the HG encom-

passes a wider demographic structure, from young skinheads to right-wing radicals,
to representatives of the older generation. In terms of military potential, the HG
probably presents no serious risk, as it is an unarmed formation. Its symbols are
taken from the Arrow Cross Party, and its name and officially declared tradition
recalls more the revolutionary Hungarian Territorial Army from 1848–49 and the
Hungarian insurgents of 1956 (Magyar Gárda 2007).The Magyar Gárda was banned
in 2009 in Hungary, though several successor and splinter groups have since been
established (Bélaiová 2011).
The Národní Garda (NG, National Guard), which was closely linked to the
Národní Strana (NS, National Party), was founded in the Czech Republic in 2007.
Its members say they want to help people in regions with high crime rates (usually
with a high concentration of Roma population), and come to the aid of citizens
after disasters (this is a propaganda issue connected with restrictions on official army
participation in civil defence). The NG also wants to bring in members of the
police and the army. However, following the decline of the National Party in 2010
the NG is no longer active (Smolík 2011).
In 2008 the small Dělnická Strana (Workers Party) founded its own paramilitary
protection corps, the Ochranné Sbory Dělnické Strany (Protection Corps of
the Workers Party). The party has been closely connected with the structures
of neo-Nazism in the Czech Republic. The protection corps was involved with
anti-Roma riots in Northern Bohemia in autumn 2008, and with monitoring crime
in some localities with strong Roma population in 2008–9. The party was banned
in 2010, and the existence of the Protection corps was one of the most important
reasons for the ban (Mareš 2010).
In several cases, extreme-right vigilante activities aimed against the Roma or
other minorities prompted the targeted groups to organize their own vigilante self-
defence against racial attacks. Such attempts were limited to a short period (usually
a few days). The same is true of the home guards of the ‘new minorities’ in the East
European area, for example Vietnamese anti-skinhead home guards in the Czech
Republic in the 1990s (Mareš 2005: 236–37). Despite the short period of existence
of these minorities’ home guards, street wars between extreme-right and minority
paramilitaries are not out of the question in the future in some regions of Eastern
Europe.
Conclusion
Contemporary paramilitary activities in Eastern Europe are the result of specific
historical traditions of the extreme right from the first half of the twentieth century.
Ethnic conflicts after the fall of communism led to the rebirth of traditional para-
militarism. Strong militarism was typical of the extreme right, and had deep historical
roots. Current extremist right-wing paramilitary units in several countries are used
in party propaganda. Parties like Jobbik or the Workers Party use a quasi-archaic
model of paramilitarism combined with xenophobic prejudices (mostly against
Roma and immigrants) and vigilantism to win media attention and build a
stable base of supporters. The image of the Eastern European extreme right at the
beginning of the twenty-first century is also closely linked to the paramilitary
groups.
Note
1 This paper has been written as part of the Research Plan ‘Political Parties and Representation
of Interests in Contemporary European Democracies’ (code MSM0021622407).
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11
EXTREME-RIGHT PARTIES IN
ROMANIA AFTER 1990
Incumbency, organization and success
Gabriela Borz
Introduction
The evolution of the extreme right in post-communist Romania bears some resem-
blance to its Western counterpart in terms of success after 2000, but also some dif-
ferences concerning its appearance, discourse and explanations for its popularity.
While the success of the extreme right in Western Europe is attributed to the pro-
test vote, due to a reshaping of the party competition space after post-industrialism
and the growth of the welfare state (Kitschelt 1995; Veugelers and Magnan 2005),
to psychological factors like alienation from politics (Ignazi 1996), or to structural
conditions like the high costs of modernization and the lack of rewards for unskilled
workers (Betz 1994), in Eastern Europe, the counterparts of modernization losers
(Minkenberg 2000) could be called the losers of the transition, and ethnic problems
and nationalism are identified as the driving forces for high electoral results for the
extreme right (Mudde 2005).
The Romanian context after 1990 offered an interesting evolution of the two
extreme-right parties: Partidul România Mare (PRM, Greater Romania Party) and
Partidul Unităţii Naţionale Române (PUNR, Romanian National Unity Party).
While their message and the type of followers almost coincided, one extreme-right
party proved to be more successful than the other in terms of persistence and elec-
toral fortunes, even though the one that failed was part of the governing coalition.
The two parties operated in the same institutional environment and used to com-
pete for the same kind of voters. In this case, one may ask what other variables,
besides the structural, economic or institutional ones, matter for the success of an
extreme-right party and what makes one extreme-right party more successful than
another?
There are a few cases across Europe where extreme-right parties have entered
government, like the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in 2002 in the Netherlands, the
174 Gabriela Borz
Freedom Party (FPŐ) in 2001 in Austria, and the PUNR in 1994 in Romania. The
coalition governments did not last long and the aftermath for the extreme-right
parties was an electoral collapse or party splits, as exemplified in the Romanian,
Austrian and Dutch cases.This questions the suitability for government of extreme-
right parties, and suggests that electoral collapse after the incumbency period is a
typical consequence. Scholars of Political Parties stipulate that incumbency is
expected to have a beneficial effect, contributing to party stabilization (Harmel
and Svåsand 1993; Mackie and Rose 1988), provided that participation in govern-
ment does not occur too early in the phases of party development. While not
specifying extreme-right parties, van Biezen (2003) argues that, in new democra-
cies with weak party loyalties, entering the government in early phases may have a
destabilizing effect for parties.Therefore building organizational mechanisms which
help maintain party unity appears necessary for these parties, especially if they become
incumbent or have government aspirations. The literature lacks a theoretical
account of the extreme right in government and its consequences, and moreover,
what constitutes an ‘early’ phase of party development may differ from case to case,
thus making it very hard to establish a clear cut-off point for every phase.
Given the gap in the literature on Political Parties on the success of the extreme
right in Eastern Europe, and its participation in government, the aim of this chapter
is to explore the link between party success, incumbency and party organization for
the extreme right, looking at the evolution of the two extreme-right parties in
Romania after 1990. Following Mudde (2000) and Meijerink et al. (1998: 165),
I consider as belonging to the category of extreme right those parties whose ideol-
ogy exhibits at least one feature from each of the following dimensions: ‘in-group–
out-group’ (nationalism, ethnocentrism, racism, xenophobia) and ‘hierarchical’
dimension (authoritarianism, anti-democracy).
This chapter provides first a short theoretical framework under which the analy-
sis operates, justifies the classification as extreme-right parties, then compares the
evolution of the two cases, in terms of party organization and incumbency (for
PUNR). The first goal is to identify what the organizational mechanisms are
that helped the two extreme-right parties to succeed or fail. The second goal is to
see if the incumbency period has had a negative effect on the extreme-right party,
contributing to its failure. The main argument is that a strong charismatic leader
combined with strong centralization of decision-making and dominance/overlap
of the party executive over the party in public office contribute to party success for
the Romanian extreme right, while a soft charismatic leader, weak party centraliza-
tion and a separation between the party executive and the party in public office
combined with incumbency lead to disaster.
The link between party success, incumbency and party

organization for extreme-right parties
This section briefly discusses and links the literature on party success, incumbency
and party organization in relation to extreme-right parties. The concepts of party
Extreme-right parties in Romania after 1990 175
failure and party success can be regarded as ambiguous, and different meanings
can be attributed to both. One understanding of party failure can be that its organ-
ization has ceased to exist (Mackie and Rose 1988: 533), therefore ‘failure to
survive as measured by organisational death’ (Harmel 2003: 9). In contrast to this,
party success can be perceived as organizational persistence and continuity in com-
peting in national elections and sending representatives to parliament, as a minimal
criterion.
For extreme-right parties, which are usually marginalized and have to fight
against a ‘cordon sanitaire’ (Van der Brug and van Spanje 2004), getting into
the government coalition can also be regarded as a ‘victory’ if this was the party’s
goal. But as the Eastern European experience shows, some extreme-right parties
may enter the government at a stage when they are not prepared and this accom-
plishment may not always turn out to be successful for the party in the long
run. Apart from incumbency, the parties may choose the strategy of deliberately
staying in opposition or only supporting the government party in the legislature. In
time, these strategies may prove to be electorally more attractive than the alterna-
tive of incumbency (Rose and Mackie 1983). Therefore, for the purpose of
this chapter, success and failure are defined using two criteria: sequential elec-
toral performance, which allows the party to gain seats in parliament, and party
organizational persistence.
In this analysis I consider a party as incumbent when it is a part of the govern-
ment, and as a consequence is expected to influence public policy. Most of the
party elite are therefore incorporated in the state structures. The literature on
Political Parties states that participation in government is supposed to have a
positive effect on a party’s career. Whether associated with party development or
party institutionalization, most of the time incumbency is regarded as a beneficial
factor in these processes (Randall and Svåsand 2002) as parties attain more routine
in terms of procedures, distribution of power and resources (Harmel 2003: 14).
Mackie and Rose (1988: 555) also find that parties which are often in government
are less likely to fail. At the same time, ‘parties in government do not maintain
sufficient agreement on the rewards of office to remain completely intact’ and
as their results show, out of 195 parties from nineteen Western European nations,
55 per cent maintained their organization intact, and only 23 per cent disap-
peared. What needs to be mentioned is that the research was conducted only
for Western Europe, with relatively stable parties which have already participated
in at least three elections. For that reason, this chapter seeks to check if indeed
incumbency has a positive or negative effect on one of the Romanian extreme-
right parties.
Moving on to the organization of the new extreme-right populist parties, the
common stipulated characteristics are charismatic leadership, and a small and selec-
tive centralized organizational pattern (Kitschelt 1995; Taggart 1995). Other party
scholars (Betz 1998; Panebianco 1988; Pedahzur and Brichta 2002) also state that,
in order to be successful, an extreme-right party needs a strong charismatic leader,
a leader capable of setting the direction that the party will follow, a leader that can
176 Gabriela Borz
control the party and its members. While charisma can benefit parties right across
the political spectrum, extreme-right parties ‘need’ it more because the xenophobic
and nationalistic message of the party requires a leader of this type, who can appeal
more to people’s emotions rather than trying to attract their support for the party’s
economic and social ‘policies’. Because of the absence of clear policy proposals,
charismatic leaders capture the consent of party members and the masses merely on
the basis of their unique personal qualities. At the same time, if charisma were to
characterize the leaders of all parties, this would reduce the explanatory power of
charismatic leaders for the success of the extreme right.
While there is agreement among scholars on the importance of charisma, there
is also agreement on the difficulty of defining and measuring it. Eatwell (2006: 271)
uses a discourse-based approach and sees a charismatic personality in terms of three
traits: missionaries with a vision, working in symbiotic hierarchy (above and of
the people) and demonizing their enemies. Similarly, based on the leaders’ charac-
teristics, Pedahzur and Brichta (2002: 40) differentiate between soft and hard
charismatic parties, emphasizing that the hard charismatic parties have a preacher
and a rigid organizer with charismatic authority who can eliminate tendencies to
factionalism, which implies that in contrast soft charismatic parties are more prone
to splits. This chapter investigates the degree of charisma exercised by the two
extreme-right party leaders by gathering evidence from their party leadership styles
and from their comparative popularity as party leaders.
Concerning the bureaucratic chain within the party organization, the literature
points in different directions. Kitschelt (1995: 32) argues that, because of the lack
of a clear bureaucratic chain inside the party, the danger of factional battles will be
inevitable. The other argument, posed by Betz (1998: 9) is that, precisely because
of the lack of bureaucratic structure and the presence of a strong discipline within
the party, factions will be avoided and the party can easily change its issue position
if this is perceived to benefit the number of votes received or chances of office. On
a similar line to Kitschelt, Eatwell (2006: 267) highlights the importance of consid-
ering leadership in relation to the organization, as the key activists in the country
can serve to limit party splits. Carter’s findings for Western Europe (2005: 99) were
that ‘well-organized and well-led right-wing extremist parties have tended to
record electoral scores that are significantly higher than those of their badly organ-
ized and badly led counterparts’. It is still a question of if and how the factions will
be avoided, and one solution could be a balance of power tilted more towards
the extra-parliamentary executive, precisely because parties in Eastern Europe want
to increase cohesion and eliminate possible internal conflicts (van Biezen 2003:
218–19; 2005).
While the previous literature has neglected the organization of extreme-right
parties in Eastern Europe, in this chapter I address the issue of organization for the
two cases in terms of degree of organization (structural articulation, intensiveness
and extensiveness) membership size (pervasiveness of organization), leadership skills
and balance of power (centralization). In a similar vein to Janda (1980: 98), I use
structural articulation in the sense of a well-defined set of party organs with definite
terms of operation and selection procedures, while intensiveness and extensiveness

of organization refer to the importance and size of the basic local unit and its spread
throughout the country.
The extreme right in Romania

Scholarly works on the Romanian extreme right (Gallagher 2005; Mungiu-Pippidi
2001; Voicu 2000) have so far offered descriptive accounts of its evolution on the
Romanian political landscape with emphasis on the communist heritage and its
peculiarities. While the institutional setting is kept constant by this analysis (com-
munist past, institutional context, party voters, party ideology), one can ask why
one extreme-right party was more successful than the other by looking at the evo-
lution of party organization, at the party leadership, at the incumbency period
and trying to find the factor or combination of factors responsible for the different
outcomes. The comparison of the two parties is a good strategy since they differ on
the dependent variable (success) while they are similar on most potential independ-
ent variables, and consequently it is easier to identify the actual reasons for their
different outcomes.
As Mudde (2000) and Meijerink et al. (1998) state, the condition for classifying
parties as extreme right is that the party ideology must exhibit at least one feature
from each of the following dimensions: ‘in-group–out-group’ (nationalism, ethno-
centrism, racism, xenophobia) and ‘hierarchical’ dimension (authoritarianism, anti-
democracy). The two Romanian parties employ at least one of these features if one
looks at the party manifestos from 1997 and 2001, and at the party discourse (Greater
Romania Party 1997, 2001; Romanian National Unity Party 1997).
Both parties manifest high levels of nationalism, if nationalism is understood as
the political doctrine asserting the congruence of the state and the nation, and also
nationalism in the sense of a major loyalty of the individual to the state. The PRM’s
statute from 2001 stresses the importance of ‘the achievement of national interests
… completion of national unity, territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence
ideals’, while nation and country are very important words, written with capital
letters in both the party statute and party programme. The Romanian nation is the
surrounding space for individuals’ everyday life. PUNR’s programme expresses
support for the existence of nation-states, especially the Romanian one, the nation-
state being the proper environment for individual development. National unity is
the main idea in the party doctrine and the historical unification from 1918 repre-
sents the corollary of Romanian statehood. As far as ethnocentrism is concerned, a
discrimination against the out-group in favour of the in-group is expressed by both
parties, if one looks at the party discourse, which is completely different in this
aspect from the parties’ programmes. The number of out-groups is larger for the
Greater Romania Party (Roma, Jews, Hungarians, and sometimes Chinese and
Arabs), while PUNR had Hungarians as its main target. The in-group is, of course,
the Romanian nation and its values, which has always ‘belonged’ to Europe.
Xenophobia, manifested as the fear of aliens, was present in both party discourses.
178 Gabriela Borz
As mentioned, the targets of the two parties were clearly defined, but the Greater
Romania Party has a wider range of unacceptable ‘aliens’. Both party programmes
exhibit authoritarian features, like emphasis on discipline and authority, with a
particular emphasis on the idea of ‘law and order’. Before the 1996 elections,Vadim
Tudor, PRM’s leader, promised two years of authoritarian rule in Romania, if his
party won the elections. Moreover, both parties, although not in a pronounced
manner, looked at the communist past with admiration, and both party leaders
were also partisans of Marshal Antonescu’s rehabilitation and the erection of statues
portraying him.
Considering the above-mentioned criteria, both parties can be considered as
extreme right, though the PRM has been more successful than the PUNR, which,
although part of the government for a while, has failed to keep its voters and
organization. In 1998 the PUNR experienced a split, with party leader Gheorghe
Funar and his followers joining PRM and the remaining faction forming a new
party (National Alliance), which in 2000 did not manage to enter parliament and
ended its activity in 2002.
The evolution of the two parties

The puzzle is why PRM gradually became very successful, while PUNR, after two
years of incumbency as a coalition partner, experienced a split and disappeared
almost completely from the political arena. Its remaining faction formed another
party, which after the 2000 elections became insignificant. Is incumbency a deadly
experience for an extreme-right party, contributing to its disappearance? Although
the two cases studied here cannot offer a final answer to this question, their com-
parison indicates possible causes for their different outcomes in terms of success,
and constitutes a step towards an empirical theory of the incumbency effect on
extreme-right parties.
Party organization: origin and development

The PUNR began its legal existence in March 1990, in Braşov, one of the
Transylvanian cities, and was the political expression of Cultural Union – Vatra
Românească (Stoica 2000: 76). The union, formed at the beginning of 1990,
was a reaction to the appearance of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians from
Romania (UDMR). The party’s initial name had the location specified ‘from
Transylvania’ but after two months this was dropped in favour of just PUNR –
the Romanian National Unity Party – in order to avoid giving the party a regional
character.
The party did not have a charismatic leader at the beginning of its activity in
1990, but its message was quite clear and succeeded in attracting attention. Gheorghe
Funar rapidly became an important party figure and already by 1992, without hold-
ing the party chair, was a candidate for presidency in the national elections and
finished third with 10.8 per cent of the votes. Gheorghe Funar was the charismatic
leader that the party needed and at the same time had been the mayor of Cluj-
Napoca, one of the biggest Transylvanian cities, since 1992.
The message promoted by the party was clearly nationalistic – the party’s main
target was to preserve national integrity, and to add to the present Romanian state
the old provinces that are no longer part of it (e.g. Moldova). Gheorghe Funar
knew how to attract attention to himself and the party and used the Hungarian
population as his main target. Being the mayor of a city with a substantial Hungarian
population (20 per cent) and the party leader from 1992, Funar used many strategies
to impose the ‘traditional values’ of the Romanian nation. Until 2005, some
distinctive features of the city were the benches and rubbish bins painted in the
colours of the national flag, or placards in the city centre displaying sections from
the Romanian constitution (e.g. ‘the official national language is the Romanian
language’), all these targeting the Hungarian minority.
The PRM started its activity one year later than PUNR, in 1991, and from the
beginning it had a charismatic leader (Corneliu Vadim Tudor), who was able to
attract electoral support and promote the party message. The party advocates ultra-
nationalistic principles and anti-Hungarian sentiments as well as combining fascist
and communist elements. Its orientation towards (re)unification with Moldova is
one of PRM’s main electoral selling points. Like the PUNR, the PRM programme
states that the Romanian nation is one of the most ancient civilizations in Europe
and that Romanians distinguish themselves by their talents and qualities. The
party programme was called ‘National Doctrine as a Synthetic Expression of a
Multimillenary Existence of Romanians’. Following the same nationalistic ideas
and similarly emphasizing the danger represented by UDMR, but with a much
more radical position than PUNR, PRM was created by the editors of Greater
Romania Magazine (Stoica 2000: 66). The magazine had a wide coverage and
Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the leader, participated in all the populist events in
Transylvania.
Party leadership
Gheorghe Funar, the PUNR’s charismatic leader, managed to win three consecu-
tive mandates for the city hall in Cluj-Napoca. But since most of his activities were
based in Transylvania, the party did not manage to extend its organizational reach
throughout the country and one indicator of this is the electoral results in the other
regions. In contrast, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the PRM’s charismatic leader, was
able to impose consensus among the members and to contribute to the party’s
growth over the years. He proved to be an authoritarian leader and his strategies
involved the elimination of party dissent, the promotion of a personality cult like
that experienced during the communist period, and a continuous propaganda cam-
paign directed against conventional politicians, ethnic minorities, liberalism and
international capitalism, in order to attract alienated voters.
Compared to other parties across the Romanian political spectrum, charisma
applies more to the leaders of the two extreme-right parties and emerges as an
180 Gabriela Borz
explanatory variable for their success/failure given the lack of a clear policy pro-
gramme offered by the parties and the low political knowledge of the voters in the
early 1990s. If we think in terms of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ charisma applied to leaders,
Vadim Tudor is clearly a hard charismatic leader – the creator, preacher and rigid
organizer of his party – while Funar is a soft charismatic leader, lacking in strategic
or consensus-building skills. He tried to delegate, to coordinate and maintain con-
sensus among the competing views, while Vadim insisted on loyalty to the leader
and eliminated any signs of factionalism. Clear evidence of Vadim’s hard charisma
are the high level of party centralization in terms of decision-making, allocation of
resources and candidate selection, as will be shown in the following section. Also,
party defections in the face of clear discipline show that no party member could
continue his/her career in the party if s/he did not accept the leadership line. Since
1992, around nine MPs have left the party. In 2001, two MPs from PRM resigned
as a result of the party’s move to the extreme right of the political spectrum. They
refused to follow the political views imposed by their leader and complained
that Vadim made statements without consulting members. The PRM was more the
creation of its leader, who knew how to control the party from the outset, while the
PUNR was the political expression of a cultural union in Transylvania, and had
from the beginning an organizational structure that could not easily be disciplined.
Gheorghe Funar has not excluded any member from the party and indeed does not
have the right to do so according to party statutes. Moreover, he could not impose
his views and future strategies on the rest of the party members, as clearly demon-
strated at the 1997 Party Congress when he was defeated in the race for the party
leadership.
Table 11.1 records that voter trust (by party) in political leaders is high only in
the case of former Romanian president (1996–2000) Emil Constantinescu with his
party, and in the case of Vadim with the Greater Romania Party. The personality
of the leader impacts the same way as the party itself on the voters. The trust score
for PUNR and its leader Funar is not that high and is indeed split between Funar
and his eventual successor as party leader,Valeriu Tabără. Furthermore, PUNR sym-
pathizers show a relatively similar degree of trust in Vadim, unexpected for the
leader of a rival party around 1995.
Though charisma is very difficult to measure and quantify, the figures in Table 11.1
can still give an approximation of the leaders’ popularity vis-à-vis their party and
vis-à-vis their electoral success, indicators at which Vadim scores higher than Funar.
Both politicians show charisma by their oratorial qualities, but then charisma gets
differentiated into hard and soft by their different abilities as party leaders. While
PRM is a case of a strongly led and well-organized extreme-right party, PUNR
falls into the opposite category of a poorly led and weakly organized party.
Degree of organization and centralization of power

The PUNR organization, as stated in the 1990 party statute, article 24, had branches
at county level and in the capital city, as well as sub-units in each town and
TABLE 11.1 Voters’ trust in parties and party leaders in Romania
Mean trust∗ Ion Gheorghe Vadim Marko Valeriu Emil Petre

Party and party Iliescu Funar Tudor Bella Tabara Constan- Roman
leaders 1995–97 tinescu
PDRS 2.92 1.74 1.96 0.84 1.26 1.97 2.08

SD 1.04 1.22 1.36 1.10 1.32 1.02 1.03
CDR 1.64 1.52 1.57 1.08 1.16 3.12 2.36
SD 0.97 1.09 1.17 1.16 1.16 0.86 1.03
PD 1.95 1.80 1.83 1.50 1.46 2.52 2.49
SD 0.98 1.07 1.13 1.30 1.16 0.99 1.10
PRM 2.20 2.06 3.13 1.05 1.51 2.03 2.02
SD 1.07 1.16 1.13 1.10 1.23 1.00 1.04
PUNR 2.13 2.61 2.28 1.29 1.86 2.20 2.21
SD 0.93 1.12 1.16 1.21 1.42 1.03 1.02
UDMR 1.30 1.18 0.96 2.45 0.45 2.57 1.79
SD 1.04 1.12 1.07 1.29 0.73 1.17 1.15
∗ Mean trust values range from 1 – very low to 4 – very high.
Source: 1995–97 Open Society Romanian opinion barometers, N = 1,495.
rural area. The internal organs responsible for the party organization at the central
level were the National Convention, National Council, Permanent Bureau and the
National Commission of Censors. The most powerful body was the National
Convention, composed of local delegates, senators and deputies, which used to
hold sessions every two years. As compared with the PRM, PUNR’s organization
was looser in terms of structural articulation since the lines of authority among
organs were blurred or contradictory. Even if in the party statutes or the initial
website, party extensiveness was emphasized, the party did not manage to have
local units throughout the country. The centralization of power was quite low; not
even the party statutes put much emphasis on the party leader and his attributes.
In contrast, the PRM started from the beginning with a centralized organization
as evidenced by the 1997 and 2001 party statutes. The party structure was complex
(at least on paper) from the start, with the party Congress as the major party struc-
ture, which ran sessions every four years. The Congress still adopts the party stat-
utes, party programme and party strategy, and elects the party leader and other party
organs (National Council, Central Commission for Coordination and Central
Commission for financial control). Between Congresses, the party activity is con-
trolled by the National Council, which elects the Executive Committee. It is the
National Council that establishes the party strategy and approves the annual budget.
The Executive Committee is the executive organ of the National Council, which
coordinates the activity of the local units, elaborates norms and instructions, nego-
tiates political alliances and mergers with other parties and validates the lists of party
candidates for the parliament. In addition to these structures, there is also a
Permanent Bureau, which holds weekly sessions.
182 Gabriela Borz
Distinct features of the PRM’s party statute are the strong leader attributes.
Considering the decision-making system, experts classified the PRM as the most
centralized party on the Romanian political landscape (Grecu et al. 2003). Having
a complex and well-specified structure from the beginning and keeping all the
decisions centralized, Vadim Tudor was able to keep the party united. As an MP
since 1992, Vadim was involved with the party in public office as well as being
the party executive. The PRM had the organizational pattern whereby the party
executive dominates the party in public office and this organizational aspect can be
regarded as a disciplinary measure employed by the party. It allowed the party’s
central leadership to control the party’s MPs and to keep the party united.
The case was not the same for the PUNR’s organization. The party chair was
in Transylvania most of the time running the city hall in Cluj-Napoca and this
weakened his control over the ministers and the party’s MPs, since from the begin-
ning the party statute did not have strong powers attributed to the party leader.
In addition to this, the party executive was not completely involved with the party
in public office and it could not act as a disciplinary force inside the party. The
situation was the reverse for the PRM, whose leader was an MP throughout and
was thus able to control the party’s MPs.
Another aspect of major importance for the success of extreme-right parties in
government, besides the partial overlap or dominance of the party executive over
the party in public office, is the actual involvement of the party leader in the every-
day political game, since the regional location or change of leader can only work to
their detriment, as other examples show.The situation of PUNR was similar to that
of FPŐ in Austria after Jőrg Heider retained only the governorship of Carinthia and
controlled the party from behind the scenes (Kitschelt 2005; Luther 2003). The
incumbency generated factionalism, and the party lost popularity in regional elec-
tions except Carinthia and suffered a split in 2005. Similarly, two years after being
in government and following the death of its leader, the LPF in the Netherlands
also experienced a split when most of its MPs left and formed their own group.
As Table 11.2 illustrates, the evolution of party membership shows no major dif-
ferences between the parties until 1996. PUNR started with more members in the
early 1990s, but PRM grew much more after 1998. After Funar’s PUNR faction
merged with PRM in 1998, Funar became the General Secretary of PRM. The
merger is a sign that Corneliu Vadim Tudor knew how to strengthen the position
of his party and his organizational and strategic skills were used to good advantage.
TABLE 11.2 Evolution of party membership in Romania
1990 1992 1996 2000 2004 2007
PUNR 21,176 49,000 40,000

PRM – 25,000 32,000 55,000–100,000 150,000 103,000
Sources: Party declarations; Lewis (2000: 102–3); Ivanici (1993: 118); Pepine (1994: 5–6).
If previously they had been rivals competing for the same voters, in 1998 Funar
became Vadim’s ‘right hand’.
The incumbency period

During the incumbency period (1994–96), PUNR had four ministerial positions in
the cabinet in areas where reforms were required. Considering the party size in
parliament (44 MPs), the two-year incumbency period, and the number of leaders,
one would have expected PUNR to stabilize as a party and to increase its electoral
success. The problem, however, was not only the weak organization of the party
across the regions but also the emergence of factionalism. Funar was not able to
keep the party ministers disciplined and he was not strong enough to impose his
point of view within the party any more. The regional location of the party leader
worked to his detriment because the party ministers were in Bucharest actually
taking part in the governing process. In July 1996 during the National Council
meetings, Funar proposed carrying on the alliance with the Social Democracy Party
(PDSR), while the party’s minister,Valeriu Tabără, favoured a strategic alliance with
the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSRD) and the Romanian Ecologist
Movement, both in opposition at the time. Funar’s proposal was rejected, and in
September 1996, two months before the legislative elections, the party withdrew
from the government protesting against the Romanian–Hungarian treaty signed
during that period. What happened after that was a sharp electoral decline in the
national elections of November 1996, when the percentage of votes fell to 4.33 per
cent for the Chamber of Deputies and the number of the party’s MPs was reduced
from 44 to 25.
Dissent inside the party materialized with the election of Valeriu Tabără as
the new party leader in March 1997 but he was not a charismatic leader comparable
to Funar. What followed was factional infighting over leadership and strategy,
resulting in a split one year after the incumbency period. Gheorghe Funar left
the party in November 1997 and his faction joined the PRM one year after
the split.
If the incumbency period occurs at an early stage of party organization, and if
factionalism is not controlled by strong party discipline, the result can be disastrous
for the party, and PUNR is a good example. When a party enters government, the
relationship between the party’s different ‘faces’ becomes more complex, because
the ‘party in public office’ is now divided between the ‘party in government’ and
‘the party in parliament’. Incumbency at an early stage of party development proved
to be destabilizing for PUNR.The party was not prepared and had not built mech-
anisms that could maintain party unity. ‘The party in government’ became influen-
tial and started to challenge the extra-parliamentary party. The PUNR is an
example that runs counter to what van Biezen (2003) illustrated as being a possible
pattern of party organization in Eastern Europe, with the domination of extra-
parliamentary executive over the parliamentary party and a partial overlap among
the two. For PUNR the party executive was not part of the parliamentary party
184 Gabriela Borz
(as in the case of PRM) and, as the events show, it is not the extra-parliamentary
party that was more powerful, but the party in government.
Party success and party failure

The merger between PRM and the Funar faction of PUNR seemed to have had
electoral benefits, because at the 2000 elections the PRM became the second
largest party in parliament after the Social Democrat Party. Besides vote pooling,
the merger facilitated resource mobilization and, moreover, it pooled legislative
votes, improving PRM’s access to committee positions and staffing resources. The
Greater Romania Party became more stable after the 1996 elections and its leader
publicly declared that the party was ready to be part of the government, but none
of the mainstream parties were disposed to enter into a coalition with an extreme-
right party. Given the international political pressure, the option of an extremist
party in the Romanian government was excluded if Romania wanted to join the
Euro-Atlantic structures.
In contrast to the PRM’s development, the PUNR was rather less successful
(Figures 11.1 and 11.2). The party entered the coalition government in 1994 at a
stage when more organization was required given the increased parliamentary size
of the party by 1992. Its electoral fortunes dropped in 1996 and internal dissent
started to intensify.The disruption was manifested by the party split in 1998 and the
poor electoral results in 2000 of the newly formed National Alliance (a merger of
the remaining PUNR with the National Romanian Party).
The regional distribution of electoral success and consequently of electoral man-
dates between the two parties differs considerably, as shown by Figures 11.1 and 11.2.
35
30
Number of mandates
25
20
15
10
0
1990 1992 1996 2000 2004
Election year
Transylvania Muntenia and Oltenia Banat
Moldova Dobrogea Bucharest
FIGURE 11.1 PRM electoral mandates by region, 1990–2004

40
Number of mandates 35
30
25
20
15
10
0
1990 1992 1996 2000 2004
Election year
Transylvania Muntenia and Oltenia Banat
Moldova Dobrogea Bucharest
FIGURE 11.2 PUNR electoral mandates by region, 1990–2004
The PRM had a homogeneous distribution of mandates throughout the regions

while the PUNR had most of its MPs from Transylvania. Even if local branches
were established in every region, the leader’s activity was mainly in Transylvania as
a city mayor and he was the charismatic figure who attracted most of the votes.The
difference between the two parties in constructing local organizations and attracting
votes is quite obvious. Even with a lower number of MPs, by 1996 the PRM suc-
ceeded in having a relatively uniform distribution of mandates all over the country.
The PUNR, however, had its main supporters in Transylvania during all three
elections in 1990, 1992 and 1996. Gheorghe Funar, the party leader until 1997,
conducted his activity most of the time in Cluj-Napoca, even though the head-
quarters of the party were moved to Bucharest in 1992. PUNR restarted its activity
in 2002 under a slightly changed name, performed badly in the 2004 elections and
merged into the Conservative Party at the beginning of 2006. Despite its highest
electoral scores in 2000, after the 2008 elections the PRM gained only 3.2 per cent
of the votes and failed to enter parliament again.
Conclusion
This analysis shows that for an extreme-right party to succeed in a newly established
democracy, a strong charismatic leader is needed, in addition to strong party disci-
pline and party centralization, especially if the party is to enter government. With
a strong leader, an extreme-right party can postpone its entry into government until
the party is sufficiently developed and the rewards of the incumbency can be
greater. A strong charismatic leader can decide about the organization of the party,
increase centralization and change strategy without too much internal debate.
186 Gabriela Borz
There were differences between the two party leaders in their ability to see, predict,
understand and act in accordance with the demands and opportunities posed to the
parties by their environment. This proves that the success of the extreme right
depends not on the existence of charisma per se, but also on its extent and the way
it is deployed.
Strong authoritarian attitudes inside the party and a strong authoritarian leader
seem to be a combination that leads to success. But the combination of strong
authoritarian attitudes inside the party, a soft charismatic leader and incumbency
seems to generate failure if the party is not able to change and adapt in time. As
illustrated, combined with the lack of a strong leader and strong disciplinary rules,
the incumbency period led to factionalism over leadership and strategy, factors that
contributed to the party’s collapse.
The PRM case verifies Kitschelt’s predictions about a successful extreme-
right party with a strong leader and a centralized organization, and also Carter’s
hypothesis about a well-organized and well-led extreme-right party. As Kitschelt
stipulated, the lack of a clear bureaucratic chain inside the party will make the
danger of factional battles inevitable and the PUNR clearly shows this. The
Romanian cases point to the fact that if the extreme-right party is to enter govern-
ment, the need for structural articulation comes first. What can be added
to Kitschelt’s model is the requirement for charismatic leadership participation in
public office at the national and not at the regional level, which can facilitate
an overlap between the party executive and the party in government and prevent
faction formation and party splits. Therefore this chapter sets a question mark for
the ability of an extreme-right party to participate in government without under-
going major organizational changes.
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12
ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE EXTREME
RIGHT IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE
Per Anders Rudling
Introduction
A young state, Ukraine became independent when the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991. As the old order crumbled, new national heroes replaced the old, after a dif-
ficult process of soul-searching. A country divided by culture, language and reli-
gion now faced the difficult task of consolidating the republic as a nation-state.
Establishing a common pantheon of national heroes for this divided country has
proven difficult. While nationalism is strong in the western part of the country,
Soviet historiography still lingers in the heavily Russified east and south. In Western
Ukraine, this process of revising Ukrainian history has often involved turning the
villains of Soviet historiography into the heroes of today. This trend is particularly
strong in Galicia, which had not been under Moscow’s control before 1939, and
has a separate political history and traditions, its own pantheon of heroes. Unlike
the Ukrainians in the Russian empire, who had a certain openness to the Russian
language and culture, the Galicians developed an exclusivist either/or identity,
clearly delineated from Polish and Russian identities (Himka 2006: 18).
The historical experiences of Western Ukraine between 1920 and 1939 were
very different from those of Soviet Ukraine, which was deeply transformed by
Stalin’s terror in the 1930s. A considerable portion of its intellectual, political
and cultural leaders were murdered. The brave wartime attempts of Ukrainian
nationalists to spread their nationalist ideology into Soviet Ukraine had limited
success (Matla 1952: 17; Weiner 2001: 250). Facing increasingly harsh national
oppression from the Polish authorities in the 1920s and 1930s, and inspired by the
rise of fascism, Ukrainian nationalism was radicalized. Western Ukraine generally
regarded the arrival of the Soviets in 1939 as an occupation, Eastern and Central
Ukraine often identified with the Soviet or larger Eastern Slavic community. The
heterogeneous political and cultural landscape in Ukraine has produced a complex
190 Per Anders Rudling
situation for the extreme right.This chapter aims to introduce the intellectual back-
ground and the history of the Ukrainian extreme right, focusing, in particular, on
the role of anti-Semitism as a link to extremists in Russia, the Middle East and the
Western world.
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN),

fascism and anti-Semitism
Ukrainian nationalism in Galicia had already developed a highly racialized narra-
tive by the late nineteenth century, complete with an elaborate anti-Jewish dis-
course (Himka 2005: 16–17). The predominant Ukrainian fascist movement, the
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was established in 1929. Drawing
heavily upon Italian fascism, its main ideologue Dmytro Dontsov, a former
Marxist, was inspired by Nietzsche and German National Socialism, combining
extreme nationalism with terrorism, corporatism and the Führerprinzip (Armstrong
1968: 402). The Ukrainian nationalist press of the 1930s published anti-Semitic
articles on a regular basis (Mytsiuk 1933a, 1933b; Wysocki 2003: 201). Dontsov
himself, who has been described as ‘an organic anti-Semite’, translated anti-Semitic
articles by Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg and Mussolini for the OUN press
(Kuzio 1992: 34; Kurylo 2007: 10, 14–20). Volodymyr Martynets’, the editor of
the OUN’s most important ideological journal, Rozbudova Natsiї, described
the Jews as a ‘parasitical’, ‘morally damaging’, ‘corrupting’ and ‘hostile element’,
‘racially unsuited for miscegenation and assimilation’. Rather than violent pogroms
and mass murder, Martynets’ argued that ‘a total and absolute isolation of the Jews
from the Ukrainian people’ would be a more effective solution to the ‘Jewish
problem’.
It is easier to liquidate 44,000 Jews using these methods, than to liquidate 3¼

million with more radical methods … All of the possibilities, especially if
combined, will decrease the current strength of Jewry and will not only bring
an end to their expansion in our country, but assure a continuous decline in
the number of Jews, not only through emigration, but also through the
decline of their natural growth rate. As the Jews will not be able to make a
living, the Jews will take care of this themselves.
(Martynets’ 1938: 10, 14–15, 22)
In 1940, the OUN split into two factions. The anti-Semitism of the Bandera wing
of the OUN – the OUN(b) – was programmatic and pogrommatic (Carynnyk
2005: 14–17). Referring to itself as a ‘natural ally’ of Nazi Germany, the OUN(b)
declared its readiness to go to war against the USSR (Kul’chyts’kyi et al. 2006:
12, 61). In April 1941 it declared that it ‘combat[s] Jews as supporters of the
Muscovite-Bolshevik regime’ (Kul’chyts’kyi et al. 2006: 43). Its propaganda
directives of May 1941 demanded the destruction of the Jews: ‘Ukraine for the
Ukrainians! … Death to the Moscovite-Jewish commune! Beat the commune,
Anti-Semitism in Ukraine 191
save Ukraine!’ (Kul’chyts’kyi et al. 2006: 159, 165). The goal of both wings of the
movement was the establishment of a Ukrainian state. In April 1941, Andriy
Mel’nyk, the leader of the OUN(m), a more conservative wing of the movement,
proposed to Hitler the creation of a Greater Ukraine, stretching from the Danube
to the Caspian Sea (Kul’chyts’kyi et al. 2006: 10). Encouraged by the German
support for fascist states in Slovakia and Croatia, on 30 June 1941 the OUN(b)
proclaimed a Ukrainian state which would ‘cooperate closely with National Socialist
Greater Germany … under the Führer Adolf Hitler’ (Kul’chyts’kyi et al. 2006: 11;
Himka 2006: 19; Serhiichuk 1996: 239). The main propagandist of the OUN(b)-
dominated ‘government’, Stepan Lenkavs’kyi, advocated the physical destruction
of Ukrainian Jewry while ‘Prime Minister’ Iaroslav Stets’ko expressed his support
for ‘the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of
exterminating Jewry to Ukraine, barring their assimilation and the like’ (Finder and
Prusin 2004: 102; Berkhoff and Carynnyk 1999: 171).
Whereas individual members of the Nazi leadership, such as Ostminister Alfred
Rosenberg and circles within the Abwehr, the military intelligence, were more
favourably disposed towards the Ukrainians, Hitler rejected both the nationalists’
declaration of independence and their offer of partnership. From the autumn of
1941, the OUN–Nazi relationship began to deteriorate. While some leading
Ukrainian nationalists, such as Iaroslav Stets’ko and Stepan Bandera, were impris-
oned by the Germans, others, among them Roman Shukhevych, the head of the
OUN(b) between 1943 and 1945 and from 1943 to 1950 the commander of its
armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the UPA), served in German uniform
until 1943. As the Red Army approached, the UPA began to cooperate with the
Germans, as their interests on the ‘Jewish question’ overlapped (Golczewski 2008:
143; Ainsztein 1974: 253–54, 363, 373).
After the war, the émigré OUN went through a number of sectarian splits.
Bandera and his circle retained their anti-democratic orientation (Rudling 2006a:
174). After 1991, the OUN(b), under the leadership of Iaroslava Stets’ko (1920–
2003), Iaroslav Stets’ko’s widow, was re-established in Ukraine. The Bandera
wing of the OUN formed the so-called Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN),
which came to have a considerable influence in Galicia in the early 1990s (Wilson
1997: 79).
The Soviet anti-Zionist tradition

While formally banned in the Soviet Union, latent anti-Semitic attitudes were
deeply rooted and seldom confronted. In the wake of the Holocaust, there were
pogroms in Dnipropetrovs’k in the summer of 1944, and in Kyiv in September
1945, targeting Jewish survivors who returned to their former homes (Weiner
2001: 169; 2003: 192). Some of the post-war show trials in Eastern and Central
Europe during the late Stalin era, notably the Slánský trial and the purging of
Romanian foreign minister Ana Pauker, had strong anti-Semitic undertones
(Wasserstein 1997: 51–57).
Stalinism, with its concept of socialism in one country, glorification of the army
and the ‘patriotic war’ and its ‘anti-Zionist’ rhetoric defies our traditional left–right
political scale (Dahl 2006: 212). While the war between Nazi Germany and the
USSR and the latter’s subsequent victory over fascism in 1945 has created the
popular perception of Stalinism and fascism as political antipodes, on a number of
occasions in history these two ‘ends’ of the political spectrum have met (Gross
2006: 224). Commenting on Communist Poland, Michael Steinlauf refers to the
phenomenon of combining key concepts of the interwar national democrats,
the Endecja, with ‘proletarian rhetoric’ as ‘Endo-Communism’, a ‘peculiar mar-
riage of authoritarian Communism with chauvinist nationalist tendencies’, in which
anti-Semitism plays a central role (Steinlauf 1996: 115).
Soviet anti-Semitism was occasionally overt. The book Judaism without
Embellishments, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1963, linked
Israeli ‘racism’ and ‘militarism’ to the Talmud, presenting Jews as Nazi collaborators
(Kichko 1963: 160–66). In July 1967, the Soviet authorities launched a propaganda
campaign against ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Talmudism’, presenting Zionism as a
‘world threat’ comparable to Nazism (Wasserstein 1997: 211–16; Sachar 2005: 722;
Umland 1999).
The extreme right in Eastern and Southern Ukraine shows many similarities
with its Russian counterpart, its rhetoric saturated with Soviet and Stalinist refer-
ences. During Gorbachev’s perestroika, Soviet nostalgists, anti-modernists and
militarists united in opposition to the political changes they felt threatened the
Soviet homeland. Their interpretation of the world varied, but these ‘conservative’
forces found common ground in their opposition to liberalism, the Western world
and modernity, often mixed with anti-Semitic components (Andreyeva 1993: 70,
88, 98, 126). While they were not always favourably disposed to Marxism and
Communism, they respected Soviet institutions as incarnations of the united and
indivisible Russia. The military, the state, the party and the personality of Stalin
represented a tradition of Soviet/Russian glory with which these people identified.
Labels such as conservatives, fascists or fundamentalists are inadequate to describe
this diverse group, which belongs on both extremes of the political spectrum at the
same time (Ljunggren 1992: 16).
The national Bolshevik tradition

The amalgamation of Stalinist authoritarianism and nationalist extremism has
crystallized into an illiberal political movement known as National Bolshevism, or
Eurasianism. This movement is indebted to a tradition which includes thinkers
such as Alain de Benoist, the Strasser and Jünger brothers, Ernst Niekisch and
Moammar al-Gaddafi (Dahl 2001: 142–45; Staud 2006: 83). A diverse movement,
National Bolsheviks share the rejection of Western individualism and liberalism,
finding inspiration in the collectivist organization of societies east of the Elbe. Ernst
Jünger’s embracing of the ‘ideas of 1914’, and his promotion of the therapeutic and
cleansing qualities of war are promoted as an alternative to the ‘ideas of 1789’
(Neaman 1999: 32). Ernst Niekisch (1889–1967), a pioneer of National Bolshevism,

rejected National Socialism for its alleged Jewish origins, and found instead inspira-
tion in Russia, identifying the Bolsheviks as the guardians of the Prussian collectiv-
ist tradition. In an untranslatable phrase, Niekisch asserted that ‘Russland überfremdete
sich preussisch … [w]e have become more French than France itself; Russia has
become more Prussian than we ourselves have remained.’ Germany, Niekisch
thought, ‘can find the road to Potsdam, back to itself, only through Moscow’
(Heidegren 1997: 55–56). Niekisch’s Manichean Weltanschauung juxtaposes the
positive values of Protestantism, Prussia and Bolshevik Russia against the negative
values, represented by liberalism, capitalism, Rome and the Western world. In the
GDR, Niekisch’s critique of National Socialism was interpreted as anti-fascism,
and he landed a professorship in ‘Imperialism Studies’ at the Humboldt University
in East Berlin after the war (Staud 2006: 94). A slightly modified version of this
dichotomy can be found in the rhetoric from the Russian and Ukrainian ‘New
Right’, which articulates an opposition to what it calls ‘American-Jewish globalism
(Mondialism)’ and ‘Atlanticism’ and the supposed ‘Semitic-liberal values’ it repre-
sents. Two major and rival concepts of nationhood are discernible in the National
Bolshevik movement: on the one hand, there are the neo-imperialist Eurasianists,
on the other the neo-Slavophiles and isolationists (Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and
Finberg 1999: 9–10; Laqueur 1993: 138–42).
UNA-UNSO
The UNA-UNSO, the leading Ukrainian extreme right organization, traditionally
based in Western Ukraine, has been characterized as an influential fringe movement.
While its membership is small, around 8,000, this organization’s spectacular activi-
ties are highly visible (McGregor 2006).While some leading members of the UNA-
UNSO partly acknowledge the National Bolshevik New Right as a source of
inspiration, Andrii Shkil, leader of the strong UNA branch in L’viv, has emphasized
other sources: Dmytro Dontsov, Arthur de Gobineau and Walter Darré. UNA-
UNSO is oriented towards Germany and has modelled itself on the German NDP,
Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, emulating its neo-Nazi style street
violence against foreigners and its veneration of the Nazi past. Its ideology resem-
bles Le Pen’s Front National, with strong influences from the ideas of the German
‘conservative revolutionaries’ of the Weimar era. Aleksandr Kovalenko, a leading
figure in the movement, also recognizes the inspiration from Russian National Bolshevik
Aleksandr Dugin. Kovalenko denounces the values of the Kravchuk and Kuchma
regimes, which he identifies as ‘Protestantism, political liberalism, and scientific pos-
itivism’ – and contrasts them with the ‘Eurasian’ values of UNA-UNSO – ‘Eastern
Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Islam’. Kovalenko interprets these as a counter-force to
capitalism, emphasizing that all these traditions ‘consider usury and banking manipu-
lations to be sins’ (Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 13–14).
Despite its uneasy relation to Russia, the key thoughts of the Ukrainian extreme
right resemble those of Russian Eurasianists. Vladimir Zhirinovskii calls for a
Russian-led Eurasian empire, stretching ‘from the English Channel to Vladivostok’

and the Indian Ocean; Dugin proposes a Eurasian empire from Vladivostok to
Dublin. For their part, Kovalenko and the UNA do not want ‘some provincial,
pocket-sized Ukraine, an object of mockery, but a Ukraine for which our ancestors
fought, a Ukraine that will rule the world, … [a] Ukrainian superpower with bor-
ders from the Adriatic to the Pacific’ (Zhirinovskii 1994: 40, 48, 66; Dymerskaya-
Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 14, 19, 22). The Ukrainian Eurasianists have
occasionally been open to the idea of assimilating other Slavs. ‘Ukrainian pan-
Slavism aspires to a confederation that might not only include Slavic states,’ UNA
chairman Oleh Vitovich asserted. ‘The only salvation for Ukraine is the establish-
ment of a new super-ethnos … with a continent of its own, a culture of its own.
It is even possible that there will be a new civilisation.’ The UNA denies
the Russian claims of being descendents of the Aryans, maintaining that Russia
should be regarded as Northeast Ukraine. While the UNA has not toned down
its anti-Russian rhetoric, leading representatives have often asserted that Ukraine
and Russia have common interests (Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 17,
22, 23).
From 1991 to 1994 and again from October 2005, UNA has been led by Iurii
Shukhevych, who is also the main commander (holovnyi komandyr) of its paramili-
tary wing, the UNSO (Solchanyk 1999: 290, 293). A former dissident and long-
time political prisoner, Iurii Shukhevych is the son of UPA and OUN(b) leader
Roman Shukhevych. In the early 1990s, Iurii Shukhevych led the extreme-right
Ukrainian Inter-party Assembly (UIA), a movement based upon Dontsov’s phi-
losophy (Wilson 1997: 73). While the UNA-UNSO denies that it is fascist and
anti-Semitic, the rhetoric of its leaders contains elements of both (Solchanyk 1999:
293). In the 1990s, its election posters carried the slogan ‘Vote for us and you will
never have to vote again.’ In a 2007 interview Shukhevych alleged that ‘the ghetto
was invented not by Hitler, but by the Jews themselves’, and repeated the Soviet
‘anti-Zionist’ allegation that Simon Wiesenthal ‘was a Gestapo agent’ (Denysenko
2007).
The more committed Eurasianists, led by former UNA-UNSO leader Dmytro
Korchyns’kyi and his National Bolshevik organization Bratstvo, find some common
ground with the pro-Soviet left. In 2004, they entered an alliance with Natalya
Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, one of the most successful anti-
Western and Eurasian groups in Ukraine. In the 2006 election, her party received
2.93 per cent of the votes, just below the 3 per cent needed to enter the Rada. Her
strongest support base is in Russophone Southern and Eastern Ukraine (Umland
2006).
Anti-Semitism
The Second World War permanently transformed the ethnographic landscape
of Ukraine. The Holocaust, Stalinist terror and several waves of ethnic cleansing
removed most of its large pre-war Jewish, Polish, German and Tatar populations
(Snyder 2003: 203–13). Whereas they constituted the majority population in many
Western Ukrainian cities prior to the war, few Jews remain today. The Ukrainian
census of 2001 listed only 103,000 Jews in Ukraine, or 0.2 per cent of the total
population. This exodus has continued – between 14,000 and 21,000 Jews leave
Ukraine every year (Rudling 2006b: 83). Jewish émigrés cite a number of reasons,
including economic hardship and anti-Semitic violence (Burds 2008: 712–13).
The phenomenon of anti-Semitism without Jews is one of the more curious
aspects of the Ukrainian extreme right. Anatolii Shcherbatiuk, an editor of Naskorena
natsiia, describes Russians and Jews as ‘enemies of Ukraine’ which should be purged.
He describes them in biological terms – Russians as parasites and alcoholics, genet-
ically predisposed towards theft, vandalism and aggression, unable to appreciate, let
alone create, culture. Jews, on the other hand, are described as cautious and suspi-
cious, taking advantage of the weakness of Ukraine and living off the misfortunes
of the ‘host peoples’. Since both thrive and multiply within the weakened Ukrainian
national organism, Shcherbatiuk demands their immediate and ruthless destruction,
their conversion into ‘biomass’, explicitly calling for the establishment of ‘cleansing
units’, modelled on the Einsatzgruppen, to annihilate these peoples in Ukraine and
all the territories to which his Ukraine lays claim.
The next millennium will be marked by an aggravation of the struggle

between two opposing worlds – the Aryan one and the Semitic one, between
the forces of Good and those of Evil. Ukraine, headed by UNA-UNSO
should be the vanguard of Aryan civilization. That the kikes are the servants
of the Devil is obvious from the Bible, the Talmud, the Torah, the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion and from the whole history of the kike people. Who cre-
ated the satanic teaching of Communism? Who built the Evil Empire of
the USSR? Who were the members of the CheKa? Who destroyed the
churches, organized the mass starvation and the destruction of the elite of the
Ukraine?
(Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 20–21)
Shcherbatiuk has worked at the paper Personal Plius, a paper published by the larg-
est anti-Semitic organization in Ukraine, a private educational institution called
MAUP, Mizhrehional’na Akademiia Upravlinnia Personalom, or the Inter-Regional
Academy of Personnel Management.1 With 65,000 students on seven regional
campuses and over 55 affiliates, in 2006, MAUP was the largest private university
in Ukraine.Virtually every issue of Personal Plius, to which its students are required
to subscribe, contains, crude anti-Semitic propaganda, such as alarming reports of
Jewish ritual murders (see, for instance, Personal Plius 2006c, 2006d). The leading
publisher of hate literature in Ukraine, MAUP produces up to 85 per cent of all the
country’s anti-Semitic material (Rudling 2006b: 81). As an accredited institution
whose diplomas are recognized by UNESCO, its links to a political party, let alone
a fascist one, are unusual. MAUP is headed by Heorhii Shchokin, a co-founder of
the Ukrainian Conservative Party. Shchokin maintains that Osama Bin Laden is
really a Jew by the name of Benya Landau, and that Bolshevism and capitalism are
the tools of a Jewish Zionist world conspiracy, under which the Ukrainians suffered
more than other people, particularly under the ‘Zionist’-organized famine of
1932–33 (Rudling 2006b: 88–89).
Several leading Ukrainian politicians, not all of them associated with the extreme
right, have served on MAUP’s board of directors, possibly attracted by its deep
pockets. Among them were two Ukrainian presidents, Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor
Yushchenko, Ukrainian foreign minister Boris Tarasiuk and several other top poli-
ticians (Varfolomeyev 2008). MAUP’s conferences bring together leading anti-
Semites, such as the first Ukrainian ambassador to Canada, Levko Luk’’ianenko.
An important figure in Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, Luk’’ianenko is also the chairman
of the Association of Holodomor Researchers in Ukraine (Dietsch 2006: 208–9).
Luk’’ianenko holds Jews collectively responsible for Stalin’s terror, and claims that
‘Jewish puppet masters control mass media, using their blood money … to culti-
vate the animal instincts of our young’ (Luk’’ianenko 2004: 4–5). Luk’’iankenko,
a prominent Soviet dissident, has been advocating a second Nuremberg process that
would put on trial the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Luk’’ianenko 2000).
At an ‘academic’ conference, organized by MAUP in 2002, in the presence of
former president Leonid Kravchuk, Ambassador Luk’’ianenko asserted that Jews,
among whom he included Lenin and Stalin (whose real names, he asserted, were
Blank and David Koba, respectively) along with 83 per cent of the members of the
top echelons of the USSR, totally controlled the USSR (Luk’’ianenko 2003:
12–13). Other presenters went even further, citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(Khyzhniak 2002: 62). A key figure in Shchokin’s circle is MAUP Professor Vasyl’
Iaremenko. Iaremenko holds ‘Zionists’ responsible not only for the famine, but also
the Holocaust. Not only did Zionists finance the Nazis, Iaremenko claims, he also
describes the SS as a ‘horde of 400,000 Jewish men’ (Iaremenko 2003: 111). The
allegations of Nazi–Zionist collaboration have Soviet and Stalinist roots. Much like
in Russia, the political agendas of the Stalinist and the extreme right sometimes
coincide. The conspiratorial outlook, the illiberal, anti-Semitic and Eurasian orien-
tation applies to the ‘new’ Eurasian right as well as to Stalinism. While MAUP
reveres the UPA and OUN, its leaders often use a political language reminiscent
of the Stalinist rhetoric of the Great Patriotic War. Statements from the MAUP/
UCP often end with slogans such as ‘No to Jewish fascism!’, ‘Judeo-Nazism
will not succeed!’ and ‘Reject the evil activities of organised Jewry!’ (Senchenko
et al. 2006). MAUP has maintained periodical contact with the leader of the
OUN(m), Mykola Pavliuk (Panchenko 2006: 6–7). Prior to the 2006 elections to
the Rada, an alliance between UCP and the UNA-UNSO, called The National
Liberation Bloc of Shukhevych and Shchokin, ‘God and Ukraine Above All!’, was
announced (Kipiani 2005; Personal Plius 2005b). However, fears that such a
bloc would be declared unconstitutional and banned from participation in the
elections averted the formation of a formal bloc only two days prior to its founding
congress (ZIK 2005). The UCP and the UNA-UNSO both performed dismally in
the polls.2
International contacts
An effective anti-Semitic propaganda centre, MAUP became a meeting ground for
right-wing extremists and anti-Semites across Europe, the Middle East and North
America. The Islamic world exercises considerable attraction on the Ukrainian
extreme right. Shcherbatiuk believes the remedy to the degeneration of the world,
corrupted by Jewish influences, can be found in the Middle East. He advocates a
political model that merges religion and politics. He found inspiration in the Iranian
revolution and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – countries he viewed as promising allies of
Ukraine (Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 21). MAUP has conducted
research seminars on Gaddafi’s Green Book; its press has praised Hezbollah which it
has compared to the OUN and UPA (MAUP 2005; Personal Plius 2006b).
The European extreme right has a long tradition of orienting itself towards the
Middle East.3 Today, the links to the Middle East translate into monetary and
political support for the extreme anti-Semitic right in Ukraine. MAUP has received
substantial financial support from Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia (U.S. Department of
State 2005). In December 2006, Shchokin travelled to Damascus on the invitation
of the Syrian foreign minister, establishing a formal cooperation between the UCP
and the Baath Party. The Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad received an honorary
doctorate from MAUP, Shchokin a gold medal from the Baath Party. ‘The col-
laboration between the true Ukrainian intellectual elite and those Arab political
regimes, which can be characterized as conservative revolutionaries, are necessary,
not only for economic reasons, but also due to national security’, Personal Plius
wrote, adding that ‘a great power, Ukraine cannot avoid practising a healthy expan-
sionist policy, even if the Ukrainian expansion will only have a peaceful and
humanitarian character.’ MAUP is working to establish a branch in Damascus and
a campus in the Palestinian autonomy. A reciprocal arrangement has been made
with Damascus State University (Huk 2006; MAUP 2007c). Another MAUP asso-
ciate is Ahmadinejad’s Iran. The Iranian president has kept a high anti-Semitic
profile, repeatedly questioning the Holocaust, demanding Israel’s eradication from
the map, and organizing conferences on Holocaust denial. Personal Plius hails
Ahmadinejad as a ‘politician of a new type’ and the Iranian ambassador is a frequent
guest at MAUP conferences (Irzhavyi 2006; MAUP 2007d). Iran has taken an
increasingly active interest in the activities of the European extreme right. Not
only the UNA-UNSO, but also the NPD, its sister organization in Germany,
regard Ahmadinejad’s Iran as an ally.4 Mirroring the Iranian and Syrian regimes’ use
of history, MAUP uses Holocaust denial as a tool to express its hostility to the
Western world and liberal democratic values (Trafford 2001). MAUP operated
a bookstore of anti-Semitic literature at Babyn Yar, selling works in which Jews are
presented as the true perpetrators of the Holocaust, until it was closed by the
authorities in May 2007 (MAUP 2007b). MAUP has actively cultivated links with
European political figures sympathetic to their worldview. In April 2006, then–
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Andrzej Lepper of the Kaczyński government
received an honorary doctorate and in January 2007 became an honorary professor
at MAUP (Personal Plius 2006a; MAUP 2007a). Intellectually kindred to MAUP,

Lepper lists Joseph Goebbels and Jean-Marie Le Pen as sources of inspiration
(Pankowski and Kornak 2005: 160). His party, the Samoobrona (Self-defence),
initiated a close cooperation with the UCP.
The former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, defended his PhD
in history in September 2005, on a dissertation titled ‘Zionism as a Form of Ethnic
Supremacism’, and has since worked as an adjunct professor at MAUP. At a 2005
MAUP conference, attended by David Duke and the ambassadors of Iran, Syria and
Palestine, several delegates called for the deportation of Jews from Ukraine (Rudling
2006b: 92–93).
Conclusion
Organized anti-Semitism in Ukraine is influenced by two political traditions. The
OUN’s legacy of anti-Russian, anti-Semitic and anti-Polish sentiments has its
strongest support in Western Ukraine. It is intimately linked to the defence of
the Ukrainian language and culture. It is closely linked to the Galician historical
experiences, and its appeal outside Western Ukraine has been limited. On the other
hand, there is the xenophobic Eurasian nationalism, steeped in the Soviet ‘anti-
Zionist’ tradition and stronger in the southern and eastern parts of the country.
It has merged aspects of integral nationalism with Stalinism into a new amalgama-
tion, with many similarities with the Russian ‘New Right’ (Wilson 1997: 197–98).
If successors of the OUN, such as KUN, represent the former, MAUP/UCP and
the UNA-UNSO represent the latter.
The UCP has an ambiguous relation to the Soviet past. On the one hand,
it strongly condemns Soviet Communism, which it sees as a tool for Jewish domi-
nation and responsible for all disasters that befell Ukraine in the twentieth century.
On the other hand, MAUP laments the collapse of the USSR, which it perceives
as a result of a Zionist conspiracy (Rudling 2006b: 106–9). At the same time, the
UNA-UNSO and MAUP share many of the anti-democratic and anti-Semitic
attributes of the Russian extreme right: anti-Semitism, militarism, illiberalism and
Eurasianism. Whereas they generally articulate themselves in Ukrainian, their
attitude to the Russian language is not uniformly negative. Several Russian names
are found among its leadership, and their propaganda is disseminated in both lan-
guages. This ambiguity is reflected in the organization’s controversial political
actions.The UNSO has sent paramilitary forces to fight on the same side as Russian
extremist militants in Transdnistria, while fighting Russian interests in Chechnya
and Abkhazia (McGregor 2006).
Moderate Ukrainian nationalists often claim that anti-Semitism is a ‘foreign’
import, lacking roots in the Ukrainian humanistic culture, but brought to society
by Russian imperialism (Myrs’kyi and Naiman 2000: 73). In September 2005,
President Yushchenko declared that ‘there is no such problem as anti-Semitism or
other manifestations of xenophobia in Ukraine’ (Rudling 2006b: 82). Yet, anti-
Semitic attitudes have increased significantly between 1994 and 2006. In 1994
38 per cent of Ukrainians were ready to accept Jews in their closest circle – as
family members and friends – but this number had fallen to 21 per cent in 2006,
while the percentage of the population that would not tolerate Jews as inhabitants
of Ukraine increased from 26 to 36 per cent during the same period. Particularly
noteworthy is that the highest levels of anti-Semitism are found among those under
the age of 20 and over the age of 70. In 2006, 45.5 and 42.3 per cent of the people
in these age groups, respectively, did not want to accept Jews as inhabitants of
Ukraine, a sharp increase over the previous decade (Paniotto 2007: 19–20). Recent
studies among Ukrainian high school and college students similarly show that while
explicit anti-Semitic views are held by a minority, there is also a tolerance of or
indifference to it. The Holocaust is seen as something distant and remote and not
part of Ukrainian history (Ivanova 2005: 418). German historian Wilfried Jilge links
this to the government-sponsored cult of the OUN(b) and UPA.
The absence of the Holocaust from the Ukrainian culture of memory is

directly connected to the closeness of the OUN to National Socialism, par-
ticularly in its relation to anti-Bolshevism and anti-Semitism … Nationalist
intellectuals can legitimise the heroic role of the OUN and UPA only by
ignoring the Jewish Holocaust and its connection to Ukrainian national
history.
( Jilge 2006: 14–17)
While post-Soviet Ukraine has been open to discuss crimes committed by the
Soviet regime against Ukrainians, there has been less openness to come to terms
with war crimes committed by nationalist extremists (Łada 2005; Marples 2007:
298–301; Dietsch 2006: 147–76). Old stereotypes have been modified and recy-
cled. The OUN position that Jews were the agents of Bolshevism has transformed
into the idea of Bolsheviks as the agents of the Jews in the narratives disseminated
by the MAUP publishing house.
Since independence, political life in Ukraine has been dominated by centrist,
rather than extremist ideologies on the left and right (Wilson 1997: 194–204;
Dymerskaya-Tsigelman and Finberg 1999: 24). Yet, while the extreme right
constitutes a divided minority, it is not isolated. Their ideas feed the national-
democratic, liberal and ecologist right (Chauvier 2007). As a part of Yushchenko’s
bloc Nasha Ukraїna, KUN has had some influence over Ukrainian politics, particu-
larly over the manufacturing of heroic myths of the past.While the UCP and UNA-
UNSO have remained extra-parliamentarian organizations, the extremists have
maintained cordial relations with the forces of the ‘Orange’ Revolution. Levko
Luk’’ianenko was, until his retirement in 2007, a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, and
a high-ranking member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc. Andryi Shkil remains one of
Tymoshenko’s deputies (Chauvier 2007; Rudling 2006b: 116–18). In 2005 and
again in 2007, Yushchenko decorated Luk’’ianenko with the highest award of the
republic in recognition of his dedication ‘to the ideals of freedom and democracy’
(Den’ 2005). UNA-UNSO leader Yuriy Shukhevych was made a Hero of Ukraine
in August 2006, something that prompted the Wiesenthal Center in Europe to

protest to the Council of Europe about Yushchenko honouring a ‘right-wing
extremist’.
The master narrative of victimization that prevails in Ukrainian nationalist dis-
course provides a fertile ground for extremist interpretations. Nationalist politicians
and opinion makers regularly portray the 1932–33 famine as an act of genocide
against ethnic Ukrainians and do not hestiate to inflate the number of victims for
political purposes (Himka 2008). The culprits of the evils that befell the Ukrainians
in the twentieth century are often portrayed as easily definable ethnic ‘others’. For
instance, in July 2008 the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), to which president
Yushchenko has assigned the task of producing a comfortable and edifying national
past, published a list of 19 perpetrators of the ‘famine-genocide’. Eight of the listed
perpetrators were of Jewish nationality (SBU 2008). This action by the SBU was
part of a larger campaign to mitigate the role of Western Ukrainian nationalists in
the Holocaust (Kurylo and Himka 2008). Not only is it impossible to establish the
ethnic origin of the people responsible for the famine, this sort of narrative also
helps legitimize the extreme right’s conspiratorial interpretations of the famine as a
Jewish and Russian genocide against the Ukrainian people, reinforcing anti-Semitic
prejudice.
While the extreme right’s direct influence over Ukrainian politics remains
limited, there has been a certain acceptance of nationalist extremism within
Yushchenko’s circle. The fascist leaders of the OUN(b) are venerated as national
heroes, and the extreme right retains a certain respectability within the corridors of
power. It is not known what sort of money Kravchuk, Yushchenko and Tarasiuk
received for their associations with Shchokin’s network, but it took considerable
international attention to make Yushchenko and Tarasiuk distance themselves
from MAUP. The continued growth of the Ukrainian economy may be the most
effective remedy against political extremism. On the other hand, the levels of
acceptance of anti-Semitic attitudes mean that a considerable part of the Ukrainian
population may be open to the message of the extremists, which have not yet
exhausted their growth potential.
Postscript, August 2011

Since this chapter was written there have been a number of changes in Ukrainian
politics. Under Yushchenko’s successor, Viktor Yanukovych, the state-promoted
cult of the OUN has come to an end. Yushchenko’s Nasha Ukraïna has been
marginalized politically, and the worship of the OUN taken over by the all-
Ukrainian Union Svoboda, or the Freedom Party.This marks a change in Ukrainian
politics as, for the first time, an extreme-right political party has real power in
Ukrainian politics. Svoboda has its roots in the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine,
which used an SS symbol as its party emblem and, like the OUN, promoted a
‘community of blood and spirit’. Svoboda leader Tiahnybok has employed openly
anti-Semitic rhetoric, referring to Muscovites (moskali) and Jews (zhydy) as scum,
and the Ukrainian leadership as a moskal’sko-zhydivs’ka mafia. In the local elections

in 2009 and 2010 Svoboda had a breakthrough. With around 30 per cent of the
popular vote, the largest political party in several Western Ukrainian city assem-
blies, there is, in the words of political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov, a strong and
disturbing possibility that the Freedom Party will set up the first overtly ultra-
nationalist parliamentary group in the Verkhovna Rada, thus constituting a new
landmark of the resurgence of the radical right in Ukraine (Shekhovtsov 2011: 213,
216, 225; Umland and Shekhovtsov 2010: 2).
Notes
1 Shcherbatiuk had a fallout with MAUP in February 2006 after which he accused MAUP
of ‘working for Arab and Russian money to discredit the domestic politics of Ukraine in
the eyes of the world – as xenophobic and chauvinist’ (Shcherbatiuk 2006).
2 In the 2006 election, the UCP received 0.09 per cent and UNA 0.06 per cent of the votes
cast. Two other far-right parties, Svoboda and Kostenko-Plyush Ukrainian People’s Party,
received 0.4 and 1.9 per cent respectively (Ukrainian Central Election Committee n.d.;
Matveyev 2007).
3 Nazi Germany cultivated close relations with the Middle East. Egypt and Syria were,
along with South America, prime destinations for fugitive Nazis after the war (Dahl 2006:
151–52). Alois Brunner, Eichmann’s right-hand man, and Franz Stangl, the commandant
of Sobibor and Treblinka, found refuge in Syria (Knopp 2004: 326, 354–57; Sereny 2000:
371–74). Hundreds of Germans and Austrians assisted in the build-up of Egyptian military
aviation and missile development. Old Nazis produced anti-Semitic propaganda for the
Nasser regime (Goodrick-Clarke 1998: 176; Trafford 2001).
4 ‘Iran is our ally, particularly now, [and] opposed to the Zionists and their fellow
travelers. We have tomorrow’s great power behind us.’ Klaus Menzel, member of
the Bundesparlament of Saxony for the NPD, sees no problem accepting money from
Iran. ‘No. Absolutely not. We accept the money from our friends. Our allies’, July,
2006 interview with Klaus Menzel, NPD member of the Saxony Landestag (Andersson
2008).
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PART IV
National and Comparative
Perspectives: A Challenge
to ‘Exceptionalism’?
13
CHALLENGING THE
EXCEPTIONALIST VIEW
Favourable conditions for radical right-wing
populism in Switzerland
Damir Skenderovic
Introduction
International academic research on the extreme right has until very recently shown
little interest in the Swiss case and few ‘comparative’ books and articles have taken
Swiss examples into consideration. The main reason for this oversight is that most
of the literature mischaracterizes the Swiss case and claims that Switzerland repre-
sents a case of failure for radical right-wing populism. The literature has thus far
failed to take account of the existence of key causal factors in Switzerland that have
favoured the emergence and continuity of such parties. As a consequence, many
scholars embrace the notion of ‘Swiss exceptionalism’.
Yet, as this contribution argues, Switzerland represents a case of ‘success’ and
there is little justification for maintaining the notion of ‘exceptionalism’. The coun-
try has had electorally and discursively important radical right-wing populist parties
since the 1960s. In truth, Switzerland has been a forerunner of radical right-wing
populist parties in Western Europe, since it was one of the first countries to pro-
duce a new type of Political Party which conspicuously avoided drawing on a fas-
cist legacy. It is important to note, furthermore, that the party system saw the rise
of seven different radical right-wing populist parties between the 1960s and 2000s,
which were all at some point represented in the national parliament. Thus, among
Western European democracies, Switzerland has recorded the largest number of
such parties to have had national MPs elected.
The main goal of this chapter is to challenge the notion of ‘Swiss exceptional-
ism’ by testing a number of variables that are commonly used in the literature to
explain the success or failure of radical right-wing populist parties. Moreover, while
the dramatic electoral successes of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP, Schweizerische
Volkspartei) have in recent years attracted the attention of scholars of radical right-
wing populist parties, there are very few accounts that take a historical perspective
210 Damir Skenderovic
and reflect this success story as being both a rise and a continuation of local radical-
ism. Therefore, I present an explanation that takes into account certain aspects of
what Cas Mudde (2007) has called the external supply-side. These are contextual
factors that refer to specific settings of Swiss politics and society, including the
institutional (direct democracy, consociationalism, federalism), the cultural (nation-
hood, citizenship, multiculturalism) and the historical (interwar history). However,
I also keep in mind that internal factors including ideology, organization, cam-
paigning and leadership are essential for understanding the success of these parties
and show how this party-centric approach helps to explain the unprecedented
electoral growth of the SVP during the course of the last twenty years.
Long-term traditions since the 1960s

In Switzerland, the history of radical-right parties is characterized by a remarkable
continuity from the 1960s onwards (Skenderovic 2009a). Less than twenty years after
the end of the Second World War, the parties of what is known to the Swiss public
as the Movement against Overforeignization (Anti-Überfremdungsbewegung) made
their appearance on the political stage and, at the time, their anti-immigration and
populist agenda was unique in Europe. During the 1960s and 1970s, the movement
was comprised of four small parties, including National Action (Nationale Aktion,
founded in 1961),Vigilance (1964), the Swiss Republican Movement (Schweizerische
Republikanische Bewegung, 1971) and the Swiss Democratic Union (Eidgenössisch-
Demokratische Union, 1975). In terms of the support they received in parliamentary
elections, they were fringe parties. Combined, they never received more than 8 per
cent of the vote in elections to the National Council (see Table 13.1), the 200-strong
lower house of parliament, and hence never had more than eleven national MPs. As
a result of continuous dissension and conflicts between and within the different par-
ties, the movement was characterized by a high degree of factionalism, and thus its
development is described as the ‘history of a divided family’ (Gentile and Kriesi
1998). Nevertheless, since the parties made extensive use of the instruments of direct
democracy, they achieved a degree of continuity in mobilization and campaigning,
and regularly exerted strong pressure on the government and polity, in particular in
the area of migration policy (Skenderovic and D’Amato 2008).
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the founding of the Automobile Party of Switzerland
(Auto-Partei Schweiz, 1985) and the League of Ticino (Lega dei Ticinesi, 1991) saw
the arrival of two new parties which also contributed to the further diversification
of the radical right-wing party camp. The Automobile Party, which was renamed
the Freedom Party of Switzerland (Freiheits-Partei der Schweiz) in 1994, repre-
sented a new type of radical movement for Switzerland, since it propagated both
neo-liberal principles and a fierce anti-asylum agenda. The League of Ticino, based
in the eponymous Italian-speaking canton, also exerted a strong anti-establishment
appeal and ‘saw itself as a representative of the interests of the common people
against environmentalists, the state, and the political establishment’ (Betz 1994: 22).
The Swiss Democratic Union, founded as a breakaway from the Movement against
TABLE 13.1 Results of radical right-wing populist parties in national council elections, 1967–2007 in Switzerland
Parties 1967 1971 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007
NA/SD 0.6 1 3.2 4 2.5 2 1.3 2 3.4 4 3.0 3 3.4 5 3.1 3 1.8 1 0.9 1 0.5 –
SRB1 – – 4.4 7 3.0 43 0.6 14 0.5 14 0.3 – – – – – – – – – – –
EDU – – – – 0.3 – 0.3 – 0.4 – 0.9 – 1.0 1 1.3 1 1.2 1 1.3 2 1.3 1
APS/FPS – – – – – – – – – 2.6 2 5.1 8 4.0 7 0.9 – 0.2 – 0.1 –
Lega – – – – – – – – – – – 1.4 2 0.9 1 0.9 2 0.3 1 0.6 1
BGB/SVP2 11.0 21 11.0 23 9.9 21 11.6 23 11.1 23 11.0 25 11.9 25 14.9 29 22.5 44 26.7 55 28.9 62
Notes: First column: share of the vote; second column: number of MPs (total 200).
1 Includes Vigilance’s share of the vote in the canton of Geneva.
2 Until the National Council elections of 1995, the BGB/SVP did not belong to the camp of radical right-wing populist parties.
3 Includes the MP of Vigilance.
4 MP of Vigilance.
Party abbreviations: NA/SD: National Action/Swiss Democrats; SRB: Swiss Republican Movement; EDU: Federal Democratic Union; APS/FPS: Automobile
Party of Switzerland/Freedom Party of Switzerland; BGB: Farmers, Artisans and Citizens Party; SVP: Swiss People’s Party.
Sources: Die Bundesversammlung – Das Schweizer Parlament, http://www.parlament.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/wa-nr-nationalratswahlen-
waehlerstimmen-1919.xls (accessed 15 January 2009); Federal Statistical Office, http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/17/02/blank/key/
national_rat/mandatsverteilung.html (accessed 15 January 2009).
Overforeignization, developed into a religious fundamentalist party of Protestant

orientation. In the 1990s, the party was a fierce opponent of Muslim immigration
and displayed pronounced anti-Islamic views.
In the 1990s, there were further major changes. Most significantly, the SVP was
transformed from a conservative into a radical right-wing populist party and it
became a forceful competitor to the fringe parties on the right-wing margin. After
a period of more than sixty years of electoral stagnation, the SVP dramatically
increased its share of the vote in National Council elections from 11.9 per cent in
1991 to 28.9 per cent in 2007 (see Table 13.1). The progress of the SVP came
at the expense of mainstream centre-right parties as well as fringe radical-rightist
parties. Following its extraordinary electoral successes, the SVP succeeded in gain-
ing a second seat in the federal government. In December 2003, the party leader,
Christoph Blocher, was elected to the seven-headed Federal Council. This marked
a historic moment in the Swiss political system, bringing an end to the so-called
‘magic formula’, an informal rule of governance that had remained unchanged for
close to half a century, resulting in a government that was, for a long period of time,
perhaps the most stable in the world.
In December 2007, however, Blocher was voted out of government and replaced
by Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, a representative from the electorally weak moderate
faction of the SVP. In the summer of 2008, the conflict over the election of
Widmer-Schlumpf resulted in the foundation of a breakaway party named the
Bourgeois Democratic Party (Bürgerlich-Demokratische Partei), which has since
founded sections in a total of fifteen cantons and was joined by Federal Councillors
Widmer-Schlumpf and Samuel Schmid, who had both deserted from the SVP.
Then again, when Schmid stepped down as Federal Councillor in December 2008,
the national parliament elected Ueli Maurer, a close ally of Blocher, as his succes-
sor, thereby conceding to the SVP its representation in the federal government.
The development undergone by the national SVP since the early 1990s typifies
the transformation of an established conservative party into a radical right-wing
populist party, similar to the transformation of the Austrian Freedom Party under
the leadership of Jörg Haider. The origins of the SVP go back to the late 1910s,
when a number of farmers’ parties were created in agrarian cantons of Protestant
German-speaking Switzerland. Throughout the post-war era, the Farmers, Artisans
and Citizens Party (Bauern-, Gewerbe- und Bürgerpartei), as it was called at the
time, acted as a close partner of the right-wing mainstream Political Parties and, as
a member of the government coalition, was tightly integrated into the Swiss con-
sociational system. It stood for markedly conservative viewpoints on issues of
domestic policy and represented the electorate of farmers and small business people
( Jost 2007).When in 1971 the party merged with the two Democratic Parties from
the cantons of Glarus and Graubünden and changed its name to the Swiss People’s
Party, this resulted in a shift towards the centre. From this point on, debates emerged
over the SVP’s programmatic course which revealed early signs of disagreement
between the cantonal parties of Bern and Zurich, the two most powerful sections
within the SVP. Under the leadership of Blocher, cantonal party president since
Radical right-wing populism in Switzerland 213
1977, the Zurich party began to embrace an exclusionist agenda and to adopt a
contentious campaigning style (Hartmann and Horvath 1995).
In the early 1990s, the Zurich cantonal party started successfully to pursue a
campaign to gain control of the national party organization and to take the helm in
debates on key policy areas, such as migration, European integration and public
policy, and to set the political agenda of the national SVP. The process of political
and ideological radicalization resulted in the adoption of a programme and rhetoric
similar to that of other radical-right parties in Western Europe. While the agenda
of the SVP became overtly marked by exclusionist beliefs, most of its policy pro-
posals were related to all-encompassing identity politics combined with a populist
appeal. Accordingly, some authors speak of the emergence of a ‘new’ SVP in the
1990s (Mazzoleni 2008).
As the development of Swiss parties since the 1960s demonstrates, it is essential
that ‘the party itself should be included as a major factor in explaining its electoral
success and failure’ (Mudde 2007: 256). This approach echoes the criticism in
recent literature on radical right-wing populism which argues that research has
been heavily dominated by demand-side oriented explanations and therefore suffers
from an ‘externalist bias’ (Goodwin 2006; see also Art 2011). In the case of the
SVP, there are several internal reasons why the party was much more successful in
the 1990s and 2000s than the fringe parties of the previous three decades. In con-
trast to these parties, the SVP was not a new movement and did not have to go
through the initial process of party formation. Organizationally, it expanded enor-
mously, almost doubling the number of cantonal parties and eventually contesting
elections in all cantons. The party was also able to rely on large financial resources,
including the contributions from Blocher who, as one of Switzerland’s wealthiest
people, has repeatedly financed the party’s public campaigns. This made it possible
for the SVP to invest heavily in advertising campaigns in the printed press and to
address a nationwide public.
With the growing mediatization of Swiss politics in the 1990s, personalization
and sensationalism became more common in the media coverage of politics, even
though it still remained at a relatively low level when compared with most Western
democracies (Donges 2005; Skenderovic 2009b). This redounded to the SVP’s
advantage, since Blocher was seen by his followers as a leadership figure with
charismatic popular appeal. It is important to acknowledge, however, that with its
style and techniques of campaigning, the SVP has also been a driving force in
this process of mediatization. The SVP has built up an efficient election and propa-
ganda apparatus, and by means of professional marketing and a controversial cam-
paigning style, it has considerably shaped the way in which politics is discussed in
Switzerland.
Finally, the SVP went through a process of ‘nationalization’ which resulted in
organizational centralization and ideological cohesion, as well as in the increased
homogenization of the election and voting campaigns. Here again, Blocher –
with his authoritarian leadership and dominant position, and a circle of devoted
senior party officials – played an important role. Thus, the SVP gained advantage
over other traditionally ‘low-profile’ parties, that tended to be characterized by

factionalism, loose organizational structures and a weak central power base. The
party’s unity was also reflected in the growing homogeneity of the SVP constitu-
ency across different cantons (Kriesi et al. 2005). Even though the exit of some
leading members in 2008 and the revived criticism of the intransigent style of the
Zurich-led faction inside the SVP have somewhat weakened the national party’s
cohesion, there is little sign of a palace revolution, given that those factions sup-
porting the turn towards radical-right politics had produced an excellent electoral
record.
The notion of ‘Swiss exceptionalism’

Despite the continuity of radical right-wing populist parties throughout the post-
war era and the boost they have experienced since the early 1990s, the idea persists
that Switzerland differs from other Western democracies where such parties
have achieved notable electoral success. As suggested, this is based on a notion of
‘Swiss exceptionalism’, implying that the Swiss case features particular historical
aspects, or aspects of the political system and culture, which are seen as creating
contextual conditions that are disadvantageous for the strength of radical-right pol-
itics. I argue instead that there is strong evidence that conditions and factors exist
in Switzerland which support, rather than impede, the emergence as well as the
persistence of radical right-wing populist parties.
But let us first start with an argument that tries to explain why Swiss radical
right-wing populist parties spent so long a period of time receiving relatively little
support. Referring to the notion of direct democracy as an institutionalized ‘safety
valve’, it is argued that these parties do not have to direct the bulk of their efforts
to election and parliamentary work, but can ensure their political survival by focus-
ing on direct democratic opportunities (Armingeon 1995: 55ff.; Helms 1997: 47).1
This avenue for exerting political pressure allows small parties and voters to express
their oppositional stance to policies embraced by the government or the established
parties without requiring a strong parliamentary position. In sum, the argument
highlights the significance of direct democracy as a particular method of political
decision-making which makes it possible to keep challenger parties out of the par-
liamentary arena, even though they may receive considerable support in referenda
from time to time.
The second argument points to the highly unifying effect of ‘consociational
democracy’ (Lijphart 1984) and the strong integrative capacity of the Swiss party
system. According to this viewpoint, the Swiss political system does not accom-
modate radical parties unless they follow an opposition policy that is loyal to
the system (Helms 1997: 43f.). One pillar of political stability is the governmental
coalition, which is composed of members from the major parties. In this view, the
large degree of electoral support for the four parties forming the government coali-
tion suggests that there are strong political alignments to the established parties, and
that the consociational system has strong support among voters.
The third argument points to the specific conception of Swiss national identity.
Switzerland is traditionally described as the prototype of a state-nation (Staatsnation)
strongly reliant on political will (Kohn 1956). In reference to Jürgen Habermas
(1996), the claim may be made for the existence of a strong ‘constitutional patriot-
ism’ in Switzerland. The Swiss federal state unites four ethno-culturally distinct
regions, each with its own language and culture. This, together with the institu-
tional mixture represented by the three elements of direct democracy, federalism
and neutrality, is used as one of the key references in the construction of Swiss
national identity. It could be argued, therefore, that the exploitation of Swiss civic
nationalism is difficult for the radical right-wing populist parties, whose ultra-
nationalist discourse depends upon the concept of a homogeneous ethnic and
cultural nation.
The fourth argument takes a historical perspective and stresses the fact that
Switzerland has no experience of fascism or National Socialism (Helms 1997: 44).
Drawing on what Roger Eatwell (2003: 62f.) has called the ‘national traditions
thesis’, it is assumed that there is a very low acceptance in Swiss political culture for
an anti-democratic right-wing stance or a demagogic revitalization of radical ide-
ologies. While Switzerland witnessed the emergence of radical right-wing groups
in the 1930s, in comparison to other countries these groups did not succeed in
developing into a mass movement and their political impact was rather ephemeral.
The fifth argument takes the view that a pronounced notion of respect and tol-
erance toward minorities and other cultures exists among large segments of the
Swiss population. These values purportedly contrast with radical right-wing actors,
whose ideology generally draws on resentment and intolerance toward minorities
(Armingeon 1995: 55). This view is supported with surveys indicating that funda-
mental rights, such as freedom of conscience and the right to one’s own language
and culture, are highly respected among the Swiss population (Armingeon 1998:
90; Melich 1991: 12). Further support for the tolerance argument is provided by
claims concerning the favourable institutional framework for native minorities that
has been created by Swiss federalism and the elaborate protection that is provided
for minority rights (Linder 2010).
Direct democracy, federalism and consociationalism

In order to challenge this view of Switzerland as an exceptional case, it is first nec-
essary to examine variables identified by the comparative literature which focuses
on the parties’ institutional environment. It is argued that the degree of ‘openness’
of the political system provides conditions which foster or impede the radical right-
wing populist parties from evolving into a serious political competitor (Eatwell
2003: 58ff.; Rydgren 2007: 254–58). The first question that arises is which institu-
tional channels are available through which radical rightist parties can articulate
political claims and intervene in policy-making processes.
In Switzerland, direct democracy represents a key element of the country’s
political system. Since the 1960s, Swiss radical right-wing populist parties have
extensively used direct democracy to mobilize constituencies and influence the

formation of public policy.2 Direct democracy has allowed the fringe parties as
well as the SVP to lead large campaigns to promote their policies, with the result
that far-reaching sections of the voting public became familiar with radical-right
goals (Skenderovic 2007). This view on the effects of direct democracy undermines
the above-mentioned safety-valve argument, which ignores the impact of the
campaigning and public pressure that is generated through direct democratic activ-
ities. Moreover, these parties are keen to present popular referenda as important
channels for expressing disapproval with consensual agreements and ‘for venting
voter dissatisfaction with the state and with the behavior of political leaders’ (Kobach
1997: 207). Thus, the Swiss system of direct democracy vividly demonstrates
that ‘[p]opulist movements and discourse are accentuated rather than reduced by
the existence of opportunity structures favouring forms of popular expression’
(Mény and Surel 2002: 15). In other words, the existing set of direct democratic
institutions represents a meaningful political arena, where these parties emphasize
the role of ‘the people’ in their populist rhetoric (Canovan 1999).3
Focusing on political institutions, a proportional electoral system can certainly
encourage the electoral rise of radical right-wing parties (Norris 2005: 114–18).
Another common assumption holds that a federalist political system can favour the
emergence of fringe radical right-wing populist parties, since it typically leads to a
multiparty structure. In Switzerland, both proportional representation and federal-
ism are central to the party system, and led to its so-called horizontal fragmentation
(Ladner 2001: 124f.). In 2007, for example, twelve parties were represented in the
National Council. Twenty-six electoral districts correspond to twenty-six cantons
of highly different population size, and the electoral threshold in cantons with a
large population is much lower than in small cantons. As a consequence, the small
radical right-wing parties could take advantage of the relatively low threshold in
cantons with a large population, such as Zurich, Bern and Geneva.
Federalism has also resulted in so-called vertical segmentation, giving great
importance to the sub-national level in terms of party-building and party autonomy
(Ladner 2004: 201). While weakening national parties, federalism has the effect of
strengthening cantonal parties. Since the fringe radical parties had limited resources,
they succeeded in consolidating their party organization by investing the bulk of
their party work at the regional or local level. Federalism also makes it possible for
a cantonal party which comes from a large canton to rely on important resources
and become a key player in national politics. As already mentioned, the relative
autonomy of cantonal parties was an essential prerequisite in order for the Zurich
SVP party to build up a powerful party apparatus and lead the transformation
process of the national SVP.
Consociational democracy is another key feature of the Swiss political system
and has a major integrating effect on party politics in Switzerland. This results in a
convergence of mainstream parties and, in contrast with the exceptionalist view,
should not be regarded as a hindrance, but rather as a favourable factor for the
success of radical right-wing populist parties. Indeed, the political space opens up to
radical right-wing populist parties when major left-wing and right-wing parties
cluster around the centre (Kitschelt 1995; Carter 2005: 102–45). Public mistrust
towards the Political Parties in power and attitudes of disillusionment with politics
are one of the consequences of this consensual system of negotiation and the lack
of real opposition forces. These developments give populist parties the opportunity
both to apply a strategy of de-legitimization regarding the political establishment,
and to claim that the established parties fail to take care of issues salient to the voters
(Karapin 1998: 227f.).
In the case of Switzerland, the fact that the major parties of the moderate
right and left moved closer together and have come to share power has provided
convenient conditions for radical right-wing populist parties in various ways. First,
these parties commonly used the strategy of inciting popular resentment against
the political elite and the government, and then presented themselves as the defend-
ers of those alienated from these negotiational arrangements. As the SVP shows,
this strategy was rather successful, since the party succeeded in attracting a large
number of volatile and newly mobilized voters in the 1999 national elections,
when the party reached a historical high for the first time (Lutz 2003: 76ff.). These
types of parties could also take advantage of the general trend of growing public
mistrust towards political institutions. As surveys show, the proportion of people
who approved of how the Swiss government was doing its job decreased from
70 per cent in the mid-1970s to 40 per cent in the mid-1990s (Suter 2000: 191).
Second, the tradition of the consociational system (the ‘magic formula’) has had
a major effect on how mainstream parties deal with the SVP and how the SVP has
been able to build up its image as a ‘legitimate’ actor in Swiss politics. As the litera-
ture emphasizes, the question of whether mainstream parties adopt a position of
demarcation or inclusion is essential to an understanding of the success of radical
right-wing populist parties (Bale 2003). Indeed, the Swiss mainstream parties basi-
cally applied a strategy of integration towards the SVP, despite its radicalization, in
the 1990s. The ‘historical capital’ of the SVP and its long-time integration in the
consociational system made it possible for the party to appear like a more acceptable
force. They continued to think about the SVP in terms of a traditional government
party, whose status as such obliged the party to act responsibly at the executive
level (Mazzoleni and Skenderovic 2007). Also, the voting out of Blocher from the
government was not a shift towards a strategy of demarcation, but rather a state-
ment against his confrontational style and his incorporative attitude in the govern-
ment body. This was confirmed by the support that a large majority of the two
centre-right parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei)
and the Christian Democratic Party (Christlichdemokratische Volkspartei), gave to
Ueli Maurer when he was elected into the government in December 2008. As SVP
party president from 1996 to 2008, Maurer had been a driving force behind
the process of transformation that had turned the SVP into a radical right-wing
populist party.
Traditions of exclusionist discourse and policies

Some of the literature has critically acknowledged that the institution-centred
political opportunity approach fails to take into account the broader cultural and
discursive determinants and dynamics of the political mobilization of radical right-
wing populist parties. Conversely, they propose the concept of discursive or cul-
tural opportunity structures to capture how radical right-wing populist parties
mobilize symbolic and cultural resources in order to set forth their proposals
(Koopmans and Statham 1999).
A commonly held assumption, also expressed by the exceptionalist position,
considers Switzerland as a ‘voluntary nation’ whose civic nationalism is seemingly
difficult to exploit for these parties. In the voluntarist conception of Swiss nation-
hood, however, political institutions can assume an exalted, almost naturalized
significance when they are conceived of in terms of a constant cornerstone of
the country’s ‘civic exceptionalism’, whose origins go a long way back in history
(Marchal 2007). Following this view, in their nationalist rhetoric the radical right-
wing populist parties present the country’s institutional settings as distinctive and
unique features of Switzerland’s authenticity that must be preserved in times of
change, come what may.
In addition, there are convincing arguments which hold that Swiss nationhood
is built not only on the conception of the state-nation based on political will and
civic rights, but on cultural and ethnic categories as well. As a matter of fact,
Switzerland’s self-perception as a national community is shaped by a long-term
process of inventing national traditions that emphasize the Swiss people’s common
mentality, as well as shared historical and geographic experiences, which have
collectively generated some kind of organically grown national culture (Zimmer
2003). The continuous invention of national myths contributed to ‘an ethnic con-
struction relying on a perception of Switzerland as an exceptional or insular case’
(Froidevaux 1997: 58). This point of view is supported by studies on Swiss citizen-
ship, which point to the highly exclusionist basis of the country’s nationhood and
emphasize that Swiss citizenship policy comes close to an ethnic-assimilationist
model (Koopmans et al. 2005). Embracing this notion of Swiss nationhood, radical
right-wing populist parties correspond to the model of ‘a social movement that
mobilises an ethnic-cultural framing of national identity against the idea of the
nation as a political or civic community’ (Koopmans and Statham 1999: 229). As a
result, there is a seemingly paradoxical situation in Switzerland, in which the
idea of the voluntary nation represents a discursive opportunity structure for Swiss
radical right-wing populist parties, alongside ethnic nationalism which refutes
the idea of civic nationalism, but does not interfere with the radical right making
use of it.
Another important discursive and symbolic frame in Switzerland is represented
by the so-called Discourse of Overforeignization. Unique in Europe for its persist-
ence throughout the twentieth century, this long-held and widely accepted discourse
has consistently been utilized by radical right-wing populist parties to construct and
to politicize the boundary between ‘us’ and the ‘other’. Initially developed by
Swiss intellectuals in the early twentieth century, the term ‘Overforeignization’
(Überfremdung) implies the notion that a dangerous threat is posed by those who are
of foreign origin and culture and that one’s own identity and group is also threat-
ened (Kury 2003). In the 1960s, the fear of ‘Overforeignization’ was revived by
large parts of the polity, including state authorities, social democrats and trade
unions. While the emerging radical right-wing populist parties were able to
benefit from this widely touted discourse of exclusion, they also radicalized it
with their demands for restriction on immigration and channelled it into political
action in the 1960s and 1970s (Skenderovic 2003). Still in the 1990s and 2000s,
‘Overforeignization’ was a buzzword used by these parties in campaigns directed
against EU membership and the government’s migration policy (Skenderovic and
D’Amato 2008).
It is also worth noting that for many Swiss, the notion of multicultural society
and tolerance towards the ‘other’ refers primarily to ‘native’ minorities and
‘indigenous multiculturalism’. The country’s history is a success story for the
integrative force of multiculturalism that binds together the different regions of
the country where German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romance is respectively
spoken. However, multicultural coexistence, reinforced by institutional agreements
and political will in favour of minority policy, has largely failed to develop
open attitudes towards the new minorities of immigrants (Linder 2010). While
the immigrants that came from southern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s were
received with much scepticism by large sections of the Swiss population, their
counterparts in the 1980s and 1990s, refugees and immigrants from Indochina,
Turkey and the former Yugoslavia, were confronted by considerable mistrust.
Thus, in contrast to the above-mentioned tolerance argument, opinion polls have
consistently provided strong evidence to suggest that the attitudes of exclusion
and intolerance towards immigrants that are found among the Swiss population
are similar to those found in other Western societies (Armingeon 2000; Cattacin
et al. 2006).
As the literature argues, the existence of successful radical right-wing move-
ments in the past can be another factor that helps to explain the success or failure
of contemporary radical right-wing populist parties (Art 2006). Thus, it was long
argued that because Switzerland had not experienced fascism to the degree that
most other European countries had, there was a very low level of acceptance
within the Swiss political culture for anti-democratic rightist forces. This excep-
tionalist view, however, has increasingly been challenged by historical research
which insists that the Switzerland of the 1930s and 1940s must be seen in the wider
European context. Recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that ideologies
of discrimination such as anti-Semitism and culture-based racism did emerge and
were often more widespread than many had long been made to believe (Altermatt
1999). At the same time, a number of intellectuals represented the Swiss version of
the German Conservative Revolution and, with an attitude of cultural despair and
fierce anti-modernism, formulated a sharp criticism of liberal and pluralistic society
as well as parliamentary democracy (Mattioli 1995). Although there is little research

on the ways in which the political work of these intellectual and political actors
continued during the post-war period, one can certainly say that Switzerland’s
political culture has also had long and firmly held traditions of authoritarian, anti-
pluralistic and discriminatory ideas.
Conclusion
This chapter has shown that Switzerland can hardly be viewed as an exceptional
case among Western democracies when it comes to accounting for parties that have
a radical right-wing populist profile. There is a significant history of parties of
this type within Switzerland and a number of contextual factors exist that are
rather favourable for the emergence of such parties. For a long time, this has
been ignored by most specialists in Swiss politics and history, including many
domestic scholars who have preferred to adopt an exceptionalist view and have
labelled these parties in different ways (e.g. ‘national-conservatives’ when referring
to the SVP). Thus, there has so far been little effort to test the Swiss case against the
explanatory theories that have been used in cross-national research in order to
understand the emergence and consolidation of these parties (for a recent exception,
see Art 2011).
As suggested, several external factors account for the persistence of radical right-
wing populist parties in Switzerland and these help to capture the reasons for their
remarkable organizational and electoral continuity since the 1960s. Institutional
and political conditions such as direct democracy, federalism, the proportional
voting system and consociationalism are important opportunity structures which,
contrary to the conventional view, actually helped these parties to mobilize sup-
port. They have also been able to benefit from discursive opportunities and sym-
bolic resources drawing on the widely accepted notion of Switzerland as a special
case and the ethnic-assimilationist nature of Swiss nationhood. Moreover, the
so-called ‘Discourse of Overforeignization’, which turned into an exclusionary
tool in relation to the ‘other’, served as an influential reference point for post-war
radical right-wing parties.
While for a long period of time these Swiss parties experienced only limited
success in parliamentary elections, the Swiss People’s Party enjoyed increasing elec-
toral support throughout the 1990s and 2000s at municipal, cantonal and national
level. This raises the question of assessing what factors account for this success, and
which aspects need to be considered in addition to the enduring institutional
and discursive opportunity structures. Certainly, as some have claimed, changing
socio-economic conditions and the growing salience of the asylum theme, as
well as new policy issues such as Switzerland’s international integration and the
re-examination of the country’s role in the Second World War have all provided
a new fertile environment. It is equally important, however, to take into account
that radical right-wing populist parties are in many ways both the designers and
the builders of their own success. Thus, after accepting that by all means favourable
conditions exist in Switzerland for radical politics, the focus of further research
should be centred on the SVP as a political actor and on the way in which the
party reinforces cleavages in Swiss society that are linked to various aspects of
identity politics (Skenderovic 2009a); for example, by examining the role the SVP
plays in the political construction of issues such as migration, asylum seekers and
international integration, by presenting them as a threat to national identity. This
party-centric approach would also make it possible to catch up with new trends
emerging in comparative research on right-wing populist parties, which pays
growing attention to the impact that these parties have on public discourses and
policies.
Notes
1 The Swiss political system has three institutions of direct democracy at the national level.
First, there is the popular initiative, which calls for a partial revision of the constitution
and must be signed by 100,000 eligible voters. Second, international treaties and many
legislative acts are subject to an optional referendum, meaning that they must be submitted
to a vote if so requested by 50,000 eligible voters. Third, revisions of the constitution
and membership in organizations for collective security or supranational communities are
subject to a mandatory referendum.
2 In fact, of the 113 federal initiatives that were put to the ballot between 1970 and 2010,
18 were submitted by parties and groups associated with the Swiss radical right. Although
the voters approved just three of these initiatives, this was above average, since a total
of only nine federal initiatives were accepted during the whole of this period. From the
95 optional referenda that were held between 1970 and 2010, 18 were introduced by
radical right-wing populist parties and groups. In four cases the voters followed the radical
right’s rejection of policy change. This was less than the overall approval rate in optional
referenda, which was around one-third.
3 In the 1990s, the SVP consistently tried to stir up resentment against what they called the
‘political class’ by leading controversial referendum campaigns opposing governmental
proposals. As a consequence, the referenda dealing with international integration issues
were important votes against the government. For example, 73 per cent of those who
voted in 1992 against Switzerland’s membership in the European Economic Area (EEA),
a treaty vigorously combated by the SVP, were also expressing their mistrust towards the
government (Longchamp 1993: 43).
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14
TURKISH EXTREME RIGHT IN OFFICE
Whither democracy and democratization?
Ekin Burak Arıkan
Introduction
The 1990s gave witness to an upsurge of extreme right-wing parties throughout
Western Europe. In a few cases these parties even became partners in coalition
governments and thus had far-reaching influence in their respective countries. This
remarkable development raised concerns about the functioning of democracy
in Western Europe and, as a result of this, studies on extreme right-wing parties
intensified and a heated debate on both defining the phenomenon and locating
these movements on the political spectrum emerged. Akin to its European coun-
terparts, the Turkish extreme right, represented by the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi
(MHP, Nationalist Action Party), steadily increased its electoral support and, for
the first time since the 1980 military intervention, surpassed the national threshold,
won representation in the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (TBMM, Turkish Grand
National Assembly) and became a coalition partner in the 57th government of
Turkey. Because of its non-democratic and violent past, this development raised
serious concerns among many about the functioning, and further enhancement,
of democracy in Turkey.
The MHP, as I have analysed extensively in another study, is remarkably similar
to many Western European extreme right-wing parties (Arıkan 2002b). The appli-
cation of Cas Mudde’s (1995) ‘five common features’ analysis to the party, which
is also affirmed by Hainsworth (2000), clearly displays that the MHP is nationalist,
racist, xenophobic, anti-democratic and has desires for a strong state, thus situating
it within the European extreme right-wing family. Despite this, the MHP also has
several clear dissimilarities to its European counterparts. References to the Central
Asian roots of the Turks and the party’s emphasis on Islam are the most discernible
of these differences. Still, Turkey’s geographical proximity to Europe, her close
socio-cultural, socio-political and economic relations with European nations,
226 Ekin Burak Arıkan
the sizeable number of Turks living in several European countries and her candida-
ture to the European Union have driven MHP closer to the European realm.
Thus, studying the party, especially from the perspective of its relations to Turkish
democracy and democratization, seems to be both interesting and worthwhile.
The primary aim of this chapter is to clarify whether the MHP is an anti-
democratic force and a threat to Turkish democratization. The main hypothesis of
this study is that the MHP is a political force that opposes the establishment and
consolidation of participatory democracy in Turkey. Further, it is a party that
systematically challenges the ongoing democratization process in the country.
Thus, the party opposes both the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of liberal
democracy. Verifying this hypothesis, however, is not easy. The party, like several
Western European extreme right-wing parties, appears, at least on the public level,
to be supportive of democracy and its rules and regulations. Neither printed party
materials, including the party programme, books and brochures prepared by the
party school, nor election leaflets openly support an anti-democratic position.
However, an in-depth analysis of the party, its ideology, the way it functions inter-
nally, and the party MPs and leader’s actions both in the parliament and in the
government (1999–2002) gives significant clues about its anti-democratic stance
and how it can threaten the democratization process in Turkey.
The first section of this chapter is devoted to a brief analysis of the Turkish political
structure. The following section familiarizes the reader with the historical develop-
ment of the MHP. The third section is devoted to an analysis of the MHP ideology
and its relation to democracy. This analysis clearly shows the anti-democratic roots
of the party. The fourth section looks into the current political programme of the
party and how it views and relates to democracy. At first sight, the party demon-
strates a belief in liberal democracy. A closer analysis, however, shows that the
MHP’s version of democracy is one that is contrary to the basic principles of a
participatory democracy. The final section is dedicated to the analysis of the anti-
democratic position and actions of the party in government. All reform packages
brought before parliament with the aim of democratizing Turkish democracy were
relentlessly criticized and opposed by the MHP. The MHP, thus, is a significant
political force that aims to establish a limited democratic order in Turkey.
Turkish state, politics and democracy

Since Ottoman times, the Turkish state was always deemed a sacred entity, both by
the elites and the masses, and thus has always been beyond question. The attempts
at modernizing the declining Ottoman Empire, which intensified after the Tanzimat
period, did not change the sacred status of the state in Turkish politics. The mod-
ernization process was initiated and administered, first by the Ottoman and later by
the republican elite. It was a modernization ‘from above’. For the republican elite
the periphery constituted the greatest danger to the political unity of the republic.
The Said rebellion in Southeast Anatolia and the Menemen incident were
both interpreted as proofs of this danger.1 According to Mardin (1977), ruling the
Turkish extreme right in office 227
periphery through top-down law-making simply duplicated the Ottoman social

administration mechanism. The chessboard-like structure of Anatolia was refused
altogether by the official doctrine of the republic. The new generations educated
with this doctrine viewed all ethnic, local and religious groups of Anatolia as
unessential remnants of the dark ages of the Ottoman Empire. The failure of the
republican elite’s grand structural changes and mass mobilizing measures put enor-
mous pressure on the official ideology. This was more than any ideology could
sustain.
This ideology, one that glorified the sacredness and the unity of the Turkish
state, continued to dominate Turkish politics in the following decades. Once the
Demokrat Parti (DP, Democrat Party) government became the centre of attraction
for the long-forgotten peripheral (mostly reactionary) forces, it was ended by the
1960 military intervention. Mardin (1977) argues that this intervention signified
the deep divide between the periphery and the centre, which was strongly associated
with the dogmatic structure of the regime. The 1971 and the 1980 interventions
were both carried out in order to reassert the raison d’être of this republican dogma.
When the forces of the periphery came into conflict with the centre, the dogmatic
defensive reflex always came from the military and suppressed these peripheral
forces.
The 1980 military intervention played a unique role in republican political his-
tory. The intervention put an end to the long-lasting coherence of the Turkish
military and civilian bureaucracy with the intelligentsia. Unlike the situation during
and after the 1960 military intervention, in this instance the Turkish intelligentsia
was among those who were severely punished by the military. As a result, they
were excluded from the post-military political design processes. The 1982 constitu-
tion, as Metin Heper (1988), a prominent student of Turkish politics, pointed
out, was a ‘mixed’ constitution that wished to ‘regulate’ democracy in Turkey.
Accordingly, against any future drift of the political regime towards extreme instru-
mentalization (or peripheralization) the ultimate guardian of the state was the mili-
tary, not the civil bureaucratic elite or any other institution. This carved an arena
for the state against ‘politics’ (Heper 1988). As a result a participatory democracy
did not flourish in Turkey and the political structure which grew out of this can
better be termed an authoritarian state with a democratic outlook.
Naturally, Turkish democracy has taken significant strides since Heper’s find-
ings. Primarily due to the Turkish candidature to the European Union, both verti-
cal and horizontal dimensions of democracy have become centres of political debate
in Turkey. The MHP has been actively participating in this debate on the side of
the anti-democratic forces. It is therefore important to elucidate the anti-democratic
roots and traditions of the party, which are covered in the following section.
History of the Turkish extreme right

The first extreme right-wing party of Turkey, Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi
(CKMP, Republican Peasant Farmers’ Nation Party) was founded in 1948 by
General Fevzi Çakmak. In 1965 Alparslan Türkeş and his friends were elected to the
party leadership and, consequently, Turkist and virulent anti-communist features
started to acquire importance in party rhetoric. In the party Congress of 1967 a new
programme that was based on ‘communitarian nationalism’ and Dokuz Işık Doktirini
(Nine Lights Doctrine) were accepted. Türkeş was declared Başbuğ (the ‘great
leader’), and he made his well-known statement, ‘whoever joins the cause and then
becomes a traitor, kill him’.
It was not only nationalist ideologies that were turned into a violent political
tool in the hands of the MHP, but Islam was also being politicized as a force
that could be manipulated against rising Marxist currents. With the advance of the
1970s, Türkeş and his aides began referring to Islam as an indispensable part of
Turkish culture. This new combination was called the Turkish-Islamic synthesis.
Türkeş articulated this synthesis in the following words: ‘We are as Turk as the
Tengri mountain [the MHP maintains that the Turks’ ancestors emigrated from
Central Asia], and as Muslim as the Hira Mountain [which is located in the Muslim
holy lands in Saudi Arabia]. Both philosophies are our principles’ (Bora and Can
1988: 54).
It was the 1969 Adana Congress that marked the end of an era for the Turkish
nationalists. The name of the party was changed from CKMP to MHP; the rank
and file Turkists who opposed the Turkish-Islamic synthesis were expelled and a
hierarchical structure, which primarily augmented Türkeş’s powers, was institution-
alized. The anti-capitalist and anti-Masonic rhetoric of the party was also
set aside, a tribute to the workings of the forces of the establishment, which increas-
ingly considered the MHP as a legitimate force because of its stringent anti-
communism (Bora and Can 1988: 46). In the years 1969–74 the party remained a
marginal force in Turkish politics, receiving around 3 per cent electoral support.
The party’s fortunes turned in 1975 when they were invited to join the Milli
Cephe (National Front) government alongside the right-wing Adalet Partisi
(AP, Justice Party) and the Islamist Milli Selamet Partisi (MSP, National Salvation
Party). Although in the 1977 elections the MHP almost doubled its vote share, the
party leadership was not satisfied. It was hoped that the coalition experience would
integrate the party into the system as a legitimate actor and widen its base of sup-
port. Even though the party succeeded in attracting an increasing number of mar-
ginalized members of the middle class who faced difficulties in adapting to the rise
of entrepreneurial capitalism, economic hardship and inflation, the party’s inflexible
and rigid attitude towards change constrained its electoral prospects. Rather than
adopting a new strategy and programme that would tackle the problems of
the Turkish society, it remained a single-issue party whose only concern was an
anti-communist stance.
Before the party could find time to reflect on its minimal electoral accomplish-
ment, the curtain fell on the MHP in 1980 as the military intervened and suspended
all political activity. Although the 1980 military coup primarily smashed the
left into pieces, the MHP was also hit hard by the harsh measures of the interven-
tion. Many MHP supporters and members were given various prison sentences.
This constituted a period during which the Ülkücüler (nationalists) found them-
selves, for the first time in their history, having to question their unconditional sup-
port of the Turkish state. A book written by Alparslan Türkeş (1995) at the time,
entitled Basılan Kervanımız (Our Suppressed Journey) expressed this sense of betrayal
by the state. It is also at this time that one of the prominent leaders of the party, Agah
Oktay Güner, said, ‘We are in prison, yet our ideology is in government’; this became
a popular slogan in Ülkücü circles, reflecting their disillusionment and sense of
betrayal by the Turkish state.
In the 1987 general and 1991 local elections, the party showed no particular
gain at the polls and its performance was almost identical to the pre-1980 period.
In 1991 the MHP entered the elections in a coalition pact with the Islamist
Refah Partisi (RP, Welfare Party) in order to circumvent the 10 per cent threshold
restriction, which it could not achieve on its own, and as a result won 19 seats
in the parliament. Parliamentary representation seemed to have been beneficial for
the party. In the 1994 local elections its vote share rose to 8 per cent, while it
further increased 0.6 per cent in the following parliamentary elections in 1995.
This time, however, the MHP could not enter the parliament due to the election
barrier.
In 1997,Türkeş died at the age of 80.The death of Türkeş was a new and difficult
challenge for the party that now found itself facing an uncertain future. In November
1997 the party congress elected Devlet Bahçeli as party chair and thus opened a
new era in MHP’s history. Bahçeli was seen as a figure who could
reunite the party around its founding principles. Aware of this potential, Bahçeli
and his aides quickly set to restructure the party’s policies and strategies, in order
to appeal to the expectations of MHP’s electorate in the countryside, along with
to its urban supporters. The party core rapidly concentrated its energy on the
re-establishment of links with the conservative electorate in central Anatolia. Since
it served a dual purpose, this policy turned out to be very successful. While support
for the party in the countryside started to increase steadily, the new policy helped
Bahçeli to further consolidate his power within the party structure. The branches
that refused to accept the directives issued by the party core were immediately dis-
solved. The foundation of a party school and the establishment of a Research and
Development (R&D) department were all organized to restore the party core’s
domination over the parts and to indoctrinate the members in line with the ideals
of the party administration. As a result, the autocracy of Bahçeli was established,
ideological standards were re-enforced and links with the rural electorate were
strengthened. As the results of the 1999 general elections revealed, this policy was
very successful. The MHP crossed the electoral threshold by a large margin and
emerged as the second largest group in the parliament.
The MHP ideology: any trace of democracy?

Parties and party ideologies are not immune to change. They adapt themselves to
changing political conditions. Since its foundation in the late 1940s, the MHP has
undergone several transformations. With the changing conditions in Turkish poli-

tics, the party ideology has been altered, renovated and revised several times in the
past. In line with this process, numerous party programmes have been written.
Although almost all versions of the party programme made references to democracy
(as the most virtuous regime in the world), democracy and democratization did
not occupy a central position in any of these programmes. The ideological core
of the party, Turkish nationalism, always weighed heavier than any other feature of
the programme.
The first party programme, valid until the 1960s, contained a corporatist, devel-
opmental-modernist ideology primarily underlined by a Kemalist restoration
agenda. During the 1950s, under the leadership of Osman Bölükbaşı, the party
ideology was shaped by a populist, conservative and nationalist stance, which was
primarily supported by peasants and by the middle classes. Between 1965 and 1969,
Turkist and virulent anti-communist features started to acquire importance in
party ideology and rhetoric. This was primarily a response to the rise of Marxist
revolutionary groups and factions in Turkish politics. Since the 1967 Congress, the
centrepiece of the party programme has been based on the Dokuz Işık Doktrini
(DID), ‘the path of development and glorification’ written by Alparslan Türkeş. In
the 1993 party programme, the DID was introduced to the reader as a doctrine
that eliminated all liberal-capitalism, communism, Westernism and imitationism
as systems that are contrary to the history and traditions of the Turks. The DID’s
nine principles are: nationalism, idealism, moralism, communitarianism, positivism,
ruralism, libertarianism and character-building, modernization, and populism and
industrialism (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Programı 1993). Interestingly enough there is
no reference to democracy among the nine DID principles.
Against possible criticisms that would label the DID fascist, Türkeş on several
occasions urged the party to differentiate their ideology from national-socialism:
‘National-socialism is based on capitalism, (anthropological) racism that is created
in laboratories, and anti-democratic ideas. However, the followers of the DID
believe in Turkish communitarianism, a social-psychologically defined (moral)
respect for ancestral traditions (lineageism), and a true democratic system’ (Türkeş
1996: 19). The characteristics of ‘a true democratic system’ as mentioned by Türkeş,
however, were never made clear. People very well knew that the MHP was nation-
alist and ‘in the service of the Turkish nation’, but no one knew how the party
viewed democracy.
The first four principles of the DID (nationalism, idealism, moralism, commu-
nitarianism), clearly display that, once it acquires power, the MHP favours
establishing a fascist-like corporatist state, rather than a ‘liberal’ democracy. It is
clearly stated that the MHP movement is a reaction against individualism, competi-
tion, and a society based on political and economic struggles between the classes.
Turkish society is viewed as an organic whole and the programme aims to abolish
class conflict and to create a harmonious society. As with corporatism, Turkish
society is seen as a body and the individuals as the cells composing it. The criticisms
of both egalitarianism and capitalist economic ideas, and the extreme glorification
of a paternalist state idea, strengthen the corporatist character of the MHP

programme.
What is strange about the MHP is that these ideas were still supported by the
party in the mid-1990s. By that same time, almost all Western European extreme-
right movements had adopted a more democratic position and rhetoric (at least at
a cosmetic level) and had eliminated nearly all fascist(ic) arguments from their
vocabulary. Like Turkey itself, the MHP was late to adapt itself to changing
world politics. Although the MHP, like the Front National (FN, National Front)
of France, had the chance to benefit considerably from the ideology of a right-wing
think-tank, the Aydınlar Ocağı (AO, Hearth of Intellectuals), which during the late
1970s and early 1980s had served almost all of the Turkish right, this group failed
to adopt a more democratic and economically liberal stance. The collapse of the
communist bloc was welcomed by the party administration and supporters: were
they not the ones who relentlessly fought against communism? Hence, the victory
was theirs. The truth, however, was different. The victory was not theirs; it was,
instead, a victory for capitalist liberal democracy. For a long time, the MHP had
not only been criticizing communism (a class-based ideology) but it had also
been severely condemning capitalism (an individualistic ideology) (Milliyetçi Hareket
Partisi Programı 1993). The organic society that it has traditionally idealized was
very much in contradiction to the plural socio-political structures of Western
democracies. While the European extreme right was going through a substantial
transformation, the MHP was standing still.
Even though the party was static towards change, some party members were
aware of the changing dynamics of world politics. Devlet Bahçeli (the current
leader of the party) was among those who demanded change. During his party
secretariat, he and Ali Güngör started a reform movement that aimed to transform
the MHP into a modern mass Political Party. The team efforts of Bahçeli-Güngör
first became visible in the 1988 programme of the party. It was only with this pro-
gramme that democracy started to acquire some significance and attention in the
party ideology and rhetoric. When compared to previous MHP programmes, the
classical fascist(ic) rhetoric of the party was softened. The changes were not radical,
however, and their primary aim was to uplift the public image of the party (Milliyetçi
Hareket Partisi Programı 1988). The rigid statements of the past were removed from
the new programme. Although the core of the programme was preserved, it was
now far more modestly emphasized (Bora and Can 1988). The arguments on a
possible ‘organic’ Turkish nation were moderated and more emphasis was given to
the historical/cultural roots of the Turks.
The new programme was based on four primary concepts: legitimacy, respect
for human character and rights, the rule of law and devotion (Milliyetçi Hareket
Partisi Programı 1988). The emphasis on democracy, however, was singled out to be
the most significant change in the new programme. The old ‘national democracy’
concept was replaced by ‘national, democratic, rule of law state’. The programme
repudiated all interventions to the functioning of democracy. This was linked to
the concept of legitimate government. Above all, the emphasis on human rights
and rule of law meant that the 1988 programme was radically different from its
predecessors. Despite this, as the subsequent programme (1993) shows, the party
continued to emphasize corporatist fascistic elements in their party programmes.
The final party programme, which is explored at length in the next section,
further eliminated fascist(ic) statements and stressed the party’s commitment to
democracy. These changes did not, however, all reflect the ideas and actions of the
MHP supporters and the party members. As elaborated in depth in the next section,
in fact, once the party was in power, the make-up melted away and the MHP was
once again seen with its bona fide anti-democratic face.
MHP and democracy: the new party programme

According to the 2003 party programme, the first and most important value for the
MHP is nationalism. Turkish nation and nationalism are perceived to be the safe-
guards of the independence and strength of the Turkish republic. They also claim
to be the guardians of democracy in Turkey (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Programı 2003).
Democracy is singled out to be the second significant principle of the party. With
this programme, the MHP accepted a modern definition of democracy. Accordingly,
concepts such as rule of law, respect for human rights and individual liberties are
incorporated. Democracy is considered to be the best political system in the world
and one that would create national unity, societal peace and a peaceful order in
Turkey. Obviously, a properly functioning democratic order confirms national
unity and creates a peaceful order. But in order to achieve this, democracy must be
seen as an end in itself. Traditionally, the MHP has always concentrated its efforts
on fighting against any force that it has believed would weaken the national unity
of the country. Accordingly, the party constantly interpreted democracy as a means
to achieve its self-defined comprehension of Turkish national unity. Democracy as
an end does not mean much to MHP. As the party programme clearly shows, the
primary aim of the party is not to establish a well-functioning democracy in Turkey,
but to use it as a means to achieve its narrowly defined national unity and peaceful
order (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Programı 2003). A robust national unity and a peace-
ful order, however, can only materialize within a democratic regime that creates a
suitable atmosphere in which the citizens can openly debate and criticize the char-
acter of the regime in which they live. Obviously, such a regime is not the MHP’s
preference.
The third paragraph of the democracy section is devoted to a critique of the
Turkish elite. It is argued that in order to institute a working democracy in Turkey,
the Turkish elite must first themselves internalize democracy, should not overlook
their fellow citizens, and must hold with the national and moral values of the soci-
ety. To a certain extent, the criticism is well founded. Political actors in Turkey
have traditionally been highly elitist. In a globalizing world, however, expecting
the Turkish elite to act within the limits of national/local moral values carries the
risk of jeopardizing democratization in Turkey. The MHP views democracy and a
productive civil society from a strictly defined nation-state perspective. As the
subsequent sections show, the party relentlessly criticizes almost any idea that is
supported by the actors of the civil society on the grounds that it does not accord
with the norms and values of the people. The party and its supporters from time
to time even go as far as accusing the pioneers of these ideas of high treason
(Nihat 2001). Finally, the MHP believes that it is their duty to put a stop to any
provocative and violent action, though ‘within the limits of rule of law’. When
defining democracy, reference for provocative and violent actions and how to
tackle them is nothing but absurd. This on its own shows the MHP’s security-
oriented mentality and how it tries to legitimize it by using concepts like rule of law
and democracy.
The next section of the programme is dedicated to human rights and liberties.
The first two paragraphs of the section underline the significance of human rights
and liberties as indispensable components of democracy and how they must be
protected. Soon, however, one realizes that these are nothing but cliché repetitions
of internationally accepted norms and values. The real intentions of the party come
to light with the third paragraph. For the party, the acknowledgement and protec-
tion of human rights and liberties are not taken for granted. They are conditional.
They will only be respected as long as the behaviour and/or action of the individual
complies with the indivisible unity of the country, state and the nation. Once again
the emphasis is on national unity. Human rights and liberties, as the word ‘human’
indicates, are related to the rights and liberties of human beings and evidently not
related to any sort of ‘unity’. What is more, ‘the indivisible unity of the country,
state and the nation’ is such vague terminology that anyone can interpret it in
a different way. Such a condition surely nullifies MHP’s sincerity as regards respect-
ing and providing the basic rights of Turkish citizens. Accordingly, a Turkish citizen’s
basic human rights can be violated if that individual acts against ‘the indivisible
unity of the country, state and the nation’.
The fifth section of the MHP programme is devoted to democratization and
rights and liberties (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Programı 2003). There are eight sub-
headings under this section: democratization, the protection of human rights and
liberties, torture, a social contract-like constitution, freedom of thought, equality
before law, the right to organize and demonstrate, rights for women and children.
Only a sentence or two explains each subheading and these are all cliché statements
which in reality do not mean much at all. The most significant subheading, which
once again displays the anti-democratic understanding of the party, is ‘freedom of
thought’. For the party, Turkish citizens are free to think whatever they like, as
long as these thoughts do not contradict national unity, the public good and the
accepted moral values of the population. This clearly contradicts the definition of
freedom of thought.
The research conducted and books printed by the Party School (PS) and the
Research and Development (R&D) branch of the party are other indicators of the
MHP’s level of interest in democracy and democratization. Neither the R&D
branch nor the PS has published any book on democracy and democratization in
Turkey. With the Turkish candidature to the European Union, the transition of
both state and society towards democracy has received significant attention (Heper
1988). The neglect of these debates by the R&D branch and the PS of the party,
both of which are composed of academics, can be considered as a clear indicator of
the level of interest given to democracy by the party.
The analysis of the MHP’s recent party programme clearly demonstrates that the
MHP is not sincerely devoted to the establishment of a contemporary democracy
in Turkey. Rather it aims to preserve the narrowly defined semi-democratic nation-
state in the country. The party distorts such concepts as democracy, human rights
and freedom of thought in order to achieve its ultimate goal of creating a homoge-
neous organic society. It is obvious that the party during the 1990s has only insti-
tuted a public relations exercise rather than transforming itself into a democratic
political force.
Democratization, Copenhagen Criteria and the MHP

As mentioned earlier, the 1982 constitution was a product of the military junta.
Shaped and sealed by the generals, the new constitution did not allow the establish-
ment of a properly functioning participatory democracy in Turkey. Often, the state
security forces violated human and minority rights and ‘the rule of law’, as the
indispensable values of a modern democratic state were pushed aside. With the
Turkish candidature to the EU, the constitutional shortcomings began to be more
openly expressed by the Turkish intelligentsia. The ‘EU process’ has had major
positive effects on the forces of democracy in Turkey. Concepts like democratiza-
tion, human rights, rule of law and minority rights were all incorporated into the
daily vocabulary of Turkish citizens. Political Parties have had to clarify their posi-
tions vis-à-vis Turkish candidature to the EU. Turkish society, though unhur-
riedly, was going through the kind of extensive transformation process that can
only be equated to the early days of the republic. The transformation process
speeded up in the late 1990s. Reforms towards satisfying the requirements of the
Copenhagen Criteria also gave rise to various societal tensions. The reflections of
these were also seen in Turkish politics. While some political actors supported the
ever intensifying reform process, others were sceptical about the EU process.
Interestingly, none of these actors (including the political Islamists) totally refused
Turkish membership to the EU. The MHP belonged to the sceptical group. They
supported Turkish candidature to the EU since it was now ‘state policy’. Yet, at
every occasion they fought against any democratization attempt that aimed to meet
the Copenhagen Criteria.
Democratization attempts intensified during the period when the MHP was in
power (1999–2002). Reform packages brought before the parliament were both
severely criticized and outrightly refused by the party. Three constitutional amend-
ment proposals (abolition of capital punishment, rights of minority foundations and
broadcasting in native languages) aimed at meeting the Copenhagen Criteria, or in
other words further democratizing Turkey, are chosen as examples of MHP’s
strict opposition to democratization. Democracy for the party, as explained above,
is nothing more than an instrument to actualize its perception of national unity.

This perception leaves no space for either human or minority rights.
During its election campaign leading up to the 1999 parliamentary elections, the
MHP promised that it would immediately execute Abdullah Öcalan, the leader
of the PKK, once it came to power. Eventually, the MHP came second in the
elections and joined the coalition government of Bülent Ecevit. Soon, with increas-
ing pressure from the EU, the government decided to abolish capital punishment.
The MHP was stuck between standing behind its promise of executing Öcalan
or continuing to benefit from the gains of political office. For the party, the mid-
and/or long-term benefits of democratization did not mean much at all. As a
party that approaches political democracy from a short-term and pragmatic per-
spective, it decided to oppose the proposal and not to resign from the government.
Again, for pragmatic reasons, this was also accepted by the coalition partners of
the MHP.
During the discussions in the parliament, the MHP speakers linked the proposal
to the execution of Abdullah Öcalan. The party members maintained that the real
aim of the proposal was simply to save Öcalan from execution. They viewed
the proposal as an exclusive amnesty for the leader of the PKK. Thus, in MHP
Erzurum MP İsmail Köse’s words, the MHP refused to participate in this evil action
(TBMM 2002a). Despite MHP’s opposition, the proposal was accepted thanks to
the support of the opposition parties.
The elimination of capital punishment was only a start. The proposition that
would allow minority foundations to hold property and to exercise authority over
it was also refused by the MHP. According to the articles of the Treaty of Lausanne,
the property rights of Turkish citizens of Jewish, Armenian and Greek origin were
guaranteed. Yet, minority foundations had been deprived of this right. Thus, their
existence was left to the mercy of the Turkish state. The aim of the proposed con-
stitutional amendment was to correct this anti-egalitarian treatment of the minority
foundations.
The Treaty of Lausanne defined Turkish minorities in reference to religion and,
hence, Turkish Christians (Greeks and Armenians) and Jews were considered as
minorities and were given particular rights. The MHP officially accepted the
outcomes of the treaty (TBMM 2002b) and, thus, in principle it acknowledged
its acceptance of the legal status of the Turkish minorities. But that was as far as its
acceptance went. The MHP was ready to display its genuine hatred towards minor-
ities. Its criticisms were underlined by a revolting racist rhetoric. During the hear-
ings, the speaker for the party group was İrfan Keleş. Keleş’s openly racist speech
was frequently interrupted by the cheers and applause of the MHP MPs. In his
speech, he argued that, with the proposed amendment, the land of the nation was
being sold to Armenians, Greeks and Jews (TBMM 2002c). It was here that the
applause from the MHP members reached a crescendo. Keleş, however, definitely
missed a few important points. First of all, the land was not to be sold to minorities
(they already had the right to own property), but to minority foundations. Even
if this was the case, the land of Turkish citizens was again being sold to other
Turkish citizens, not to Armenians, Greeks or Jews as he narrowly defined them.

The land would be sold to Turkish citizens originating from different ethnic and
religious backgrounds. Obviously, Keleş was trying to provoke hatred among the
citizens of the Turkish republic. Above all, his speech and the supportive cheers of
the MHP MPs clearly demonstrated how the MHP viewed its fellow citizens of
different ethnic and religious backgrounds. It was obvious that the MHP did not
consider minorities as Turkish citizens.
For Keleş, the proposal also contained several risks. What if, for instance, an
Armenian foundation decided to own property in Diyarbakır,Van, Ağrı and Kars?2
What if the same foundation declared that it would help Armenia since it had lots
of money? (TBMM 2002c). In a way he was stating that the minority foundations
were a threat to Turkish territorial integrity. Thus, extending their rights was con-
sidered to be a vital danger to the very existence of the Turkish republic. Within
the traditionally defined national unity of the MHP, the minorities did not hold any
place at all. Despite the MHP opposition, this proposal was also accepted with the
support of the opposition parties.
The tension once again rose when a proposal to lift the ban on broadcasting in
native languages was brought before the Turkish parliament. The MHP opposed
the proposal from a strictly defined, nation-state perspective. First of all, there was
no minority in Turkey other than that specified by the Treaty of Lausanne. In his
speech delivered to the parliament, a leading MHP MP, Koray Aydın, pointed out
that there was no Muslim minority in Turkey (TBMM 2002b). With ‘Muslim
minorities’ he was in fact referring to Kurds. In his opinion, through the EU proc-
ess the West was seeking to pursue its traditional policy of dividing Turkey geo-
graphically. For Aydın, it was the same hostile mentality that had once tried to
achieve this evil objective through the implementation of the Treaty of Sèvres. The
only difference was that this time they were not using military but political and
economic tactics (Copenhagen Criteria). The MHP interpreted the right to broad-
cast and to be educated in native languages as the first step in this separationist
project. According to Aydın, the second step would be the establishment of a fed-
eral structure in Turkey. Furthermore, the proposal, in his opinion, was contrary to
Article 42 of the constitution; thus the sponsors of the proposal were also commit-
ting a constitutional offence.3 Eventually, the proposal was firmly rejected by the
MHP MPs on the basis that it carried a potential to endanger the very existence and
integrity of the Turkish nation. Once again the amendment was passed thanks to
the support of the opposition parties.
The first clause of the Copenhagen Criteria is, in fact, a brief definition of a
modern democratic state. It asks that candidate countries stabilize their political
institutions so as to guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect
for and protection of minorities. The three constitutional amendment proposals
clearly aimed to meet the first clause of the Copenhagen Criteria. Above all, they
endeavoured to establish a modern democratic state in Turkey. The MHP, although
claiming to support both Turkish candidature to the EU and a viable democracy in
Turkey, is actually against any sort of democratization attempt.
Conclusion
As the most prominent extreme right-wing party in Turkey, the MHP has always
been one of the most significant anti-democratic forces in the country. Ideologically
speaking, since the foundation of the party, all MHP programmes have had author-
itarian and/or fascistic outlooks. Democracy and democratization never acquired
any significance within the party ideology and programme. The changes that were
employed towards adopting a more democratic rhetoric by the 1990s were only a
cosmetic that melted away once the party achieved political power. The MHP’s
version of a modern liberal democracy can be better termed a ‘conditional democ-
racy’. Almost all the features of a modern democracy are pushed aside in favour of
the better interests of the state. Thus, the MHP does not support human rights and
liberties, the rule of law and minority rights. If liberal democracy is equality through
liberty, the MHP believes in neither equality nor liberty. As such, the MHP is a
political force that is a threat to both the functioning of democracy and democrati-
zation in Turkey. The MHP, with reference to Heper’s terminology, is one of the
best examples of ‘absence of learning’ of Political Parties in Turkey with reference
to democracy (Heper 1991b).
Notes
1 The Said rebellion was a Kurdish uprising with strong Islamic undertones, while the
Menemen incident was purely an Islamist uprising against secularization attempts.
2 Most of the cities named by Keleş had been densely populated by Armenians in the
past.
3 Article 42 of the constitution states that, ‘No language other than Turkish can be taught
as a native language in Turkish education institutions’.
Bibliography
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Hand in a Velvet Glove?’, Middle Eastern Studies, 34(4): 120–34.
–––– 2002a. ‘Türkeş’ten Bahçeliye Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi: Değişim Nereye Kadar?’
in S. Öngider (ed.), Milliyetçilik, Faşizm ve MHP. İstanbul: Aykırı Yayıncılık, pp. 49–79.
–––– 2002b. ‘Turkish Ultra-Nationalists under Review: A Study of the Nationalist Action
Party’, Nations and Nationalism, 8(3): 357–76.
Bora,T. and Can, K. 1988. Devlet Ocak Dergah: 12 Eylül’den 1990lar’a Ülkücü Hareket. İstanbul:
İletişim Yayınları.
Dahl, R.A. 1982. Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Hainsworth, P. (ed.) 2000. The Politics of the Extreme Right: From the Margins to the Mainstream.
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–––– 1988. ‘State and Society in Turkish Political Experience’, in H. Metin and
A. Evin (eds), State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s. Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter.
–––– 1991a. ‘Introduction’, in M. Heper and J.M. Landau (eds), Political Parties and Democracy
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–––– 1991b. ‘Transitions to Democracy Reconsidered: A Historical Perspective’, in

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Were the Fascists? Social Roots of European Fascism. Bergen: Universitetsforlage.
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Parliamentary Affairs, 46(3): 420.
15
SCANDINAVIAN
RIGHT-WING PARTIES
Diversity more than convergence?
Marie Demker
Right-wing parties and the political opportunity structure

In countries such as Belgium, France, Austria, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands
extreme-right parties have thrived on xenophobia.These parties usually express a
defensive attitude towards rapid cultural changes in their own national states. Some
of these parties have been successful in gaining support, some also in enjoying policy
influence, but many of them are characterized by sudden but short-lived success.1
A puzzling question is why extreme-right parties have not developed in the same
way in the three Scandinavian countries – Denmark, Norway and Sweden. These
Scandinavian countries are often studied together because it is generally admitted
that they share a common political culture, characterized by proportional represen-
tation, stable parliamentary democracy and a social democratic welfare state. Yet,
whereas in Sweden the extreme right has enjoyed only brief and recent electoral
success at national level, in Denmark the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party)
has become a parliamentary force, supporting the government since 2001,while in
Norway the Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) with 38 seats has been the second
largest party in parliament since 2005 but excluded from influence. This chapter
discusses these differences among the Scandinavian countries and explores the
reasons why Sweden seems to be different from its Scandinavian neighbours.
Empirically, there is no evidence to support a direct correlation between the level
of immigration in a given country and strong electoral support for an extreme-right
party.2 Other reasons may equally explain the electoral strength of such parties,
notably domestic variations in the political opportunity structure (Tarrow 1994;
Kitschelt 1995; Koopmans and Statham 2000; Meyer and Minkoff 2004; Kestilä
and Söderlund 2007). Tarrow argues that the concept of ‘political opportunity
structure’ is crucial to understanding the formation and development of social
movements and social protest. The starting point of this approach is that external
240 Marie Demker
factors enhance or inhibit prospects for mobilization and that these factors could
explain why certain claims and strategies affect political institutions and others do
not. This approach has nevertheless been criticized for being both too narrow
and too broad, for being vague and for neglecting phenomena like ideologies and
identities (Benford 1995; Koopmans 1999). Ruud Koopmans (1999: 100) points
out that the political opportunity structure approach is more powerful in explaining
cross-national variations than in longitudinal single-case studies. Therefore, in this
chapter I will analyse differences between Scandinavian xenophobic extreme-right
parties, with a clear focus on Sweden as a deviant case (Downs 2001; Bleich 2002;
Ivarsflaten 2005; Frölund Thomsen 2006).
I will use a modified model of political opportunity structure by arguing that
(a) the immigration issue must be put on the political agenda by legitimate societal
actors, (b) the immigration issue must be perceived as an ideological issue where a
usually well-mobilized anti-immigration lobby seems to oppose a non-mobilized
pro-immigration one, and (c) existing political cleavages provide a grid through
which immigration policy can be understood.
It is important to stress that Scandinavian countries are not politically as similar
as many outsiders tend to believe (Rokkan 1987; Björgo 1997; Demker 2006b).
Since the 1950s the party systems in both Norway and Sweden have developed in
different ways with polarization in Norway and an overcrowded middle-ground in
Sweden (Demker and Svåsand 2005). Sweden on one hand and Norway and
Denmark on the other differ in political cleavages. The Swedish party system has
for a long time been characterized by the left–right cleavage, but in Denmark and
Norway it is structured around several regional, urban/rural and religious cleavages.
The more pluralized political landscape in Denmark and Norway tends to give
room for xenophobia as a political issue, while in Sweden this issue must be
subordinated to the left–right cleavage.
I argue that the most plausible explanation of the divergence in voter success
between the right-wing parties in Scandinavia is that the political opportunity
structure in Sweden for parties on the right of the right has been unfavourable,
while in Denmark and Norway this is not the case.3 As an additional explanation
I will argue that the newest right-extremist party in Sweden – Sverigedemokraterna
(Sweden Democrats) – has a history of racism and linkage with Nazism that sets its
origins apart from the more opportunistic right-extremist parties in Denmark and
Norway (cf. Rydgren and Widfeldt 2004; Ivarsflaten 2006).
Party strategy of right-extremist parties in

Scandinavian agenda-setting
Political scientist Anders Widfeldt has described Danish and Norwegian right-
extremist parties as a product of the second wave of European extreme-right poli-
tics since the end of the Second World War (Rydgren and Widfeldt 2004: 12–17),
a wave which followed a first attempt made by Nazi and fascist parties to reorganize
in the aftermath of the war (cf. Engene 2005). From 1955 until 1980, this second
Scandinavian right-wing parties 241
wave was characterized by populist protest movements with mostly tax protests and
anti-modernism on the agenda. Mogens Glistrup’s Fremskridtspartiet in Denmark
and Anders Lange’s Parti in Norway were two such 1970s parties, whose rhetoric
echoed to an extent the French Poujadists of the 1950s.Yet, these Danish and
Norwegian parties were not xenophobic from the start: they were essentially a
neo-liberal answer to an escalating social-democratic welfare state with progressive
taxation responding to citizen demand for better education, health and social serv-
ices. In Sweden, by contrast, no similar party emerged: instead the conservatives
themselves endorsed a more neo-liberal agenda in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Denmark, Mogens Glistrup founded his neo-liberal tax-abolition party in
1972. Its initial success slowly crumbled until Pia Kjaersgaard replaced Glistrup in
parliament when he went to jail in 1984, sentenced to three years for tax fraud.
Glistrup was an odd and provocative politician. He came up with proposals like
selling Greenland to the highest bidder or replacing the Danish army with a tele-
phone answering machine.While the number of asylum seekers increased in all the
Nordic countries during the 1980s, Glistrup chose the elections of 1987 and 1988
to leave behind the old anti-tax rhetoric and make immigration the most important
issue. He attacked immigrants, specifically Muslims (or ‘muhammendaner’ in his
words), accused of aiming to take over the country. The party enjoyed an electoral
revival, but its social base changed: after 1987–88 its electorate became more
working class with lower levels of education (Skidmore-Hess 2003).
Following intense personal conflict, the party expelled its former leader Mogens
Glistrup in 1991. Pia Kjaersgaard was officially appointed leader of the party with
the double objective to make the party more respectable, more mainstream and to
make immigration its top priority. Under her leadership the party, renamed Dansk
Folkeparti (DPP, Danish People’s Party) in 1995, has distanced itself from Glistrup
and his supporters, whose overtly racist rhetoric, notably after the terror attacks on
11 September 2001, led to their marginalization and moral discredit. Kjaersgaard,
on the other hand, has become a successful leader. In the 2007 general elections,
the DPP won 14 per cent of the vote and gained 25 seats out of 179 and is now a
key member of the Danish parliamentary majority
In Norway, Fremskrittspartiet (PP, the Progress Party) was founded by Anders
Lange in 1973 as an anti-tax party, a neo-liberal protest organization, just like the
Danish Fremskridtspartiet. When Lange died in 1974, the new leader Carl Hagen
reorganized the party. Under his leadership, xenophobia did not rise to the top of
the party’s agenda, even if the party expressed some concerns about rising antago-
nism between immigrants and Norwegians due to a lack of jobs in the national
labour market (cf. Hagelund 2004).
In Norway, as in Denmark, immigration or immigrants were never a big issue
until the 1980s.The two countries had a small number of foreigners coming into the
labour market, mainly other north Europeans but also some migrants from south-
ern Europe. In the 1990s, the flow of refugees increased throughout Scandinavia
and their integration became a controversial issue, particularly in Norway. Here
asylum seekers increased from two or three hundred to tens of thousands in a few
242 Marie Demker
years and a discussion about what to do was initiated. For the PP, welfare benefits
distributed to immigrants became the major issue, as it argued that refugees drawing
generous benefits from the Norwegian welfare system put a strain on its resources
at the expense of the native population. The PP’s manifesto did not make immigra-
tion its central issue until around the turn of the millennium and focused on this
subject with an intensity not reflected in any other party (Svåsand and Wörlund
2005; cf. Harmel and Svåsand 1997). During the 1990s the voter profile changed
from a party for younger people to one that mainly attracted older voters.
Hitherto, if the PP had occasionally supported centre-right governments on
specific issues, it never gained enough support to exercise any governmental respon-
sibility. Despite gathering 15 per cent of the vote in the 2001 general election,
41 per cent of Norwegians were opposed to its participation in government, as
public opinion perceived the party to be too right-wing (Svåsand and Wörlund
2005: 263–77).With the current left-wing government, elected in 2007, there is no
scope for the PP to cooperate with government and thus no ground to acquire the
status of a legitimate partner. After the terrorist acts of 22 July 2011, when Anders
Behring Breivik murdered 77 people (eight in Oslo and 69 at a social democratic
summer camp) there was a backlash against the Progress Party in the opinion polls.
Breivik justified his actions in terms of a necessary war against multiculturalism and
threats to Western values. In the aftermath it was revealed that Breivik was a member
of the Progress Party until just recently.
In Sweden,the party NyDemokrati (ND, New Democracy) was founded in 1991
in the rural town of Skara. Like its Scandinavian sister parties, ND was a tax-reduction
party, but unlike them it also had an anti-immigration agenda from the outset. ND
was a classic anti-establishment party with two odd leadership figures, popularly
represented as ‘the count and the servant’: Count Ian Wachtmeister, ND’s eccen-
tric initiator, known for his practical jokes and highly provocative statements, and
Bert Karlsson, an entrepreneur, owner of a gramophone company and now in the
business of selling mass-produced Swedish pop music. Both firmly believed that the
country could be run like a business, using corporate solutions to manage the coun-
try as a whole. ND was a typical example of a so-called flash party organization
(Taggart and Widfeldt 1993). At first, it was fairly successful, and in the 1991 gen-
eral elections, with 6.7 per cent of the vote, ND seized 25 parliamentary seats (out
of 349). However, internal divisions and poor political acumen led the party to
collapse. By the 1994 elections, both voters and leaders had left the party and it
only survives at the margins of the political spectrum, occasionally winning a few
scattered seats in local elections.
However, in the 2010 general elections, an unambiguously xenophobic, nation-
alist and populist party had a breakthrough in the national elections. The party
Sverigedemokraterna (SD, Sweden Democrats) won 5.7 per cent of the votes,
enough to gain parliamentary representation. Nevertheless, SD already had, since
2006, elected representatives in nearly half of Sweden’s municipalities (144 out of
291). The roots of this party are not to be found in a neo-liberal anti-establishment
agenda, but in right-wing extremist ideology. SD was founded in 1988–89, merging
into a single party a number of racist, Nazi and nationalist groups. The party is now
trying to distance itself from this racist past. Its new leader, media-savvy Jimmy
Åkesson, has given SD a new image and built up an organization from local to
national, developing a nationalist-conservative agenda but with the immigration
issue as top priority.
In Sweden, immigration is traditionally not high on the Political Party agenda.
Likewise, immigration is not the top issue of concern for Swedish public opinion.
A desire to see the implementation of tougher policies towards immigrants does not
necessarily lead voters to cast their vote in favour of a xenophobic party: immigra-
tion is not seen to be as important as other issues such as welfare, health and edu-
cation (Holmberg and Oscarsson 2004: 123). None of the established parties in
Sweden have discussed the possibility of closing borders or initiating immigrant
expulsions. Generally, immigration as an issue has not been put on the agenda by
legitimate societal/political actors. Instead most political actors have discussed
immigration as something genuinely constructive for Swedish society. This is dif-
ferent from Denmark, where most parties perceive immigration to be a problem
(Green-Pedersen and Odmalm 2008) and from Norway, where the PP, thanks to
its strong parliamentary representation, has successfully reshaped the political agenda
to make immigration a national priority.
Opportunity structure in Scandinavian opinion – Sweden as a

deviant case
A review of Swedish opinion on immigration

Since 1986 the SOM-institute, at the University of Gothenburg has investigated
attitudes towards immigration and refugees in Sweden.4 We know very little about
opinion patterns before 1986, but there are indications of discrimination towards
almost all immigrant groups and minorities already in the 1960s (Swedner 1966).
For all we know, xenophobic attitudes were both more widespread and more
accepted in the 1960s than now.
From the end of the Second World War, Sweden has been a country of immi-
gration (Demker and Malmström 1999), but from the 1990s, the increase in immi-
grant population has been particularly sharp: in relation to its overall population,
Sweden has received one of the highest levels of refugees and immigrants. Yet, the
evolution of public opinion towards immigration since 1986 seems to have changed
slowly from an antagonistic to a more tolerant attitude (see Figure 15.1). Swedish
opinion has grown more tolerant since 1992, but still nearly half the population
approves of the suggestion that Sweden should receive fewer refugees (Demker
2006a). This can be nuanced if we consider more specific responses towards the
cultural background of immigrants.
In four selected years I have investigated xenophobia in terms of distance, aver-
sions and the respondents’ own feelings towards foreigners. In these figures there is
a clear pattern of increasing tolerance towards all immigrants/foreigners, with one
noticeable exception: freedom of religion. Other investigations and research indi-
cate that reservations about religious freedom should be interpreted as a sceptical
244 Marie Demker
80
65
61 59 56 56
56 54 54
60
50 50 50 52 48
46 43 44 46 45 46
49
40 42
26 28 29 25 28 26
30
21 24 24 24 24
22 20 21 20
20 16 19 28 26
0
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Fewer refugees More refugees
FIGURE 15.1Swedish attitudes to receiving more/fewer refugees to Sweden,

1987–2007 (percentage thinking more/fewer is a good suggestion)
Note: The SOM-survey is an annual postal survey, the external loss is about 30 per cent and the
N is usually between 1,670 and 3,700. Percentage is calculated on full answers; only respondents
that have chosen one alternative are included in the percentage base. The suggestions were:
‘Receiving more refugees’ and ‘Receiving fewer refugees’ and the five alternatives were: ‘very
good suggestion’, ‘good suggestion’, ‘neither good nor bad’, ‘bad suggestion’, and ‘very bad
suggestion’. Here only the respondents who answered ‘very good’ or ‘good suggestion’ are
accounted for.
attitude towards Islam, which is the most well-known immigrant religion in

Sweden (Hvitfeldt 1991).
As we can see in Table 15.1, antagonism towards foreigners and immigrants has
decreased during the years 1993–2009 (Demker 2005, 2008, 2010). But only a
minority of the Swedish population is willing to allow foreign cults without restric-
tions. Previously immigrants were mainly Lutheran, Orthodox or Catholic
Christians, but since the late 1980s many Muslims have come to Sweden. As many
TABLE 15.1 Swedish attitude towards immigrants, 1993–2009 (per cent)
Agree completely or mainly with the statement: 1993 1997 1999 2004 2007 2009
‘There are too many foreigners in Sweden’ 52 48 40 42 39 36

‘Immigrants in Sweden should be free to exercise 41 39 41 40 37 38
their religion’
‘I could think of joining an organization against 40 44 49 47 39 41
racism and xenophobia’
‘I would not like having an immigrant from 25 18 17 15 14 12
another part of the world married into my family’
Note: See Figure 15.1. The alternatives were ‘agree completely’, ‘mainly’, ‘partly’, ‘not at all’ and ‘do not
know’. The alternative ‘do not know’ is not accounted for in these figures.
of them have fled from religious oppression in their home countries, they have little
interest in emphasizing religion (refugees from Iran, for example) in Sweden. In
later years, though, more refugees have escaped from secular oppression and hope
to have the opportunity to enjoy religious freedom again (refugees from Kosovo,
for example). In Sweden conflicts between religious conceptions and political
norms have mainly been discussed as issues of gender equality, religious education
and freedom of speech. It means that arguments for and against religious clothing,
liberal policy on sexuality, food restrictions and the existence of religious holidays
have become central issues in the political debate.
Since the 1980s, Swedish women have voted more leftist than men. Women,
on the other hand, have been a bit more sceptical towards religious freedom and
preserving national culture (Demker 2005). Generally speaking, younger women
are more tolerant of refugees while younger men and men beyond their 70s are
most restrictive.5 Teenage boys were in 1999 very much more negative than the
population in general and teenage girls much more positive. Among Swedish
women the attitude towards immigration has for a long time been more supportive
than among men (Demker 2000).
Education – in terms of both the level and the nature of educational qualifications
– is a prominent factor explaining attitudes towards refugees. Among respondents
with a university degree, 33 per cent had a restrictive attitude to receiving refugees,
compared to 55 per cent among respondents with lower attainment (two-year post-
obligatory education) (Demker 2003). Already in the early 1990s the anti-immigrant
profile was tightly connected to males and low education. The most generous pro-
file was consequently found among highly educated women (Bennulf and Demker
1992). The most critical attitude to refugees is found in working-class households,
and the most generous attitude is found in white-collar and academic households
(Demker 2005, cf. O’Rourke and Sinnott 2006).6
Interestingly enough, not only the length of education decides attitudes, but also
the type of education. Respondents with a qualification in art and literature
(humanities) or in pedagogy are more positive about receiving refugees. Respondents
with an education in hotel, restaurants and services or economy/business are the
most negative. Among women, respondents with a qualification in natural sciences,
pedagogy, humanities, aesthetics, social sciences and engineering are the most
generous. Among men, the most generous are respondents with a qualification
in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and economy/business (Demker
2003).
Turning to how the immigration issue is interpreted in Sweden we observe that
among citizens who identify themselves as leftists only a minority wants restrictions
on receiving refugees while citizens who identify themselves with the right are
more supportive of restrictions (Demker 2006a). But there is also a left–right divi-
sion among party sympathizers within each party. Sympathizers who perceive
themselves as on the left of their own party are more tolerant towards refugees than
those who perceive themselves as on the right of the same party (Demker and
Gilljam 1994).
246 Marie Demker
There is also evidence that leftist ideology is more important when explaining
attitudes towards receiving refugees than sex and age (Demker 2000, 2004). Among
women that identified themselves as ‘clearly to the left’, only 24 per cent wanted to
reduce the number of refugees coming to Sweden, while among women identifying
themselves as ‘clearly to the right’ that proportion was 58 per cent. The same pat-
tern appeared across most of the age groups. Only in the group between 60 and
75 years old was the ideological identification not decisive for attitudes towards
receiving refugees to Sweden (Demker 2000). Among teenagers this pattern is very
clear, where young boys and young girls are on totally opposite sides of the fence:
young boys mostly to the right with a very restrictive attitude, and young girls
mostly to the left with a very generous attitude. As is shown in Table 15.2 the
ideological effect is stronger than effect by sex. It is also clear that among the
younger generation there is a considerable divergence of positions on immigration.
In 2006, 37 per cent of teenage girls had a restrictive view on refugee immigration,
contrasting with 51 per cent of the teenage boys.7 People under 30 years are also
the group most interested in refugee policy (Demker 2007).
If the parties to the right took up the immigration issue and mobilized voters
against immigration, or at least argued for rigorous restrictions, it would be possible
to put restrictions on immigration on the political agenda in Sweden. But, as I
made clear earlier, none of the Swedish parliamentary parties have up until now
made a serious attempt to make immigration restrictions or a tough refugee policy
an important issue in election campaigns (Dahlström and Esaiasson 2011). However,
given that the immigration issue in Sweden is partly interpreted in left–right terms,
and that the most right-wing voters are the most restrictive, it will be the parties of
TABLE 15.2 Attitudes towards refugees among boys

and girls (15–19 years old) regarding ideological
attitude in 1999 in Sweden (per cent)
Statement: Receive fewer refugees in Sweden
Left Right Effect
Boys 44 75 +31
Girls 24 56 +32
Effect: +20 +19
Note: See note to Figure 15.1. Percentage is calculated on
full answers; only respondents who have given one alternative
are included in the percentage base. The suggestions were:
‘receive fewer refugees’ and ‘accept fewer refugees’ and
the five alternatives were: ‘very good suggestion’, ‘good
suggestion’, ‘neither good nor bad’, ‘bad suggestion’, and
‘very bad suggestion’. The ideological alternatives were
‘clearly to the left/right’ and ‘somewhat to the left/right’
which have been fused into ‘left’ and ‘right’. The alternative
‘neither left nor right’ has been taken out of the analysis.
the right that hold the key on this political issue. But, if they decided to play that
card, they would meet resistance from leftist and green political groups, which
strongly support a generous influx from outside Sweden. And given the divisions
in public opinion, and the higher level of generosity compared to Denmark and
Norway, the outcome of that drama is not predetermined.
Swedish opinion in a Scandinavian perspective

Immigration issues have been handled differently in the Scandinavian countries.
Denmark and Norway did not take on any immigration flows until the 1980s while
Sweden has been an immigration country since the 1950s. Immigration policies
and the way public opinion reacts and supports such policies greatly diverge among
the Scandinavian countries.
It is remarkable that Swedish public opinion does not perceive immigration as a
threat in the same way and in the same proportion as in Norway and Denmark. For
instance, left-wing voters differ substantially in the way they support or oppose
immigration. Only 22 per cent of Norwegian and 24 per cent of Danish left-wing
voters support an immigration policy that would not restrict immigrants’ entry into
their respective countries, a position which appears rather lukewarm when com-
pared with the 41 per cent reached in Sweden. However, 11 per cent of Norwegian
and Danish left-wing voters think that immigration is undermining their country’s
cultural life, an opinion shared by only 6 per cent of Swedish left-wing voters. The
right is also more resolute in its opposition to immigration in Norway and Denmark,
since 19 per cent of Norwegian and 17 per cent of Danish right-wing voters per-
ceive immigration as a threat to their national culture, as opposed to 7 per cent in
Sweden. And if 31 per cent of Swedish right-wing voters believe that immigrants
should be allowed to enter and settle in the country, that support is reduced to
17 per cent and 19 per cent respectively among Danish and Norwegian right-wing
voters. Not only does resisting immigration have a stronger correlation to left–right
attitudes in Denmark and Norway than in Sweden, but the left in Norway and
Denmark is also less supportive of immigration. Further, beyond political cleavages,
Swedish public opinion displays less restrictive tendencies towards immigration
than its neighbours. Some 33 per cent of the population thinks that it is a good idea
to allow many immigrants of a different race/ethnic group to come and live in
Sweden, compared with 14 per cent in Norway and 12 per cent in Denmark.8
Studies of xenophobia in Denmark show an overwhelming trend of restrictive
attitudes explained mostly by a cultural antipathy against foreign traditions and
values. About 40 per cent of the Danish population perceives immigration as a
threat to Danish society. That feeling has also increased during the last twenty years
(Frölund Thomsen 2006: 226–27; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995: 98). Likewise, com-
parative studies show that Norwegians stand out as more xenophobic than Swedes,
and this result is linked to the traditionally strong nationalistic feeling in Norway
(Knudsen 1997; cf. Hjerm 2000). Immigration as a threat is thus much more salient,
as an attitude, in Norway and Denmark.
248 Marie Demker
Comparing the Scandinavian countries, it is worth reflecting that during the

1990s in Sweden immigration was not an issue monopolized by a particular section
of the political spectrum.9 And none of the parliamentary parties have hitherto used
immigration as a full-fledged part of an electoral, vote-maximizing strategy. Finally,
Swedish voters in general do not find immigration an important political issue. The
exception is the voters for Sweden Democrats, almost all of whom find immigra-
tion a very important issue (Demker 2011). Conversely, if immigration has been an
important issue for the Danish People’s Party right from the start, today the vast
majority of Danish parties acknowledge that immigration is the major political issue
(Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup 2008). Most Danish parties now agree that restric-
tive policies are necessary, if not desirable, and this constitutes a marked contrast
with Sweden where more liberal, generous solutions towards immigration are still
very much in evidence (Green-Pedersen and Odmalm 2008). In Norway, immigra-
tion does not yet have the same salience as in Denmark. At first, it was not central
to the Norwegian populist party Fremskrittspartiet, but it has steadily become part
of its policies in later years (Svåsand and Wörlund 2005: 267). The PP is now the
only party which has tried to make immigration a core subject on the political
agenda, arguing since the 1993 general elections for a restrictive approach. None of
the other parties have made immigration – in one way or another – prominent in
their party strategy (Svåsand and Wörlund 2005).
Tentative conclusions and discussion

The aim of this chapter is to discuss and explore differences in the parliamentary
achievements of right-wing parties among the Scandinavian countries. I argue
that the Swedish opportunity structure for extreme-right parties is unfavourable.10
I argue that a profitable opportunity structure is at hand if (a) the immigration issue
is put on the political agenda by legitimate societal actors, (b) the immigration issue
divides a mobilized position of anti-immigration and a non-mobilized position of
uninterested voters, and (c) immigration could be interpreted and perceived as an
extension of existing political cleavages in the system.
First, my results indicate that xenophobia in Sweden is not commonly expressed
by legitimate societal actors but restricted to specific sections of Swedish society,
mainly low-educated, politically uninterested, young and middle-aged provincial
men. In Norway, and to a lesser extent in Denmark, xenophobic support enjoys a
much wider social base (see also Maddes et al. 2000). In Denmark other parliamen-
tary parties, besides the Danish People’s Party, have engaged in electoral debates
over immigration as a problem. This has not been the case in Sweden (cf. Goul
Andersen 2004; Dahlström 2007). Thus, in Sweden, as opposed to Denmark and
to a lesser extent to Norway, a restrictive view of immigration has not been put on
the agenda by legitimate societal actors.
Second, the way immigration issues are mediated in public debate is also impor-
tant. In Sweden, since ND entered parliament in 1991, immigration and integra-
tion policy has been politicized at both ends of the political spectrum.The issue has
not been monopolized by the right of the right, but left-wing parties as much as
a series of civil society associations have been able to defend vigorously a more
generous approach to immigration, offering a plausible alternative to the more
restrictive solutions usually found on the right of the political spectrum.The debate
is thus polarized and structured around clearly differentiated scenarios. Thus, in
Sweden, as opposed to Denmark and Norway, immigration has not become an
issue monopolized by those who wish to support a restrictive approach to immigra-
tion, but is also politicized by those who demand a more generous approach to
immigration issues.
Finally, the nature of the cleavage structure differs between the three countries
selected for this study. Whereas the Swedish party system is structured around a
single dominant political cleavage – left and right – the Norwegian and Danish
party systems are far more complex and combine different cleavages, such as the
rural–urban and centre–periphery dimensions (Rokkan 1987: 239ff.; Oscarsson
1998; Demker and Svåsand 2005). New parties can thus prosper outside the strict
left and right cleavage and draw support from a variety of interests (Demker and
Svåsand 2005). In Norway and Denmark, voters do not identify themselves as
clearly with the left–right cleavage as is the case in Sweden. In Sweden, the Sweden
Democrats party has voters who define themselves as being from the centre to the
right on a left–right axis (Holmberg 2007). Because the left–right axis in Sweden is
the dominant political cleavage, the SD is clearly identified with the right and
indeed, its voters do define themselves as right-wing voters. For instance, SD voters
tend to be hostile to globalization, equality between men and women, membership
in the European Union and protecting the environment (Oscarsson and Holmberg
2008). The only potential overlap between SD and left-wing voters is on a form of
opposition to the European Union. But on most other issues, SD voters are on the
right of the Swedish left–right axis. The situation is far more complex in Norway
and Denmark where the Norwegian Progress Party and Danish People’s Party do
not have to align themselves with the right: rather, they can form a new pole within
the party system which potentially crystallizes the opposition to all other parties,
from left to right, but also attracts voters from different political traditions (Björklund
and Goul Andersen 1999). In Sweden, as opposed to Denmark and Norway, resist-
ance to immigration has been considered to be located further to the right of the
political spectrum, and as such, does not permeate the constituent elements of the
Swedish political cleavage system.
Sweden has recently witnessed the arrival of a populist/nationalist party in par-
liament. As in the Danish case, the cultural issue seems to be the most vulnerable
point for a populist/nationalist party to enjoy relative national success in Sweden.
The Sweden Democrats try to focus on this point and have put effort into building
a solid party organization (cf. Goodwin 2006). However, this party has its roots in
an extremist, nationalistic and racist organization and its transformation into a
mainstream democratic, populist party is difficult. The party identity as such is
very rigid and could not be changed easily (Demker 1997). However, they have
managed to mobilize the relatively limited group of voters that both support a
250 Marie Demker
restrictive immigration policy and find immigration politics the most important
political issue on the agenda. Sweden Democrats has made the most of its abilities
as a party. It was easier to gain support in Denmark and Norway where the Progress
Party and the Danish People’s Party were both derived from previous neo-liberal
populist parties which did not have any racist connections. In Sweden the way
opportunity structures may change will depend primarily on how other parties
respond to the challenge that the Sweden Democrats represent.
Notes
1 For a discussion, see Van der Brug and Fennema (2003); Art (2006); Frölund Thomsen
(2006). See also Abedi (2004). I will use the term ‘right-wing party’ which includes
both populist and more extreme far-right parties. This terminology is used to illuminate
that the Scandinavian parties do not have similar roots among the bloc of far-right party
organizations.
2 Among the ten industrialized European countries that have had the highest average of
asylum seekers between 1992 and 2001 there are xenophobic parties in six. Among
the ten industrialized European countries with the lowest average of asylum seekers
between 1992 and 2001 there are xenophobic parties in five. Source: UNHCR 2003
and parliamentary Internet sites.
3 For the contradictory standpoint about Sweden, see Rydgren (2002).
4 Managed by Professor Henrik Ekengren Oscarsson since 2010.
5 SOM (Samhälle, Opinion, Medier 2006). Calculated by the author.
6 This fact has often been explained by fears of labour-market competition. However,
a study of European attitudes has shown that there is no connection between this fear
and immigration attitudes (Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007; cf. O’Rourke and Sinnott
2006).
7 SOM (Samhälle, Opinion, Medier 2006). Calculated by the author.
8 ESS (European Social Survey 2006).
9 Among respondents with the most restrictive attitude, 60 per cent found the immigration
issue very important, and among the most generous respondents 50 per cent thought
about the same (Demker 2001).
10 See Koopmans and Statham (2000) for a discussion of an opportunity structural approach
in this research area.
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16
DOWNSIDE AFTER THE SUMMIT
Factors in extreme-right party decline
in France and Austria
Michelle Hale Williams
Introduction
Extreme right-wing parties across Western Europe experienced a well-documented
surge in support at the end of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1990s,
they made electoral gains and seemed to be on an upward trajectory of electoral
success. Many of them portrayed themselves as populists calling for change and a
return to nationalism and core cultural values at a time when economic challenges,
immigration waves and other social problems worried national populations. In
France beginning with a breakthrough election in Dreux in 1983, the National
Front won local elected offices and gained seats for the first time in the national
parliament in 1986. They also amassed a stable and growing percentage of the
popular vote in national elections typically ranging from 10 to 15 per cent through
2002. In Austria, the Freedom Party went a step further entering the governing
coalition following parliamentary elections in 1999 and staying there until 2006.
However, in both cases the extreme right later experienced a measure of twenty-
first-century electoral decline. Although in both cases the parties have since
rebounded, focus on their periods of decline promises illumination of key factors
shaping their electoral fortunes.
The logic of extreme-right party decline

This chapter examines the pattern of extreme right-wing party rise and decline in
two cases. Several propositions provide a basis for expecting that extreme-right par-
ties may experience a decline after their zenith. First and foremost, populism as a
strategy seems short-lived. The fact that many of these parties have positioned
themselves as anti-establishment or anti-government protest parties means that
once they begin to assume seats in government, and especially as they begin to join
Downside after the Summit 255
coalition governments, they may need to rethink their mobilization strategy. Once
they become part of the establishment, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to
oppose it. Additionally, to the extent that extreme right-wing parties have made
gains by paying attention to demand factors such as public attitudes (see discussions
in Eatwell 2003; Rydgren 2003, 2007; Norris 2005), they become vulnerable when
other parties also pay closer attention to these cues. Extreme-right parties can easily
be out-competed by mainstream parties that similarly respond and give voice to
popular concerns.
Extreme-right decline in Austria following the 1999

electoral victory
The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ, Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) has proven
itself as one of the most successful extreme-right parties in Western Europe. The
FPÖ entered the governing coalition in 1999 not as a junior partner but as the party
that had topped the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP, Österreichische Volkspartei) by
a narrow margin of approximately 400 votes. This election moved the FPÖ into a
new status position. No longer was it an anti-establishment fringe party occupying
third place and perpetual opposition status. It had attained a new level of achievement,
and worldwide reaction resulted following elections in a country that generally
goes unwatched in such political contests.
The attainment in 1999 would not have been possible without Jörg Haider.
Haider proved to be one of the most highly visible and charismatic leaders of any
extreme-right party. The physical appearance and public image that he worked
diligently to cultivate formed the basis of his charisma (Eatwell 2005: 108). Extreme-
right parties outside Austria often used his photo on their campaign materials. Inside
Austria, billboards, flyers and posters blazed his image ubiquitously. In a marketing
sense, Haider was a brand. On this collateral, he travelled the world as a diplomat
talking with controversial leaders in other countries, including Saddam Hussein
(Heinisch 2003: 111).
The rise of the FPÖ

The FPÖ began its ascendancy in earnest in 1986 when Jörg Haider took leadership
from Norbert Steger. As party support waned in the mid-1980s, Haider proposed
taking the party in a completely different direction. At the 1986 party convention
in Innsbruck, Haider was selected as party leader with the backing of the German
nationalist faction within the party.
One of the exogenous elements beyond party strategy and the ascension of
Haider as party leader fuelling popular support for the FPÖ was the Waldheim Affair
of 1986. As Kurt Waldheim became president of Austria in 1986, his past affiliation
with Nazism came to light and sparked much controversy and reconsideration
of the Austrian role in the Second World War (Bassett 1990). Waldheim first
denied the allegations but later claimed he had provided nothing but dutiful service
256 Michelle Hale Williams
to his country (Wodak and Pelinka 2002: xii). Waldheim’s diplomatic credibility
faltered.
Domestically the Waldheim Affair elicited repressed memories for many
Austrians. Some Austrians rallied to defend Waldheim while others questioned
their cultural identity. Overall, the situation produced a victimization complex
whereby many Austrians collectively felt that they too had been victims of the
Third Reich and they asserted pride in their country and heritage (Art 2006: 102).
This directly fed the nationalist appeal of the redirected FPÖ platform under
Haider’s leadership. Austria in 1986 proved ripe for fomenting cultural iden-
tity issues and Haider took advantage of this circumstance to build a base of
support.
The FPÖ continued to gain ground electorally through the 1990s. By 1993,
many from the more liberal faction within the party broke away to form Austria’s
liberal democratic party, Liberal Forum. This left behind a party base that tended
to be more right-wing conservative. This is not to say that there were not
liberals remaining, as an economic liberal faction would re-emerge in the early
twenty-first century, but a larger base now came from the nationalist wing.
This becomes evident when looking at the electoral trend. Rather than losing
ground electorally after the split in 1993, the party increased its vote share from
16.6 per cent in 1990 to 22.5 per cent in 1994. It hovered at 22 per cent in 1995
and then soared to its all-time high return of 26.9 per cent in the 1999
elections.
A significant strategic shift that seemingly accounts for this trend came with a
reorientation of the party around the immigration issue. Specifically, in the early
1990s FPÖ politicians began strategically emphasizing a hard anti-immigrant
message through their public rhetoric (Müller 2002: 165–66; Art 2006: 183–84).
Some supporters left the party during this period, but new ones joined in droves.
While the nationalist and anti-immigrant position may have accounted only
partially for this trend in the 1990s, a populist and anti-establishment message
accounted for much of the rest (Müller 2000: 198). The FPÖ claimed rhetorically
that the people of Austria should be more directly involved in the political decisions
of the country (Müller 2002: 171). They challenged the traditional post-war
pillarization of Austrian politics and the power-sharing of various grand coalition
governments, the Proporz system of proportional allocation of civil service jobs,
and the division into three Lager or political camps made up of socialists, Catholic
conservatives and nationalists (Bunzl 2002: 64; Kitschelt 1995: 200). In sum, in
addition to playing upon a cultural identity crisis at the right time with calls for the
reinvigoration of national culture, they found the time ripe to launch a vehement,
populist critique of government and the political establishment.
The fourth session of the European Parliament (EP) from 1994 to 1999 was the
first session in which the FPÖ held seats. Holding representative office outside
Austria represented an important shift for the FPÖ. Reasons to seek office at the EP
level include gaining influence and recognition outside Austria and connecting or
networking with other extreme-right parties. Another reason suggested by an FPÖ
member who held an EP seat in both the fourth and fifth sessions is that the FPÖ
perceived the EP as an important policy-maker and therefore a place where it
would want to have a voice in policy decisions.
I think the average politician and also the people in the country underesti-
mate how much membership in the European Union influences more and
more of our daily life and also our political life. I think that more than fifty
per cent of all decisions that concern our life in one of the member countries
are already decided in the European Union.
(Sichrovsky 2001)
Moreover the EP gave the FPÖ an opportunity for image-building and visibility
outside Austria. As the same member of the EP explained, the FPÖ has always bat-
tled with its negative image outside Austria, and the EP provided another platform
where members could present themselves interacting and working with members
from other European countries.
First of all, the Freedom Party always concentrated on Austria. We never

cared what was printed [in the media] outside. … Because they [FPÖ elites]
said, ‘Ok that’s what’s written in the US’. Now that they’re [FPÖ elites]
in government they realize that was a big mistake. Because now all that
people know outside of Austria about the Freedom Party is from what they’ve
read in the last 10–15 years. And what they [the media] write wasn’t very
positive. And we have a tremendous PR and image problem outside of
Austria.
(Sichrovsky 2001)
However, the party had to be careful not to associate formally with extremists in
the EP in order to build a stronger rather than a weaker image outside Austria.
In terms of other parties or leaders that might be seen as extremist, the delegate
mentioned the National Front leader in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen:
Or look at Le Pen in France. I think the difference compared to the Freedom

Party is that we did not position ourselves in such an extreme and definite
way … We are not like Le Pen in the extreme right.
(Sichrovsky 2001)
The FPÖ held three seats in the fifth session of the EP from 1999 to 2004, one seat
in the sixth session from 2004 to 2009, and currently has two representatives in the
seventh session serving until 2014.
By the elections of 1999, the FPÖ reaped unprecedented rewards for its strategic
efforts to capture popular support. By a slim margin it became the second most
popular party in Austria, yet the triumph seems even more fragile considering that
one-fifth of all voters made their decision on how to vote within the final weeks
and days before the election (Müller 2000: 197). Still, after fierce negotiations
between the three largest parties, the FPÖ entered a coalition government, with
the mainstream conservative ÖVP, early in 2000.
The fall of the Freedom Party

In many ways the FPÖ changed the moment it took government office. Coalition
negotiations were hard fought and took months before the ÖVP–FPÖ coalition
agreement was announced on 1 February 2000.Worldwide reaction resulted. Leaders
of the other then fourteen European Union (EU) member states sanctioned Austria
and withdrew all but technical bilateral relations, claiming that the FPÖ exhibited
extremist party characteristics (Müller 2000: 156). Sanctions were lifted later in the
year following an EU report commissioned by the president of the European Court
of Human Rights that alleviated concerns to some extent. However, the tarnish on
the legitimacy of the FPÖ remained.
From scholarly literature to popular media, investigations of the ‘threat to
democracy’ posed by the FPÖ proliferated (see, for instance, Luther 2000; Howard
2000; Mény and Surel 2002). While this galvanized many populist and anti-
establishment supporters of the FPÖ, it may have made duties of public office
more complicated. Interviews with several FPÖ members sitting in the Austrian
Nationalrat in 2001 and 2002 suggest many were defensive about such charges.
One of them suggested that the leftist global media was largely to blame for casting
the party in such undeservedly negative light and, when asked about allegations that
the FPÖ challenges the democratic order, she responded:
That’s nonsense, that’s simply not true! Just take a look at our party’s pro-
gramme: freedom and independence are our most important values. [The
press says such things] because all over the world the journalists are left wing.
They simply want to increase the influence of the left wing and help them
to grow.
(Partik-Pable 2001)
Nevertheless, FPÖ members of parliament found themselves and their policy

proposals increasingly scrutinized as a result of worldwide interest in the 1999
election.
Furthermore, as a result of the coalition negotiations with the ÖVP, the FPÖ
seems to have been somewhat domesticated and its more radical impulses con-
tained. The FPÖ remained resistant to EU integration and to a more liberal immi-
gration policy allowing foreign workers entry to fill jobs (Heinisch 2003: 106).
However, on many other political issues it largely fell in line with its mainstream
conservative counterpart. The FPÖ wanted to be in government and yet the ÖVP
bargained from a position of strength as the only party with two majority coalition
possibilities. Chancellor Schüssel could have turned back to traditional grand coali-
tion partner the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ, Sozialdemokratische
Partei Österreichs). The FPÖ–ÖVP coalition agreement was moderate rather than
extremist in its final form (Luther 2003: 137). As one observer describes it,
the policies emanating from the new government in 2000 ‘were not the slash and
burn neoliberalism that critics alleged’ (Heinisch 2003: 104). Instead a balanced
budget by 2002 became an administration goal. Even though the FPÖ widely
took credit for the Kindergeld policy providing a stipend paid to all mothers, adopted
in July 2001 under the FPÖ–ÖVP government, this programme also remained
consistent with a long-term ÖVP commitment that all mothers regardless of
their employment status should be entitled to monetary compensation (Heinisch
2003: 105).
The FPÖ began visibly to fall apart by 2002. Internal party factions became
publicly apparent leading to a party conference in September 2002 in the small
Austrian town of Knittelfeld, Styria. The senior FPÖ leader, Vice Chancellor
Susanne Riess-Passer, did not attend. In fact, attendees represented the more ultra-
nationalist conservative wing of the party led by Haider. Haider asserted the need
for an extreme-right turn in the party. In response, many of the highest office-
holding and more moderate leaders of the party resigned in protest, including
Riess-Passer and Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser (who was later reappointed
in this position by the ÖVP) along with the chairman of the FPÖ parliamentary
club, Peter Westenthaler. This resulted in Chancellor Schüssel’s dissolution of the
coalition, calling for new elections.
Although the FPÖ–ÖVP governing coalition was renewed following elections
in 2002, the FPÖ had slipped to just over 10 per cent of the popular vote. This
probably resulted from internal feuds throughout the campaign cycle covered by
the media. Party leadership changed hands three times after Riess-Passer stepped
aside in the months before the November 2002 elections. Social Affairs Minister
and Haider loyalist Herbert Haupt landed the job of leader of the party heading into
the elections (Luther 2003: 143). In short, the FPÖ fell apart leading into this elec-
tion due in part to the internal coup d’état attempted by Haider in Knittelfeld.
Haider left the party completely and disappeared for a year or so before announcing
the founding of his own new party in April 2005, the Alliance for the Future of
Austria (BZÖ, Bündnis Zukunft Österreich). Although this party included several
elites from the former extreme-right faction within the FPÖ who had followed
Haider to form this new party, it won only 4.1 per cent of the vote in 2006 compared
with 11 per cent for the FPÖ.
In sum, several elements appear to have contributed to a sharp decline in elec-
toral support for the FPÖ in the twenty-first century. Credibility or legitimacy
problems present the first hurdle and these begin immediately after the 2000 coali-
tion formation. The sanction by the EU and the scrutiny that followed limited
FPÖ opportunities to advance a radical agenda. Second, domestication occurred
to the extent that the coalition agreement negotiated with the ÖVP as it bar-
gained from a position of strength produced a fairly modest agenda for change.
The biggest initiatives included balancing the budget by 2002 and the social
programme providing a stipend for all mothers. Finally, internal factions and crises
of leadership plagued the party as it imploded amid bickering over critical issues like
the party’s agenda and ideological orientation.
In the autumn of 2008, a snap Austrian election took place on 28 September
with ground gained by both the FPÖ and BZÖ. Extreme-right parties captured
centre stage following this election. Both of the parties of the 2006 grand coalition
lost seats as a result of this election with gains going to the extreme right. The
FPÖ captured 17.5 per cent of the popular vote, with the BZÖ under Haider’s
leadership increasing to 10.7 per cent. While numbers for the two parties individu-
ally remain lower than any of the FPÖ returns since 1990, this election clearly sug-
gests dissatisfaction with mainstream parties that advantages the extreme right in
Austria.
However, despite early participation in coalition talks with the ÖVP by the
FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache and BZÖ leader Haider, by late October a
return to grand coalition looked increasingly likely. A further complication arose
in the untimely death of BZÖ leader Haider in an automobile accident just
days after the press was announcing favourable coalition talks between the ÖVP,
FPÖ and BZÖ. The global financial crisis prompted grand coalition talks initiated
by the ÖVP according to Der Standard (2008).Then the so-called Österreich-Gespräch
or Austria dialogue ensued through which the two mainstream parties came
together in several sessions to discuss common ground on potential legislative
issues that would require a two-thirds majority. The government was formed
in early December 2008, officially returning the SPÖ–ÖVP grand coalition to
power.
Austria’s far right appears poised to recover its national-level legislative seat share,
down since the split between the two parties. FPÖ fortunes appear more optimistic
than those of the BZÖ whose Gallup poll numbers for September 2011 reflect less
support presently than in 2008 (neuwahl.com). For the FPÖ, however, key trends
suggest a level of recent reversal on several factors contributing to the period of
decline.Vienna’s municipal elections of October 2010 may foretell a wider turning
point in the far-right recovery process. The historically socialist-leaning capital city
of Vienna supported the FPÖ with 27 per cent of the vote (Mestre 2011) coming
close to the peak level of support won by Jörg Haider in 1996 of 27.9 per cent.
Credit for the Viennese showing may be due to a certain degree of un-domestica-
tion resulting from time spent recently in opposition to the ÖVP–SPÖ grand coa-
lition as reflected in strong anti-Muslim rhetoric from the FPÖ throughout 2010.
Additionally, credibility has improved through the now more seasoned leadership
of Heinz Christian Strache. Recent Gallup poll trend data showed only two
parties in Austria gaining ground in terms of their popularity since the 2008 elec-
tions: the FPÖ and the Greens (neuwal.com). The poll estimates a 6.5 percentage
point gain for the FPÖ over support levels in 2008 with an estimated electoral
mandate gain of twelve given present levels of support. Present indications favour
a trend of continued growth for these two smaller parties with the FPÖ seemingly
back on track.
Extreme-right decline in France after 2002

The French National Front (FN, Front National) is one of the most enduring and
consistent extreme-right parties in Western Europe. It had the earliest breakthrough
election in 1983 with local-level offices gained in Dreux. It then went on to build
a base of around 10 per cent of the popular vote that it maintained and increased
over time until 2002. As with Haider in the Austrian case, the success of the FN
owes much to a charismatic leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen. This section considers party
leadership and other factors contributing to trends in FN support.
The rise of the National Front

Jean-Marie Le Pen called the early years in the life of the FN a period of ‘crossing
the desert’ (DeClair 1999: 42). With this reference he indicated the difficulty
encountered in constructing a viable extreme-right party in France, from the
founding of the FN in 1972 until its initial signs of stability and growth in the early
1980s. Le Pen confronted loose groupings of nationalists, authoritarians, and eth-
nocentrists remaining from the Vichy period, and faced the task of consolidating
them while also expanding the base to include other constituent groups.
The FN benefited from the strategic planning and positioning of issues by party
elites such as Bruno Mégret, former deputy to party general secretary Carl Lang.
Mégret is credited with influencing much of the ideology of the party beginning in
the late 1980s. He cultivated a more intellectual basis for party positions working
with neo-conservative think tanks such as the Club de l’Horloge (DeClair 1999:
27). Such connections fostered legitimacy for the FN and enhanced the credibility
of extreme-right ideas (Williams 2006: 82).
The French FN has long aimed to win seats in the EP. In the 1980s the FN
became one of the first extreme-right parties to have delegates elected to the EP,
beginning in 1984. The EP held value as a place for extreme-right parties to gain
power and influence, according to an EP delegate from the FN:
Once they are elected, a member of the [European] parliament looks always
to be re-elected but also to increase the power, the competence of the
institution that he belongs to, because it increases his power also.
(Gollnisch 2002)
In some instances, the EP becomes a place for extreme-right parties to network

with other extreme-right parties. Even when they do not agree on all matters, in
the EP they can find strength in larger numbers of sitting delegates than in their
home countries in many cases.
But anyway we have contacts [in the EP]. We have an alliance with the
Flemish party in Belgium, which is 100 persons, together with us. And
the first party in Antwerp, and we also belong to the same group as the
Northern League in Italy, although we are not regionalists, we are in favour

of maintaining the unity of the state, but that is for France.
(Gollnisch 2002)
However, the delegate went on to explain that some extreme-right parties fear
these cross-national alliances, thinking that they will thereby be stigmatized as
extreme-right.
The problem is that demonization is so strong that everybody fears every-

body. For example Haider in Austria and Fini. I would say Berlusconi
himself and his friend are in a way stronger than Fini about immigration. And
Haider, Fini, they do not want to have too many contacts with us because
they fear that at home all of these lobbies, the media, maybe left wing
lobbies or Jewish etc. will put pressure on them. ‘You ally yourself with the
racist, fascist, anti-Semitic Le Pen.’ So in my opinion they are completely
wrong.
(Gollnisch 2002)
The FN had a strong showing in the second EP, taking twelve seats. The party has
continued to prioritize EP elections, and has never dipped below nine seats through-
out the 1990s. It has remained consistently the largest extreme-right party delegation
to the EP since 1984, surpassed only once by the Italian National Alliance party in
1999.
Throughout the 1990s, the FN steadily gained ground. In 1986 it had won
9.7 per cent of the popular vote on the first ballot and had steady gains in 1988 and
1993; by 1997 it attained its highest returns at 15 per cent. While Le Pen’s charisma
and Mégret’s party strategy proved critical, another factor in this growth included
reaching out to new constituent groups to grow the base of support for the party.
One such opportunity emerged with working-class voters of the former commu-
nist left. From the early 1980s, communists in France modified their ideological
position to move into alliances with the centre-left socialists (Hayward 1990). As
they moderated, radicals favouring more revolutionary politics became disgruntled.
The FN began to court these disgruntled working-class voters. The 2002 FN
election campaign aimed to appeal to the working-class voter (Ceccaldi 2002;
Gollnisch 2002). While direct vote transfers from the French Communist Party
(PCF, Parti Communiste Français) to FN may not be measurable, the FN was
able to expand its base and attract the traditional PCF constituent, namely young,
working-class males. At the same time, the errors and perceived moderation of
the mainstream right opened up political space for the FN. It continued its popu-
list appeals to attract voters away from the mainstream parties while courting
new voters from the far left. The goal became expansion in any direction by the
twenty-first century.
An additional factor in its rising success comes in its strategic positioning on the
immigration issue. The FN in France has been characterized as the role model for
other extreme-right parties in terms of its strategy on the immigration issue (Marcus
1995; Minkenberg 1998; Schain 1999; Williams 2006). Martin Schain has argued
that the FN took a non-issue in France in the early 1980s, immigration, and
made it a core issue in terms of party strategy but, more importantly, made it a key
concern in the public consciousness (Schain 1999). Immigration became a funnel
issue through which all other concerns of the day were driven rhetorically and
strategically by the FN (Williams 2006). Immigrants became the scapegoats for a
range of social problems in France including crime, the deficiencies of education
and health care, or indeed any other problem of the day. FN Delegate General
Bruno Gollnisch portrayed the link between immigrants and crime in a personal
interview:
If you take the security problem you have to take some rules of procedure,
you have to build jails, you have to have better treatment of small criminality,
you have to reverse the trend of immigration because it is obvious that there
is a link, not a 100% link, but a link between immigration and criminality
given the fact that people come here that have completely lost their roots in
a society.
(Gollnisch 2002)
Deputy Director of Legal Affairs for the FN, Marcel Ceccaldi, echoed Gollnisch’s
explanation of the link between social problems and immigration:
All the crime and insecurity comes from immigration. But the papers only
say ‘young’ people not immigrants. But the French people know it is the
immigrants even though the papers do not say so.
(Ceccaldi 2002)
The FN capitalized upon public fear of immigrants, blaming them for social prob-
lems, utilizing a populist mobilization technique of anti-establishment appeals, and
claiming to offer the necessary solutions. The strategy proved beneficial as FN sup-
port rose throughout the 1990s. In 2002, when Jacques Chirac was re-elected as
French President, Jean-Marie Le Pen received the second highest percentage of the
popular vote on the first ballot.
The fall of the National Front

A moderating trend emerges in considering the twenty-first-century modifications
in FN rhetoric and policy positions. One key shift has been a more conciliatory
attitude towards Jews, and a strategic retreat from the language of anti-Semitism
among party members. The rise of anti-Islamism following the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks in the United States and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ contributed
to the rise of anti-Islamism across Europe as well. A flip-side of the increasing anti-
Islamic emphasis in anti-immigrant rhetoric is that it brings former out-groups like
the Jews in. This came through in conversations with FN leaders during personal
interviews.
Yes, [after 11 September 2001] there has been more, there has been certainly
an anti-Arabic, anti-Muslim trend in society. Which, by the way, we did not
encourage. We did not support this trend. We did not say all Muslims are
terrorists. Although we were the first [party] to state 20 years ago that we
would one day have a problem with Islam, radical Islamism and so on. But
I think that in this field we did well, in fact Le Pen was right, more or less.
And it is now allowed [permissible] to criticize some aspects of Islam, which
was absolutely a kind of taboo because every religion was supposed to be
equal in dignity and so on. We were very moderate by the way when they
[the media] asked for our reaction. And also there is a change that is very
important. There is a change in Jewish opinion.
(Gollnisch 2002)
Just as anti-immigrant positions have become virtually synonymous with anti-

Muslim positions in party rhetoric, so prominent party members such as Marine Le
Pen have overtly extended an olive branch to Jews. She is reported to have indi-
cated a desire to travel to Israel and she joined the European Parliament’s friendship
caucus with Israel (Simon 2005).
Through both the 2002 and 2007 election campaigns, the FN did not appear
to be as flamboyant as it had in the past. Its language was seemingly more measured
and its positions seemed closer to those of the mainstream. In 2002, Le Pen did
advance to the second round run-off for the presidency against Jacques Chirac.Yet,
one likely side effect of this result may be that the party had to move to the centre
in preparation for the run-off to attempt to widen its appeal. Furthermore, in
2006 the FN declined participation in media debates and Le Pen kept a much
lower profile than he had in 2002. He allowed other party leaders like Marine Le
Pen and Bruno Gollnisch to provide the public face of the party throughout the
campaign. In part, this presented a different and arguably more moderate face of
the party.
A second factor that may be affecting the FN’s loss of ground is issue co-optation.
Mainstream right-wing parties began to react in the late 1990s to the ground that
they lost to the FN by taking back some of the issue space and voters that had
defected to the FN. They did this in 2002 and 2007 by moving their own positions
further to the right on issues such as law and order and immigration. Sarkozy made
one of his first policy changes in office after he was elected president in 2007 by
creating a new government Ministry of National Identity and Immigration (Bell
and Criddle 2008: 191). Martin Schain argued in 2002 that FN issues had been
co-opted by mainstream parties (Schain 2002). This was a key strategy of the main-
stream parties in their attempt to contain and weaken the rising support for the
FN that had persisted through the 1990s. In personal interviews, elites of the FN
indicated precise instances where their key policy positions had been co-opted by
the mainstream right, many of which date back to the late 1980s during the initial
FN ascendancy (see Williams 2006: 105–6).
A high-profile leadership struggle surfaced in 1998 and 1999 with a much pub-
licized dispute between Mégret and Le Pen.This resulted in Mégret leaving the FN
to form a new party, the National Republican Movement (MNR, Mouvement
National Républicain) and the FN taking a turn further to the right. However,
more recently the leadership question appears to be producing a moderating effect.
Leadership succession came to a head at the party congress in Nice in April 2003.
As Jean-Marie Le Pen was then seventy-seven years old, he indicated his intention
to step down as head of the party. He was expected to step down naming a succes-
sor at the subsequent party congress in 2006 (Barth 2003a); however, this did not
happen and a power struggle ensued through the 2007 election campaign. Top
contenders for the job included Delegate General Bruno Gollnisch and party activ-
ist and daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen. If Le Pen decided to pass
the torch to his daughter, he stood to alienate top intellectuals in the party as well
as members of the conservative party base. If he designated Gollnisch as his succes-
sor, he would be choosing a leader of the past rather than a rising star in the party
with fresh ideas.
The difference between Gollnisch and Marine Le Pen is striking ideologically.
Gollnisch maintains the more traditional stance that is true to the party origins as a
party with pro-Nazi leanings. In late 2004, Gollnisch was still quoted as saying
‘there is not a serious historian who still totally agrees with the conclusions of the
Nuremberg Trials’, going on to suggest that the magnitude of the Holocaust geno-
cide had been exaggerated (Simon 2005). On the other hand, Marine Le Pen is
seeking a somewhat innovative and more moderate image for the party. In October
2004, she expressed sympathy for the plight of Jews and she denounced anti-
Semitism in an interview on French radio (Simon 2005). She condemned the
remarks made by Gollnisch just prior to her radio interview.
In an interview published in Valeurs magazine in September 2008, Le Pen
appeared to be giving the nod to his daughter, announcing his plans to step aside
before the next elections according to an article in the International Herald Tribune
(2008). Le Pen had shown clear signs over recent years that he was positioning his
daughter to succeed him. In the months prior to the party convention in 2003, in
a six-hour meeting of the nominating committee, Le Pen recommended that his
daughter be chosen as the party’s main candidate in regional and European elec-
tions in 2004 rather than Gollnisch (Le Monde 2003). Prior to this move, Le Pen
named Marine Le Pen as vice president of the party, placing many of her supporters
on the party executive committee at the party congress (Barth 2003b). However,
Gollnisch remained favoured among certain members of the party, especially among
the traditional base of support, including the more extreme-right nationalist wing
of the party. Previously when they have faced off head to head within the party,
Gollnisch has come out on top. For instance, when both jockeyed for the top
position on the Central Committee of the party, Gollnisch won the position
while Marine Le Pen came in thirty-fourth. This suggested that naming Marine as
successor could produce some in-fighting and a backlash within the party. In
January 2011, Marine Le Pen officially emerged as party leader, having secured the
needed two-thirds votes at the party congress to succeed her father.
In sum, at least three factors appear to have dampened the success of the FN in
the twenty-first century. First, the party appears to be moderating its stance on core
issues that have traditionally delineated the party. Second, the mainstream right
appears to have effectively stolen some of the issue space of the FN as the Union
for a Popular Movement (UMP, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) of Chirac
and Sarkozy moved steadily to the right in the 2002 and 2007 elections. The UMP
has particularly emphasized law and order politics and restrictions on immigration,
two key issues of the FN, in both campaigns. The mainstream right co-optation
attempts began in the late 1980s continuing through the 1990s, however with little
impact on the electoral fortunes of the FN during that period.The 1980s and 1990s
have been characterized as a period of party polarization in France with expanding
opportunities for small parties to compete (see, for instance, Cole 2003 and Knapp
2004). By contrast, the UMP performance in 2002 and 2007 alongside declining
support for many smaller parties, including the FN, suggests a return to consolida-
tion on the right. Third, a disruptive effect emerged with a high-profile leadership
transition as Jean-Marie Le Pen stepped down as party leader. Leadership transition
could potentially be quite pronounced in its disruptive effect since the FN is a
party that has only ever had one official party leader since its foundation, and
membership is divided in loyalties over the successor.
Early indications in the spring of 2011, one year ahead of the 2012 national
elections, suggest an FN revival following its leadership transition. A surge in FN
popularity in public opinion polls shows Marine Le Pen’s support surpassing pro-
jected candidates of both the mainstream right and mainstream left (The Economist
2011). Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007, indicated in a
television interview that Marine Le Pen would be a ‘more credible and dangerous
candidate than her father’ (Moffett 2011). Marine Le Pen’s more moderate
branding of the FN could potentially alienate its traditional base that remains tied
primarily to issues of identity politics. Yet her image, appeal and political acumen
thus far bode well for the electoral success of the FN in 2012. While her task will
be maintaining the internal party balance to avoid a split like the Austrian one in
2005, this party appears to have made a right turn in a normative sense.
Conclusion
Examination of the trajectory of the rise and recent fall of extreme right-wing
parties in Austria and France reveals common factors despite different circum-
stances. In both cases, growth accompanied the emergence of a charismatic leader
who came to embody the party. Additionally, both parties went through a proc-
ess of solidifying the base with a nationalist, anti-immigrant appeal. In Austria,
Haider cultivated the extreme-right core of the party, alienating more liberal hold-
overs from the early 1980s and the direction was fuelled by the Waldheim Affair.
moderation
co-optation
leader change
expand base
gain in EP
populism
solidify base
leadership
FIGURE 16.1 Trajectory comparison of the FPÖ and FN
In France, Le Pen’s Deputy Delegate General, Bruno Mégret, identified a lack of

intellectualism underlying stale nationalist appeals and set about linking the FN
to more credible think tanks. And both parties then sought expansion to new
constituents and beyond national borders in the EP.
A central focus of this chapter has also been to consider whether these factors are
fading, or no longer producing sustained success in the twenty-first century. This
chapter suggests that the period of electoral decline identified in each case may in
fact be due to a reversal of factors operating in the period of growth. Lines could
easily be drawn in Figure 16.1 connecting factors in the rise with their counterparts
in the fall.
Leadership changes (the departure of Haider and Le Pen) reverse the key leader-
ship factor with uncertain implications at this juncture. The populist, nationalist,
anti-immigrant appeal proved unsustainable, losing veracity as the FPÖ entered
coalition government and faced compromise and power sharing. Likewise the FN
experienced co-optation, fuelling a mainstream right-wing consolidation of power
by the UMP. Finally, both parties confronted factions and faced splits to form the
BZÖ and MNR, and Marine Le Pen must carefully guard against such a split in the
FN as it moves forward. While splits occurred at different times and with different
effects, they underscore a common problem. The expansionist aim of the growth
stage brought new constituencies into the party, producing factions and forcing
both parties to sidestep contentious issues and moderate their stance. As both parties
appear poised to return to a sustained upward trajectory of support, they may do
well to keep this lesson in mind.
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NJ: Transaction Publishers.
PART V
From ‘Local’ to
‘Transnational’
17
RIGHTS, ROOTS AND ROUTES
Local and transnational contexts of
extreme-right movements in
contemporary Malta
Mark-Anthony Falzon and Mark Micallef
Introduction
The archipelago state of Malta (316 km2 with a population of 402,000) is the
European Union’s smallest member state. Since its independence from Britain in
1964, the Maltese polity has been characterized by a bi-partisan see-saw formula-
tion that leaves little space for smaller political groupings. The two main parties
are the centre-left Partit Laburista (PL, Labour Party, currently in opposition with
33 parliamentary seats) and the Christian-Democrat Nationalist Party (PN, cur-
rently in government with 34 seats); the Greens, locally incarnated as Alternattiva
Demokratika (AD, Democratic Alternative, no seats), have been actively involved
in national politics, with scant electoral success, since 1989. Arguably the three major
political processes of these last two decades have been the accession to the EU
in 2004, the liberalization of the economy post 1987, and the pluralization and sub-
sequent proliferation of the media in the 1990s.The last, coupled with the burgeon-
ing of new technologies of communication, has made it increasingly possible for
emergent movements to engage with the public sphere.
The rise of the local extreme right belongs within this context. Largely in
response to unprecedented influxes of sub-Saharan irregular migrants, a small and
highly diverse number of individuals, groups and political actors peddling extreme-
right ideas have been making their presence felt since 2002 or so, reaching a peak
in 2004–5. This chapter is an attempt to describe and understand the dynamics of
the Maltese extreme right. We first describe and contextualize, from/in a local
perspective, the elements making up this heterogeneous category; we then go on
transnationally to locate it within much broader processes, ideas and practices. Our
underlying argument is that sui generis studies of local movements, albeit of ethno-
graphic interest, are hardly comprehensive ways of understanding the extreme
right, in Malta or elsewhere.
274 Mark-Anthony Falzon and Mark Micallef
A note on research design: this chapter is based on fieldwork in Malta from 2002
to date. Our main data sources were: first, a number of in-depth interviews
with the protagonists and followers of the local extreme right; second, participant
observation sessions at various events organized by extreme-right circles; third,
extensive and regular ‘observation’ of online forums and websites (see Jacobson
1999), notably the well-known Vivamalta forum1 and the Imperium Europa website;2
and, fourth, observation of public meetings and the local print and broadcasting
media.
The extreme right in contemporary Malta:

the actors, roles and script
The key characteristic of the contemporary Maltese far right is its heterogeneous
and invertebrate nature. Nonetheless, one may discern four fairly coherent threads
(see Table 17.1), here listed and described in descending order of extremeness.
Imperium Europa is formally a one-man show set up and run by Norman Lowell,
by far the most prominent extreme-right personage in contemporary Malta. As a
notion, Imperium Europa (elaborated on at length in Lowell’s 2003 book of that
title) originally proposed the ethnic cleansing of the whole of Europe (‘from Ireland
to Vladivostok’) to achieve an exclusively ‘Europid’-inhabited continent. In recent
years this has been broadened to incorporate North America, South Africa and
‘huge swathes’ of Latin America – what Lowell envisages as ‘two white rings encir-
cling the globe’. Lowell’s ideology presents all the trappings of global neo-Nazi
and white supremacist beliefs: Holocaust denial and a rabid anti-Semitism (in a
nod to the Nazi film The Eternal Jew [Der ewige Jude, 1940], he describes Jews
TABLE 17.1 Taxonomic sketch of activity and ideology among the contemporary Maltese
extreme right
Imperium Vivamalta Alleanza Nazzjonali Azzjoni

Europa Repubblikana Nazzjonali
Participation in Sporadic No No Strong

elections
Conservatism Ambiguous Ambiguous Strong Moderate to strong
Palingenetic Very strong Variable Mild No
mythology
White supremacism Very strong Strong No No
Anti-Semitism Very strong Variable No No
Patriotism Ambiguous Variable Very strong Strong
Anti-immigration Very strong Very strong Strong Strong
Transnational Strong Strong Moderate No
connections
Spectacle and Very Important Moderate Weak
performance important
Extreme-right movements in Malta today 275
as ‘sewer rats’), racism (particularly that addressed at ‘negrids’), hard-line anti-

immigrationism, and, importantly, a palingenetic vision for the revival of a pre-
Christian spirituality (‘cosmotheism’) of which Malta, with its heritage of Neolithic
sites, would be a foremost exponent. Lowell also talks of a ‘planetary imperium’ to
be born of a ‘cataclysmic crisis’ in 2012, the winners of which will be a global white
‘spiritual’ elite inhabiting a ‘sacred geography’ punctuated with ‘power points’
which include Malta, Stonehenge and Monte Rosa.
A retired banker, Lowell had been flirting with Maltese public opinion for a
couple of decades before really attempting to take centre stage. By 2004, and riding
the crest of the immigration issue, his vitriolic attacks on blacks, Jews, immigrant-
friendly non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the Church state hegemony,
galvanized his role as a spokesman for the emergent extreme right, not least thanks
to a mushrooming of Internet forums as well as his regular television appearances
on a small private station, which aired a series of political debates featuring the
minor candidates of the EU parliamentary election of that year.
The press largely reacted with contempt; at the same time, however, it displayed
a bemused fascination with his eccentric persona (Vassallo 2006). The attitude
changed to an active indifference, even censorship, in the run-up to the March
2008 general election. This later attitude of negation was fuelled in large part by a
realization, on the part of the mainstream, that the media coverage Lowell had been
given in 2004, despite it having been largely negative, had inadvertently raised his
profile and made him something of an anti-establishment icon. In this sense Lowell’s
success at the 2004 polls (he failed to get elected but got a very respectable number
of votes) must have served as an eye opener that the extreme right was potentially
a political actor to be reckoned with.
At the time of writing (spring 2008, revised 2011) Lowell’s popularity is at a low
ebb. He retains a regular presence on the Vivamalta website, to which he is ‘affili-
ated’, and has kept up his contacts with like-minded movements in Britain and the
US. His visibility in the Maltese public sphere, however, has decreased. On 27
March 2008 Lowell became the first Maltese to be handed a jail sentence (two
years, suspended for four) for incitement to racial hatred. Even so, following a
period of uncertainty as to whether Lowell’s conviction precluded him from elec-
toral politics, Imperium Europa trebled its first-count votes to 3,637 in the June 2009
Euro-parliamentary elections.
Vivamalta, essentially a website which brings together, through its online forums,
a number of individuals whose views, though strongly divergent in substance on
most counts, tend to converge on the themes of race, immigration, and sympathy
for Norman Lowell’s performances and rhetorical style (if not necessarily his views).
Vivamalta attracts hundreds of Maltese and foreign visitors weekly, of whom around
30 are regulars (though this number has recently been on the wane). It has also
produced an ‘affiliated’ political candidate (apart from Lowell, that is), a university
student3 who contested and performed miserably in the March 2008 elections.
Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana (ANR, National Republican Alliance) was
set up in 2005 and all but disbanded in 2007. The ANR presented itself as a pressure
group which aimed to ‘defend and promote the identity, integrity, and interests of
the Maltese nation’, defined as ‘Latin, European, and Roman Catholic’.4 Its two
main lines of attack were a conservatism based on ‘traditional’ models of nation and
family, and a strong anti-immigrationist stance. The two were clearly linked as
immigration was represented as the main threat to ‘Maltese’ models of family and
values. The ANR enjoyed several months of fairly high-profile presence in the
public sphere, notably through public meetings and television appearances.
Azzjoni Nazzjonali (AN, National Action’) was a political party set up in 2007
with an aggressive nationalist, conservative and anti-immigrationist agenda (which
attracted most ANR members to its ranks, rendering the pressure group redun-
dant). AN was the brainchild of Josie Muscat, a prominent gynaecologist, private
medical care entrepreneur and former Nationalist MP. Following a poor showing
in the 2009 EP elections, AN was formally dissolved in 2010.
Convergences: putting the Maltese extreme right

in local context
In this section we are interested, first, in exploring how the four movements
described above are related and, second, in linking them to a heuristic socio-political
context. The first element of convergence concerns genealogy, in the sense that a
significant number of individuals who got involved in the more moderate ANR
and AN were first attracted to the extreme right by the performances of Norman
Lowell. There is of course a high turnover rate and people come and go and com-
mute between the movements, often doctoring their discourse accordingly. Thus
an AN political candidate might show a moderate countenance to immigration in
a television debate, and a hard-line one in his online ‘avatar’. One might add that
as individuals move from more to less extreme – and therefore closer to the main-
stream – they tend to disown Lowell, sometimes publicly. Lowell himself has
responded by denouncing both AN and especially ANR as minions of an interna-
tional Jewish plot. Formally, then, one notes a sustained difference between the
broad-ranging ideas of Norman Lowell (and, by osmosis, some of the regulars on
Vivamalta) and the conservative, ultra-nationalist views of the ANR and AN. On
an informal level, however, the boundaries between the four movements are less
easily definable.
Besides genealogy, the second and by far the most important centripetal force,
that has fostered a convergence of thought and action, is immigration – more spe-
cifically, the mass immigration of sub-Saharans (known generically, popularly and
unflatteringly as klandestini). One should note that since sub-Saharan immigrants
arrive in Malta by sea, often on overloaded rickety boats that appear out of nowhere
at random places along the coast, there is a strong element of spectacle about them
(Falzon forthcoming). Besides, in an island context, this dynamic lends itself to
metaphors of ‘invasion’. The concentration of immigrants in fortified ‘detention
centres’, and later in ‘open centres’ (the largest one of which happens to be situated
on one of the busiest roads in Malta), makes them even more visible. Be that as
it may, all four extreme-right movements are strongly anti-immigrationist (though

their proposed solutions vary from blasting boatloads of immigrants in the case of
Norman Lowell to suggestions that Malta ought to ignore international asylum laws
and ‘get tough’ on immigration in that of AN) and their fortunes tend to fluctuate
in tune with the volume of immigrant arrivals in Malta – or, more accurately, with
the prominence given it by the mainstream media and parties.
Put broadly, the local response to irregular migration has shifted from initial
sympathy and commiseration when landings started in 2001, through outright con-
tempt within the space of two to three years, to a cautious sense of co-existence of
sorts by 2007. (In early 2009, probably as a reaction to spectacular mass arrivals,
things began to sour again.) Anti-immigration rhetoric reached a peak in 2004–5.
A news item broadcast on national television in the summer of 2005, for instance,
compared the ‘invasion’ by migrants to a jellyfish infestation of the Maltese coast
that was making the news at the time (Sammut 2007). Newspapers published sto-
ries of ‘weapons’ confiscated at immigrant detention camps, the potential terrorist
threat of migration, and black prostitutes roaming the streets and spreading HIV
(Texeire 2006).5
The tension was fuelled not only by the sheer number of migrants and the dra-
matic context in which they found themselves in Malta, but also by a palpable
expectation that the situation could be resolved given political will and decisive
administration. If the European Union was not willing to help with what the gov-
ernment described as ‘burden sharing’, then Malta would have to take matters into
its own hands, the popular call went. That is exactly what the extreme right’s expo-
nents had on offer with their talk of sinking migrant boats ‘14 miles out’ (Lowell),
‘cleaning the streets’ of klandestini (ANR), and, more recently, having them ‘shipped
to Brussels’ (AN).
Nonetheless, a series of turning points tripped the momentum which the move-
ment was beginning to harness. The most relevant came in autumn 2005, when
ominous racist graffiti appeared at roadsides, along with minor vandalism to public
property. The situation escalated in early 2006 into a series of arson attacks on
Jesuits and prominent journalists – named enemies of the extreme right for their
championing of immigrants’ rights. Whether any of the formal movements
described earlier were responsible for these arsons is irrelevant (nobody was ever
charged). The point is that the incidents broke the extreme right’s back after a
number of its affiliates were arrested and interrogated for their suspected involve-
ment. Many members defected and, along with the arrest and charging of a number
of protagonists for incitement to racial hatred, the whole debacle had a negative
effect on the extreme right’s standing in public opinion, not least since clergy had
been targeted in the attacks.
The timing of general elections in Malta on 8 March 2008 could not have been
more providential in that it allowed us to test our long-held contention that the
extreme right’s star as a formal and political actor in Malta was on the wane.
Immigration got hardly a mention during the campaign, despite polls showing it
was generally a salient issue among the electorate. This was partly because it was
supplanted by more ‘seasonal’ topics (there are usually no migrant crossings in

March due to rough seas), and also because of a tacit consensus among the main
parties to steer clear of partisan debate on immigration.
As the polls predicted, the situation proved disastrous for AN, which, with its
talk of being able to break through Malta’s entrenched political bi-polarity and of
having the support of a silent majority, had poured substantial funds into the cam-
paign. In an election with one of the lowest turnouts in recent years (93 per cent –
still very high compared to that in most Western democracies), the minor parties
and independent candidates, but especially the extreme right, fared dismally. The
incumbent Nationalist Party won 49.34 per cent of the vote over the Labour Party’s
48.79, leaving little ground for any third party. Significantly, ‘protest’ voters
preferred to abstain rather than vote for the extreme right or other parties.
AN managed 1,461 votes or 0.5 per cent of the total votes cast. Following
the result, leader Josie Muscat resigned, stating publicly that it was ‘not worth it’
(he later reconsidered although the party was eventually dissolved). Norman Lowell,
on his part, seemed more realistic about his prospects, and went on record as
saying that his candidature was more a token of ‘final resistance’ (to the country’s
‘takeover’ by immigrants) than anything else. He polled a mere 84 votes. This per-
formance contrasts with recent ones in Europe. Linden and Klandermans (2007),
for example, talk of a rise of extreme-right sentiments in the Netherlands in the
1990s, as witnessed, inter alia, by successful electoral results. Likewise Virchow
(2007) describes the success of the German extreme right in the 2004 elections and
ascribes it to a general disenchantment with politics, allowing extreme-right parties
to win over protest votes; he also cites their focus on bread-and butter-issues like
unemployment and reductions in social security, and their strong anti-immigration
stance.
By 2009 the subject of immigration was again catapulted into the Maltese public
sphere. Hot on the heels of a summer which saw a record number of migrant land-
ings, the first months of 2009 were characterized by an unusually high number of
crossings. Some 150 migrants from Africa landed in January, while February saw a
record 489.
This time, however, mainstream politicians seemed to be taking up the issue,
pulling the proverbial rug from under the extreme right’s feet. On the day 227
immigrants were brought ashore, the leader of the opposition called for an urgent
discussion in parliament; the prime minister agreed in principle but denied the
matter was especially urgent. Meanwhile, a pariah government back-bencher
declared, at odds with official government rhetoric, that Malta was ‘full up’ and that
migrants should have been sent back to Libya summarily. And candidates for the
June 2009 Euro-parliamentary elections, no doubt primed by their constituents,
put immigration on their campaign agendas.
For its part, AN put forward a ten-point proposal which suggested, among other
things, that immigrants in detention should be put to forced labour. Not many
people seem to have noticed. Put simply, this and later developments of the main
parties appropriating the immigration debate appear to have sealed the fate of the
extreme right in Malta, at least for the foreseeable future. This matches what hap-
pened to the Greens, who saw ‘their’ environmentalist agenda being carved up by
the two main parties in the late 1990s.
Despite the connection between the fortunes of the various movements and
immigration, it would be mistaken to frame the Maltese extreme right in the con-
text of immigration alone. One also senses that at the heart of its emergence lies a
profound rejection of the Maltese establishment. On the level of the members,
it is a protest against what they perceive as a stale and inauthentic sense of national
identity.
Just as other emergent extreme-right parties have done on the Continent (Heinisch
2003), the local movement actively and somewhat paradoxically projects itself as a
marginal and disenfranchised group (in the sense of being non-mainstream) which
claims to defend, and therefore speak for, the rights of the silent majority – even
though it is fundamentally positioned against it.
The discursive field of the movement happens to dovetail, in substance, with the
theory of Maltese sociologist Godfrey Baldacchino (2002) who argues that the
national interest in Malta has been hijacked by the country’s all-powerful socio-
political institutions, the Church and the two main Political Parties, which he calls
‘the Troika’. In practice, this means that the public sphere and any civil expression
within it is channelled through the discourse of these mammoth institutions, out-
side which all else is marginalized (see Falzon 2007). The Troika, in other words,
comes to represent the primary anchor of identity, acting as an intermediary for the
sense of being Maltese.The parties become the quintessential expression of national
identity and national interest, as well as the political avenue sanctioned by it. For
one to be Maltese, one must be either a Nationalist or a Labourite, and definitely a
Catholic or have some relation (whichever way) to Catholicism.
Perhaps the shortest route to locating the discourse of the extreme right within
this set of relations is through a favourite metaphor in Lowell’s repertoire, namely
that of ‘il-ġaħan Malti’ (‘the Maltese ġaħan’). ‘Ġaħan’ is a folk simpleton who, in
Lowell’s rhetoric, comes to symbolize a mentally comatose Maltese culture. At the
same time, and somewhat paradoxically, ġaħan is called upon to shake off the slum-
ber foisted upon him by the establishment. The ġaħan metaphor, which also found
its way into the rhetoric of AN’s Josie Muscat during the 2008 electoral campaign,
thus represents a parody of Maltese society, a caricature of the inability of the Maltese
to think independently, in their own interests. In Lowell’s terms, the Maltese ġaħan
has been hijacked by ‘the two parties and the KKK’ (‘KKK’ stands for ‘Knisja Kattolika
Korrotta’, ‘Corrupt Catholic Church’; Lowell also describes the two parties as ‘les-
bian prostitutes sharing the same bed’).
It is worth noting that, on their part, AN and ANR completely sidestepped the
criticism levelled at the Church. The formation of the ANR and later AN under
the banner of Catholic conservatism came in large part as a response to the per-
ceived sterility of the polity; it was a marked shift away from Lowell’s neo-paganism,
visceral racism and anti-Semitism, in favour of a more pragmatic ideological line.
The so-called ‘split’ happened roughly during the summer of 2005, when the
different factions of the movement, until then a rather compact if nebulous group,
began openly criticizing each other, primarily on the leading far-right Internet
forum, the now-defunct AveMelita.
In sum, the extreme right in Malta amply displays what Griffin (1991) calls the
‘basic features’ of such movements, namely organizational complexity and ideo-
logical heterogeneity. It can be seen as a mélange of ideas, personalities and prac-
tices which articulate themselves along the lines of the four movements. At the
same time, it does show a sense of convergence on a small number of central
themes, which affords it both strength and vulnerability. Its main weakness is that
it will most likely remain on the margins of Maltese politics, especially as it loses its
main battle horse (anti-immigrationism) to the main parties. That said, it may well
prove capable of a sustained if minor presence by putting on the national agenda
issues which would not otherwise be broached by the mainstream parties.
How ‘Maltese’ is the Maltese extreme right?

On the one hand, our object is ‘Maltese’ in that it is located in Malta, is made up
mostly of Maltese people, and is embedded in the historical and contemporary
realities of the Maltese polity. On the other, a number of factors make it clear that
a localistic and exceptionalist heuristic will not suffice. In the following two sec-
tions we shall, first, look at some of the mechanisms of transnational interactions
that characterize the Maltese extreme right, and, second, discuss the ways in which
its key attributes exhibit a homology with similar movements elsewhere.
A good number of extreme-right actors draw on biographies of mobility and
interaction with similar groups in various countries. In the case of Norman Lowell,
for instance, his white supremacist ideas were moulded in the 1970s in what
was then Rhodesia. Lowell spent several months immersed in the racial politics
that characterized that country at the time, and he regularly refers to the experi-
ence as having been of epiphanic significance to his thought and beliefs. It
gives him a claim to ‘understanding blacks’ and their ‘inherent’, racially defined
‘inferiority’. More recently Lowell has been to London several times to give
speeches at gatherings of the New Right group, a small UK-based extreme-right
organization of sorts centred on palingenetic white supremacism and British ultra-
nationalism.6 (Interestingly, the New Right’s journal is called New Imperium.)
A number of other individuals have biographies of mobility and displacement;
some are of transnational parentage or have non-Maltese partners, while others
have worked and/or lived in countries where they came across local extreme-right
groups.
A detailed description of the Maltese extreme right’s transnational connections
is beyond the scope of this chapter but suffice it to mention the example of
links (through direct relations, correspondence or published literature) with various
neo-Nazi groups such as The Order (a US white-supremacist and anti-Semitic ter-
rorist organization active in the 1980s), as well as more moderate movements.
Lowell, for example, has corresponded with Britain’s Oswald Mosley (he claims to have
‘stacks of his letters’), insiders of the French Nouvelle Droite, Austria’s Jörg Haider,
as well as a host of US extremists (notably The Order’s David Lane, regarded as a
martyr by neo-Nazis worldwide). At a recent public meeting, he claimed that
Malta has been chosen (by extreme-right movements in Europe) as the venue
for the launching of the anthem of a ‘new Europe’, in effect George Lehmann’s
Ave Europa.
The second factor which enables and fosters the local extreme right’s transna-
tional connections is information technology. Let us first establish that the Internet
has been a pivotal element behind the recent rise of the movement in Malta, for
various reasons. First, the Internet is a facet of the public sphere which is inherently
very hard to control. This means that it is open to anti-Semitic, racist and other
extremist (and potentially incriminating) discourses, which are otherwise censored
by editors of mainstream media. Second, online communities constitute a ‘safe’
venue for interaction, not least because interlocutors can, and generally do, use
‘avatars’ to mask their identity.7 The crucial point, however, is that the Internet,
being literally a world wide web, re-territorializes interaction (see, for instance,
Featherstone 1995, Hannerz 1996 and various contributions in Inda and Rosaldo
2002) and renders the local transnational. In our case, it means that the extreme
right is embedded in transnational networks. The Vivamalta online forum in par-
ticular attracts posts from neo-Nazis, white supremacists, neo-Fascists and ultra-
nationalists based in a number of locations worldwide. It also regularly carries links
(in alternative cyber jargon, ‘opens threads’) to like-minded movements and invites
users of the forum to discuss extreme-right issues. With respect to the ANR, they
were ‘affiliated’ (though the exact relation is vague at best) to the Center for Vigilant
Freedom, a US-based but largely online8 organization which targets the ‘Islamist
threat’.
Norman Lowell, for his part, has benefited greatly from the Internet – indeed,
one might say he has in good measure been produced in and of it. His speeches,
usually made available online through YouTube9 and/or Maltese-run websites,10
have proved very popular among local youth for their caustic and eccentric assaults
on the establishment. Some of his speeches and writings in English are known
beyond Malta, recently through his presence on the UK-based white-supremacist
Internet Majority Rights radio.11
The upshot, and this is worth emphasizing, is that despite being linked in piece-
meal fashion and in various ways to local contexts (through criticism of the Catholic
Church, sub-Saharan immigration or anti-Semitic verbal assaults on ‘infiltrated’
national politics), Maltese extreme-right ideas and discourses are anything but ‘local’.
Transnational homologies
There is another level, apart from that of content, at which the local extreme right
goes well beyond exceptionalist frameworks. In fact, and in spite of the particulari-
ties of context, in terms of structure the extreme right in contemporary Malta is
markedly homologous with similar movements elsewhere. In this sense, the recent
special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (which included case studies
of extreme-right movements from a number of locations) constitutes a useful refer-
ence point. In her editorial chapter, Blee (2007) identifies a number of common
factors which we found to be readily applicable to the Maltese case.
The first factor is an emphasis on individual motivations and practices which
goes well beyond a requisite nod to ‘agency’. As Blee puts it, it is essential to dif-
ferentiate ‘the external façade of the far right from its internal dynamics’ (2007: 122).
In the case of the Maltese extreme right, one notes, first, the importance of indi-
vidual entrepreneurship, and, second, the marked disjunctures between the regular
formal façade and the variegated informal interior. Norman Lowell, for example,
can be seen as a ‘cultural entrepreneur’ in Barth’s (1969) sense, a mongerer of
‘organized culture difference’ (i.e. identity) by bringing together, through his indi-
vidual biography and experiences, a number of strands of discourse and practices;
Josie Muscat represents another significant agent.
Further, although subscribers do cross paths at a number of important junctions,
one notes a very pronounced heterogeneity of ideas and practices – both between
and within the various movements. This gives rise to constant sparring, online as
well as in other contexts. It also means that it is very difficult for the extreme right
to evolve into a structured unified movement (or at least number of movements)
with a clear and sustained political line of action. In this vein, a fact that never
ceased to surprise us during our fieldwork was that even hardened followers of
Lowell, who hardly ever missed an event or went a day without posting online,
told us that, on account of his esoteric views, they would not consider voting for
him in a general election.
Blee’s (2007) second point concerns emotions. She privileges, as many scholars
do, the role of emotions in the making of extreme-right movements. Given the
recent spate of literature rehabilitating emotions into social theory (see, for instance,
Williams 2000; Milton and Svašek 2005), as well as the obvious emotionality of
extreme-right performance, this is hardly groundbreaking. However, she adds that
it is important to realize that it is not just the ‘expected emotions of hostility, per-
secution, and anger’ that matter, but equally those of ‘pride, amusement, and
sensuality’ (Blee 2007: 123). The co-existence of these contrasting sets of emotions
should not come as a surprise; on the contrary, it is a well-trodden point that the
sacred is created through a process of loss – in Bataille’s (1972) words, ‘Pleasure
only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness
must be tainted with poison.’ Hansen (1999), for instance, writing about the far-
right Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers
Organisation) in India, notes how a collective ‘grandiose self ’ – that is, a commu-
nity organized around enjoyment (jouissance) – is based not least on a sense of con-
stant threat of ‘theft of enjoyment’ by outside groups.
In our case there is no doubt that emotions, including those of ‘pride, amuse-
ment, and sensuality’, are a defining aspect of the local extreme right. It is in fact
hardly a case of ideology uniting the Maltese extreme right, but rather one of
people with different agendas rallying around a field of emotionality emanating in
part from individual charismatic selves. Weber defined charismatic authority as

stemming from ‘a certain quality of the individual personality by virtue of which he
is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhu-
man, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities’ (1947: 358). Lowell
clearly fits the bill as an exceptional figure in the eyes of many followers; at the same
time he has never really exerted ‘authority’ in a classical Weberian sense (i.e. as a
form of leadership power), acting instead as a charismatic coagulant for an other-
wise nebulous following. In part this is because he has never quite modified his
ideas to achieve a more respectable image, as other extreme-right leaders have done
elsewhere in Europe (Eatwell 2002).
The heart of Lowell’s charisma is its symbolism; an emotive dynamic which
gives his circle (and the wider group he influences) an essentially ritualistic charac-
ter. While the members’ broad endorsement of the movement is meaningful and
directed, their political actions are ritualized, in the sense that the ‘identity’ of
the group’s actions as a whole (the gatherings and the form that support takes in
Lowell’s public performances) is ‘non-intentional’ and archetypal (Humphrey and
Laidlaw 1994). Emotions of anger and frustration abound and are typically directed
at immigrants, NGOs and political incompetence; these co-exist with a generous
supply of emotions of ‘pride, amusement, and sensuality’ generated by Lowell’s
irreverent wisecracks and his professed love of wine, women and song.12
In other words, the movement only represents the aspirations of the members in
symbolic-emotive rather than concrete terms, a sort of protest-by-proxy, rallied
around banners to which the members only subscribe in form. The gatherings and
the online activity become rituals in themselves, wherein the subversive context is
provided by the proximity to Norman Lowell and his performances, and
not through some expectation that the activities will lead to the social changes
prescribed by his ideology.
Third, Blee (2007) generalizes about attempts by extreme-right movements
to reconcile extremist agendas that are consistent with their internal ideologies,
with more moderate tactics that appeal to a wider base of remits (and possibly
voters). In the Maltese case, there are some important differences. As mentioned
earlier, Norman Lowell has never sought to go moderate. At the same time, he
has attempted to resolve the tension between palingenetic global scenarios and
the more mundane agendas of locality by differentiating between the ‘imperium’
and ‘dominium’ spheres which would come into being post-2012 (his formula is:
imperium = aggressive masculinity = world empire; dominium = caring femininity
= local communities). At the other end of the spectrum, AN took pains to present
a respectable façade and adopt a ‘moderate’ stance on, say, immigration. But then,
AN was a Political Party that relied on people’s votes for its success, while Lowell
seems more interested in the dictates of the ‘cosmic will’. (As mentioned earlier, he
has never taken his local political programme very seriously – on the contrary, he
talks of ‘entering the fray holding our noses’.) In sum, our case confirms Blee’s
observation and shows that the degree of modification may be linked in part to the
actual political practices of the groups in question.
Blee’s (2007) fourth point concerns what she calls the ‘centrality of culture’ as in
music, clothing, style, bodily disciplines, ritual and performance. Again, her generali-
zation is very much applicable in our case. With respect to Norman Lowell, the
sensational effect of his ideas certainly played an important role. However, a signifi-
cant chunk of his following was won on the grounds of his persona and performances.
Besides his idiosyncratic sartorial style, which includes jackboots, a range of walking
sticks and, often, a tie wrapped around his neck like a scarf, Lowell presents himself
as a misunderstood Nietzschean idealist, a victim of his own anachronistic chivalry.
His public performances, which often take place in pubs and restaurants, attract
substantial crowds for their entertainment value. Usually propped on some sort of
stage giving him extra presence, Lowell typically blends his vitriolic attacks on
‘negrids’, Jews and society’s sacred cows with a dose of acerbic political satire, of
which there is a serious dearth in Malta. In these settings he is both spectacle and
object of admiration for his audience. One senses a feeling of awe at the display of
brazen irreverence which most spectators deem themselves incapable of. Further,
his claims to physical prowess and endurance, both legacies of his earlier interest in
the martial arts, strike a chord with members of his inner circle as well as with more
distant spectators.
The whole point about Lowell’s charisma is his idiosyncrasy, and as such he has
not spawned any direct imitators. Indirectly, however, many of the individuals
drawn to the extreme right – notably his close circle and regulars on the Vivamalta
forum – are able to participate in his ideals of chivalry and martial ‘spirituality’
through various means. Online avatars are often chosen along these lines, and
typical ones include ‘Baron Ironblood’, ‘Norman Soldier’, ‘Neverwinter’ and
‘Praefectus’; these names are invariably accompanied with hyperbolic martial
images. In part, the importance of such images derives from their role as symbols
on which individuals and groups with highly divergent ideas converge, thus
fostering a semblance of ‘community’ (see Cohen 1985).
The scholarship on the extreme right has rightly focused on choreographed
events as collective venues for specialized performance of extreme-right sentiment.
Virchow (2007), for instance, has written about the prominent part played by the
Deutsche Stimme (Voice of Germany) Festival, as well as others organized by the
National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD, Nationaldemokratische Partei
Deutschlands) and neo-Nazi ‘groupuscules’, as performative venues for recruiting,
holding and activating followers and enhancing the collective identity of the
German extreme right. In the Maltese case such specialized events have been lack-
ing, with very few exceptions. Lowell’s public speeches are very much one-man
shows in which the audience is spectatorial rather than participative. Perhaps more
relevant are the monthly barbecues organized by Imperium Europa and Vivamalta at
a secluded spot in the countryside, and typically attended by the inner circle and a
small number of transients. These barbecues are publicized on the Vivamalta web-
site as venues for the participants to sit around a logfire sipping wine and holding
conversations on ‘spirituality’ and ‘high politics’, thus ‘renewing’ their ‘bond’ ‘in
tune with the cosmos and Mother Nature’.
Conclusion
(T)he genus ‘fascism’ shows no sign of becoming extinct. Like some wounded
hydra, it continues to sprout new progeny.
(Griffin 1991: 182)
Bardèche (1961, as cited in Griffin 1991: 172) holds that, although fascism will
phenotypically vary from movement to movement because ‘each nation has its
own way of saving itself ’, it has in common a palingenetic myth of a new and
coming ‘Third Order’ for the West – ‘[e]ither the West will go under like a
“drowning old man” or “the order of Sparta” will be reborn in a totally new form’
(Griffin 1991: 172). Griffin (1991: 177) goes on to argue that, due to the resilience
of the palingenetic myth, ‘even if fascism will always be successfully marginalised by
mainstream politics … there is every indication that it will remain a permanent
component of the ultra-right in democratised or democratising societies, providing
an inexhaustible well of organised xenophobia and ultra-nationalism’.13
We contend that, if it is at all possible to generalize about extreme-right move-
ments, it must be in the direction of drawing up a list of tropes from which
individual movements, be they local or transnational or (as is common) both,
will ‘pick and choose’ depending on a number of key variables – the historical cir-
cumstances of locality and/or region, the nature of the public spheres within which
they develop, and, crucially, the vagaries of individual cultural entrepreneurship.
Methodologically, four main objects of analysis emerge: first, identifying which
tropes are chosen by a particular movement; second, the dynamics of choice; third,
the process/es by which they are embedded in local contexts; and, fourth, the lack
of/success and consequentiality of the venture.
Take Norman Lowell’s anti-Semitism, for instance. Lowell often describes Jews
as, among other things, a ‘green-eyed black octopus’ with its tentacles wrapped
around the world. He also refers to them as ‘mischief makers’ and proceeds to
cobble together ‘evidence’ that they were behind a number of wars, the ascribed
rationale being a sort of divide-and-rule vis-à-vis Europeans. While this imagery
may sound entertaining and original to his audiences, it is in fact stodgy fare. The
idea that Jews, especially the Rothschild banking family, are a kind of ‘vast, black
octopus’, originated with ‘Coin’ Harvey in the US in the 1890s; and the suggestion
that Jews were involved in fomenting wars between European states is at least as old
as a number of late-nineteenth/early twentieth-century commentators, including
the Liberal J.A. Hobson (see Ferguson 1998: 20–21).
Clearly, the advance of new technologies of communication and mobility makes
this ‘shopping’ more possible than ever before; it also enables the re-territorialization
of these tropes. In the case of the contemporary Maltese extreme right, the tropes
of anti-Semitism, white supremacy, social conservatism, ultra-nationalism and
palingenetic myth have been embedded, wholesale or in part, in a local context
characterized by strong Catholic and pro-European roots, and a Church–party
hegemony. Partly because of this very context, the process may not have struck a
sustained chord with the electorate, and the far right remains a marginal political
actor. It is still, however, very much the recognizable progeny of the wounded
hydra.
Notes
1 http://www.vivamalta.org.
2 http://www.imperium-europa.org.
3 http://www.pathforger.com.
4 Party statute at http://www.anrmalta.info.
5 One should note that the press was to some extent polarized on the issue, with sections
of it championing the rights of immigrants.
6 See founding member Troy Southgate’s website at http://www.myspace.com/troy
southgate.
7 Although Lowell’s recent conviction was based in part on online evidence which he had
posted in his name.
8 http://www.vigilantfreedom.org.
9 http://www.youtube.com.
10 Notably http://www.sandrovella.org, a Maltese satirical website.
11 http://www.majorityrights.com.
12 Lowell’s entertainment value is not to be underestimated. His speeches are among the
most frequently accessed online material locally, and from time to time he is invited to
give speeches to circles of work colleagues and such, that are in no sense of the term far
right; in these situations he is seen as hearty after-dinner entertainment. He also regularly
boasts that his circle attracts beautiful women – as he put it, ‘women may vote Left, but
they sleep Right’.
13 One should note that Griffin is specifically referring to ‘fascism’ rather than the ‘extreme
right’. He defines fascism as ‘a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its
various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism’ (1991: 26).
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18
CROSS-NATIONAL IDEOLOGY
IN LOCAL ELECTIONS
The case of Azione Sociale and the
British National Party1
Andrea Mammone and Timothy Peace
Introduction
Extreme-right parties in Europe have gone beyond their former status as a marginal,
or even exotic, phenomenon in electoral politics. For the last twenty years, in
virtually all countries of the European Union (EU), such parties have shown them-
selves capable of electoral success, gaining policy concessions from governing parties
or even determining the actual process of policy making and influencing the public
debate on key issues. Even in Britain, traditionally seen as one of the few outlying
cases where the extreme right could not penetrate, the situation has evolved. Since
the British National Party (BNP) has been led by Nick Griffin, it has experienced
a continual, though hardly spectacular, growth at the local level, leading to the
election of a number of local councillors, a member of the London Assembly and
two MEPs. It started to receive support from parts of the electorate that one would
not normally associate with such a party and the strategy of the BNP in recent years
has been to move beyond the classical enclaves of extreme-right support. In Italy,
Azione Sociale (AS, Social Action) led by Alessandra Mussolini, similarly had rep-
resentatives in local government across Italy and had also been represented in the
European parliament. Since the parliamentary elections of 2008, it has been a con-
stitutive part of Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà (PDL, People of Freedom)
coalition. In March 2009 AS became completely merged within the PDL along
with other parties on the Italian right such as Forza Italia and Alleanza Nazionale
(AN, National Alliance), although its members still maintain a certain level of inde-
pendent activism.2 Despite being forced to camouflage somewhat its neo-fascist
identity within this new party, it has received notable benefits in terms of media
coverage which go well beyond the election of Mussolini to the Italian parliament.
In this chapter we analyse the political discourse of both the BNP and AS during
local elections. The aim is to highlight what unifies these two parties, placing
emphasis on the transnational similarities of the extreme right across European bor-
ders, in particular ultra-nationalism and xenophobia. Our analysis is based on party
literature including both manifestos and other electoral material such as campaign
flyers as well as statements made by party leaders in the media. We gathered
campaign material used during the local elections of 2006 including that circulated
on the Internet of both the national party and local sections or affiliates. We have
thus chosen to link a localist dimension with a cross-national focus. We also wish
to show that, setting aside the impact of immigration and the processes of ‘ethnic
competition’ (well described in this volume by Goodwin), the progression of the
extreme right could also be due to an apparent external moderation of their politi-
cal discourse and the abandonment of references to a more radical (explicitly fascist
or neo-fascist) past. However, we consider these particular parties to still represent
authentic cases of neo-fascism (and not as mere ‘populist’ or ‘national-populist’ par-
ties), albeit with a veneer of respectability. Finally, we conclude with some reflec-
tions on the public reception of these parties and their leaders in the media.
The extreme right in Italy and Great Britain

Italy represents an obvious reference point for scholars of the extreme right and not
only because of the historical development of fascism, the regime of Benito
Mussolini and the short-lived Salò republic. It is also the nation in which, during
the immediate post-war period, fascists reorganized themselves into several differ-
ent strands (which often interacted with each other): clandestine and terrorist
groups (fascismo clandestino), veterans support associations, political activism through
the infiltration of smaller existing movements and the creation of the most well-
known European neo-fascist party – the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI, Italian
Social Movement) (Mammone 2005, 2007). More recently, the country has
witnessed the promotion of politicians who were prominent members of the MSI
to ministerial and other influential political positions such as the mayoralty of
Rome. This has coincided with the rise of the ethno-regionalist and xenophobic
Lega Nord (LN, Northern League) which has held a number of important portfo-
lios within the various governments led by Silvio Berlusconi’s administration.
Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the Duce, was first elected to the Italian
parliament in 1992 for the MSI which then became Alleanza Nazionale in 1995.
Mussolini left AN in 2003 due to disagreements with its leader Gianfranco Fini and
created her own political movement – Alternativa Sociale (Social Alternative). This
included other extreme-right forces such as Forza Nuova (New Force) and the
Fronte Sociale Nazionale (National Social Front) and also had the support of
MSI-Fiamma Tricolore (MSI-FT, Tricolour Flame). Her own party Libertà
d’Azione (Freedom of Action) was also naturally a part of this coalition and was
later renamed Azione Sociale. Alternativa Sociale was an attempt to federate
the disparate archipelago of Italian neo-fascist movements and parties, a project
which eventually failed due to their extremely fractious nature and that of the
political personalities behind them. Despite this failure to create a single entity,
290 Andrea Mammone and Timothy Peace
these parties still routinely collaborate with each other. For example, Roberto
Fiore, leader of Forza Nuova, maintains strong links with Mussolini.3 Incidentally,
he also enjoys a personal friendship with BNP leader Nick Griffin. Fiore and Griffin
were both active in the International Third Position and influenced by the ideas of
Italian Julius Evola (Mammone and Veltri 2011b: 408).4 Griffin’s parents are also
linked with an English language school in London owned by Fiore (Cobain and
Taylor 2008).
Both the BNP and AS have a well-structured ideology which we argue can be
identified as neo-fascist, with an authoritarian conception of law and order and a
mythological representation of the past. These core values are synthesized in their
respective mission statements published on the party websites.5 AS can certainly be
classified as a neo-fascist party for its professed ideology, its core values (tradition,
family, motherland, race, work), its glorification of both fascist and neo-fascist
icons and its identification with the historical experience and related mythology
associated with the regime of Benito Mussolini. The neo-fascist label was not dis-
puted by the party’s leaders and supporters, a fact that would be hard to deny
given its public activities which included pilgrimages to the tomb of Mussolini
and the commemoration of certain key historical dates from the fascist past.
In fact, in 2008 after AN leader Gianfranco Fini made a statement about the value
of anti-fascism, Alessandra Mussolini turned up in parliament with a t-shirt bearing
the slogan ‘Con orgoglio dalla parte sbagliata’ (‘Proud to be on the wrong side’ –
where the ‘wrong side’ was interwar fascism). Labelling the BNP as fascist or neo-
fascist, as many analysts have traditionally done, is now much more problematic.
Griffin admits that the party comes from a fascist past but argues that it can no
longer be considered as such because it opposes a large central state and warns of
the dangers of excessive state power. He first used the term ‘21st Century popular
nationalism’ at the launch of their manifesto for the general election of 2005,
a document which broke new ideological ground for the party. However,
a number of scholars have tended to treat this evolution of the party’s doctrine
with a certain amount of scepticism. Nigel Copsey, one of the foremost experts on
the BNP, has argued that ‘neo-fascist’ continues to be the most correct label and
that the party’s recent ideological positioning should not be taken at face value
(Copsey 2007).
The extreme right in Britain, of which the BNP is currently the most influential
component, traces its origins to the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Sir
Oswald Mosley. This party had strong ties with the Italian Fascists, and Chiara
Chini (2008) has revealed the extent of these links and the funding Mosley received
from the regime of Benito Mussolini. After 1945, Mosley collaborated with other
‘orphans’ of Nazi-fascism such as Evola, the American Francis Parker Yockey and the
Frenchman Maurice Bardèche. He founded the Union Movement in 1948 and
attempted to modernize the Imperialist ideology of the extreme right by promoting
a new pan-European vision of fascist nationalism through the development of the
‘Europe a Nation’ policy. This was based on the idea of a united Europe of the
white race with its common values and superior civilization that would dominate
and exploit the colonies still controlled by the Imperial powers of the continent.
The international activism of neo-fascists such as Mosley, Bardèche and others such
as Ernesto Massi – and the important contribution of the founding of the MSI – led
to a series of international meetings such as those held in Rome in 1950 and Malmö
in 1951. This culminated in the creation of the European Social Movement,
an alliance between extreme-right forces in Europe and an early example of neo-
fascist transnationalism and internationalism (Mammone 2011a). In 1954 the League
of Empire Loyalists was founded by conservatives opposed to the dissolution of the
British Empire; this group was instrumental in the founding of the National Front
(NF) in 1967 which for many years remained the main party of the British extreme
right. The heyday of the NF was in the late 1970s when it regularly marched in the
streets and often clashed with anti-fascists. By taking a much firmer line on immi-
gration, Margaret Thatcher managed to neuter the threat of the NF and it entered
the doldrums.
Today’s BNP was founded in 1982 as a result of a split within the NF. For a long
period, the BNP was considered by many as nothing more than a joke, a small
clique of extremists with no serious hope of electoral success. Britain was often
hailed as the only major Western European country that had no significant party of
the extreme right, which had essentially ‘failed’ (Cronin 1996). As Copsey (2004)
explains, however, a modernization process was initiated from 1999 onwards when
Nick Griffin became party leader. The Cambridge graduate attempted to modify
the violent and threatening image of the BNP with its focus on ‘activities’ (street
violence). Out, too, went the use of overt racist language associated with that
old-style image; even the term ‘race’ was replaced by the term ‘identity’. A genuine
electoral strategy was then formulated based on grass-roots campaigning and
exploiting local grievances. Such a strategy has been the hallmark of success and a
tried and tested formula of extreme-right parties across Europe.
The MSI had attempted a similar strategy of legitimization with its Destra
Nazionale project at the beginning of the 1970s, a strategy that was subsequently
adopted by French neo-fascists in 1972 when they created the Front National
(FN) (Mammone 2008). Griffin in turn used Jean-Marie Le Pen as his model to
follow and the fruits of the party’s modernization were already evident at the
May 2002 local elections, when the BNP won three council seats in Burnley.6
In local elections the following year they won seven seats there and a further six in
other towns, and by 2004 the total number of councillors had grown to twenty-
one. The party narrowly missed out on electing an MEP in 2004 (Renton 2005)
and in the 2005 general election it contested 119 seats and won 192,850 votes, a
huge improvement on the 47,129 votes it had gained in 2001. By 2010 the BNP
was fielding 338 parliamentary candidates and received 563,743 votes, thus demon-
strating consistent progress. It has however been unable to elect any MPs because
of the electoral system and the number of local councillors it elects also fluctuates
with the electoral cycle. In 2006 the BNP went from a total of twenty councillors
to forty-six and then in 2010 it was reduced to nineteen representatives in local
government.
‘Localism’ and ethnic competition

There are a number of good reasons to study the behaviour of extremist parties at
the local level. The first reason is that local elections, as well as second-order elec-
tions such as those for the European Parliament, offer an opportunity for small
parties to come to the fore. The most emblematic case involving the extreme right
remains the FN, which in 1982 gained over 10 per cent of the vote in five cantons
in local elections in France. From this first success, the FN steadily rose to promi-
nence, culminating in Le Pen’s arrival at the second round of the 2002 presidential
election. Such electoral successes are often the fruit of years of grass-roots political
activity. Second, the deep entrenchment of an extremist party at a sub-national
level may allow it to put into practice its political philosophy, promote community
debates on themes that it considers crucial (immigration, public security), and even
exert pressure ‘from below’ on national policies (see Veugelers in this volume).
Martin Schain (2006: 287) has noticed how ‘decentralised structures – regions and
municipalities – are reinforced by strong local party units and local notables to give
these structures important policy-making roles. These structures, then, can be used
as leverage to magnify the influence of the extreme-right in national politics.’ This
has indeed been the case for AS which, since joining the PDL, has given the party
the opportunity to have representatives in local and regional bodies as well as influ-
encing the political agenda at the national level. This is already evident with the
current anti-immigrant climate in Italy as well as the creation of vigilante squads
which have been encouraged by politicians such as Mussolini and the leader of the
LN Umberto Bossi.
A third element to note about the local level is that these parties need to be
selective about the seats they contest and therefore organize their often meagre
campaign resources in a targeted manner. The BNP targets economically deprived
towns in the north of England such as Bradford, Burnley and Oldham, which have
significant numbers of South Asian origin Muslim residents. It also focuses on the
East End of London, another area of ‘ethnic competition’ between different groups.
In such places it is more likely that voters of the so-called ‘white working class’ will
take into consideration the possibility of voting for the extreme right (see also
Goodwin in this volume). The electorate is also more likely to vote for such parties
at the local level as a means of punishing the established parties for what they see as
the neglect of their concerns. Nick Griffin acknowledged this in an interview with
the BBC after the 2006 local elections, claiming that ‘at local elections the public
can let their real feelings out’.7 However, in parliamentary elections, which are seen
as more important, electors may be less willing to give their vote to a minor party
with little chance of winning seats (particularly under the first-past-the-post
electoral system).
By attaching itself to local concerns, the BNP has been able to achieve the status
of a respectable political actor in some areas of England, despite the fact that at
the national level the party remains a political pariah. Indeed, it has been shown
that many BNP voters tend to differentiate the party at a local level and the way
in which it is presented nationally. Well-known members of local communities are

often selected as candidates and as James Rhodes (2006: 18) noted, ‘the BNP can
gain legitimacy at a local level while still being labelled fascist nationally’. Extremist
parties feel freer to express their ‘true ideas’ at the local level. Examining local elec-
tion pamphlets often reveals stark differences from those used nationwide. The
political message does not need to appeal to a wide and diverse electorate but can
rather focus on the needs and fears of the voters who feel alienated and ignored by
mainstream parties. One flyer produced by a local section of AS for the 2006 local
elections declared that immigrants and gypsies (Roma) ‘should be thrown into the
sea!’. This came before the national backlash against the Roma in Italy (Sigona
2010) which subsequently gave Alessandra Mussolini the opportunity to declare in
an interview that she would like to expel them all from the country.8
The 2006 local elections were an enormous success for the BNP. Whereas
before these elections the party had twenty town councillors (and four parish coun-
cillors), it gained another thirty-three bringing the total to fifty-three. The party
received a total of 229,000 votes and averaged 19.2 per cent of the vote in the 363
wards it contested. In Barking and Dagenham (East London), it polled 41 per cent
of the vote in the wards it contested compared to Labour’s 34 per cent. The BNP
billed these elections as a ‘referendum on Islam’ in an effort to capitalize on the
tragic events in London on 7 July 2005. The fear of Islam has no doubt helped to
fuel support for the BNP, although it had started targeting Muslims even before
9/11. Due to the salience of public fears about terrorism, the party has shifted its
attention to focus almost exclusively on what it sees as the threat posed by Muslims.
In the party magazine Identity, Griffin (2006: 1) told his followers that ‘this is the
threat that can bring us to power. This is the Big Issue on which we must concen-
trate in order to wake people up and make them look at what we have to offer all
round.’ In 2006, local elections also took place in Italy, although they were on a
relatively small scale so it is difficult to assess the relevance of the results. For AS,
these elections could not be considered as particularly successful as it failed to
elect any local representatives and gained only around 0.6 per cent of the national
vote (7,600 votes). Even if we ignore the fact that turn-out was low for these elec-
tions, it was of course extremely difficult for AS to make any kind of breakthrough
because of the sheer amount of competition on the extreme right in Italy.The pres-
ence of AN and LN, which both draw large support and campaign on an anti-
immigration platform, means that the potential vote of AS was naturally reduced. It
also had to compete with the various other small extremist parties, thus compound-
ing the problem, and this could explain the decision to join the PDL in 2009.
This does not, however, mean that AS represents an insignificant political force.
Being part of a wider centre-right coalition has allowed it to influence national
policy. In fact, in recent years its political discourse towards immigrants and other
minorities in Italy has been adopted by mainstream politicians. Rather than elec-
toral progress, as in the case of the BNP, this has been the major achievement of AS
and in particular its leader Alessandra Mussolini. It does not find itself an isolated
voice when it attempts to exploit public fears about immigrants, asylum seekers
and Muslims. It is joined by other extremist parties as well as the governing Lega
Nord. In fact, LN has taken the lead in the denigration of Islam in Italy which has
been a key mobilizing theme in its campaigns. Roberto Calderoli, formerly a min-
ister in Berlusconi’s cabinet, has become a symbol of opposition to the building of
new mosques in Italy. He has taken a pig for a walk on areas designated for mosque
construction, thus symbolically desecrating the land intended for this purpose. Such
ideas have been supported by Alessandra Mussolini who suggested throwing salami
and other kinds of meat made from pigs in areas where new mosques are due to be
built (ANSA 2007).
Nation and tradition

Ideologically, the nationalism that both AS and the BNP espouse can be included
in the ideal-type that Ramón Máiz (2003: 261) defines as ‘organicist nationalism’,
a concept ‘in which the nation is fundamentally defined by extremely determinist
criteria which entails that the national community is internally homogeneous
and exclusive’. The nation is thus envisaged as a natural entity that entails a neat
distinction between ‘us’ – who have a historic attachment to the motherland, and
‘them’ – outsiders who no matter how long they live in the country, can never
become real citizens. AS and the BNP emphasize the importance of national iden-
tity, and the pureness of the nation or community’s ‘soul’, displaying an almost
blind faith in the superiority of the white race. This ultra-nationalist approach is
not, of course, something new in the history of Europe. It was the main ideological
bedrock of European fascism and post-war neo-fascism. It descends from the idea
of a nation, and its deep virtues, located entirely above the individual human beings
from which it is composed. This nation is perceived as a holistic unit in which the
community is a collective actor characterized by its homogeneity. Neo-fascist
parties emphasize the similarities, common traditions, roots and aspirations of ‘the
people’ − similar to the holistic vision of the national community promoted
by historical fascism. The BNP, for instance, states that a major party aim is
‘to foster and promote a feeling of national and cultural unity amongst our people’.9
Correspondingly, following a clear neo-fascist tradition, AS promoted what it called
italianità (Italianess). The nation is associated with a community based on blood
lines which shares similar values and belongs to a glorious and mythological past.
The importance of ‘tradition’ is paramount within this organicist nationalism.
Party activists often believe in the central role of family values and are consequently
opposed to homosexuality, pornography and abortion – themes that were well
rooted in the neo-fascist philosophy of the MSI. The family, for instance, is often
represented as the imagined ethnic nation in miniature. The BNP boasts of the fact
that it is the only party to hold ‘family festivals’ and AS supports all policies and
initiatives which it claims support the traditional family such as the Family Day
demonstrations against the proposed law in favour of civil unions. It has also fought
to maintain the presence of crucifixes in public buildings such as schools. This
approach is perhaps unsurprising in Italy where the Catholic Church still plays an
important role in national politics. The BNP, on the other hand, seems to view
religion as a means of recuperating a lost cultural heritage even if churches in
the UK across all denominations have always strongly condemned the party. Its
literature is firmly rooted in a certain nostalgia for the past and as part of its local
education policy it seeks to ‘press for the preservation or reintroduction of morning
assemblies based on Christian worship, in order to ensure that children are not cut
off from our religious and cultural heritage’ (British National Party 2006a: 10).
It also intends to promote the celebration of the patron saints days of what it calls
the ‘British family of nations’.
The importance of local traditions and heritage is closely tied and interwoven
within their promotion of nationalism. This even extends to the promotion of local
agricultural products. In fact, agriculture is, somewhat bizarrely, the first theme of
Azione Sociale’s 2006 local election manifesto (Azione Sociale 2006a: 2). This
seemingly innocent concern for local produce is explained in the manifesto as
a means of economic protectionism against ‘third world products’ which are appar-
ently damaging the local economy and causing potential health risks. In a similar
vein, the BNP advocates giving schoolchildren one free item of fruit per day, ide-
ally ‘a locally grown apple or pear’ (British National Party 2006a: 10). The primor-
dial virtues of tradition and fatherland are supposedly able to counterbalance the
perversions of modern life that are destroying the past and its sacred principles. This
approach to modernity is reminiscent of Evola’s radical philosophy, but also the
fascist ‘alternative modernity’.10
Extreme-right parties usually reject the authority of the European Union as it is
an obvious challenge to national political sovereignty and economic independence.
The BNP and AS are no exception, although Alessandra Mussolini’s party does not
always call for the withdrawal of Italy from the EU. However, it strongly condemns
the idea of expanding the EU to include those countries ‘which do not have the
traditions of European peoples’. This is the case with Turkey:
The absurd attempt to enlarge Europe – as if it was only a common market –

to countries outside its borders implies a redefinition of the contours of our
[European] continent. 3000 years of culture and history exist to remind us of
what Europe is … The entrance of Turkey into the EU would distort the
cultural and spiritual homogeneity both of Turkey itself and our continent
because thanks to the Schengen agreement it would give Turks the right to
work in Europe … In our view, the entrance of countries with clear Christian
roots should be instead favoured.
(Azione Sociale 2006b)
The BNP has an identical approach to Turkish candidacy and European enlarge-
ment in general, but is much more explicitly anti-EU, denouncing what it calls
the ‘voracious technocracy of Brussels’. This is even present in its local election
manifesto, which claims that it will ‘challenge the diktats of the European Court’
with regard to corporal punishment in schools (British National Party 2006a: 9).
Both parties also strongly criticize the economic liberalism of the EU and the free
circulation of goods. They are actually in favour of economic protectionism, a clas-
sic trait of neo-fascism. This is in contrast to most right-wing ‘populist parties’
which now generally accept economic liberalism. By contrast both these parties
oppose economic globalization which they see as leading to the loss of jobs back
home and numerous other problems – most notably immigration.
National preference on a local scale

In recent years, these parties have tried to promote an allegedly less racist version of
their ideology. This is an intellectually elaborated reversal of positive discrimina-
tion, infamously described by Jean-Marie Le Pen as la préférence nationale (national
preference). This implies privileging the ‘indigenous’ inhabitants of the country
and the effective exclusion of foreign migrants and their descendants. This strategy
was influenced by the intellectual production of Alain de Benoist and what is
known as the Nouvelle Droite (ND).11 The ND replaced the classic theme of
anti-egalitarianism with the idea of irreconcilable differences between peoples and
cultures, thus promoting a right to be different. In the past, the BNP called for the
repatriation of non-whites, but instead it now proposes the ‘introduction of a
system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here
will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by
generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question’
(British National Party 2006a: 6). The same policy has been adopted by AN and,
during a protest against extending voting rights to foreigners, AS supporters dis-
played banners reading ‘Let’s help them go home’. Recent literature produced by
the BNP reveals an apparent softening regarding its approach to ethnic minorities,
although membership until very recently was only open to white people. It even
presents itself as a party trying to defuse racial tensions which government policies
have inflamed. In an interesting twist, it condemns ‘equal opportunities’ policies as
being racist:
The imposition of ‘equal opportunities’ quotas is both unfair on the majority

who are discriminated against, and condescending to capable members [our
emphasis] of ethnic minorities who are seen as having obtained jobs on
account of their colour rather than their personal abilities. Council run ‘equal
opportunities’ policies encourage racial tensions and deny the taxpaying
public the right to have the best people doing the jobs for which we have to
pay. BNP-run councils will move on from racist quotas and discrimination
and become ‘Best Possible’ Employers, hiring the best-qualified and suited
person possible for each job, regardless of their ethnic origins.
(British National Party 2006a: 6)
As Roger Eatwell (2006) has pointed out, this is merely a tactic by the party leader-
ship to defuse charges of racism by distinguishing between good immigrants and
bad ones, the latter being especially Muslims and new arrivals. For the 2006
local elections, AS proposed in its electoral programme the principle of national

preference:
Preference for social services run by the local authorities will be offered to
Italian citizens … we cannot deny the fact those who have roots in an area
have contributed through successive generations to the creation of these
services over the years. On the other hand, foreigners can obviously not
claim the same rights to such services.
(Azione Sociale 2006a: 12)
In the same manifesto the party launched a campaign against multi-ethnic classes in
state schools claiming that children of immigrants slow down the education of
native Italian children (this policy has also recently been advocated by LN through
a proposal on ‘separate classes’). In a very similar vein, the BNP’s 2006 Council
Election Manifesto opposed the teaching of minority languages to classes containing
any native British children:
If minorities want to teach their own children their native languages, they
should do so in their own time and at their own expense … where foreign
pupils have not achieved a satisfactory standard of English, they should be
taught separately rather than being allowed to drag down standards and hold
back native English-speakers.
The language used to describe the national community differs slightly between
the two parties. AS merely refers to ‘Italians’, although by this we are clearly meant to
understand Italians of European origin. In the case of the BNP, in order not to risk
the confusion of the label ‘British’ being applied to ethnic minorities, the prefix
‘native’ is generally applied and white Britons are even referred to as the ‘indige-
nous peoples of these islands’. The use of such terms is a convenient way of avoid-
ing being accused of overt racism. In fact, both parties are aware of certain constraints
on what they can say regarding race and hence frequently encourage positions
which are not explicitly racist but a kind of Nouvelle Droite inspired ‘differentialist
racism’. This represents a kind of intellectually elaborated positive discrimination
and recognition of the differences between people. The BNP has shifted from a focus
on race to the defence of cultural identity, following the example of the ND. On
the frequently-asked-questions section of its website, it is stressed that it does not
hate other ethnic groups, in fact ‘they have a right to their own identity as much as
we do, all we want to do is to preserve the ethnic and cultural identity of the British
people’. This ‘ethnic protectionism’ leads to policy proposals which would be
almost humorous if it were not for the seriousness of their content. The BNP states
that on winning local power it will:
examine closely the licensing policies of the council in relation to taxi and
minicab businesses to ensure that the ownership of such firms and the supply
of drivers bears the closest possible relationship to the average make-up of the
local population. This will also apply to other areas of trade where a BNP
council has control of licensing including the sale of alcohol, market trading
and late hours catering services.
Such a proposal represents nothing more than an attempt to strip certain citizens in
Britain of their jobs as these professions (taxi driver, market trader, take-away and
local shop owners) are those which are stereotypically identified with immigrants
and their descendents from the Indian subcontinent. Such statements are a typical
expression of the doctrine of national preference. The BNP has always been skilful
in manipulating local grievances in this respect. Its meteoric rise in Burnley was
fuelled around concerns over ‘positive discrimination’ in favour of ethnic minori-
ties and the belief that the town council spent disproportionate funds on those areas
of the town with a large ‘Asian’ population. The 2006 manifesto promised that
‘different ethnic groups within the population will have money spent on them
according to the percentage of the taxpaying population they make up’ (British
National Party 2006a: 5).
Both parties display an obsession with multiculturalism and its supposed threats
and/or failures. The BNP has waged a crusade against multiculturalism for at least
the last ten years. This was initially viewed as part of a Jewish conspiracy but now
it claims that multiculturalism is one of the effects of globalization and that it wipes
out indigenous cultures and identities through homogenization, presented as a form
of ‘cultural genocide’ (Copsey 2007: 74). The BNP never misses an opportunity to
disparage multiculturalism which it describes as a ‘wicked social engineering exper-
iment’ and openly claims that its recent success is based on people’s frustration
with multicultural policies. In a televised interview with the BBC following the
announcement of the results of the May 2006 poll, Griffin said:
There are genuine concerns about issues relating to immigration, asylum and
multiculturalism and the British people … are saying ‘we’ve had enough of
the whole multicultural experiment, especially as it’s financed with our taxes
without our consent’.
(BBC 2006)
Such opposition to multiculturalism may be considered as surprising in the case of

AS, as Italy is still struggling to decide over the possible introduction of official
‘multicultural’ state policies – and has not yet adopted any clear model of integra-
tion for immigrants. Nevertheless, the headline of one issue of the party magazine
was ‘the failure of multiculturalism’ using Great Britain and the London bombings
as proof of this argument (Landino 2006). Indeed, both parties promote a constant
mobilization of xenophobia towards immigrants who symbolize people’s worst
fears (social insecurity, criminality, unemployment) and are held responsible for a
sense of crisis or decline. According to the section on tourism in the manifesto of AS,
the number of immigrants who are working on the beaches has even damaged the
local economy by discouraging potential tourists (Azione Sociale 2006a: 17).
Conclusion
This study has attempted to show the fundamental similarities in both the ideology
and local strategies of these two parties. The BNP and AS both promote xenopho-
bia and exploit the fears of ordinary people linked to insecurity, criminality and
unemployment. The themes of ‘crisis’, ‘decline’ and ‘fear of the outside enemy’
were elements that, albeit in a radically different historical context, contributed to
the success of fascism. Both parties share values which have the hallmarks of the
neo-fascist tradition. The current crisis of legitimacy faced by traditional political
actors and the distance which separates them from the people they represent, as
well as economic instability and the threat of Islamist terrorism, means that parties
of the extreme right have fertile ground for progression. The BNP in particular
continues to break new ground, first by gaining a seat in the London Assembly in
2008 and then electing two MEPs in 2009 with nearly a million votes nationwide.
The party still struggles to achieve the recognition it craves from the media although
recent results are making cordon sanitaire tactics even harder to enforce. In October
2009, in the wake of the BNP’s success in the European elections, the BBC was
forced to invite Nick Griffin onto its political programme Question Time. The
visual media in the past was extremely sensitive to the potential consequences of the
BNP’s message. In 2004, the party was forced to edit its party political broadcast
and Channel 4 agreed to postpone the showing of a documentary it had made after
police warned it could inflame racial tensions and contribute to BNP success in the
local elections. Later that same year, the BBC aired its own documentary entitled
The Secret Agent which featured speeches which led to Nick Griffin and Mark
Collett12 being tried on charges of inciting racial hatred, although they were acquit-
ted in both the trial and subsequent re-trial in November 2006. At election time
the party still faces strong campaigns from parties across the political spectrum
and anti-fascist groups, and its air time is extremely limited. However, due to
the BNP’s recent success, it is harder to justify the exclusion of Griffin and other
BNP candidates from speaking on political programmes and other appearances in
the media.
There was never such a campaign to limit the air time of AS and other neo-
fascist parties in Italy, no doubt a legacy of the controversial relationship Italy still
holds with its fascist past (Mammone 2006). Certain politicians still refuse to con-
demn fascism but are nonetheless selected as candidates for the right-wing PDL.13
Alessandra Mussolini, due to the connection with her grandfather, is treated as a
kind of minor celebrity by large sections of the Italian media. She was a regular
guest on the reality TV show La pupa e il secchione (Beauty and the Geek), provided
the voice for an episode of the Italian version of The Simpsons and is regularly
invited onto TV chat shows and political programmes. This could be interpreted
as another sign of the crisis in Italian democracy (Mammone and Veltri 2010).
Nevertheless, AS has of course merged with the PDL and Mussolini must now
slightly tone down her rhetoric. In the Italian context, what is perhaps more discon-
certing is the fact that politicians from the LN are not only often on TV, but also
hold positions of power in both national and local government.14 In spite of the
evident differences of the ‘public perception’ of extremism within a democratic
system, what has been shown here is that, despite the geographical distance that may
separate them, extreme-right parties use an ideology and mobilizing themes which
are remarkably similar, demonstrating a certain transnationality of political cultures.
This is a reminder of the fact that we are facing a truly European phenomenon,
just as interwar fascism was.
Notes
1 An early version of this chapter was presented at the 2007 annual conference of the
Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) in London.
2 This chapter was written before the official creation of the PDL but has since been
modified to reflect this situation.
3 When in 2008 Mussolini became an MP in Italy, she vacated her place in the European
Parliament which was taken by Fiore. Indeed, they were both in Alternativa Sociale
which contested the European Parliament elections in 2004, but at that time only
Mussolini and Luca Romagnoli (MSI-FT) were elected.
4 The National Front, and in particular its Political Soldiers faction, was also fascinated with
Evola’s ideas. It is worth remembering that Fiore was convicted in Italy for terrorism and
spent many years on the run in the UK.
5 See http://www.azionesociale.net (click on Decalogo dei valori) and http://bnp.org.uk/
about-us/mission-statement/.
6 On the BNP’s breakthrough in Burnley, see Rhodes (2009).
7 Video of the interview available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/
4974870.stm.
8 ‘Ladri e accattoni, via tutti i rom’, La Repubblica, 27 May 2007.
9 On this, see ‘The BNP: Defending Britain’s Heritage, Traditions and Way Of Life’
(British National Party 2006b).
10 For a review of this concept, see Roberts (2009).
11 On the transmigration of the ideas of the ND to Russia, see Peunova’s chapter in this
book. For a more detailed discussion of the ND, see Bar-On (2007).
12 Former leader of the youth wing of the BNP who attended the University of Leeds
(UK) at the same time as the authors.
13 Mussolini herself was attacked for her decision to join the PDL. Daniela Santanchè a
former colleague in AN claimed that this decision would make Benito ‘turn over in his
grave’ (Santanchè later also joined the PDL).
14 On the racist approach of the Lega, see Avanza (2010).
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Direct and Indirect Effects’, West European Politics, 29(2): 270–89.
Sigona, N. 2010. ‘“Gypsies Out of Italy!”: Social Exclusion and Racial Discrimination of
Roma and Sinti in Italy’, in A. Mammone and G.A. Veltri (eds), Italy Today. The Sick
Man of Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 143–57.
19
THE TRANSFER OF IDEAS ALONG
A CULTURAL GRADIENT
The influence of the European New Right
on Aleksandr Panarin’s new Eurasianism1
Marina Peunova
Russia is the eastern extreme of a gradation of European Old Regimes running

from the more elaborate and developed to the more simple and brutal. In short,
she is the backward rear guard of Europe at the bottom of the slope of the
West-East cultural gradient.
Cited in Evtuhov (2003: 2)
Introduction
In his controversial work The Soviet Tragedy: a History of Socialism in Russia, distin-
guished cultural historian Martin Malia argued that European ideas migrate east-
ward along a time-contingent gradient of retardation that increases from Western
to Eastern European boundaries. In a departure from the perception of Russia as a
brother of Oriental despotisms promoted by fellow Sovietologists Richard Pipes
and Karl Wittfogel, Malia de-Orientalized and de-Othered Russia by presenting it
as an intrinsic part of the Occident, albeit its backward, illiberal and un-modernized
part.2 Russia, for Malia, embodies and mirrors Europe’s shortcomings and flaws. In
this view, Russia is seen to be Europe’s alter ego, its Mr Hyde, of which Dr Jekyll,
or Europe, is afraid yet is enraptured by it.
If one disregards its flaws,3 Malia’s concept of a ‘cultural gradient’ is of much
relevance to the study of Russian nationalism in a comparative perspective. Similarly
to the fate of European socialism, which, when transferred to Russia, served as the
foundation for Soviet communism, European ultra-nationalist trends became,
during the past two decades, an inspiration for homegrown fantasies about the
great Russian nation. The demise of Marxism-Leninism was followed in Russia
by the inexorable advent of right-wing extremism. In contemporary Russia, ultra-
nationalists take on and push mutated European Romantic notions of organicism
and particularism.
304 Marina Peunova
In this chapter I subject to scrutiny the work of one such Russian intellectual
who came under the spell of European ideas. One of the most recognized thinkers
in Russia of the two post-Soviet decades, Aleksandr Panarin (1940–2003) devel-
oped, towards the end of his life, a cocktail of culturalist, particularist, anti-liberal,
anti-Western, imperialist, anti-globalist, Russian Orthodox and geopolitical ideas that
meet, on Russian soil, under the umbrella of new Eurasianism. A civilizationist –
expansionist and empire-oriented – nationalism,4 new Eurasianism takes its name
from the 1920s–1930s movement of Russian émigré scholars who fled Bolshevik
Russia and found their new home in European capitals. The new Eurasianist
worldview rests on the assumption that Russia is the core of Eurasia, a unique
civilization apart from Europe that geographically corresponds to the territory of
the former USSR and that is defined by ‘common culture’. A multi-ethnic entity,
Eurasia, preach new Eurasianist pundits, is fated to re-become an empire and to
achieve a messianic mission in the world. New Eurasianists advance a Russia-driven
globalizing project that would counter Western-led globalization.
While widely popular in Russia towards the last years of his life, Panarin did not
receive due attention in Western scholarship.5 This lack of in-depth analysis of
Panarin’s ideas is ever more surprising considering the breadth of literature that
focuses on the current guru of new Eurasianism, Aleksandr Dugin.6 While Dugin’s
extreme-rightist leanings, his ‘geopolitical pessimism’ (Tsygankov 2005), Aryanism,
and occultism, as well as his ties with the leaders of the European New Right
(ENR), are not questioned (Laruelle 2006b; Sokolov 2006), the influence of the
ENR on Panarin’s work has remained unnoticed. Due to this lack of analysis of
Panarin’s work through the prism of European right-wing extremism, Panarin’s
views are judged to be more restrained than those of Dugin.
This chapter highlights the transformation of Panarin’s thought towards the end
of the 1990s from a ‘soft’ liberal nationalism to an anti-liberal nationalism of the
extreme right. As I argue, Panarin’s work is heavily indebted to the French Nouvelle
Droite (ND) and his new Eurasianism echoes ENR thought. The ideas of Panarin
stand as a conspicuous example of the transmission of ideas across state boundaries
and the fertilization of Russian nationalism by its European counterpart.
In my definition of the extreme right (as it manifested itself in the post-1985
Russian context), I follow Walter Laqueur, who distinguishes radical right-wing
groups and persons from mere nationalists by adhering to
a simple rule of thumb. A basic difference exists between those who seek the
cause of Russia’s misfortunes entirely in the machinations and intrigues of
foreign and domestic enemies – and the others, who are willing to engage in
introspection, self-criticism, and, where called for, penitence.
(Laqueur 1994 [1993]: xv)
Alan Ingram echoes Laquer’s argumentation but adds a more nuanced touch to it by
noting that Russian ultra-nationalists propagate anti-Semitic and anti-democratic
views as opposed to their moderate counterparts (Ingram 1999: 696). This position
European NR and Panarin’s new Eurasianism 305
is also shared by Stephen Shenfield, who notes that representatives of the Russian
extreme right believe that Russia should follow her own, particularist, path of
development and nourish expansionist hopes to recreate a Russian empire, whereas
moderate nationalists adhere to pluralism and universal human rights and accept the
dissolution of the USSR as a fait accompli (Shenfield 2001: 50).
The European New Right and its reception in Russia

A French intellectual, Alain de Benoist first used the term ‘New Right’ in the 1960s
in an attempt to disassociate his position from the ‘old’ right. Presented as a rein-
vigorated rightist movement, the New Right gained supporters among European
intellectuals, most notably in Belgium, Germany and Italy. By the 1980s, the ENR
lost its initial allure and was reduced to the margins of intellectual life in Europe.
New rightist ideas, however, continue to influence extreme right-wing European
politics.7
A ‘cultural school of thought’ (Duranthon-Crabol 1988a) with multiple gravity
poles, the ENR has inspired a storm of heated theoretical debates.8 Academic
swords mainly cross around the question of whether the New Right is the heir of
classical fascism (1919–45), with an increasing number of authors accepting Roger
Griffin’s definition of generic fascism as a ‘genus of political ideology whose mythic
core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism’
(Griffin 1993: 26). These scholars assess a wide spectrum of culturalist, ethnocentric,
racist and supra-nationalist movements including the ENR through the prism of neo-
fascism, and point out that fascism reproduces in different socio-historical settings.
Members of the ENR are ‘ideological entrepreneurs’:9 journalists, philosophers,
economists and autodidacts that work towards creating an anti-liberal and anti-
egalitarian ideology.10 Their overruling goal is to attain Gramscian cultural hegem-
ony: in their pursuit of power over minds, they reject parliamentary politics and
resort to metapolitics instead. Understandably, these pundits deny the accusation of
fascism, preferring to present their position as a response to the challenges posed by
the new left, not the old right.11 By dressing in politically correct clothes, the ENR
intellectuals render their arguments more appealing to post-Second World War
audiences wary of the gruesome outcomes of fascism.
The ENR’s defensive rhetoric, however, falls short of redemption if one exam-
ines closely their texts. In their numerous publications, ENR authors repackage and
reinvigorate the main premises of the old right, but take their discourse ‘in such
idiosyncratic directions away from any discernible revolutionary position that their
fascist expectations of rebirth seem to have melted into a diffuse cultural pessimism
about the present world order’ (Griffin 2000c: 170). Despite its innocent mask, the
ENR represents a real threat to the liberal democratic order of multi-ethnic societies.
A few recurrent core ideas permeate the works of ENR intellectuals. They warn
of modern Europe’s decadence as it ‘has entered the night of its decline’ (Faye
1985: 15) and hope that a regenerating palingenesis that rests on a return to
authentic European traditions and spirituality would be a panacea for the crisis
306 Marina Peunova
(Duranthon-Crabol 1988b); they argue that local cultures and regions have ‘the
right to difference’ (le droit à la différence) and call for the preservation of a way of life
of organic local communities against globalization that brings, in their view, uni-
formity; they promote a pan-European identity for the inhabitants of the ‘European
empire of the regions’ (Faye 1985: 13, 34). According to the author of the most
comprehensive history of the ENR, Tamir Bar-On, the notion of the homogene-
ous pan-European empire is at the core of the ND’s Weltanschauung (Bar-On 2008).
The federation of homogeneous ‘ethnies’ propagated by ENR thinkers would be
based on what Martin Lee calls ‘cultural ethnopluralism’ (Lee 1997) or, as Pierre-
André Taguieff (1990) puts it, the ‘new cultural racism’.
Like their European counterparts, Russian proponents of the New Right are
inspired by traditionalism and a call for the return to Russian national values and
spiritual foundations. They take as a template European traditionalism as it is
used in the discourse of the ENR, but appeal to Russian traditions and religiosity
instead. European traditionalism struck the imagination of Russian intellectuals in
the 1960s with translations of Julius Evola, René Guenon, Titus Burckhardt,
Frithjof Schuon and other traditionalist authors whose works became available to
members of the dissident Iuzhin Circle, which congregated in the apartment of a
dissident writer, Iurii Mamleev. After Mamleev’s emigration to the United States
(forced by the KGB),12 another occultist writer and philosopher, Evgenii Golovin,
became the new leader of the circle. He later formed a clandestine organization
Chernyi Orden SS (Black Order SS), which included the nascent new Eurasianists
Dugin and Geidar Dzhemal’ as members (Dunlop 2004: 41). While traditionalism
might have prepared the ground, it was not until the late 1980s–1990s that ENR
ideas reached the peak of their popularity in Russia, and it was then that these ideas
began fertilizing newly resurrected Eurasianism.13
Similarly to their European confederates, Russian proponents of the New Right
aim primarily to attain cultural, not political, hegemony. After his initial – and
failed – flirtations with politics during the 1990s,14 Dugin stated that his goal is ‘not
to achieve political power, nor to fight for power, but to fight for influence on it’
(Dugin 2001). Despite this seemingly apolitical position, some of the main premises
of new Eurasianism have gradually transformed, during Vladimir Putin’s second
term (2003–8), from an intellectual epidemic spread across separated groupuscules
of intellectuals into generally accepted postulates, the traces of which are found in
Political Parties’ programmes and government statements.15 A number of promi-
nent politicians are members of the Mezhdunarodnoe Evrazii’skoe Dvizhenie
(International Eurasian Movement) (2001) headed by Dugin.16
Panarin’s ‘translation’ of Nouvelle Droite ideas

Panarin’s stratospheric ascendance to the academic Olympus and the popularity
that he attained in the public sphere as a maître-penseur of new Eurasianism is all the
more striking considering that his name was completely unknown not only in
the West but also in Russia until the mid-1980s. Unable to pursue a scholarly
vocation at Moscow State University (MSU) due to his dissenting views during the
Soviet era,17 nor to publish, Panarin was relegated to minor teaching institutions
with dubious philosophy departments where he stagnated for two decades prior to
perestroika. Panarin resurfaced only in 1984, when he was invited to accept a post at
the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences. During the next two dec-
ades, until his sudden death in 2003, Panarin became something of a celebrity and
had many followers among his students. He became Professor and Chair of the
Department of Political Science at MSU. He proved to be a powerful speaker and
his lectures, which attracted large crowds, were audiotaped. He frequently appeared
on television. A prolific writer, he produced a mountain of publications, of both
academic and publicist nature.
While Panarin, unlike Dugin, did not belong to the traditionalist circle headed
by Mamleev and then Golovin during the Soviet era, his position was informed by
ND thought, of which he could probably be considered one of the best specialists
in late Soviet Russia. Many of the conclusions that Panarin reached in his first
published works were carried throughout his later publications. Thus, already in
his early (1980–91) articles and two monographs, Stil’ ‘Retro’ v ideologii i politike
(kriticheskie ocherki frantsuzskogo neokonservatizma) [The ‘Retro’ Style in Ideology and
Politics (Critical Essays on French Neoconservatism)] (1989) and Sovremennyi tsivilizat-
sionnyi protsess i fenomen neokonservatizma [The Contemporary Civilizationist Process and
the Phenomenon of Neoconservatism] (1991), Panarin writes approvingly of the ND’s
culturalism and traditionalism while, at the same time, criticizing the New Right
for its anti-liberal and hierarchical stance.
Interestingly, Panarin started as a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalization
reforms and his views during perestroika were similar to those of the members of the
Club de l’Horloge, composed of dissenting ND intellectuals who broke with de
Benoist and the main ND think tank, the Research and Study Group on European
Culture (GRECE). The Club de l’Horloge members embraced ‘liberal nationalism’
(Taguieff 1993: 17) that combined economic ideas of liberty with views on culture-
bound national identity. It is only in response to the dissolution of the USSR and the
social havoc, disintegration of the state, and overall spiritual and ideological crisis that
overshadowed Russia during the Boris Yeltsin years that Panarin moved from his
initial support of liberalism to rejecting it altogether and deeming liberalism unsuit-
able for Russia. As he changed his credo from liberalism to ultra-nationalism towards
the end of the 1990s, Panarin’s views have come to resemble those of the first gen-
eration of the ND represented by de Benoist and the initial GRECE members.
Panarin eventually appropriated some of the major building blocks of the discourse
of the ND intellectuals as a means to create his anti-liberal new Eurasianist edifice.
What might seem a perplexing change of heart on the part of Panarin is in fact
paradigmatic of the situation of the Russian intellectual scene during the 1990s. In
many ways, Panarin’s metamorphosis was similar to that of a number of other
Russian intellectuals who became disillusioned with Yeltsin’s neoliberal reforms
and who viewed the separatist ethnic strife that unravelled in Russia and other
former Soviet republics as proof that the disintegration of the Soviet empire was a
308 Marina Peunova
tragic mistake. Panarin, however, not only ceded his pro-democratic stance (as was
the case with many other intellectuals), but radically shifted to the right: he began
accusing the West, Jews (Panarin 2003a: 253–56, 529), and Russian pro-liberal
Westernizers (whom he called the ‘Chicago boys’ and ‘the fifth column of the
West’) for the destruction of Russia during the Yeltsin era (Panarin 1999b: 76).
Panarin’s lamentations became increasingly paranoid towards the end of his life
when such events as the 1999 NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia and the
perceived Western support of the Chechen separatist struggle fuelled his suspicions
and conspiracy theories about the US’s role in the demise of his country.
In his growing extreme nationalism Panarin found inspiration in arguments of
the ND, which he propagated at times explicitly, at times obliquely. Echoing de
Benoist, Panarin deemed liberal democracy to be a ‘construction based on a con-
sumerist-hedonistic utopia of the world’ and advocated ‘organic democracy’ instead
(Panarin 2003a: 147). He agreed with de Benoist’s claim that the key dividing line
lies between those who promote a conception of a uni-dimensional world and
those who stand for ‘ethnopluralism’ based on the diversity of cultures, between
those who defend universal human rights of individuals and those who give prec-
edence to the rights and duties of peoples (de Benoist 1986: 17). Most importantly,
Panarin was drawn to the ND’s treatment of culture as ‘a special organizing factor
of human existence, the belittling of which is always felt as a loss of the meaning of
life’ (Panarin 1989: 157). He believed that cultural differences are a ‘vitally indis-
pensable reserve of mankind’ (Panarin 1999a: 173). Similarly to de Benoist’s argu-
ments against homogenization, Panarin advocated a nation’s ‘right to be different’
(Panarin 1991: 4). In the ND vein, he viewed cultures as closed, impermeable enti-
ties that need to maintain their specificity and uniqueness (samobytnost’) as they
serve as the foundation of national consciousness (natsional’noe samosoznanie). In his
later writings, Panarin presented cross-fertilization between cultures as dangerous
and called for cultural autarchy.
Panarin was as careful as the ND authors to clear his ideas of racist undertones,
and to replace the category of biology with that of culture, which rendered his
discourse, like that of the ND intellectuals, culturally racist nevertheless, as he
divided the world into non-malleable, culturally defined groups to which he
ascribed certain ingrained psychological characteristics that bound these groups to
certain beliefs and actions.
Panarin’s regionalism resonates with the ND’s pan-European regionalism and de
Benoist’s dreams of a ‘Europe of a Hundred Flags’ or a Europe of a multitude of
‘homogenous communities’ (Bar-On 2008). Akin to the ND’s praise of local tradi-
tions (de Benoist and la Commission ‘Traditions et Communauté’ 1982), Panarin
backed the reinvigoration of the local cultures and folklore of small Russian towns.
In proposing to restore a Eurasian empire by uniting the CIS countries into a new
federation, he advocates the replacement of ‘national republics’ (the status previ-
ously held by the countries of the former Soviet Union during the Soviet period)
with ‘regions’ that would be based not on arbitrarily drawn borders but on organic,
cultural specificities (Panarin 1994: 160).
A Russian-style traditionalist, Panarin came to share the ND’s views on the

dehumanization of life as the price of modernity, the primacy of culture over eco-
nomics, and the preservation of national cultural heritage against US-induced
commercialization. New Eurasianism, as promoted by Panarin, is analogous with
the ND in its anti-globalist stance, as both perceive globalization as a deconstruc-
tion of sovereign nation-states and the disappearance of cultural diversity (Panarin
1999c, 2002, 2003b).
The Russian nation, as envisioned by Panarin, brings together the Russian
people, not as a civic but as an organic community. This ‘natural’ formation is a
collectivity held together by a common culture that was formed through the com-
plex process of interaction between geography, climate and history. It is not the
state, nor the intelligentsia, but the Russian people (narod) that is ‘the source of
material and spiritual wealth, the carrier of main values’ (Panarin 1999b: 102).
Narod is thus a guardian of ‘collective’ consciousness, and narodnost’ is coterminous
in Panarin’s thought with collectivism and communality (obshchinnost’), as juxta-
posed to Occidental individualism (Panarin 2003a: 153). Panarin conceptualized
Russia as the core of Eurasia, a civilization apart from both Europe and Asia, but
one that has more affinity with Asia than with decadent Europe and the even more
decadent US. A Eurasian civilization from Panarin’s dreams is defined by common
culture and corresponds to the borders of the former Soviet Union. As a unique
multi-ethnic entity, Eurasia, in Panarin’s view, is fated to be an empire and to
achieve a messianic mission in the world.
The ND ideas on a European ‘spiritual empire of the regions’ and on Europe’s
rapprochement with the Third World were of particular interest to Panarin (Ilin
and Panarin 1994: 132). In the 1960s–1970s, de Benoist, Guillaume Faye and other
ND intellectuals advocated Europe’s alliance with Third World countries: a unified
Europe fortified by such a union with the developing world would be strong
enough to stand up to the US and the USSR, thus fostering a multi-polar world
that would bring to an end Cold War bipolarity (Faye 1985: 103–18; de Benoist
1986). Panarin argued that since Russia was always an empire, it should remain an
empire and reject futile efforts to become a nation-state. Panarin’s Eurasian empire
that would constitute a part of a continental axis of power and counter the Atlanticist
domination of the world is reminiscent of the European empire envisioned by the
ND authors.
Both Panarin and proponents of the ND are nostalgic for the colonial/imperial
past of Russia and France respectively, their nostalgia translating into dreams of rap-
prochement with the former Soviet Republics and the Third World respectively.
Both Russian and French discourses in focus stem from the feeling of resentment –
of the dissolution of the USSR in Panarin’s case and of the decolonization of
Algeria in the ND case. Panarin’s views on Russia’s role in its neighbourhood, the
former Soviet Union, are as unoriginal as they are utopian. Panarin’s fantasia,
‘Eurasia’, thus repeats an age-old narrative on the civilizing mission by the benevo-
lent ‘significant’ nation over ‘less significant’ communities. According to Panarin,
Russia should turn its Eurasianist, autarchic and protectionist face towards the
310 Marina Peunova
Occident and its ‘civilizing’ face towards the neighbouring countries that consti-
tute, in Panarin’s view, Russia’s ‘internal Orient’ (vnutrennii Vostok). Panarin thus
accused the Occident of being a colonizer of Russia while at the same time calling
on Russia to return to its role as colonizer of its neighbours. His otherwise anti-
Occidentalist stance thus mimics the very Eurocentrism that he so vehemently
rejects.
There is also an affinity between the ND’s and Panarin’s anti-Americanism.
Comparable to the ruminations of the ND, Panarin brought forward in one of his
textbooks, approved by the Ministry of Higher Education and still widely read at
Russian universities, the concept of the ‘Protestant North’, which he called the
‘referent group’ for the Occident, and which, in its entirety, is a subject of an
‘aggressive political influence of Americanism, a culture of hedonistic individual-
ism, hostile to certain collectivist values, to collectivist heroism and [the] asceticism’
of Russia (Ilin and Panarin 1994: 114). If the ND authors criticized the US-
imposed post-Second World War order, Panarin held American ‘hedonistic indi-
vidualism’ and ‘destructive demoralization’ responsible for Russia’s ills (Ilin and
Panarin 1994: 116). As a less developed society, Russia, for Panarin, will always be
subject to this ‘demoralization’ if it pursues open contacts with the Occident.
Panarin, therefore, believed that the Russian culture, as a culture recipient, can
only maintain its identity if it resorts to a cultural autarchy vis-à-vis a culture donor,
the US (Ilin and Panarin 1994: 117). Panarin presented the Western discourse on
human rights as a US-inspired sham that covers ‘real’ American interests: ‘as the
only superpower, the US uses this discourse to achieve world dominance and to
justify its interference in internal matters of other countries including Russia, thus
breaching its sovereignty’ (Panarin 1999a: 180). Similarly, Faye conceived human
rights to be an ‘American ideology’, a mercantilist ‘machine of war against political
sovereignties’ imposed on Europe and the rest of the world that promotes an
American idea of democracy and liberalism (Faye 1985: 77–78).
Panarin’s thought was also heavily influenced by the ND’s musings on Indo-
European heritage conceptualized by the latter as being the groundstone of
European culture and civilization (de Benoist 1978: 32–37). Panarin’s numerous
works included references to the hierarchical separation of ancient societies into
‘pagan priests’, ‘warriors’ and ‘plowmen’, these myths employed in such a way as to
demonstrate their apparent relevance for the analysis of the contemporary world
(Ilin and Panarin 1994: 208–9). Based on this mythic notion of Indo-Europeanism,
Panarin, for instance, suggested that Russia should develop closer ties with Iran and
fantasized about a successful use of ‘all three continental ideas – Southern, Eastern
and Indo-European’, the latter allowing Russia ‘to reconstruct its Europeanism, its
Petrine heritage … [and] to contribute to the formation of great Russia – the avant-
gard of Eurasia’ (Panarin 1999c: 269–70). The philosopher, however, never resolved
the contradiction between his Gorbachev-era pro-Europeanism and enthusiastic
calls for a dialogue of cultures and civilizations, whereby he considered Russia to
be an intrinsic part of Europe, indebted to the European spirit of Enlightenment,
with his later warring anti-Occidentalism and particularism.
As seen from the above, Panarin’s views were indebted to a very significant
degree to those of the proponents of the ND. At the same time, the two differ on
a number of very important accounts. De Benoist and other ND authors are repre-
sentatives of a non-Catholic, anti-Christian right who impugn Christianity for cor-
rupting the true European essence and extol neo-paganism as the very foundation
of ‘authentic’ European culture.18 In the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche, Evola and
Guenon, the neo-paganism of de Benoist and other ND authors is embedded in the
illusions of Indo-European heritage, founded on the ‘re-enchantment’ of the world,
a concept of ‘a man as a Demiurg’, a ‘master and a creator of his destiny’. Conversely,
Panarin’s civilizationist nationalism is founded on Orthodox Christianity, which
he sees as the core of Russian culture and a ‘Russian type of consciousness …
characterised by religious-Manichean radicalism’ (Ilin and Panarin 1994: 127).
The Eurasian empire is to be held together by a distinct idea, Christian Orthodoxy:
‘[t]he absence of such an idea deforms and disorients people’s consciousness in
the former Soviet Union’ (Ilin and Panarin 1994: 132). Panarin accuses the
Russian elite of being an unfit guardian of the civilizational heritage of Eurasia (Ilin
and Panarin 1994: 168). In his earlier works still free of his later geopolitical
Armageddonism, Panarin writes that the role of the Church will supplant that of
geopolitical military control in Eurasia. In multi-ethnic civilizations, as opposed to
nation-states, the role of religions is even more important, according to Panarin, in
gluing the structure together (Panarin 1999b: 130). In short, Panarin believed that
unless they abandon their neo-pagan atheism and ‘return to religion (as manifested
by the great religious traditions embraced by Russia, Iran, and India)’, the propo-
nents of the ND have no political future (Panarin 1999c: 268–69).
The most obtuse discrepancy between the ND’s and Panarin’s ideas is their
respective perception of the Muslim minorities in Europe and Russia. Peculiarly,
Panarin failed to acknowledge that in a Europe envisioned by French New Rightists
that he so studiously tried to emulate, there is no place for non-Europeans, and
especially no place for Muslims, whereas the concept of ‘Eurasia’ rests on a marriage
of Orthodox Christianity and Islam. This marriage is, however, an illusion, as Islam
takes a backseat in Panarin’s Eurasia, and Orthodox Christianity assumes a primary,
civilizing, role.
Conclusion
From 1985 to 2003, Panarin evolved from being a liberal nationalist to embracing
apocalyptic geopolitical visions of the war between ‘Occidental’ and ‘Eurasian’
worlds. He came to reject his earlier Europeanism and to argue Russia’s cultural
uniqueness and that it did not belong within Europe. He created images of Russian
and Occidental ‘civilizations’, each of which he believed to be endowed with a set
of traditions and non-malleable values determined by an unalterable ‘cultural code’.
In his works he drew an impermeable mental border between Russian and Western
‘civilizations’, whereby the West assumes once again the role of the Other against
which Russian ‘differentness’ is highlighted and Russian national identity is
312 Marina Peunova
constructed and measured. Panarin enticed acute cultural relativism by asserting

that the ‘West’ and Russia share neither the same culture nor the same values. He
now argued that ‘Occidental’ values and cultural practices are ethnocentric and
hence unfit to set an example for Russia.
Yet at the same time, Panarin’s neo-Eurasianism stands as a striking example of
the reflection and permutation of European culture on the Russian intellectual
landscape. In his writings, he emulated European-bred ideas of Nouvelle Droite
intellectuals. Situating Panarin within the context of the European New Right, and
viewing his thought as an instance of the diffusion of European ideas onto Russian
soil opens new venues for understanding the prominence of ultra-nationalism in
Russia. Like other ideological currents, the Russian extreme right carries a heavy
weight of European ideas. For all its vehement anti-Westernism and attempts
at self-definition through juxtaposition with Europe, Russian ultra-nationalist
discourse is European at its core as it is fertilized by the European extreme
right’s grim prophecies of the decline of the West and calls for its rebirth. While
rejecting European Enlightenment, Russian ultra-nationalists continue to be greatly
affected by Western intellectual currents which, when translated into Russian
discourses, assume, more often than not, distorted forms. The very rethinking
of modernity is done in Russia through emulating European extreme-rightist, as
well as postmodernist, traditions. The parallels between the European New Right
and Panarin’s new Eurasianism are an instance of an eastward transmission of
European ideas along the cultural gradient and of the Europeanization of Russian
ultra-nationalism.
Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2008 World Convention of
the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) on 12 April 2007 (Columbia
University, New York). The author is grateful to the Académie suisse des sciences
humaines et sociales (Bern, Switzerland) for the travel grant that made attendance at the
ASN Convention possible.
2 Pipes condescendingly notes that
the notions of law and universal human rights lack deep roots in the consciousness
of the Russian people. A Westerner is prone to regard these concepts as innate to
man and their absence as intolerable deprivation. In reality, they are the product of a
unique cultural tradition that originated in Stoic philosophy and was transmitted to
the West through Roman jurisprudence … In the course of its historical evolution,
Russia has failed to come within the orbit of classical influence … The average
Russian … lacks a consciousness of legality.
See Pipes (1984: 166). See also Wittfogel (1957). For an insightful account of the Russia-
as-Orient trend within Sovietology, see von Hagen (2004).
3 Malia’s universalistic musings on the prescribed ascendance and reception of ‘good’
universalistic European ideas and practices of market and democracy arouse serious
reservations, and his definitions of ‘east’ and ‘west’ are hazy and coloured by Cold
War-era confrontation.
4 To my knowledge, Marlène Laruelle was the first to introduce the term ‘civilizationist
nationalism’, which was adopted by other scholars including Emil Pain. See Laruelle
(2007) and Pain (2007: 53).
5 The exceptions to the paucity of works on Panarin are Laruelle (2006a, 2007), Bazhanov
(1999) and Pursiainen (1998).
6 See, for instance, Dunlop (2004), Umland (2007), Shlapentokh (2007) and Shekhovtsov
(2008).
7 For a great overview of the ENR, see Bar-On (2007). See also two works by the
converts to the New Right: Sunic (1990) and O’Meara (2004).
8 On these debates, see Griffin (2000a). For a critique of this position, see Gregor (2006).
See also Taguieff (1994) who argues that with the beginning of the publication of the
journal Krizis in 1988 de Benoist broke irrevocably with neo-fascism and the extreme
right.
9 Gary Stark applies this poignant term to German Conservative revolutionaries. See Stark
(1981).
10 For the ND critique of liberalism, see de Benoist (1979: 84–89). On the ND’s anti-
egalitarian discourse, see Baccou and Le Club de l’Horloge (1981). See also de Benoist
(1978: 24).
11 Griffin and others argue that the New Right aims to render the Old Right more
respectable: see Griffin (2000b). Conversely, others believe that the New Right is a
cultural reaction to the challenges identified by the new left in the 1960s: for this view,
see Minkenberg (1997).
12 Mamleev regained Russian citizenship in 1991. He remains one of the most dedicated
new Eurasianists affiliated with Dugin’s International Eurasian Movement. He also gives
lectures at New University created in 1998 by Dugin.
13 On the Russian New Right, see Frumkin (2002), Umland (1997, 2002) and Sokolov
(2006).
14 Dugin made unsuccessful moves to enter mainstream politics by first allying with the
head of the Russian Communist Party Gennadii Ziuganov and later with the National-
Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov. These alliances proved to be political failures. Dugin
reached his glory days only in 1997 with the publication of his Foundations of Geopolitics,
and especially a year later, when he became an adviser to the Duma Chairman, Gennadii’
Seleznev.
15 Traces of new Eurasianism are found in the discourse on sovereign democracy introduced
by Vladimir Putin’s ideologist,Vladislav Surkov. See Surkov (2006).
16 These include the former Minister of Culture Aleksandr Sokolov; the Chairman of
the Federation’s Council’s International Relations Committee Mikhail Margelov; the
Vice-Speaker of the Federation Council Aleksandr Torshin; former adviser to Vladimir
Putin Aslanbek Aslakhanov; former adviser to President Yeltsin and an Ambassador to
Denmark Dmitrii Riurikov; former Head of the Ministry of Justice Department on
Political Parties and Social Organizations Aleksei Zhafiarov; President of South Ossetia
Eduard Kokoiti; former Deputy Foreign Minister and current Ambassador to Latvia
Viktor Kaliuzhnii; and Yakutiia (Sakha) Minister of Culture and Rector of the Arctic
State Institute of Culture and Art Andrei Borisov. Many prominent personalities
were, or still are, associated with Dugin’s movement, including the President of the
National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters Eduard Sagalaev; Odnako
(However) TV show host and Editor-in-Chief of the weekly political journal Profil’
(Profile) Mikhail Leont’ev; Head of the Territorial Directorate’s State Committee for
Property responsible for Moscow State University Zeidula Iuzbekov; Chief Mufti of the
Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Russia and European Countries of the CIS Talgat
Tadzhuddin; Head of the RF Council of Ambassadors and President of the Russian-
Turkish Friendship Society ‘Rutam’ Al’bert Chernyshov; Editor-in-Chief of the Russian
army newspaper Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star) Nikolai Efimov; President of the consulting
firm Neokon and founder of the website Worldcrisis.ru Mikhail Khazin; Academician
of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Vice-President of the Society of Georgians of
Russia Severian Zagarishvili; and Head of the Congress of the Peoples of the Northern
Caucasus and Secretary for National Issues of the Union of Writers of Russia Brontoi
Bediurov. The Eurasian movement also gained supporters in the Commonwealth of
314 Marina Peunova
Independent States (CIS) countries. Such people as Rector of the Lev Gumilev Eurasian
National University of Astana (Kazakhstan) Sarsyngali Abdymanapov; Ambassador of the
Republic of Kyrgyzstan to Russia and Head of the Council of Directors of Postnoff Ltd
Apas Dzhumagulov; Director of the Academy of Management attached to the Office
of the President of Belarus and Director of the Research Institute on the Theory and
Practice of Government of the Republic of Belarus Evgenii Matusevich; Rector of the
Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University of Bishkek Vladimir Nifad’ev; Director of the Akhmad
Donish Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Tajik Academy of
Sciences Rakhim Masov; Rector of the Makhambet Utemisov Western Kazakhstani
State University of Uralsk Tuiakbai Ryzbekov; and the Leader of the Progressive Socialist
Party of Ukraine Nataliia Vitrenko are all members of the movement which, surprisingly,
also attracts followers outside the CIS. The currently imprisoned head of the İşçi Partisi
(Labour Party) of Turkey Doğu Perinçek; retired French Air Force General and leader
of the Forum for France Pierre-Marie Gallois; Director of the Center for Central Asian
and Caucasian Studies at Luleå, Sweden, and Editor-in-Chief of the scholarly journal
Central Asia and the Caucasus Murad Esenov; Lecturer of the Faculty of Policy Studies
of Iwate Prefectural University, Japan, Iukiko Kuroiwa; conspirologist and author of the
book Vladimir Poutine et l’Eurasie Jean Parvulesco; Editor-in-Chief of the Milano journal
Eurasia: Rivista di Studi Geopolitici Tiberio Graziani; Head of the Congress of Serbs of
Eurasia (KSEA) Mila Alečković-Nikolić; and retired General and former functionary
of the Serbian Radical Party Božidar Delić are all associated, one way or another, with
Dugin. I am grateful to Andreas Umland for compiling this impressive list of Eurasianist
personalities. See Umland (2009: 13–17).
17 Vitalii’ Ia. Pashchenko, personal conversation, October 2006, Moscow. Natalia Zarubina,
personal conversation, May 2008. See also Zarubina (2005: 26).
18 De Benoist (1990). See also de Benoist (1981).
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20
TRANS-EUROPEAN TRENDS
IN RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM
Michael Whine
Introduction
This chapter examines the effects that the easing of Europe’s borders and the devel-
opment of information and communications technologies are having on the outlook
and activities of right-wing extremists. It will argue that these developments are the
new ‘enablers’ allowing white supremacists and neo-Nazis to connect and move
closer to the cooperation that earlier extremists argued for, but failed to accomplish.
Of course right-wing extremists are not the only political activists who benefit.The
extreme left has always been internationalist, and anti-globalization protestors com-
municated and organized across borders to stage demonstrations and riots in
Gothenburg (2000), Genoa (2001) and elsewhere. The extreme right, however,
has not, and attempts to create enduring international collaboration have been less
successful.
This chapter’s focus is on white supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and the youth
cultures they frequently recruit from, rather than parties, although there may be
links between them. Their lifestyles are a consequence of easier movement and the
adoption of contemporary cultures, most notably music and clothing. A trend
towards focused terrorist violence is also emerging.
European collaboration
In 1997, Leonard Weinberg cautioned that the danger posed by the extreme right
should not be minimized, notwithstanding its lack of enduring political success in
Western Europe. He noted its dynamism and suggested that extremists’ exploita-
tion of popular nationalist sentiment is limited and declining, and their concerns
now focus on the presence of large numbers of non-European immigrants whose
presence is perceived to be an economic and cultural threat. He observed that
318 Michael Whine
‘in some cases the rightists depict themselves as the defenders of European civiliza-
tion now threatened by Ottoman or Moorish invaders’. He also observed the
growing animus toward the United States: ‘Not uncommonly these extreme right-
ists use the United States as a negative reference point. It is precisely America’s
evolving multiculturalism that they wish to avoid for their own countries’ (Weinberg
1997: 279).
In 1995, Peter Merkl suggested that the contemporary extreme right in Europe
is largely new, and should be investigated accordingly. He noted the readiness with
which many young right-wing activists, and even politically unconnected skinhead
gangs and soccer hooligans, reached for the old Nazi or fascist labels and utilized
their flags and symbols while representing a new entity. Young people, particularly
in post-Communist states, have grown up in a state of confusion amid collapsing
political and social values.They have therefore eagerly seized on ready-made images
of ethnic identity, especially in an extreme form (Merkl 1997: 23).
Anthony Smith suggested that it is the ethnic vision that now underpins Europe’s
nationalisms. He noted that ethnicity fills up the ‘nationalist concept space’ in a
manner that leaves little room for other looser conceptions or discourse of the
nation. The idea that nations may be plural rather than culturally homogeneous still
makes little headway among Europe’s extreme right. It is the French concept of
ethnie that predominates with its basis in common racial, cultural, religious and
historical experience (Smith 1995: 23). This leaves no room for new immigrants,
particularly those who openly preserve their religion and culture.
We therefore see an emerging pan-European extreme-right identity, which
claims to be based on common European histories, identities and cultures in reac-
tion to the increasing presence of new migrants and which is at times attracted
to and influenced by the American extreme right, but also repelled by American
cultural and economic hegemony.
The extreme right failed to establish trans-European institutions before the War.
Italian and British fascists attended an International Conference of Fascist Parties in
1932, and representatives from France, Norway and Ireland attended the 1934
Fascist International Congress in Montreux (Bar-On 2003: 233). During the
Spanish Civil War, British and other European sympathizers joined the Friends of
National Spain, and members of the Irish Blue Shirt Movement joined the Spanish
Foreign Legion to fight against the Republic (Keene 2001: 2–7). But nothing
enduring was created and the Axis alliance was primarily a strategic one.
Further attempts to collaborate were made after 1945 when former Nazis and
neo-Nazis sought to build a new Europe. Unlike the political unity sought by
Western powers, theirs was a unity based on pan-Europeanism in the face of an
ethnic, rather than a strategic threat. For a few, the idea of uniting with the Soviet
Union against China also proved attractive. Latterly the preoccupation has been
to unify against the US and globalizing influences and to remove immigrant
(particularly Muslim) communities.
European collaboration among extreme-right groups after the Second World
War was particularly driven by the concern to unite against the nationalisms that
Trans-European extreme-right trends 319
had long torn it apart, and as a reaction to the mounting threat from the Soviet
Union. Its proponents were former Nazis and their sympathizers. Among them was
Francis Parker Yockey, the American lawyer seconded to the war crimes trials
who fled to Ireland after he openly sympathized with those he was prosecuting.
He argued in Imperium that the age of narrow nationalism was dead and that the
organic development of a new Europe was necessary to save Western civilization.
He wrote that:
This is addressed to all Europe, and in particular to the culture bearing stra-
tum of Europe. It summons Europe to a world-historical struggle of two
centuries’ duration. Europe will partake in this struggle either as a participant
or as the booty for marauding powers from without. If it is to act, and not
merely suffer in this series of gigantic wars, it must be integrated and there is
only one way this can occur.
(Yockey 1948)
In 1947 Yockey joined Sir Oswald Mosley’s attempt to build a covert European
network, but broke away in 1949 to establish the European Liberation Front (ELF)
with the aim of building an authoritarian united European state. Over the next
three years he travelled between Europe and America, but the differences among
the groups, and their often contradictory aims, led him to abandon the effort and
to move to Egypt in 1953 where he joined forces briefly with former SS Colonel
Otto Skorzeny and former Nazi Major General Ernst Otto Remer (Lee 1997: 87–97).
Whereas the ELF sought a pan-European front of Western states, Skorzeny and
other former Nazi officials strove to build links with the Arab world and Latin
America. He influenced the formation and development of the Spanish Circle of
Friends of Europe (CEDADE, Círculo Español de Amigos de Europa), the neo-
Nazi group that continues to host European neo-Nazis at its annual gatherings.The
motivating impetus here was to build a worldwide neo-Nazi international network
together with potential allies in the Arab world, brought together by their shared
hatred of communism and Jews (Lee 1997: 156; Michael 2006).
A third collaborative attempt was initiated by former Belgian Nazi collaborator
Jean Thiriart who established the Jeune Europe movement in the 1960s to unite
European nationalists, but with the realization that the trappings of Nazism had
to be discarded if the young were to be attracted. In particular he advocated a
white Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals but without the US. He forged
an alliance with Adolf von Thadden, the German National Democratic Party
(NDP) leader, and with Juan Perón, the exiled Argentinian dictator, then living in
Madrid. Both urged the militarization of the white struggle against communism
and non-European migration into Europe. Thiriart also incorporated elements
of leftist thinking into his evolving ideology and adopted the Palestinian cause.
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was seen at that time as
the vanguard of the left struggle against US imperialism, and indeed neo-Nazis,
as well as leftists, went to Lebanon and Syria for terrorism training in Palestinian
320 Michael Whine
camps (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1976). Thiriart’s works were also trans-
lated into Russian and influenced the post-war redevelopment of National
Bolshevik ideology that re-emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Whereas the earlier proponents of pan-Europeanism excluded Russia from their
plans, later activists sought to incorporate it. The Danish neo-Nazi, Povl Riis
Knudsen, who succeeded George Lincoln Rockwell in 1967 as leader of the World
Union of National Socialists, wrote after his 1978 visit to Russia that:
The racial consciousness of the Russians, who are the dominant nation in the
Soviet Union, definitely promises a better prospect for the survival of the
Aryan race than the visions of liberal and conservative American politicians
… It is true, of course, that Communism does not support racial principles
in theory – but with Communism theory and practice are very different
things.
(Lee 1997: 167)
By 1983, Remer, who had returned to Germany, began to advocate collabora-

tion with Russia to counter the threat from Asia. He too argued that communism
should be no impediment, and in doing so influenced later generations of neo-Nazi
ideologues seeking a united Europe. This younger generation, however, were also
influenced by the anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism of the emerging new left
(Lee 1997: 209–11).
Latterly it has been the Italian Roberto Fiore of the New Force (Forza Nuova)
and former German NDP leader Udo Voigt who have promoted European and
European–Russian cooperation. In a spring 2008 joint press statement, they praised
former President Putin’s muscular Russian nationalist policies. This followed Fiore’s
invitation to representatives of the Russian extreme right to meet in Rome in
November 2007, to assist in ‘choosing the guidelines of international politics for
the next few years … and the end of American unipolarism and the birth of a
European pole’. Fiore added that ‘for those who have eyes to see, it is clear that it
is in Moscow reside our hopes for a new Europe’ (Bernabei 2008: 3).
Some Russian extreme-right groups promote ties with Europe based on per-
ceived shared racial and cultural identities, and there has been an increasingly appar-
ent ideological transfer from East to West and evidence of national Bolshevist
influences on European groups (Mathyl 2002). They stand in contrast to the
Eurasianism of Aleksander Panarin and Aleksander Dugin. The former rejected
cross-fertilization between Europe and Russia, while the latter additionally seeks
alliances in the Middle East to offset American unipolar domination (Peunova
2008; Stack 2008).
The ‘Ideological Principles’ of the Northern Brotherhood sum up the views of
those seeking ties:
By positioning ourselves as pragmatic defenders of Russian nation interests,

we can’t skip consideration of more general context. And in this context we
are identically determined as white racists … Therefore, in being developed

now world fight of continents, races and civilisations, we support the fight of
white humanity for survival, for the saving of white mankind which is now
under the threat of elimination or dissolution of its identity in the mainstream
of Southern colourful invasion.
(Northern Brotherhood 2007)1
Jaroslav Krejci noted in the early 1990s that extreme-right groups were cultivat-
ing friendly and mutually supportive contacts, as they were becoming racially rather
than ethno-linguistically oriented. In this way he suggested they are now making
common cause:
They therefore pose as determined defenders of the purity of European cul-

ture, a culture the very spirit of which they fail to understand … The new
emerging identities have similar but also different roots to the class and iden-
tification politics that gave rise to Fascism and Nazism. Identity and exclusion
feed on each other, even as social and economic pressures move Europe
towards a more plural type of society.
(Krejci 1995: 17)
The political and class struggles of communists and fascists, the pursuit of strong
totalitarian states and the reaction to mass unemployment is not what now unites
contemporary right-wing extremists. They are motivated more by the negative
economic and political effects of globalization and the prospect of unemployment
brought about by the transfer of economic activity to low-cost producers, reaction
to a US-dominated uniform culture, and the presence of new migrants whose
cultures and religions are seen as alien to Europe.
Despite some diminution of American extreme-right influence, it is worth
recording that some streams maintain a foothold. Christian Identity retains
offshoots in Sweden, Belfast and London, as does the Church of the Creator in
Sweden.2 Two Americans have worked to strengthen transatlantic links. The first
was the late William Pierce, founder of the National Alliance, who encouraged
links with the BNP and NDP, and who told the NDP youth congress in October
1999 that ‘it is essential – not just helpful, but necessary – for genuine nationalist
groups everywhere to increase their degree of collaboration across national borders’
(Pierce 2002, n.d.). The other is former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose
appeal to the American and European right to join together in his booklet Is Russia
the Key to White Survival?, was a product of his visits there and to Ukraine, which
began in 1995 (Duke 2000). These led him to establish groups to encourage trans-
atlantic cooperation, the most recent of which is the European-American Unity
and Rights Organization (EURO) (Anti-Defamation League 2001; Lee 2003).
Changing social and economic conditions and these personal initiatives are
promoting a convergence of right-wing activity and many groups are beginning
to look and sound similar. Merkl noted in 1997 that ‘the new radical right (on both
322 Michael Whine
sides of the Atlantic) voice opposition to the rule of unresponsive Eurocrats in exactly
the same way as the American right voices opposition to the decision makers of
Washington’ and that ‘If a Euro American radical right has not emerged as yet, one
certainly appears on the horizon’ Merkl (1997: 25–29) However, for many European
right-wing extremists the United States is a negative reference point and it is precisely
America’s evolving multiculturalism they wish to avoid for their own countries.
Enabling processes
I now turn to the processes that are enabling collaboration. In previous publica-
tions, I have indicated that elements within the American extreme right had been
the first to use the Internet to enable communication across vast distances, and at
about the same time the German extreme right sought to use it to organize events
and to evade scrutiny by law enforcement. I had also noted that the Internet
enhanced capacity to unify disparate groups advocating violent extremism (Whine
1999, 2000, 2007; BfV 2000).
According to the German security service:
The Internet has become the most important medium of communication

for right wing extremists, who use it to present themselves, make verbal
attacks, carry on internal debates, and to mobilise attendance at their rallies
and demonstrations.
(BfV 2003: 24)
The Dutch Racism and Extremism Monitor notes that:
Many (Internet) forums form collaborative networks, some tighter than

others, often with a hierarchical structure, in which all sorts of activities are
undertaken or initiated, just as in ‘real’ organisations. These activities can be
exclusively digital, but they can also take place in the real world or in a com-
bination of the two.
(van Donselaar and Rodrigues 2006)
In the twenty-first century the static medium of websites is increasingly being

replaced by interactive e-mailing lists, discussion forums and the Web 2.0 social
networks, such as MySpace, Facebook and the YouTube video-sharing site.
Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are now noting that neo-Nazis are increas-
ingly using social networking platforms to infiltrate and recruit the next generation.
Chris Wolf of the American Anti-Defamation League has commented that:
In today’s Web 2.0 world with user generated content, social network sites
like Facebook and MySpace, mobile computing and always-on connectivity,
every aspect of the Internet is being used by extremists of every ilk to
repackage old hatreds and to recruit new haters … The emergence of new
Internet technologies and their adoption by online haters is much more per-
nicious than the static websites most of us have been focussing on over
the years.
(Wolf 2008)
The first interactive extreme-right website was established by the American

Stormfront in 1998, and in 2000, ‘Stormfront Nederland en Vlaanderen’ was estab-
lished to link Dutch and Belgian neo-Nazis and, although it never achieved the
importance of its American originator, it has served as a forum for promoting hate
speech (van Donselaar and Rodrigues 2006). Redwatch and similar sites are the
cause of mounting concern in Europe. They name anti-Nazi opponents and jour-
nalists and publish their home addresses with the implicit expectation of them being
physically attacked as has happened in the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic.3
In Spain, complaints by a human rights organization that one of its leading offi-
cials, and his home address, were listed on the site of the National Alliance again led
to a police investigation, though no charges have been brought to date (Alianza
Nacional 2008). In Russia, similar websites have circulated the names and home
addresses of judges, prosecution service officials and public figures, causing the
General Prosecutor’s office to initiate a criminal investigation into their activity in
March 2008 (SOVA Centre 2008).
Many of these sites are sophisticated, hosted abroad and mirrored elsewhere to
avoid legal sanctions. One US-hosted Russian site, vdesyatku.net, was closed after
complaints, but others, nordrus.org and nordrus.info, for example, are mirrored in
both the US and in Singapore, and are now believed to be working on yet another
fall-back site.4
The second enabling process flowed from the Schengen agreements of 1985 and
1990. These abolished checks at the internal borders of five of the initial signatory
states (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and created
a single external border. Common rules regarding visas, right of asylum and checks
only at external borders were adopted to allow the free movement of persons
within them. A further eight states (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy,
Portugal, Spain and Sweden) signed the agreements between 1990 and 1996. The
UK and Ireland are now also party to some aspects of the agreements (Europa
2009). The net effect of Schengen has been to allow Europeans to travel around,
and to work within, the area without border checks or other restrictions, as the
architects of the agreements planned. Coupled with substantially cheaper travel
costs, Schengen has facilitated trans-European migration and short-term visits in a
way that was inconceivable to previous generations. Fans now think nothing of
crossing Europe to watch a football match or a concert.
Trends
The most obvious manifestations of these currents and enabling processes are: inter-
national gatherings, clothing, music and violence. Pan-European associations also
324 Michael Whine
promote closer contact. One, the European National Front, was founded in 1999,
and named after Yockey’s organization. It claims Bulgarian, Dutch, French,
German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish affiliates and in August
2006 mobilized up to 10,000 supporters for the Deutsche Stimme festival in
Sachsen, Germany (Southgate 1999; European National Front 2006; AIVD 2004).
Meetings to mark historic anniversaries, such as Hitler’s birthday, attract inter-
national participants. The annual August Wunseidel memorial march in Bavaria to
commemorate Rudolf Hess started in 2001 and attracted over 4,500 international
participants in 2004. In 2005 it was banned on the basis that the organizers’ inten-
tion was to glorify Nazism (Klein 2005; Taschel 2007). The annual Dresden march
commemorating the Allied bombing, organized by the German NPD, attracted
over 3,000 in 2005, up to 6,000 in 2008, and thousands were again expected in
2009. Participants include skinheads and neo-Nazis from all over Europe. The
annual December march through the Stockholm suburb of Salem commemorating
the murder of White Power supporter and skinhead Daniel Wretstrom in 2000,
acted both as a unifying point for the Swedish extreme right, and attracted partici-
pants from elsewhere in Europe (The Local 2007). But the numbers of foreign
participants in national manifestations may now be falling because of exclusions by
national law enforcement agencies. However, parade bans in one country can lead
to their transference elsewhere, allowing neighbouring groups to link. German
neo-Nazis marched with the Dutch People’s Union (NVU, Nederlandse Volks-
Unie) through Dutch towns and cities in 2001 and 2002, enabling them to evade a
ban in Germany (AIVD 2001, 2002; van Donselaar and Rodrigues 2006).5
Mass movement from Eastern and Central Europe into the European Union,
however short-lived and temporary, has also encouraged right-wing extremists to
establish liaisons and bases beyond their national boundaries, as happened when
Polish extreme-right groups held meetings in London in 2007 and 2008.
The transnational clothing brands adopted by skinheads and neo-Nazis such
as Lonsdale, Pit Bull and Thor Steinar, promote a common identity within the
extreme right. Groups using these brands, sometimes referred to as ‘Lonsdale youth’
(or Gabbers in the Netherlands), were not initially a target for recruitment by
neo-Nazi groups, in part because of their drug use (van Donselaar 2004; AIVD
2004).6 The German security service describes the relationship between skinheads
and neo-Nazis as an ambivalent one; the immediate attraction for skinheads is a
lifestyle based on action and spontaneous violence, with easy access to drugs and
music. Only rarely did they develop firmly held ideological views or target their
political efforts in any more specific sense. But the picture has changed in recent
years as more have become radicalized and they now constitute an important
recruitment arena (BfV 2003: 41; BfV 2005: 51–53; van Donselaar and Rodrigues
2006). Therefore at a local level, skinhead clothing and music provide a route
into neo-Nazism and a transnational identity. According to a German security
service assessment, they now play ‘an important role in consolidating groups
of right-wing youth willing to use violence’ in the Netherlands, Sweden and
Germany (BfV 2004: 23).
There is no suggestion that the clothing brands’ owners are complicit in the
promotion of right-wing extremism. Their sales strategies, however, clearly recog-
nize potential markets, and rely on accepted neo-Nazi and Norse symbols. For this
reason Mediatex, the German manufacturer of Thor Steinar, successfully resisted a
lawsuit brought by the Norwegian government which sought to ban their promo-
tional use of the Norwegian flag, although the company later decided not to use the
national symbol of Norway (Wroe 2008; Thor Steinar 2007).
The third trend, skinhead or white power music, provides a unifying ideology,
a common language, and a perfect example of globalisation. Developed in 1980s
Britain, White Power music has grown into a multimillion Euro industry, and helps
to fund violent extremist groups. According to Interpol the industry was worth
£3.4 million a year in 1999, and it certainly grew for some years thereafter (White
Pride Worldwide 2001; BfV 2005: 58–69).7 Devin Burghardt has noted that ‘the
music scene has created international ties where there were none, and has inspired
an ideological pan-Aryanism that has broken down the walls between racist groups’
(Burghardt quoted in White Pride Worldwide 2001). The Swedish security service
likewise regards music as ‘one of the most important tools when it comes to spread-
ing the movement’s ideas’ (SAPO 2002; see also Glaser and Pfeiffer 2007). Disks
are recorded in one country, pressed in a second and retailed in a host of others and
concerts attract international audiences. For example, Hammerfest 2000 organized
near Atlanta, NJ by Panzerfaust Records and Resistance Records, drew fans from
Austria, Canada, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain, and bands from the
UK (White Pride Worldwide 2001).
The transnational nature of the production and distribution processes were
revealed in February 2003 when a shipment of inflammatory CDs was seized at
Frankfurt airport. They had been produced by a German neo-Nazi domiciled in
Thailand who had sent them to Sweden for distribution in Germany and elsewhere
(BfV 2003: 46). William Pierce recognized the transnational possibilities of attract-
ing young alienated racists and neo-Nazis, and the money-making potential of
music. In 1999 he purchased the Swedish Nordland Records and merged it with
his successful Resistance Records. During 2000, he sought a business deal with
Hendrik Mobus, a German neo-Nazi. In a radio broadcast on 9 September 2000,
Pierce stated that they had planned to ‘establish new outlets in Europe’ for (Pierce’s)
records and were discussing ‘the role of music in our overall effort’. Their grand
plans, however, were never properly realized and Pierce died shortly thereafter
(White Pride Worldwide 2001).
The progenitor of the White Power music scene, Blood and Honour (B&H),
founded by the late Ian Stewart Donaldson in the late 1980s, has grown from its
UK origins into a trans-European and transatlantic movement with offshoots in
the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, the UK and the US (Lowles 2001). Recent
internal schisms, however, have now resulted in two B&H international associa-
tions: one aligned to the traditional skinhead network; the other closely aligned
to the political and more extreme Combat 18, Terrormachine and the Racial
Volunteer Force (RVF). Although their activities take place in a mostly non-political
326 Michael Whine
twilight zone, some adherents moved into overt political activity in spring 2006,
when Dutch and German members attempted to lay a wreath at the German mili-
tary cemetery in Ysselsteyn near Limburg, prior to a concert organized by B&H
Flanders. Arrests of Belgian B&H members in the same year reportedly averted a
planned terrorist attack (Renard 2008; see also AIVD 2006: 53).
According to Merkl,
There is little doubt that the vast majority of new recruits to the various
European radical right groups is male, lower class and very young.
(Merkl 1997: 36)
In the case of East Germany, the extreme youth of many extreme-right activists
makes them more vulnerable to anti-foreigner rock music. Helmut Willen’s 1,400
person case study noted that over 75 per cent of skinheads are under 21 years and
that 50 per cent of these are under 18 years. The lack of education as well as the
extreme youth of violent racists in Germany appears to be replicated in Sweden and
the Netherlands (Merkl 1997: 27).
Realization at government levels that rock music events were acting as an incu-
bater for racist violence has led to police action, and in recent years their number
has declined and the number of concerts played by foreign groups in Germany, for
example, has fallen (BfV 2003: 45). However, there has been no diminution in the
number of concerts played by German groups in Germany itself, despite large-scale
banning of CDs and skinhead literature (Raabe 2007).
Street violence to terrorism

The fourth by-product of these processes is the trend to violence. Street violence
has always been part of the neo-Nazi scene: it provides a focus for hatred and
thereby draws in new adherents, but the emerging trend involves a move beyond
the anti-foreigner street violence of the 1990s towards a more focused violence,
which includes terrorism, and which is spurred by different reasons (Merkl 1997: 17).
Tore Bjorgo noted in 1995 that the increasing support for xenophobic and
radical-right parties enabled the growth of militant neo-Nazi organizations and
networks which targeted asylum seekers and visible minorities within Europe. He
further observed that groups perceived as ‘right wing’ or ‘racist’ often turned out to
have no connections with extreme political organizations, and only a rudimentary
idea of any ideology. He suggested that defining the essence of right-wing extrem-
ism in terms of one single issue, value or philosophical idea would prove to be a
frustrating exercise. Rather, he suggested, that theirs ‘is an anger against perceived
outsiders, or the state, which could take a violent path’ (Bjorgo 1995: 2).
At the same time, the late Ehud Sprinzak suggested that violent, extreme right-
wing groups are organized around the belief that the object of their intense opposi-
tion is a priori illegitimate, that they do not belong to the same humanity as
themselves, and should therefore be kept in an inferior legal state, expelled or
even eliminated. He further observed that their violence may be directed towards
the ‘inferior’ group, or it may be directed against the political authority which has
allowed such a situation to develop (Bjorgo 1995: 4).
Evidence in recent criminal trials and security services’ reports suggests that ele-
ments within the extreme right are preparing and training for what they perceive
to be a coming war for ‘white survival’. Few criminal justice agencies publish data
on this specifically, or differentiate it from other forms of violent crime, but the
exceptions are the Swedish and German security services (BfV various years; SAPO
various years; for background, see Bjorgo 1995). Their reports note that within
established extreme-right bodies there are now individuals, or small groups, who
are planning and preparing for acts of terrorism using firearms and improvised
explosive devices that are more sophisticated than petrol bombs or other forms of
missile previously associated with extreme-right violence. This new trend stands in
stark contrast to earlier perceptions when several European security services reported
an ambivalence towards the use of violence.
The move to terrorism is not perceived to be a substantive challenge to the state,
but rather an attack on symbols of the state and a reaction to the influx of migrants,
particularly Muslims. In Sweden, for example, four neo-Nazis were charged in
early 2005 in connection with a terrorist plot to attack the parliament building and
schools, but for evidentiary reasons were convicted only of causing criminal damage
(SAPO 2005: 5). The Swedish security police therefore noted in 2006 that:
Both the White Power scene and the autonomous scene contain actors who
have shown that they are prepared to use threat, violence or force to attain
their political objectives. In some cases their actions are directed against
authorities or Political Parties represented in parliament.
(SAPO 2006: 23)
This new trend is neither widespread nor does it involve large numbers, but is the
consequence of a small minority acting out their extreme ideology. It is, however,
planned and coordinated at a national and an international level, and it is the
Internet that enables and strengthens the processes. A Europol report noted in
2006 that:
Although violent acts perpetrated by right-wing extremists and terrorists may

appear sporadic and situational, right-wing extremist activities are organised
and transnational.
(Europol 2007: 4)8
The inspiration for many is the ‘leaderless resistance’ model of small cells or
single individuals (‘lone wolves’) using terror tactics to resist central government
suggested by US extreme-right theoretician Louis Beam, and the messages con-
tained in The Turner Diaries and Hunter, two novels written by William Pierce, under
the pseudonym of Andrew Macdonald. The former depicts a violent revolution to
328 Michael Whine
overthrow the US federal government and to exterminate Jews and non-whites;

the latter describes a targeted assassination campaign of couples in inter-racial mar-
riages and civil rights activists carried out by a Vietnam War veteran who is drawn
into a white nationalist group planning insurrection (Beam 1992; Macdonald
(1978, 1989).
The murder of Theo van Gogh, and the 7 July London bombings galvanized
neo-Nazi groups around Europe although the immediate reaction did not lead to
the extreme violence that security agencies predicted. There was, however, an
increase in low-level violence, and anti-Muslim demonstrations in many countries,
especially in the Netherlands and the UK. The Dutch security service and the
annual Dutch Racism and Extremism Monitor both reported a discernible move by
activists to ‘tougher, violence-prone neo-Nazi groups’ which are ‘just a fraction
removed from terrorism’ (AIVD 2005, 2006, 2007; van Donselaar and Rodrigues
2006). The acquisition of arms, bomb-making materials and military manuals has
been noted in several states, although the degree to which they will use them is
another matter, and their possession may be more apparent than their willingness
and capability to deploy them. During April and July 2005, the German authorities
confiscated large caches of arms and explosives in raids on the homes of neo-Nazis,
but commented afterwards that the intention appeared to have been to stockpile
arms rather than use them immediately. They also noted that some right-wing
extremists reject terrorist activity which could lead to increased surveillance by
the state (BfV 2005: 50). In the UK, the police also foiled a succession of terrorist
plots initiated by extreme-right activists.9 Nevertheless, the German authorities
report that extreme-right activists are increasingly prepared to resort to violence, to
obtain weapons and to engage in paramilitary exercises, as training for terrorism
(BfV 2004: 39–41; BfV 2005: 49–50).
The willingness to employ extreme violence in defence of European ‘values’ is
apparent in the ideology of several groups, among them the British Patriots of the
White European Resistance (POWER), which emerged in 2006, and which claims
supporters in Croatia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland,
Slovenia and Sweden. The British police have reported:
There is no intelligence to suggest that POWER is instrumental in influenc-

ing known or alleged ‘Lone Wolf ’ operatives. However POWER is a relatively
new group who are difficult to regionalise and who have links to continental
Europe.
(Association of Chief Police Officers 2008: 1)
The POWER website states that:
We began in Great Britain but are a pro European movement with members
in all European countries … We were formed as a last chance movement to
preserve our individual nations and to unify Europe and build the great
nations and Europe we once had … We are not a Political party, and would
consider ourselves freedom fighters, not the left wing version of the term
freedom fighters. Which are called Terrorists, we are defenders of the
European culture. However we urge people to support National Socialism
… We are firm believers in the policies of Oswald Mosley and strongly
support all of his theories on the state of Europe.
(http://www.14power88.com/vonherman/vwar/page.php?id=6)
POWER identification of the enemy is shared with like-minded groups:
The western world we feel is under threat from not only Jewish corruption
but also from mass immigration, drug imports, religious divide, gun crime,
Islamic hatred and multiculturalism in general, we firmly support all of
Europe but refuse to accept that we owe any African anything … We stand
alongside every European nation that wishes to remove non whites from
their land.
(http://www.14power88.com/vonherman/vwar/page.php?id=6)
The Racial Volunteer Force (RVF) is a second trans-European group which

emerged from the UK-based Combat 18, with branches in the UK, Germany,
Belgium and the Netherlands, and which declares itself to be an international ‘mil-
itant Pro White Organisation’, with its own European council. It hints that it will
resort to violence and warns its members that they must think long and hard before
joining (http://wwwrvfonline.com/house.htm). The Dutch security service iden-
tified its members as ‘strongly ideologically developed’ and capable of playing an
important role in furthering and cementing contacts (AIVD 2006: 52). The terror-
ist threat is not perceived to be a substantive challenge to the state, but rather an
attack on the symbols of the state and a reaction to the influx of migrants, particu-
larly Muslims. It is not a widespread trend, nor is it coordinated and planned at any
central point. Rather, it is the consequence of small groups acting out their extreme
ideology.
The 2008 Europol report on terrorist threats within the European Union iden-
tified an increasing number of extreme-right terrorist plots in the UK during the
past ten years by individuals classified as ‘lone wolves’ who share ‘an ideological or
philosophical identification with an extremist group, but do not communicate with
the group they identify with’ (Europol 2008: 39). They follow the models pro-
posed by Beam and Pierce.
It is against this background that the case of Anders Behring Breivik should be
considered. A political activist since his late teens who was considered unfit for
military service, he hung around Norway’s far right without ever engaging organi-
zationally with it, although he was a member of the anti-immigration Progress
Party for some years. He likewise created online links with the English Defence
League and a Swedish far-right forum. But his drift toward violence led to others
distancing themselves from him, and his terrorism plans appear to have been devel-
oped, and carried out, alone. Nevertheless, the Norwegian Police Security Service
330 Michael Whine
warned in its Annual Threat Assessments in both 2010 and 2011 that there was a
risk of terrorism from far-right activists, made easier by the easy access to firearms
(PST 2010, 2011).
Conclusion
Contemporary cultural, economic and racial challenges within Europe have allowed
extremists to become more active once again. They have particularly spurred the
growth of extreme nationalism and closer trans-European cooperation among
extreme-right groups. These processes are enabled by the growth of ICTs and the
ease of travel, and their outward manifestations are seen in the meetings, rallies and
clothing adopted by many. The enabling mechanisms also allow the move to vio-
lence. In these developments the European extreme right has been influenced by,
and has copied, its counterparts in the US. Yet at the same time they have also
opposed the globalizing and Americanizing influences on Europe which are
regarded as a danger to European ethnic and cultural identity.
The outward manifestations of youth cultures should not be seen as a threat in
themselves. The disparate and often confrontational nature, and historical tendency
to splinter within the extreme right, reduce any political impact, but their violence
is real and growing and does not involve large numbers, only isolated individuals or
small cells. This is emerging as a clearly defined trans-European threat. In these
activities the extreme right is achieving some of its goals and developing the realities
that early proponents sought, but failed to realize.
Notes
1 See also Northern Bortherhood (n.d.).
2 Belfast-published books promoting the US Christian Identity Movement were on sale
at the Orange Street Congregational Church, Leicester Square, London in September
2008.
3 Redwatch – the site the traitors love to hate, http://www.redwatch.org/index2.html.
See also Taylor (2006) and ATL (n.d.).
4 Private communication between SOVA and author, 25 April 2008.
5 For continuing liaison between German extreme-right groups and others, see
International Connections section in successive BfV annual reports.
6 For background on the origins and international connections of the skinhead movement,
see Anti-Defamation League (1995).
7 For useful background, see also Ware and Back (2002).
8 See also PET (2006).
9 The Turner Diaries were a formative influence on former BNP and Combat 18
member David Copeland, the London Nail Bomber, who was imprisoned for life in
1999 for planting three bombs in London which killed three and injured over 200.
Lance Crossley, a Nazi sympathizer from Manchester, was imprisoned for six years for
possessing an arsenal of guns and explosives in 2001; David Tovey, BNP sympathizer,
was imprisoned for 11 years for possessing weapons in 2001; Alan Boyce, a former
BNP and NF member, was convicted of planning a bombing campaign against a local
immigrants’ hostel in 2006; Robert Cottage, a former BNP local election candidate,
was imprisoned in 2007 for stockpiling bomb-making chemicals for what he perceived
to be the imminent war between British citizens and foreign migrants; Nathan Worrell,
a far-right sympathizer, was imprisoned in 2008 for amassing bomb-making chemicals;
Martyn Gilleard, the British People’s Party leader, was imprisoned in 2008 for making
nail bombs and possession of ammunition for a firearm. It was stated that his computer
password was ‘Martyn1488’, the 14 being a reference to the far right slogan ‘We must
secure the existence of our race and a future for the white people’ coined by the late
David Lane, an American white supremacist. Police found that he had researched bomb-
making techniques on the Internet, bought explosives materials and made four nail
bombs with the intention of bombing mosques (BBC News 25 July 2008).
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Stack, M. 2008. ‘Russian Nationalist Advocates Eurasian Alliance Against the US’,
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Taschel, S. 2007. ‘Ban Shatters Hess Commemoration Plans’, Searchlight, October.
Taylor, M. 2006. ‘Web of Hate’, The Guardian, 4 October. Retrieved on 21 July 2008 from
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van Donselaar, J. 2004. ‘The Lonsdale Problem’, Monitoring Racism and Extremism. Amsterdam:
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Right-Wing Extremism in the Nineties. London: Frank Cass, pp. 271–81.
Whine, M. 1999. ‘Cyberspace – A New Medium for Communication, Command and
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INDEX
Abramowicz, M. 65–6 Balibar, Étienne 5, 56

activism of the extreme right 327–8 Bandera, Stepan 191
Adamson, K. 71 Bardèche, Maurice 285, 290–1
Agir party 64 Barking and Dagenham 21–2, 25–8, 293
Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud 167, 197 Bar-On, Tamir 4, 306
Åkesson, Jimmy 243 Barth, Karl 282
Alaluf, M. 67 Bastien, Marguerite 63–4
Albert, M. 5 Bataille, G. 282
Aldrich, R. 34–5 Bayle, M. 36
Alduy, Paul 45 Beam, Louis 327, 329
Alleanza Nazionale (AN) 80, 85–9 Belgium 62–76
alterity: embodied 54–6; linguistic 52 Benoist, Alain de 9, 102, 296, 305, 308–11
Amorim, Fernando Pacheco de 97 Berlusconi, Silvio 80–1, 288–9
Anglada, Joseph 121 Betz, H.G. 176
anti-Americanism 310, 320 Bihr, Alain 3
anti-globalization protests 317 Bin Laden, Osama 195–6
anti-Semitism 11, 74–5, 128–9, 151, 166, Bjorgo, Tore 326
190–201, 219, 263, 265, 274, 285, 304 Blee, K.M. 282–4
Antonescu, Ion 178 Blocher, Christopher 212–13, 217
Arafat,Yasser 319 Bölükbaşi, Osman 230
Arias, Carlos 111 Bosnia-Herzegovina 147–53
Arkan, Željko Ražnatović 164 Bossi, Umberto 79–80, 90, 292
Arreckx, Maurice 38–40, 44–5 Bowyer, R. 159
Arriaga, Kaúlza de 101 Breivik, Anders Behring 242, 329
Art, D. 69 Brichta, A. 176
al-Assad, Basher 197 British Broadcasting Corporation
asylum seekers 241–2, 326 (BBC) 299
Austria see Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs British National Party (BNP) 7, 10, 17–29,
Aydın, Koray 236 288–99; emergence of 19–20; local
Azione Sociale (AS) 7, 10, 288–300 case studies on 21–8; social basis of
support 20–1
Bahçeli, Devlet 229, 231 Brito, Antonio Jose de 95
Baldacchino, Godfrey 279 Brooks, Harry 24
INDEX 335
Brussels 72–3 Diabo (newspaper) 100–1

Bulgaria 162, 169 Dillen, Karel 73–4
Burghardt, Devin 325 Dodik, Milorad 148–9
Burnley 21–5, 28, 291, 298 Dokuz Işık Doktrini 230
Dontsov, Dmytro 190
Caetano, Marcelo 95–6, 101, 106, 111 Dos Santos, Alves 72
Çakmak, Fevzi 228 Dragišić, Z. 165
Calderoli, Roberto 294 Dugin, Aleksandr 193, 304–7, 320
Calvão, Alpoim 99 Duke, David 116–17, 198, 321
capital punishment 234–5 Dzhemal, Geidar 306
Carrero, Luis 110–11
Carter, E. 176, 186 Eanes, Ramalho 104
Catholic Church 110, 279, 294–5 East Berlin 48–58
Ceccaldi, Marcel 263 Eatwell, Roger 152, 176, 215, 296
Centro Bull, A. 78 Ecevit, Bülent 235
charismatic leadership 174–80, 185–6, 255, Emilio, Rodrigo 96
262, 283–4 emotions, role of 282–3
Chechnya 166, 308 English Defence League 12, 329
Chini, Chiara 290 ETA organization 111, 114
Chirac, Jacques 263–6 ethnic compensation theory 18
Circulo Español de Amigos de Europa ethnicity 318
(CEDADE) 9, 116, 118, 319 Eurasianism 192–4, 198; see also
Club de l’Horloge 307 new Eurasianism
Coelho, José Pinto 104–5 European Court of Human
Collett, Mark 299 Rights 258
colonialism 44 European Court of Justice 295
Communal, René 38 European Parliament (EP) 4, 256–7,
community politics 20, 27 261–4, 267
Constantinescu, Emil 180 European Union (EU) 4, 83–4, 104, 119,
Copenhagen Criteria for EU membership 121, 233–5, 258–9, 277, 295–6
234, 236 Evans, J.A.J. 45
Copsey, Nigel 290–1 Evian Accords (1962) 36
corruption 45, 80 Evola, Julius 290, 295, 306, 311
Croatia 144–7, 151–3, 162–3
cultural differences 308; see also Falco, Hubert 44
multiculturalism fascism: definitions of 3, 305; survival of
‘cultural gradient’ concept 303, 312 285–6
cultural influence of the extreme right 11 Faye, Guillaume 306, 309–10
Czech Republic 167, 170 Féret, Daniel 63–5
Czechoslovakia 160–1 Ferreira, Zarco Moniz 102
Fini, Gianfranco 289–90
da Cruz Rodrigues, António 103–4 Fiore, Roberto 290, 320
Dagenham see Barking and Dagenham Flood, C. 33, 35
Dapić, Anto 146 Ford, R. 21
da Silva, Bernado Guedes 102 Forest organization 66
Davies, P. 41 Forza Italia 80–1, 85–9
Dayton Peace Accords 148–9 France see Front National, French; Nouvelle
De Witte, H. 69 Droite; Toulon
Delmonte, F. 38 Franco, Francisco 109–17
Delwit, P. 66, 75–6 Frêche, Georges 44–5
democracy 232–7; consociational 214, 216; Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) 10,
liberal 308 254–60, 267
Demol, Johan 72 Frey, H. 33, 35
Denmark 239–43, 247–50 Froidevaux, D. 218
Dewinter, Filip 69–72, 75 Front National, Belgian (FNB) 63–76
336 INDEX
Front National, French (FN) 6–7, 9–10, 28, Internet resources 281, 322, 327; Facebook
33–4, 38–45, 116, 128, 231, 254, 261–7, 322; MySpace 322; social networking
291–2 platforms 322
Funar, Gheorghe 178–85 Ioannides,Yiannis 135
Futuro Presente (magazine) 102 Irving, David 116–17
Islamophobia 6, 67–8, 75, 120, 166–7
Gamborino, Salvador 119 Italy see Azione Sociale; Lega Nord
Garoufalias, Petros 127 Ivaldi, G. 71
De Gaulle, Charles 35–8
Gentile, P. 210 Jamin, Jérôme 5
Gilbert, M. 78 Janda, K. 176–7
Girón, José Antonio 111 Jeune Europe movement 319
Glistrup, Mogens 241 Jilge, Wilfried 199
globalization 296, 298, 306, 309, 321, 325; Johannisthal 51, 54, 56
see also anti-globalization protests Johns, R. 71
Gollnisch, Bruno 261–5 Johnson, M. 20
Golovin, Evgenii 306 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 281–2
Goodwin, M.J. 21, 26 Journal of Contemporary European Studies 1
Gorbachev, Mikhail 192, 307 Juan Carlos, King of Spain 112–13
Goux, Christian 41 Junger, Ernst 192
Grasser, Karl-Heinz 259
Greece 9, 124–37 Karamanlis, Constantine 127
Griffin, Nick 288–93, 298–9 Karatzaferis, George 124–6, 129–31, 135–6
Griffin, Roger 280, 285, 305 Karlsson, Bert 242
Guardia Nazionale Italiana 12 Keleş, Irfan 235–6
Güner, Agah Oktay 229 Khyzhniak, I. 196
Güngör, Ali 231 Kitschelt, Herbert 18, 45, 86–7, 176, 186
Kjaersgaard, Pia 241
Habermas, Jürgen 215 Klandermans, B. 278
Hagen, Carl 241 Knudsen, Povl Riis 320
Haider, Jörg 182, 212, 255–6, 259–60, Kobach, K.W. 216
267, 281 Koch, Roland 57
Hainsworth, P. 225 Komšić, J. 150
Hansen, T.B. 282 Koopmans, Ruud 218, 240
Harmel, R. 175 Korchyns’kyi, Dmytro 194
Haupt, Herbert 259 Köse, Ismail 235
Heinisch, R. 259 Kosovo 150–1, 164–5, 245
Henriques, José Luis Paulo 104 Kotleba, Marian 169
Heper, Metin 227, 237 Kovalenko, Aleksandr 193–4
Hess, Rudolf 324 Kravchuk, Leonid 196
Hitler, Adolf 191 Krejci, Jaroslav 321
Hobson, J.A. 285 Kreuzberg 53
Holocaust denial 116–17, 265, 284 Kriesi, H. 210
Honsik, Gert 116 Kul’chyts’kyi, S. 190–1
human rights 231–7, 308, 310
Hungary 161, 169–70 labels, use of 2
Hussein, Saddam 167 Labour Party, British 18, 24
Lafontaine, Oscar 57
Iaramenko,Vasyl 196 Lane, David 281
Ilin,V.V. 311 Lang, Carl 261
immigration and immigrant issues 6, 18, 20, Lange, Anders 241
23, 26–7, 50, 57–8, 65–7, 70, 83, 87–90, Laqueur, Walter 304
118–19, 122, 128–30, 133–4, 239–50, Lausanne Treaty 235–6
256, 262–4, 274–80, 296–9, 317–18 Lavarde, Alain 119
Ingram, Alan 304 Le Chevallier, Cendrine 43
INDEX 337
Le Chevallier, Jean-Marie 38, 41–4 National Front (NF), British 17–20,

Lee, Martin 306 25, 291
Lega Nord (LN) 2, 8, 10, 78–90, 289, 294, nationalism 3–4, 63, 68–70, 74–5, 103,
297, 300; attitudes of supporters 85–9; 128, 143–4, 148–54, 160, 162, 177,
historical evolution of 79–82; party 198, 215, 228, 232, 254, 303, 312,
platform 82–5 318–21, 330; ‘liberal’ 307;
Lehmann, George 281 ‘organicist’ 294
Lenin,V.I. 196 Nazi New Order 4, 73; see also
Lenkavs’kyi, Stepan 191 neo-Nazism
Le Pen, Jean-Marie 34, 38, 40–3, 65, 75, neo-liberalisn 241, 307
198, 257, 261–7, 291–2, 296 neo-Nazism 17, 116, 168, 274, 280, 284,
Le Pen, Marine 264–7 317–28
Lepper, Andrzej 197–8 Neukölin 53–6
Linden, A. 278 New Democracy (ND): Greek 124–7,
Lowell, Norman 274–85 136–7; Swedish 242
Luk’’ianenko, Levko 196, 199 new Eurasianism 304–12, 320
New Right thinking 305–7, 312
Mackie, T. 175 Niekisch, Ernst 193
McLaren, L. 20 Nietzsche, Friedrich 311
Máiz, Ramón 294 Nikolić, Tomislav 150, 152
Malia, Martin 303 Nogueira, Florentino Goulart 96
Malta 273–86 Nogueira, Jaime 102
Mamleev, Iurii 306 North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Mamy, Bernard 38 (NATO) 104, 121
Mannheim, Karl 33 Northern Brotherhood 320–1
Mardin, Ş. 226–7 Norway 239–43, 247–50, 325, 329–30
Marković, Mirjana 164 Nouvelle Droite (ND) 9–10, 296–7, 304,
Martynets,Volodymyr 190 307–12
Massi, Ernesto 291 Nuremberg Trials 265
Maurer, Ueli 212, 217
Mediatex (company) 325 Öcalan, Abdullah 235
Mégret, Bruno 43, 261–2, 266–7 Ochsenberger, Walter 116
Meijerink, F. 174, 177 Organisation armée secrète (OAS) 36, 38
Mel’nyk, Andriy 191 Ottoman Empire 226–7
Mény,Y. 216 ‘Overforeignization’ 218–20
Merkel, Angela 57
Merkl, Peter 12, 318, 321–2, 326 Palestinian Liberation Organization 319
Miller, B.A. 28 Panarin, Aleksandr 11, 304–12, 320
Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP) 225–37 pan-European associations 323–4
Milošević, Slobodan 149–50, 164 Papadopoulos, George 128
Mizhrehional’na Akademiia Upravlinnia paramilitarism 12, 159–71; definition of
Personalom (MAUP) 11 159–60; linked to vigilante activities
Mobus, Hendrik 325 167–70; in post-communist conflicts
Monteiro, Manuel 105 163–6; prior to 1989 160–3
Mosley, Sir Oswald 280–1, 290–1, Partik-Pable, H. 258
319, 329 Patriots of the White European Resistance
Mudde, Cas 143, 147, 151, 174, 177, 210, (POWER) 328
213, 225 Pauker, Ana 191
multiculturalism 73–4, 87, 90, 219, Pavelić, Ante 146
298, 318 Pavliuk, Mykola 196
Múrias, Manuel Maria 101–2 Paxton, Robert 3
Muscat, Josie 276–9, 282 Pearson, G. 23
music industry 325–6 Pedahzur, A. 176
Mussolini, Alessandra 288–95, 299–300 Peron, Juan 319
Mussolini, Benito 161, 289–90 Pétain, Philippe 35–6
338 INDEX
Peyrat, Jacques 44–5 Sadaune, Alain 65

Piat,Yann 38–40 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira 95, 104
Pieds-Noirs 34–8, 42–4 Sanches Osório, José 98–9
Pierce, William 321, 325–9 Sarkozy, Nicolas 264, 266
Piñar, Blas 114 Schain, Martin 263–4, 292
Pinto, J.N. 100 Scheepers, P. 69
Pipes, Richard 303 Schengen agreements 323
Plevris, Kostas 129 Schmid, Samuel 212
Poland 161 Schüssel, Wolfgang 258–9
‘political opportunity structure’ concept Sentandreu, Juan Garcia 121
239–40 Serbia 144, 149–54, 162–5
Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), Greece Šešelj,Vojislav 150, 152
124–5, 129–37 Shcherbatiuk, Anatolii 195, 197
populism 7, 78–9, 84, 88, 90, 104, 131, Shchokin, Heorhii 195–7
209, 214–20, 249–50, 254, 256, 296 Shenfield, Stephen 304–5
Portugal 95–107; old and new radicalism Shkil, Andrii 193, 199
in 103–4; period of democratic Shukhevych, Iurii 194, 199–200
consolidation 102–3; period of Shukhevych, Roman 191
normalization 100–2; resurgence of the Sichrovsky, P. 257
radical right 104–6 skinheads 168, 324–6
‘positive discrimination’ 298 Skorzeny, Otto 319
Poulet-Dachary, Jean-Claude 43 Slovakia 161, 169
Powell, Enoch 18 Smith, Anthony 318
Pridham, G. 107 Smith, S. 25
Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 117 Soares, Mario 97–8
Prodi, Romano 82 social Darwinism 58
Psomiades, Panayiotis 135 Sofianopoulos, Sotiris 129
Putin,Vladimir 320 Sokol organization 160–1
Soviet Union 318–19; see also Russia
racial hierarchy 70–1 Spain 109–22
Racial Volunteer Force 329 Spinola, Antonio de 96–9
racism 5–6, 50, 65, 119, 219, 235, 240, Sprinzak, Ehud 326–7
274–5, 296–7, 308, 326; culturization Stalin, Joseph 196
of 58 Stalinism 192, 196, 198
Rea, A. 65, 67 Statham, P. 218
Reagan, Ronald 102 Steger, Norbert 255
refugees 245–6 Steinlauf, Michael 192
religious freedom 243–5 Stets’ko, Iaroslav 191
Remer, Ernst Otto 319–20 Stolcke,Verena 6
Rhodes, J. 23, 293 Strache, Heinz-Christian 260
Riess-Passer, Susanne 259 Suárez, Adolfo 113
Roberto, José Luis 119 Surel,Y. 216
Rockwell, George Lincoln 320 Sweden 239–50, 324–7
Rodrigues, P.R. 328 Switzerland 209–21
Roma population 167–70, 293 Swyngedouw, M. 71
Romania 162, 173–86
Rose, R. 175 Tabără,Valeriu 180, 183
Rosenberg, Alfred 191 Tadić, Tonči 146
Royal, Ségolène 266 Taguieff, Pierre-André 306
Rozakis, Christos 130 Tarasiuk, Boris 196, 200
Rua (newspaper) 100–1 Tarrow, S. 239
rule of law 231–4, 237 Taylor, M. 12
Russia 165–8, 303–12, 320, 323; see also terrorism 326–9
Soviet Union Thadden, Adolf von 319
Rüttgers, Jürgen 57 Thatcher, Margaret 102, 291
INDEX 339
Thiriart, Jean 319–20 Wachtmeister, Ian 242

Tiahnybok, Oleh 201 Waldheim, Kurt 255–6, 266
Tomás, Francisco J. 121 Weber, Max 283
Toulon 33–46 Weinberg, Leonard 317–18
Trémolet de Villers, Jacques 42 Westenhaler, Peter 259
Trucy, François 38–41, 44–5 Widfeldt, Anders 240
Tudman, Franjo (and Tudmanism) 144–6 Widmer-Schlumpf, Eveline 212
Tudor,Vadim 178–83 Wiesenthal, Simon 194
Türkeş, Alparslan 228–9 Willen, Helmut 326
Turkey see Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi Wittfogel, Karl 303
Tymoshenko,Yulia 196, 199 Wolf, Chris 322–3
Wretstrom, Daniel 324
Ukraine 2, 166, 189–201
xenophobia 6, 10, 65, 89, 118–21,
Valkeniers, Bruno 73 137, 147–51, 154, 170–1, 177,
van Biezen, I. 174, 183 198, 239–40, 243, 248, 285,
van Donselaar, J. 328 298–9, 326
van Gogh, Theo 328
Varela, Pedro 116–17 Yanukovych,Viktor 200
Vienna 260 Yeltsin, Boris 165, 307–8
vigilante activities 12, 167–70 Yiannakou, Marieta 135
violence of the extreme right 328 Yockey, Francis Parker 290, 319
Virchow, F. 278, 284 YouTube 322
Vitovich, Oleh 194 Yugoslav state 162–3
Vitrenko, Natalya 194 Yushchenko,Viktor 196–200
Vlams Belang (VB) 8, 28, 63–4, 69–76
Voigt, Udo 320 Zionism 192, 195–8
Vorides, Makis 128–9 Žirinovskij,Vladimir 164–7, 193–4

Andrea Mammone - Emmanuel Godin - Brian Jenkins - Mapping The Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe - From Local To Transnational-Routledge (2012)

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MAPPING THE EXTREME RIGHT IN

Andrea Mammone is an Assistant Professor of Modern History in the School of

Emmanuel Godin is Principal Lecturer in French Politics in the School of

Brian Jenkins is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of French at the

Founding series editors: Roger Eatwell, University of Bath and

1. Uncivil Society? 9. Ecological Politics and

Edited by Andrea Mammone,

ISBN: 978-0-415-50264-1 (hbk)

Introduction: mapping the ‘right of the mainstream right’

1 Backlash in the ‘hood’: exploring support for the British

2 After colonialism: local politics and far-right affinities

3 Placing the extremes: cityscape, ethnic ‘others’ and young

4 Extreme-right discourse in Belgium: a comparative

5 Regionalism, right-wing extremism, populism: the

6 The Portuguese radical right in the democratic period 95

7 The Spanish extreme right: from neo-Francoism to

8 LAOS and the Greek extreme right since 1974 124

9 The extreme right in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina

10 Extreme-right paramilitary units in Eastern Europe 159

11 Extreme-right parties in Romania after 1990:

12 Anti-Semitism and the extreme right in

13 Challenging the exceptionalist view: favourable conditions

14 Turkish extreme right in office: whither democracy

15 Scandinavian right-wing parties: diversity more

16 Downside after the summit: factors in extreme-right

17 Rights, roots and routes: local and transnational contexts

18 Cross-national ideology in local elections: the case of

19 The transfer of ideas along a cultural gradient: the influence

20 Trans-European trends in right-wing extremism 317

2.1 Voting for the Front National/Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and

13.1 Results of radical right-wing populist parties in national

11.1 PRM electoral mandates by region, 1990–2004 184

Gabriela Borz is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Politics

Giorgia Bulli is a Researcher in the Department of Political Science and Sociology

Marie Demker is Professor in Political Science at the University of Gothenburg

Antonis A. Ellinas is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of

Mark-Anthony Falzon is a Social Anthropologist and Head of Department of

Emmanuel Godin is Principal Lecturer in French Politics in the School of Languages

Matthew J. Goodwin is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Nottingham

Jérôme Jamin is Professor in Political Science at the University of Liège

Brian Jenkins is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of French at the

José L. Rodríguez Jiménez is Professor in Contemporary History in the Faculty of

Andrea Mammone is an Assistant Professor of Modern History in the School of

Riccardo Marchi is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Social

Miroslav Mareš is a Head of the Section of Security and Strategic Studies,

Mark Micallef is a News Editor with The Times of Malta (Malta).

Timothy Peace is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (UK).

Marina Peunova is a PhD Researcher in International History and Politics at

Per Anders Rudling is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of History at

Nitzan Shoshan is a Professor of Anthropology in the Centro de Estudios

Damir Skenderovic is Professor of Contemporary History in the Department of

Richard Stojar is a Lecturer and Researcher in Military Science and Security

Věra Stojarová is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science of

Filippo Tronconi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Department of

John Veugelers is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology,

Michael Whine is Director, Government and International Affairs at the Community

Michelle Hale Williams is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the

Andrea Mammone, Emmanuel Godin and Brian Jenkins

closely linked (i.e. extreme-right ethno-nationalism).4 Immigrants – in particular col-

ambiguous, if not contradictory, in order to appeal to different constituencies, while

tendency to overemphasize the exceptional features displayed by national case

as has been the case in neighbouring Scandinavian countries. (It is nonetheless

Bihr, A. 2000. Le Crépuscule des États-Nations. Transnationalisation et Crispations Nationalistes.