Protecting European Democracy or Reviving the Cold War?
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- Published on Tuesday, 07 October 2014 23:40
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1045 .... October 8, 2014
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Protecting European Democracy or Reviving the Cold War?
Liz Fekete
A new report by Human Rights First on fascism in Hungary and Greece raises important questions. But its orientation toward U.S. national interests smacks of Cold War thinking.
When we think of the leaders of Europe's far- and extreme-Right parties today, it is easy to ridicule them as fossils, nostalgic for days of Empire and white supremacy, or stranded on pre-second-world war shores, fighting the territorial fights of yesteryear. Yet despite the extreme Right's much-vaunted irredentism, it has also mounted strong critiques of the very modern phenomenon of globalization. The internationalization of capitalism, its unprecedented ability to cross the boundaries of national political and legal jurisdictions, has led to a sea-change in the way... fascists respond to the vital question ‘where does the national interest lie’. Today, fascist and nationalist movements don't just wave the flag of the nation-state. Despising the liberal values of Europe, deploring the subservient actions of European governments in the face of the EU's hegemonizing tendencies, extreme-right leaders gaze admiringly across the EU border to authoritarian leaders abroad, longing for the day when they too can govern illiberally.
For the counter-jihadi strand of modern fascism, it is Israel, with its unrelenting force against the Palestinians, that stands out as a nation with civilizational rigour. But for many of the up-and-coming demagogues of the populist and anti-Communist extreme Right, ranging from UKIP's Nigel Farage to the FN's Marine Le Pen, from Gábor Vona of Jobbik to Nikos Michaloliakos of Golden Dawn, it is the autocratic leadership of Russian president Vladimir Putin that is most admired and emulated.