1 June 2016

Vox: An expert on the European far right explains the growing influence of anti-immigrant politics

The core of the ideology of the radical right includes three features: nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. [...]

So there is an aspect of color in it. But the key enemy has become Islam. That's done some good for some other minorities. If you look in the Netherlands, for example, Moroccans and Turks are perceived as Others, while Surinamese — who are black but not Muslim — have disappeared from the "Other" category. Today you can see some nonwhites among radical right parties, but they tend to be Christian or at the very least non-Muslim. [...]

And there's quite a lot of anti-Semitism in the East, even in countries that have very few Jews (like Poland). By contrast, anti-Semitism is almost absent on the radical right in Western Europe. If it comes from the right, it tends to be neo-Nazi groups, not radical right parties. [...]

I make a distinction generally between the extreme right, which opposes democracy as such, and the radical right, which accepts democracy but challenges some of the fundamentals of liberal democracy — particularly pluralism and minority rights.

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