The racist violence of the extreme right in Europe is prominent in international consciousness. But, reports Green Left Weekly's FRANK NOAKES, this violence rests on an insidious state racism. Official racism is encapsulated in new anti-immigration laws adopted or toughened by most west European countries in recent months. Although these measures accord with the political direction of the individual governments, they are driven further by the process towards European unity under the Maastricht Treaty.
Underneath a canopy of economic gloom, the construction of a European social and economic fortress is all but completed. True, there are debates over whether, or when, to lower the drawbridge to admit the least economically devastated countries of eastern Europe; and yes, there are continuing squabbles about who is to be king of the castle. But the sad fact is that Europe has a new wall. The difference between the old and new wall is that the former was built to keep people in, whereas the new one is fortified to keep them out.
During the decades following the second world war there was a shortage of labour in Europe, and migrants were welcomed by business keen to exploit a pool of cheap labour. Migrants often did the dirty, unskilled and poorly paid work. Unemployment was generally low, and living standards were improving. Of course, racism existed in those years and was real enough for those on the receiving end, but it wasn't accompanied with the generalised violence of today.
The recently increased tensions are the result of a long-term economic crisis that has no discernible end, a crisis in which all free market "remedies" only promise more pain for the majority.
Unemployment, officially 17 million across the 12 countries of the European Community, is growing. The social welfare system is universally under threat: according to one EC official, welfare was "designed to be counter-cyclical to help people until they got back into work. But it is becoming the
only means of existence for increasingly large numbers of people, creating a public expenditure crisis which threatens to swamp us all."
This situation has led directly to a truly formidable loss of political confidence in the mainstream parties. Moreover, the collapse of confidence extends beyond the parties, to embrace many institutions that have been the bedrock of the capitalist system.
Britain is governed by an unpopular party led by the most disliked prime minister in living memory, the church is threatening to split over the ordination of women priests, and the soap operatic antics of the young royals threatens the long-term survival of another pillar of the establishment. In response, the opposition Labour party has decided to roll over and play dead, in wistful expectation of the electorate eventually tickling its tummy.
Italy faces the gravest crisis of all, with nearly all institutions and political parties implicated in thoroughgoing corruption. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's standing is at an all time low, as the country, rocked by scandal, slips into recession. In France, the former Socialist Party government was decimated in the March national election. These are only the most prominent examples of a crisis-ridden Europe.
In this situation many governments have consciously decided to play the racist card. A statement by those protesting against draconian new anti-immigrant legislation in France noted: "Every time there is a crisis, the search is started for a scapegoat rather than for real solutions. In pointing out foreigners and their children as being responsible for our country's problems and a source of insecurity, the machinery has been set in motion which will benefit only the extreme right."
The Kohl government successfully promoted racism for its own political ends; on the basis of restricting the growth of the extremists, Kohl persuaded the opposition Social Democrats to support legislation limiting asylum.
Increasingly it is the extreme right setting the political agenda. A reflection of this can be seen in
Kohl's recent appointment of a new interior minister whose aim is to promote policies that voters of the far-right Republican Party "can say yes to". Anti-racist demonstrators in Berlin identified the source of the racist violence with the slogan: "The arsonists are in Bonn [the seat of federal government]".
As a result of the collapsed institutions and disintegrating economies in eastern Europe, the number of refugees on the continent has increased dramatically since 1989.
The bloody break-up of the Yugoslav federation has displaced more than 3 million people, most of whom want to return to their homes as soon as it is safe to do so. But far from finding a safe haven in western Europe, they find the door to safety barred; they are being thrown back onto eastern European countries, least able to cope. The new Europe is anything but inclusive and compassionate.
However, it is the people of the third world who feel most acutely the racism of Europe. Because of their colour they are readily identifiable targets of abuse and violence; targeting of these communities is tolerated, despite the pious government statements to the contrary, because it serves to discourage prospective asylum-seekers and immigrants. Of course, the violence sometimes goes too far and arouses active solidarity with those communities — it is then that the French and German governments, in particular, distance themselves from such attacks.
Yet the dire predictions of a Europe swamped and overcrowded are contradicted by a report delivered in March to the European Population Conference in Geneva. This authoritative study forecasts that the population of Europe's largest 20 nations will decline from today's 449 million to 342 million, a fall of some 100 million, by the year 2050.
Migrants remain a small percentage of Europe's population. This is true even if one categorises as "migrants" the large numbers who are born and raised in their parents' adopted country. In Germany, where only limited citizenship rights exist, there are 6.5 million "foreigners" in a population of 80
million. These foreigners or "guest workers" have in no small measure helped to make Germany the affluent country that it is. The percentage of "migrants" in other EC countries is generally similar to that of Germany.
Yet bigots like Tory MP Winston Churchill fan the flames of race hatred by insisting, as he did on May 28 at a meeting in the north of England, that "... the population of many of our northern cites is now well over 50% immigrant". In fact, as the left paper Socialist Outlook reported, "The majority of Britain's black population have been born here. Not one city has a black population anywhere near that figure. Bradford's black population is fewer than one in six and in Leeds it is 5.8%."
Not that this should matter anyway.
Racially inspired attacks have doubled in Britain over the past five years, and last year topped 7800. A British crime survey says that only one in 10 such attacks is reported, a figure which the police don't dispute; therefore, the real figure could be as high as 80,000 attacks.
Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old student, was beaten and stabbed to death by six white youths on April 22, making him the fourth black male murdered by racists in the area since the racist British National Party moved to a nearby London suburb two years ago. Last September in Birmingham a 20-year-old taxi driver was murdered by three passengers. A fascist convicted of murdering two Asian people boasted aloud that he would kill another when released. Many others have been murdered. As the Anti Racist Alliance said with justification, "Black life comes cheap in Britain today".
In Italy, Milan's new mayor, the Lombard League's Marco Formentini, has threatened to expel immigrants from the city if the Italian government doesn't curb immigration. The right-wing Lombard League won many victories across the north of Italy in the June local government elections. In the past year more than 300 actions by the extreme right have been catalogued, including the brutal murder of a Spaniard by Nazi skinheads in Milan.
The stain of racist violence has spread across Europe leaving no country unmarked, but in Germany it is darkest. There last year, more murders were committed by Nazis than in the year before Hitler came to power; this year it will be worse.
There have been too many incidents to list, but the fire-bomb murder in May of two Turkish women and three girls in the city of Solingen, north of Cologne, provoked the deepest response. For the first time the 1.7 million strong Turkish community took to the streets in large numbers throughout Germany, where they were joined by thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators. Running battles with the police lasted for days.
The leaders of a normally tolerant community, established in the '60s and '70s in an agreement between the Turkish and German governments, expressed anger at the government and the police for failing to protect their people. "Foreigners, foreigners, that's all our children, born in Germany, have heard since nursery school!", said one. Older leaders spoke of young people criticising their softly softly approach: "Where has it got us?", they demanded.
The murder of the Turkish women came only days after the German government, barricaded in parliament behind 4000 police and razor wire, voted to abolish the guaranteed right of foreigners to seek asylum, as thousands demonstrated their anger outside. The right to asylum was granted following World War II, in part as recognition of the more than 800,000 Germans who had sought and gained refuge abroad from the Nazis.
The attacks continue. On June 28 a gang of youths set fire to a Moroccan family home, severely injuring one occupant. On July 8 a "foreigners'" house was burnt down in Gttingen. Kohl's June 16 statement about getting tough on racism and xenophobia was mere wind, and the extreme right knows it.
The emergence of a rejuvenated far right is perhaps the most worrying aspect of European politics in the '90s. The development of this phenomenon is uneven from country to country. There is not always a direct link between those who act openly
in the political arena and those paramilitary-style organisations which commit violence. However, in some countries there is mounting evidence of collusion and cross-membership between the "respectable" right and illegal paramilitaries.
In Germany the Republicans, who boast a membership of 25,000, are led by former Waffen SS officer Franz Schonhuber. They are registering in excess of 6% in opinion polls. The party claims not to be Nazi and has expelled one or two members on the grounds of their "extremist" views, though this is thought by many to be a cover to preserve its legality. On June 26 the RP held its annual conference in Bavaria, its stronghold; it was reported that many of the 591 delegates were police officers.
Predictions are that the party will gain representation in the German parliament (Bundestag) after the federal election next year. It already has one member in the chamber through the defection of a member of the governing Christian Democrats. The RP program calls for the nationality of criminals to be disclosed, for asylum seekers to be imprisoned in camps until their case is heard and for special privileges for Germans.
Half a dozen openly fascist groups have been declared illegal, but as soon as one set of initials is outlawed, another rises to replace it.
In France, the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen won 12.4% of the popular vote but no parliamentary seats in the March general election. The NF's slogan was: "Three million unemployed, three million immigrants in France — out!"
Alain Krivine, a leader of the Revolutionary Communist League, told Green Left Weekly earlier this year that only the NF's vote increased. "Their voters came from the populous cities where traditionally the PCF [Communist Party] had strong support, in the south, Marseille, and in the north, the old industrial cities and the former 'red suburbs' of Paris. The NF has really grown roots in French society. The danger of a fascist and racist force like the NF will continue for a long time."
The Guardian newspaper observes, "Le Pen's National Front has forced more liberal politicians to adjust their line". The right coalition government of Gaullist Edouard Balladur has indeed taken on board much of the NF's anti-immigration line.
The Italian Lombard League bathes in the rather innocuous description of "populist", but its program betrays a more sinister aspect. This outfit, like the far right across Europe, is benefiting from the credibility crisis of the major parties. Its anti-corruption, anti-Mafia stance has won it respect, but behind this lies a strong streak of racism and anti-unionism.
In Holland the Nazi groups are small and inchoate. In Belgium the racist Vlaams Blok has emerged but remains small at present. The British National Party is small and marginalised, though no less violent because of this.
The Guardian explains why the far right has not yet managed to gain an independent foothold, despite the crisis, in British politics: "Mrs Thatcher cut off their main source of support with her hardline attitude to immigration, and her notorious comment in the run-up to the 1979 election of Britain feeling 'swamped' by immigrants". After Thatcher's election, many in the far right joined the Tories, and many remain members.
Another reason for the marginal existence of the BNP is that the left in Britain continually mobilises and confronts the Nazis whenever they organise publicly.
Ernest Mandel, a prominent European socialist, wrote in La Gauche in March 1992 that "there is a confusion between the political mask they [far-right] wear in public and their fundamental objectives, which they are still keeping under wraps. To win votes, to get the traditional right to accept them as partners and win a pseudo-democratic credibility, they play the card of 'traditional Christian values': fatherland, family, security, law and order and all the rest.
"However, when you look at the ideas of their ideological outriders you find unashamed nostalgics for fascism, racists, anti-Semites, xenophobes,
anti-feminists, fierce opponents of unionism and the workers movement and apologists for the worst crimes against humanity."
But while the extreme right feeds off the anxiety of people who fear, or are actually experiencing, the loss of their relative affluence, it is the actions of governments and the EC that make the extremists seem increasingly respectable.
If you scratch the Maastricht Treaty, the edifice of a European economic and social fortress is immediately exposed. Its institutional racism operates on two levels. Economically, it restricts third world countries from trading with Europe. (Witness the recent EC restrictive quota decision on bananas, which has thrown several Latin American economies into severe crisis.) Socially, and in the same callous manner, it restricts non-EC people from migrating or taking refuge within the walls of the European fortress.
The French interior minister, Charles Pasqua, introduced tougher immigration laws that will allow the police to conduct mass sweeps in a search for suspected illegal immigrants. At France's frontiers, police will be able to determine a person's eligibility for asylum, with no right of appeal. Pasqua's legislation will allow easier expulsions, restrictions on French citizenship through marriage and restriction on political refugees and family reunions.
Other laws under consideration include the end of automatic citizenship for those born to non-French parents in France. In future these children may have to pass a "suitability test".
Pasqua and the government of Balladur have the stated aim of achieving "zero immigration".
Since July 1, anyone entering Germany through a "safe" country, for example, Poland or the Czech Republic, has no right to asylum in Germany and will be immediately deported back to the safe country. Social security payments for those awaiting a determination on their application for asylum will be cut by 25%. The new legislation abolishes the
provision that "the politically persecuted enjoy the right of asylum".
As of June 2, there were 200 people in detention without trial under the British Immigration Act. Over the course of a year more than 10,000 asylum-seekers, visitors or students are held in prison, some for up to six months, convicted of no crime — this is to deter immigrants.
In fact, the Europe of Maastricht demands more restrictive measures as a prerequisite for relaxation of the internal borders of the EC, for if one country were to fail to take sufficient measures then "undesirables" would be able to enter any country through the breached fortifications.
The EC bureaucrats aren't about to let that happen. They have set up the appropriately named Expulsion Sub Group of the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration, to harmonise the necessary restrictions.
Under the 1951 Geneva Convention, a refugee is defined as a person who "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his [sic] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country".
Now according to the EC "those who fear violations of their human rights should if possible remain in their own countries, and seek protection or redress from their own authorities or under regional human rights instruments".
No sooner has one wall been torn down in Europe than another one is erected. As with its predecessor, it will take mass popular action to remove the racist wall of the Europe of Maastricht.