Global Forum: The rise of the Far Right

  Click here to watch the forum.  

---

Jean-Marie Le Pen's unexpected victory in the first round of the French presidential elections reflects a shift to right-wing politics in Europe.

Two years ago, in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider entered government.

Last year the left-of-centre government in Italy was voted out of office.

The far-right has even scored success in traditionally liberal societies like Denmark and the Netherlands.

Why are far-right parties becoming more popular? Could Le Pen's victory be repeated elsewhere?

David Shukman was joined by BBC correspondents Angus Roxburgh in Brussels, Bethany Bell in Vienna and James Coomarasamy in Paris who took your questions in a live forum.

---

Transcript

David Shukman:
Mario Formosa, Malta asks: Why is Le Pen considered an extremist? I've never seen him being interviewed or read an article by him.

James Coomarasamy:
Well, the most famous sound bite from Jean-Marie Le Pen is that he considers the Nazi death camps of the Second World War to be a detail of history. That's got him into all sorts of troubles and that's the one quote that people come back to, to show just to what extent he is an extremist.

He's someone who has built an entire political career on opposing immigration. He's someone who has in the past said that the number of immigrants in France pretty much equals the number of unemployed - so to get rid of all the unemployed, the best thing to do would be to repatriate all the immigrants.

He is also someone who is known for his extreme actions as much as extreme words. He was barred for a time from the European Parliament where he is still an MEP for punching a Socialist candidate in the arm during an election rally. He's also someone whose rhetoric is extremely over the top on many occasions. He makes comparisons between people who want to stay in Europe and homosexuals using a pun on the two things and he's someone who wants France to completely withdraw from the European Union. So in many ways his political and all his social policies are extreme.

David Shukman:
Anthony, Germany: The vote for the Front National seems to be strongest in the areas of France with the biggest immigrant communities (the South and East). Isn't this a protest vote by many ordinary people who feel unhappy with the high levels of immigration? Couldn't the problem be solved by spreading immigrant communities more evenly throughout France?

James Coomarasamy:
Yes, it's true that the Front National's core vote - and that held up during this first round of the election - is predominately from those southern and eastern areas with high immigration. But I think one interesting thing we must point out about what happened last Sunday is that in a lot of non-traditional Front National areas, Jean-Marie Le Pen did extremely well. Places which don't necessarily have high immigration, don't necessarily have high unemployment. Forty per cent of the vote in parts of Alsace - certainly in the east - which in the past have voted for the Socialists

So I think this time we saw a different phenomenon - we saw people who were to an extent dissatisfied with all the mainstream politicians and saw the Le Pen as someone who was speaking their language - speaking very directly. Of course underlying it all people know this man has a history - 25 years or so - at the very top of politics here in France and he is know to have anti-immigration views. Whether shifting immigrants around the country would change matters is another issue altogether. I think you will always have this hardcore Front National vote. Remember he's been pretty steady at 15% or so for more than 15 years now. So it's not something that's going to be changed overnight.

David Shukman:
Joe, Belgium: In 1988, Le Pen got 15% of the vote. Last time round, he got 13% of the vote. His vote has only gone up 2% in 14 years! Has there really been a "sudden rise" in support for Le Pen?

Jonathan Noon, London, England: Is this trend to the right a Europe-wide protest vote about the liberties being taken in our immigration systems, or do you honestly think that we are heading towards a more right wing society?

Angus Roxburgh:
I don't know about heading towards a more right wing society but there certainly has been a drift towards right wing governments in Europe over the past four years or so. I think we have to distinguish in a way between two things. We've seen the rise of far right - extreme right parties, like Le Pen's, and other similar parties in several countries around Europe and also a shift towards moderate mainstream right wing governments in the past four years. I remember attending an EU Summit about three and a half years ago in Austria and we were all amazed to look at the leaders there who were almost entirely left wing - socialist or social democrat governments. Shroeder has just been elected in Germany, Blair had been elected the previous year in Britain. So the whole of Europe, if you like, was pink or red and since then many of those governments have changed and become centre-right governments.

As to why this is happening - I think the questioner is right to point to immigration as a major factor there and particularly a factor in the rise of the extreme right wing in several countries. Almost all of those extreme parties have spotlighted high immigration as allegedly a threat to the national identities of their countries and I think that their vote has increased as a result of preying on the fears of people about losing their own identities.

David Shukman:
Dominic Corby, London: Is the apparent support for extreme right wing parties due to the result of apathy on the part of mainstream electorates, or a general feeling of disaffection with the political mainstream?

James Coomarasamy:
I think they're two sides of the same issue. Certainly if we look at what happened here in France, there was a record high level of abstention in the first round of the election - 28% or so and this clearly is what let Jean-Marie Le Pen in. He only beat Lionel Jospin by just about .7%. So most of these abstentions tended to be people who would naturally have voted on the left. But of course that's the problem that Lionel Jospin, the Socialist, had - they couldn't mobilise their core voters. People thought that they weren't speaking them - that they were somehow above the concerns of ordinary people.

Also what we saw here in France - apart from the move to the extreme right - we also had a very strong showing on the extreme left. The traditional Communist Party - their vote almost collapsed. But people to the far left - the Trotskyists - they had three candidates and between them they got more than 10% of the vote. So yes, voter apathy is an issue - also the specifics of what happens in France - traditionally in the first round of this election people vote with their hearts - the cliché goes and with their heads in the second round. They vote to protest against what they see as an establishment that hasn't been changing. On this occasion more of them voted against the establishment and more of them decided not to vote at all in protest at that.

David Shukman:
James Wild, London: Is it possible that the Front National vote was partly due to European integration taking power away from elected parliaments, thus leaving people feeling powerless? Is there not a danger that European integration will lead us to fascism?

Angus Roxburgh:
Anti-EU policies were of course one of the major planks in Mr Le Pen's programme. He came here to Brussels yesterday hoping to talk about them - he didn't get a chance to do that in the end and left without making any statements. He's well know for his anti-EU policies - he would like to take France out of the single currency and out of the European Union. Again this is a feature that is common to most of the far right parties around Europe. For instance, the Danish People's Party which gained 12% of the vote in the last general election there - they campaigned hard a couple of years ago against Denmark joining the single currency. So again the two things are linked - the anti-immigration policies and anti-EU policies - both of them very much part of the right wing strategy.

David Shukman:
Anthony Hopkins, Toronto, Canada: Do you think this apparent shift to the right is solely European based or could this extent readily to the whole of the "Western World"?

Angus Roxburgh:
Hard to say I suppose. But I think the right wing generally in all countries tends to prey on intolerance, if you like and of course intolerance grows when there are social problems which make people feel excluded, makes people want to blame outsiders or troublemakers in society. I think that's where the right comes in and for instance tries to blame influxes of immigrants, asylum seekers and so on. They point to rising crime waves in various countries and encourage the people to look for very radical and drastic solutions to these problems.

So I think that's really the problem and that can affect any country, not just Europe. I don't really see though that this as a right wing wave which is spreading out from Europe and is likely to hit the rest of the world. I think right wing and left wing policies within moderate bounds tend to come and go in cycles in all democratic countries and one hopes that that would continue to happen.

David Shukman:
Eric, Fairfax, USA: Don't you think that "establishment" politicians who have not had much to offer in the last decade may be using the "fear factor" to get re-elected, instead of coming up with new ideas and a new vision for their particular countries?

James Coomarasamy:
I think that's a very good point. Certainly there's been a lot of soul-searching since Le Pen's strong showing on Sunday about who was to blame for it. Many people say that both Chirac and Jospin to a certain extent were because they didn't really campaign on policies other than crime which is obviously a policy that has always played well with Le Pen. He is someone who has always spoken about being tough on crime and there's always been the subconscious link between crime and immigration.

Certainly Chirac used that to his advantage - I think most people are pretty sure of that - he continued to make sure crime was at the top of the agenda. Most of his election rallies or his election visits certainly were to very poor suburbs, very ethnically mixed suburbs where crime has been very high. So I think yes, mainstream politicians, certainly here in France, were unable to show the electorate that they had any other ideas. Now in the long term it seems that will play to Chirac's favour but within the short term people here are accusing him of being very cynical.

David Shukman:
Jim Bunker, Nottingham, England: Will the new move to the right in certain countries mean that even moderate parties will have to shift to the right in order to get votes? Is this what happened in Austria after Joerg Haider's election?

Bethany Bell:
There certainly does seem to have been polarisation since the Freedom Party came to power just over two years ago. The opposition left has moved further to the left and the conservatives, who rules in coalition with the Freedom Party have moved to the right. This has been very visible in plans to tighten up conditions for immigrants. There are now going to be compulsory German lessons with a threat of deportation if you don't past set tests.

The conservatives have also had to grin and bear it when their coalition partners, the Freedom Party, have used very populist tactics - for example, over the question of EU enlargement, over questions of when Joerg Heider tried to defy the constitutional court and they hands in a sense have been tied - they haven't been able to be as critical as they might have been if the Freedom Party had not been in government with them.

David Shukman:
Gareth Nicholson, UK: Do you think that extremists will continue to gain support as long as mainstream politicians shy away from tackling the problems of mass immigration for fear of being called a racist?

Bethany Bell:
Well in the Austrian case the Freedom Party actually seems to have lost support since its been a mainstream party in government and since its had to tackle problems like mass immigration. It's down almost 10% compared to where it was at the time of the election. A sign perhaps that it's possibly easier to be a protest opposition movement than to actually have to deal with problems like immigration.

David Shukman:
Rebecca Knight, Lancashire, UK: What role does the proportional representation electoral system play in the rise of the right?

James Coomarasamy:
It has played a very important role. It certainly was to a large extent the reason that Jean-Marie Le Pen gained electoral credibility in the first place because France had always had a first past the post system. In the 1986 legislative elections, the then president Francois Mitterand introduced the PR system and this enabled Jean-Marie Le Pen to translate his number of votes into seats in parliament he gained 35 seats in the French parliament.

Now this was overturned a couple of years later by the Prime Minister at the time - a certain Jacques Chirac - who decided that this was no longer appropriate and since then Jean-Marie Le Pen has had a very personal vendetta against Jacques Chirac for, as he sees it, changing the system and then stopping him getting his due amount of votes as he would see it. Now this isn't directly relevant to what's happened here because the presidential election is a straight race between candidates - it is not a proportional representation system at all. But certainly in historical terms, it has been very important in giving Le Pen electoral legitimacy - giving him seats in parliament and that's to a certain extent why Chirac decided at the time to reverse the system back.

David Shukman:
As you heard Rebecca Knight from Lancashire here in the UK asking what role proportional representation might have in the rise of the right.

Also Marcus Self, Warwick, England asks: Do you think we in Britain, with our "first past the post" system, are less at risk from the development of dangerous fascist sentiments in our political mainstream?
Bethany Bell:
Well it certainly seems that the proportional representation system in Austria has helped the Freedom Party. If you look at the last election, the party that actually came first is now in opposition because it couldn't form a coalition with the centre right party. People say that in general the population in Austria generally swings towards the right but the right has been split because of proportional representation and that the Freedom Party might actually be much smaller if you didn't have that type of system.

With the question of whether one can keep fascist sentiments out of the mainstream with the first past the post system - there are certain safeguards it would appear in that system but you can't rule out what charismatic politicians can achieve. Joerg Haider brought his party out of oblivion practically - he was helped by the political system but he also had an attractively packaged message that people were very willing to listen to.