Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose. RADIO 4 CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS FLIRTING WITH FASCISM TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY Presenter: Felipe Fernandez- Armesto Producer: Ingrid Hassler Editor: Nicola Meyrick BBC White City 201 Wood Lane London W12 7TS 020 8752 6252 Broadcast Date: 11.07.02 Repeat Date: 14.07.02 Tape Number: TLN227/02VT1028 Duration: 27.42 Taking part in order of appearance: Henk Wesseling Professor of Contemporary History at Leiden University in the Netherlands Peter Skaarup, MP Deputy Leader of the Danish People's Party Pieter Hilhorst Political journalist and author of the recent play “ Hetze”, Amsterdam Dr Kirsty Hughes Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Timothy Garton Ash Writer and Historian, St Antony’s College, Oxford and The Hoover Institution, USA John Gray Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics Ana Palacio, Spanish Foreign Secretary, and former MEP for the Partido Popular FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Let's shelve delicacy. Let's be frank about what has changed politics most in western Europe in recent times. Henk Wesseling, Professor of Contemporary History at Leiden University in the Netherlands, remembers the way things used to be. WESSELING In 1955 I went to Paris for the first time and I realised that I’d never seen a black person in my entire life in the city of The Hague. I mean, there was not a single, not white Dutch person. Somebody told me there are ten in Amsterdam. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Well, there are plenty now and not just in Holland. SKAARUP There’s a debate going on in Denmark saying that we want to protect what is Danish, what is our culture here. It’s not a thing you could describe as populism. I think you could describe it as love to your country. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup, Deputy Leader of the Danish People's Party, which got 12 % in Denmark's recent general election. At first glance, it looks like part of a classic nationalist revanche. In France, Italy, Holland, Austria, similar programmes have re-shaped national elections; in other ways – through regional legislatures or pressure on policy – their influence extends over most of western Europe. Hostility to immigration is the starting-point of their success. But the common features don't end there. For a start, they've all emerged from consensus, cohabitation, cosiness – the swamp in which Euro-politics are mired. The party founded by the most ostentatious of the new populists, the Lijst Pim Fortuyn, is now the second- biggest in the Dutch legislature with seventeen per cent of the vote. Their opportunity arose from the voters' disenchantment with a left-right coalition. Henk Wesseling explains. WESSELING The result of all this, of the reconciliation, of the two opposite ends of the political spectrum was a total boredom that came over the country because the new political leaders, they would always point out to you like the civil servants do in “Yes Minister” that this is very, very interesting proposal but unfortunately impossible and in a way that was the mood in the country. People were terribly terribly bored. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO At this point, enter Pim Fortuyn. WESSELING He would say, when somebody says you are an anti-immigration man, he said: “I anti-immigration, I anti-Moroccan, I sleep with the Moroccan boys, I like them” - and all these things. And there’s another side to it - is he is a self made millionaire. He has a big house in Rotterdam which he calls Palazzo di Pietro, where he lives alone with his two pet dogs, he has a butler, he has a Bentley or Daimler. Now you think probably about the Dutch as a Calvinist nation. Not at all. People adore it. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Bentley and butler: most Dutch politicians just have a housewife and bicycle. Before the last Dutch general election, Fortuyn was shot dead in the street. By an uncanny coincidence, a new play – the story of a deadly attack on a Fortuyn-like character – had just opened in Amsterdam. HILHORST I was asked to write a play about multi-culturalism in politics and I was working on it and then I saw an article in a right-wing newspaper that a look-alike of Fortuyn had been beaten up by Moroccans and that what the play starts with. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Political journalist Pieter Hilhorst. His play, Hetze – The Smear – was widely admired. But he was accused of giving succour to Fortuyn’s supporters by exposing conventional politicians’ dirty tricks. Fortuyn declared national culture ready for a clean-up, like the litter in the streets. Despite his vaunted homosexuality, he praised family values. He was louche and libertarian, but his platform had planks recycled from the traditional right. Voters liked the mix. Pieter Hilhorst. HILHORST In the Netherlands if Fortuyn would not have been killed, my guess was that he would have been the biggest party. There’s a strange coalition which backed Fortuyn. It’s part the people who are threatened, so the people in the lowest strata of society who are living in the areas where there are problems with crime. So he got the backing of those groups but also of people higher in society who are fed up with government. And there’s something which Fortuyn did very well. So we always said there’s a taboo on talking about crime and there’s a taboo about talking about immigration. There are certain thing which I’m not allowed to say. People are trying to demonise me. And that made, of course, debating with him very difficult because if you criticised his views then he always said you’re trying to shut me up. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Fortuyn, then, was a snoot-cocker, who blew away the inhibitions of political correctness. He also offered a mixture of outrage and hope to the traditional constituency of the extreme right. But his kind of demagogy has an extra allure, which makes it different from and perhaps more insidious than the fascism of the past: it's proof against prosperity; it attracts all sorts of votes – even some from immigrants. Why? Why now? Dr Kirsty Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. HUGHES I think it’s to do with a general discontent with contemporary politics and this is something that the extreme and populist right has managed to pick up and exploit and turn into certain xenophobic political approaches. It’s also a post September 11th effect. There is a greater nervousness about Islamic religion. There’s Islamophobia and that’s being exploited by some parties. But I think it’s being exploited in ways that are very similar to the old extreme right and populist right parties. SKAARUP We, since 1983, have seen very many refugees and immigrants coming to Denmark. It’s more exactly from the Middle East that there’s a lot of people coming here - Palestines, Lebanese, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup of the Danish People’s Party. SKAARUP Many of them representing a belief and a way of thinking that is much different compared to what we are used to here and therefore there’s a clash of cultures, you could say. For instance, concerning equality where women and men have really, I think, have equality in Denmark in all ways of living. There’s a new discussion now because Muslim people here in this country seem to believe that women should be at home and not being part of the labour market. So that’s a big concern. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO If this sounds Islamophobic, it's well attuned to a lot of genuine concerns among ordinary people in the secular, progressive west – defending lifestyle-liberalism against godly orthodoxy’s, for instance; advocating feminism and economic liberalism against supposedly benighted prejudices; strengthening security against torrents of terrorism; rejecting immigrants – not explicitly as black or brown but as culturally backward; exalting Danishness, in Peter Skaarup's case, for all he finds best in Denmark. SKAARUP I think you can look back on other periods in history where a country or their culture have been threatened. I compared it with the Second World War because there you had this discussion in Denmark, this proudness to be Danish. So it’s at these times where you begin to discuss a way to be Danish. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO In other words, Pieter Skaarup acknowledges a historical precedent in the Nazi era – but not in the way you might expect. His kind of nationalism, he says, originated in reaction against the Nazis. The immigrants are threatening Danishness now, just as the invaders did then. What makes the new populism so hard to handle is this claim to virtuous credentials. You can find them – or claim to find them – further back than the forties, deep in the western tradition. Pieter Hilhorst in Amsterdam: HILHORST What Fortuyn did, he was something who was for the enlightenment. He was an enlightened politician in a sense that he said: We have certain freedoms, we have certain liberties and we want everybody to conform to them. So he was against foreigners not because he was exclusive but because he was an enlightenment politician. And that’s something which I think is new. Actually they defend the enlightenment against forces from outside and that’s something which has a much bigger appeal also from people who are right but who don’t want to be called a racist. But they only say no, we want our values, our enlightenment values defended against forces, religions like the Islam which are against that. And that’s something which is a much more modern and therefore much more dangerous political story. And I think that that story will win from the old Le Pen type of right wing policies. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So there is more than one kind of right-wing populism in Europe today. A new extremism – zappy, zeitgeisty, cool – has put down respectable roots and learned the language of the Enlightenment. It's hard for the old Le Pen-style right to compete, and hard for the establishment to cope. If the new populists are really as dangerous as Pieter Hilhorst thinks, it may be because they’re wolves in sheep's clothing – unrepentant reactionaries in enlightened disguise – or it may be because they’re streamlined for success in today’s world, like the government put together by Forza Italia leader, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. The contemporary historian Timothy Garton Ash, of St Antony’s College, Oxford: GARTON ASH It’s a mistake to think too much in terms of the sort of traditional themes of the European right because that obscures the really novel elements in this kind of politics. Pim Fortuyn, for example, it seems to me is extremely hard to describe in categories of the traditional right because he’s someone who is arguing for integration into a modern liberal state. So I wouldn’t think that he fits very well. I don’t think that Berlusconi fits very well into a traditional right because Berlusconi is not about building up a larger state or a stronger state. He’s put together, for example, very strong elements of economic liberalism which do appeal to a middle class as Berlusconi has done, but which would not have been found in a traditional nationalist European right. Many of the movements seem to be quite untypical and that is their economic liberalism. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Peter Skaarup, too, resists classification of his party in old-right terms. He talks the new language, exemplifies the new style. SKAARUP I don’t consider the Danish People’s Party as an especially right wing party. I think that it’s very old fashioned to talk about right wing in these days. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Yes, we’re into a new politics. SKAARUP Right and I think, if you ask a Danish voter voting for the People’s Party here, he won’t consider himself as a right wing person. And you can say, concerning economics where you usually also discuss right wing as liberal, we have a policy that is in the middle. We are protecting the welfare system, the welfare society. So I think it’s a whole new agenda. We are still a liberal country, still a tolerant country, people are still welcome to come here. The thing is that we have to tighten up a welfare system because it’s being taken advantage of by people coming from especially the Middle East - there we have to change this so we can still be this tolerant and liberal country. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO These are truly remarkable claims. Can you really have a society which is liberal inside barricaded borders; a welfare state which discriminates against some residents; an enlightenment which is exclusive; toleration in which some people are targets? These sound like contradictions to me, but Peter Skaarup would see them as a modern synthesis. We know the new parties are wised-up and wired into some of the latest trends. Modern, however, doesn't mean moderate. John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. GRAY Just as many of the fascist movements and indeed even some aspects of the Nazi regime can be seen as radically modern in that they implemented what were then the most advanced theories of political economy and economic policy, they embraced, what were then, the most advanced technologies and they saw themselves as carving out a new kind of future. Just so, at the start of the 21st century, many of the far right movements in Europe, embrace the new technologies of the internet and of information technology. They embrace globalisation and world wide trade and movement of capital and they understand better, I think in some ways than the parties of the centre understand, that economic globalisation has casualties even in the richest countries. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So there’s this thread of modernisation binding them to the kinds of movements we saw in the 30s. They’re also appealing to the economically excluded as those parties were in the 30s. GRAY That’s correct. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO There’s a lot of common agenda here - nationalistic , anti-immigrant and there’s a strong authoritarian tendancy in a lot of these movements. So it sounds to me as though they quack like a duck. I mean, why don’t we call them, you know, the 30s returning? GRAY In contrast with European far right movements in the inter-war period which typically aimed to overthrow or destroy democratic government where it existed, the far right parties at the start of the 21st century aim to shape the agenda of democratic government. So their strategy is either by becoming part of national government, as they’ve done in Austria and the Netherlands, or by having a decisive influence on parties in national government as they’ve done in Denmark, to compel the centrist parties to shape their policies in response to the electoral momentum which the far right parties have gained. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Only last week, under the influence of Peter Skaarup's party, Denmark introduced the most radical immigration legislation in Europe so far, withdrawing asylum seekers' entitlements to housing and welfare, denying the right of entry to spouses and children. As John Gray indicated, this is how the new populism works: influencing the establishment, tugging at governments. Even in Britain and other countries which don't yet have electorally successful parties of the new right, mainstream politicians try to mimic or pre-empt their appeal. Does Kirsty Hughes think this is the right strategy? HUGHES I think they’re making a very serious mistake by going in that direction because I don’t think you’ll placate the extreme right or the populists by adopting their policies. You won’t take the issue of the agenda. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO So what would be your prescription for mainstream parties in Europe reacting to this phenomenon? HUGHES They have to show much more courage and leadership than they’ve shown so far. I think so far we’ve seen a mixture of cowardice and opportunism. PALACIO It’s not a matter of civilised right and populists. It’s not the threat from the right. I insist it’s the threat from disenchanted or confused citizens that are lured by the right populists nowadays. So what I think it is that we have to address their problems not the populists. They will always be there. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO That’s the new Spanish Foreign Minister, Ana Palacio, who, until this week was a Euro-MP representing the Partido Popular, Spain’s centre -right government party. It sounds as if it's not the mainstream parties' fault but ours. The voters have put populists in power. And Ana Palacio sees the potential benefits of a system which drives moderates and extremists into collaboration, as in Joerg Haider's Austria. PALACIO What we are seeing in Austria, for instance, is that the government is keeping absolutely in track with all other governments in Europe. So we have to admit that -now with a perspective of some now nearly two years of government- the results are there. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO This is a remarkable turnaround, because when Joerg Haider's Freedom Party first joined the Austrian government, the EU responded furiously, introducing sanctions. If Ana Palacio is right about Austria today, it's surely because the populist strategy has worked: Europe generally has moved to the right in response. Yet hope persists that extremists can be domesticated, even emasculated, by being given a share of government. The Dutch establishment wants a similar solution in Holland, smothering them in boredom. Professor Henk Wesseling. WESSELING Now what’s going on now - that is the normalisation of what’s called the Lijst Pim Fortuyn. So they’re just doing the same, boring negotiations week on, week on, week on as we have always had. Now what most people expect and I think what many people hope is that these people from the Lijst Fortuyn will see how difficult it is to govern the country, see all the complications, all the compromises that then at a certain moment there will be a crisis, will be new elections, the party will, the Lijst Fortuyn will have fallen victim to its own disintegration and we will go back to normalcy. That’s what the political elite wants. FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO This is a dangerous strategy. The populists could be strengthened by power. Even if they soften and submerge, their influence will linger in a Europe they are helping to re-shape. Speaking for his own country, Denmark, Peter Skaarup is frank about the hit-list of what they want changed. SKAARUP We don’t want to be betrayed by people who transfer power from Denmark to Brussels, betrayed by people who agree or at least maybe they don’t say that but they in practice agree with having a multi-ethnic society. That’s being seen as portrayal from the leading politicians and people want something new. PALACIO This is fear, this is fear in many cases. FERNANDEZ - ARMESTO Ana Palacio, Spain’s new Foreign Minister. . PALACIO When you see the percentage of French voters that vote for Le Pen, then you see that behind this vote there is something different from xenophobia or just being against Europe. No, it’s much worse. I think what they are is is citizens that feel that the institutions that should represent them, that should listen to their real concerns are not doing so. The European level has been playing around without paying notice to security and security related to illegal immigration was very high on the concerns of the citizens. So what citizens do not understand is that if there is a real problem there, we don’t tackle it. FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO The European Union’s recent Seville summit was an attempt to respond. Kirsty Hughes. HUGHES If you look at the Seville conclusions, what they do is spend about six pages on how you try and stop illegal immigration, how you try and tighten European borders. And in those six pages there was about one sentence on: We must do something nonetheless to promote anti-discrimination policies and to meet our responsibilities under the Geneva Convention. There’s been perhaps a complacency in Brussels on this because you certainly haven’t seen people like Romano Prodi or any of the other European commissioners getting up and making strong and passionate political speeches defending human rights, defending the asylum process in Europe. So, I think, in terms of the rhetoric and to some extent in terms to the direction of policy, there is a pandering to the extreme right. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO - and a good job too, some say. Austria’s Joerg Haider has been reported as congratulating the Union on copying a stance for which he says he was 'labelled as a racist and fascist'. The extremists, then, have succeeded in changing the agenda on immigration. So far, however, they haven't been so successful in changing the other big nationalist bete-noire, the European Union. The establishment seems willing to sacrifice the immigrants, but not the Eurocrats. Now there's an important law of political science to remember here: every integrative process provokes a fissile reaction: Europeanisation, therefore, stimulates nationalisms. In these circumstances, can the European project be kept safe from the rise of the right? Timothy Garton-Ash. GARTON ASH I do think that what we have achieved in the European Union and in the ever closer co-operation of European states and peoples is seriously under threat and that the combination of this sort of challenge with the challenge of the enlargement of the European Union, could put the whole show on the skids. FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO And, of course, this new agenda is very hostile to enlargement anyway. So is enlargement definitely out of the picture for the future? GARTON ASH No, I don’t think it is because it is the big project and everyone knows that this is what we have to do. But I think it means that enlargement will be enormously bad tempered because voters who already believe that Moroccan or Turkish or Pakistani immigrants are taking their jobs will think that Hungarians and Czechs, and Poles will take even more of their jobs and will also think that having been bled dry in other respects, they’re going to be bled again for enlargement. So that I think it will increase the resistance to the eastward enlargement to the EU. FERNANDEZ -ARMESTO So a lot of the established political landscape of Europe is feeling the rumblings of seismic change. Integration is subverting the kind of multi-culturalism we have known, as immigrants take compulsory lessons in the language, heritage, and allegiance-rites of their hosts. Euro-enlargement is under a shadow, the whole European project under a cloud. Consensus and cohabitation are in the cauldron. John Gray of the LSE identifies those responsible. GRAY At present, both the centre parties and even more the European Institutions, have exhibited a mixture of opportunistic retreat and bureaucratic rigidity. They still hold to the belief that the genuine issues that the far right is exploiting for its regressive goals will somehow be resolved by everyone becoming richer. But the far right does not need large scale economic dislocation, does not need large scale unemployment to make headway. So, I fear that a mixture of rigidity and complacency is opening Europe to further advance of far right parties which is distinctly worrying. FERNANDEZ- ARMESTO Timothy Garton Ash sees some of the same dangers, while reconnoitring routes of escape. GARTON ASH This kind of politics will not go away on its own just because the European economy picks up a bit or this or that party comes in or out of power. I think it needs a real strategy by European leaders, a wholly welcoming and embracing attitude to immigration with, of course quotas, with of course border controls. Every immigration country has that. America has it in spades, Australia, Canada. It’s nonsense to say otherwise. But a welcome to those who do come- legally. Secondly, addressing the structural problem of unemployment and thirdly, a kind of rethinking of the politics of the traditional democratic right. . FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO As a grand strategy, that is hard to quarrel with: but what about the tactics along the way? Welcoming immigrants means tolerating cultural pluralism – a policy which the nationalists will not endorse and on which established politicians seem willing to compromise. The democratic mainstream is re-thinking its policies, aping or assimilating the extremists rather than resisting them. That’s not the way forward, according to Kirsty Hughes. HUGHES What I think we might see and what’s of greatest concern is that if we carry on going down this path of following the more populists policies in terms of immigration and anti-asylum seeker rhetoric, that you will see a lot more potential for ethnic conflict and ethnic difficulties within the European Union. You can’t stop the EU being multi-cultural - it is. All the different people are here already. So what you’ve got to do is push forward the policies that the EU does have on anti-discrimination. And it has a range of policies on anti-discrimination in terms of race, in terms of ethnic group, in terms of sexual orientation, age, disability. It’s got to push forward those policies and try and manage the diversity that there is within the European Union if it’s to be a stable beacon in the world as it actually wants to be. If it becomes unstable, ridden with conflict and ethnic difficulties, then it’s going to have great difficulties in developing at all. FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO Europe is in for a spell of designer- demagogy which thrives in affluence and ennui and gift-wraps the agenda of extremism in the language of Enlightenment. To confront it, mainstream politicians need to engage with the voters and argue against the noisy little men, with their nationalism and narrow-mindedness. For if the agenda of extremists becomes the message of the mainstream we’ll be in a new kind of consensus, which will again consign voters to frustration and deprive them of choice: cohabitation resumed – only this time with dangerous bedfellows. 17 16