Michael Colborne Rise of a new far-right: The European 'philosemites' using Jews to battle Muslims
***
haaretz.com
Almost
three decades ago, Heinz-Christian Strache was arrested at a torch-lit
march with a group modeling itself on the Hitler Youth. But these days
the 48-year-old head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party – which after
Sunday’s election is a likely entrant into Austria’s new right-wing
government – sounds like he’s trying to be Israel’s best friend.
Strache has visited Israel representing the Freedom Party several times,
but government officials have shunned the head of a party whose first
leader was a former SS officer. Strache even wrote to Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year pledging to move the Austrian
Embassy to Jerusalem from a Tel Aviv suburb, and supports Israel’s right
to build West Bank settlements.
Israel possesses “the right to build wherever is required in the Land of Israel,” Strache wrote.
Strache
is far from the only far-right leader in Europe who’s perceived as
having become a devotee of so-called philosemitism. Dutch Islamophobe
firebrand Geert Wilders says Israel is “the West’s first line of defense”
against Islam; by his own reckoning, Wilders has visited Israel more
than 40 times. In France, far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen
has told members of the largest Jewish community in Europe that her
party is “the best shield to protect you.”
But
whether it’s in Austria, Germany, France or even Bulgaria – where an
openly far-right party has been part of the government since May –
far-right leaders are using Jewish communities, whether real or
imagined, as tools to demonize Muslims and other minorities.Pro-Israel positions and philosemitism are
relatively recent within the European radical right, even within Western
Europe,” Cas Mudde, a political science professor at the University of
Georgia, told Haaretz by email.
Mudde,
who studies Europe’s far-right movements, also notes that far-right
parties like the Freedom Party and National Front that have taken on
philosemitic positions “developed them as part of their Islamophobic
agenda.”
Writing
more than a decade ago in a study on populist radical right parties in
Europe, Mudde highlighted the stance of many radical rightists on the
Jews. Jews, says Mudde, are seen to embody a modernity to be defended.
Europe’s large Roma minority, on the other hand, are seen as barbarians
living on the fringes of modernity, while Muslims are seen as barbarians
living inside modernity – the enemy already inside the gates, according
to the far right.
As
a result the “philosemitic turn” of many far-right parties, in the
words of sociologist Rogers Brubaker, comes directly from these parties’
preoccupations with Islam. Writing earlier this year, Brubaker argues
that the far right has come to redefine Jews as “fellow Europeans” and
“exemplary victims of the threat from Islam.”
Anti-Semitism still rears its head
But
not everyone in these newly philosemitic parties seems to have gotten
the memo. Before the French presidential elections in April and May,
Marine Le Pen had to fend off accusations that two of her longtime
associates were Nazi sympathizers who used to host “striped-pajama”
parties – referring to the clothing Jews were forced to wear in
concentration camps.
In Austria, Strache makes a show of decrying the anti-Semitism that still runs in the party; this month he had to suspend a local Freedom Party councillor
who made a Nazi salute. On top of this, Austrian activists recently
published a list of what they say are more than 60 anti-Semitic and
racist incidents involving Freedom Party figures since 2013.
“If [the Freedom Party] really changed their
ideology, it is a question they can only answer themselves,” Austrian
analyst Alexandra Siegl told Agence France-Presse.
But sometimes the mask seems to slip a bit. Days before the Austrian vote that saw the Freedom Party nearly match its best result ever,
Strache questioned the motives of one of incoming Chancellor Sebastian
Kurz’s campaign donors – Jewish businessman Georg Muzicant, son of the
former head of Vienna’s Jewish community.
Strache said Muzicant’s financial support for Kurz was evidence of Verstrickungen
– entanglements – a word in that context implying a Jewish conspiracy.
For his part, Kurz said Strache’s comments were “dishonorable,” though
he still looks likely to form a coalition government with him.
Big in Bulgaria
In
Bulgaria, on Europe’s oft-forgotten fringes, a far-right party already
sits in a coalition government – one using Bulgaria’s experience during
the Holocaust to attack the country’s most-maligned minorities.
Bulgaria’s United Patriots, a grouping of three
far-right parties, scraped its way into the government after elections
this year left three-term Prime Minister Boyko Borisov with no other
feasible coalition partner.
The
United Patriots and its Islamophobic, anti-Roma leaders are proud
promoters of Bulgaria’s role in saving Jews from Germany’s death camps.
In March 1943 Boris III, the king of Nazi-allied Bulgaria, refused to
allow Bulgaria’s 50,000 Jews to be deported to the camps. Almost all
survived the war and, over time, left for Israel.
Today
there are barely 2,000 Jews in Bulgaria and only two functioning
synagogues. Still, Jewish-community leaders have warned this year about
an increase in anti-Semitic language and incidents, including the
defacing of Jewish gravestones in Sofia’s central cemetery last month
and annual marches commemorating a notorious Nazi-era general, Hristo
Lukov.
None of this has discouraged the United Patriots.
“Jews
in Bulgaria are an example of successful integration,” a United
Patriots MP said in Bulgaria’s parliament on Rosh Hashanah, reading a
party declaration. Jews, the MP said, are “an example that all minority
groups in our homeland should follow,” subtly chiding Bulgaria’s Roma
and ethnic Turks, who together make up almost 20 percent of Bulgaria’s
population.
But
the United Patriots’ take on Bulgarian Jewish history skips a few key
points. During World War II, Bulgarian Jews were forced to wear yellow
stars, follow strict curfews and hand over jewelry and other valuables.
And during the war Bulgaria occupied Macedonia, Thrace and part of
Serbia – and did nothing to prevent 11,000 Jews in those areas from
being sent to their deaths.
That’s not something the United Patriots like to talk about.
In a statement, the party said that today “the enemies of Bulgaria, actively supported by bezrodnitsi”
– a poetic term for people who have distanced themselves from the
nation – “try to stick a shameful accusation against Bulgarians” by
bringing attention to those 11,000 Jews who were deported to their
deaths.
It’s
an attitude that unnerves Bulgaria’s current Jewish community. Tom
Junes, a historian and member of the Human and Social Studies Foundation
Sofia, a nongovernmental think tank, told Haaretz something a Bulgarian
Jewish colleague once told him: “If I have five kids and you come into
my house and kill one of them, am I supposed to be grateful to you for
not killing the other four?”
The
United Patriots will have to get used to hearing more questions like
this. The 75th anniversary of Boris III’s refusal to deport Jews from
Bulgaria proper falls this March – right when Bulgaria is holding the
rotating presidency of the European Union Council, followed,
coincidentally, by Austria. Some of Europe’s most fervent far-right
politicians might find themselves and their ostensible philosemitism
receiving more scrutiny than they ever expected.
Michael Colborne
Haaretz Contributor
Commenti
Posta un commento