The Immigrants and the Rise of the New Reich

The Middle East is where the great religions have their genesis. It is the home of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The crusades were fought in this part of the world hundreds of years ago. Religious wars have been re-kindled and are being fought. There are wars of intra Islamic nature and there is the war for land in Palestine. The religious strife in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Libya has spilled over to Europe and is having a profound impact on the European political landscape.
Desperate refugees from the war in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East are pouring into Europe at unprecedented numbers. They initially started the trek by sea but are now coming through the Greek Islands, through Macedonia to Serbia and using Hungary as the gateway into the European Union.
Not all the countries of the European Union are receptive to the refugees. Most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe have professed their hostility to the influx of refugees. Nations like Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic have vehemently opposed a mandatory quota system. These countries have begrudgingly stated that they would take in Christian refugees but are opposed to Muslims in large numbers upsetting their homogeneous societies.
The influx of immigrants has been a causal factor in the rise of ultra-right political parties in Europe. Even though Eastern and Central Europe were under the “thumb” of the Red Army after World War 11, many of these countries have a fascist past and were sympathizers to Nazi Germany. Anti-immigrant political parties have taken hold in Denmark, Holland, Finland, Hungary, et al. For years even at soccer matches, spectators attending these sporting events have been known to shout racial epithets at multi-racial visiting teams and to engage in the Nazi salutes.
Other European leaders like the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, see this as a humanitarian crisis that requires a uniform European response. The Chancellor of Germany has indicated a willingness to absorb and hopefully assimilate 800,000 refugees. But even Germany is now fearful that the numbers might soar and thus making an orderly process nigh impossible.
The welcoming nations must be aware of how the refugee crisis will trigger a backlash which the ultra-right parties will exploit. For example, the National Front in France has been extending its base based on its anti-immigrant appeal. The Party was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and was not only anti-immigrant but was anti-Semitic and racist. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter has assumed control of the National Front and Marine Le Pen jettisoned the vulgar anti-Semitism in an attempt to make the Party more appealing to mainstream votes. The father and daughter are locked in a power struggle over the ideological direction of the National Front. The father, an octogenarian, has been expelled from the Party that he founded.
Marine Le Pen’s Party has done quite well in recent local elections and the fear is that she could be in the run-off for the Presidential election in 2017. A recent criminal investigation into the financing of elections has damaged the image of the Party but the refugee crisis in Europe could provide the ultra-right Party with new momentum.
The isolationist nature of American politics prevents media pundits from making connections of what is taking place in Europe with political trends in America. It is clear that the changing demographics of the American population are a causal factor in the Republican Party’s inexorable drift to the far right. Obama’s election and re-election to the Presidency has exposed the maggots rampant in bodypolitic. America has a long unbroken record of democracy. Nonetheless, there has persisted a neo-fascist element in American politics. It used to manifest itself around the subjugation of black people. Not that racism is dead but the new scapegoat is the Mexican immigrant. When a leading candidate of the Republican Party can demagogically characterize a national group as rapists and criminals and the Republican voters are not outraged, it means that a neo-fascist form of politics has captured the imagination of a sizeable segment of the Republican Party.
The American economy is not falling apart. Job growth for the last six years has brought down unemployment rates to 5.1 percent. Yet most Presidential candidates of the Republican Party are making the case that the United States, is in a degenerative state. How did a super power become such a dysfunctional state? Everything for the American right is tantamount to armageddon whether it is the Iran Deal, the Affordable Care Act or Planned Parenthood. That hyperbole response by elected leaders invariably leads to the search for a Messiah.
In Europe, ultra-right third parties have emerged. That is evident in France, in Denmark and in Hungary. In the United States, the rise of the ultra-right is not of a third party but in the takeover of the Republican Party. The refugee crisis in Europe will serve as a test of Europe’s humanitarian sensibilities. The 2016 Presidential election in America will serve as a test as to whether Americans are willing to embrace a new twenty-first century form of fascism or demonstrate the decency of the American people and their rejection of xenophobia and a reaffirmation of democratic precepts.