Just Another wing of the Welfare-State Left

by Eric Dondero

Interesting take on things you find in the foreign press. They often twist themselves in such knots to explain "Far Right" phenomenon that they more often than not, stumble right upon the truth.

Searchlight is what you might call a Southern Poverty Law Center like publication in Europe. Graeme Atkinson is like the Mark Potok of Europe. He's the "expert" Euro-press most often go too to describe the "rise of the Right," as Potok is all over MSNBC, CNN and other far left media in the US talking of the "violent threat" posed by the Tea Parties.

But Mr. Atkinson has let the proverbial Ole' English cat out of the bag. In an interview with one of Europe's most respected on-line journals the EU Observer, Atkinson fumbles. He inadvertently links the so-called "Far Right" with Euro-Socialists. And he manages to - albeit unknowingly - de-link them with Free Enterprise advocates.

Too much Free Market Capitalism to blame for Rise of Fascists

From Eu Observer:

"The frustration I have with the sudden burst of media coverage is that for most of the time, the far-right phenomenon is not treated seriously," complains Graeme Atkinson, the European editor of the UK's anti-fascist monthly, Searchlight. "They're treated as cranks, so papers don't write about them, don't notice them. And then suddenly something like this happens and they think the sky is falling."

"I don't go for either picture. It's not that the crisis has suddenly caused this. This is a phenomenon that goes back much further than the last two years ... Of course it exacerbates the situation - it would be surprising if the crisis did not result in some increased support for the far-right. But it's a long-term phenomenon that needs monitoring and countering. It's no reason to panic and then forget about it once the next big news item happens."

Mr Atkinson actually lays the bulk of the blame on the centre-left establishment in Europe: "Social democrats everywhere have abandoned their traditional constituency. This is the vacuum the far right are filling."

As socialist and labour parties have, pace Tony Blair, embraced business, backed privatisation and instituted social spending cuts, he argues, extremist ideas provide an easy answer to the thousands that feel disoriented by the slings and arrows of the free market.

So, because of the fact that the UK Labour Party has moved Right on Capitalism, and have abandoned the much adored Dickensian Working Class, the Working Class has turned to National Socialism.

And now for the coup de grâce (Continuing):

The Perspective Institute, a Budapest polling firm, demographically backs this analyis, noting already in an analysis after last year's European elections in which the party scored 14.8 percent that left-wing voters were en masse turning toward Jobbik: "The Hungarian extreme right doesn't primarily recruit its supporters from the centre-right but instead from the leftist camp disappointed with the governmental performance of MSZP [the Socialists]. Jobbik, in certain cases, succeeded in doubling its nationwide share of the votes in cities that had been Socialist strongholds."

Euro-Fascists hate the Libertarian Right

Jobbick much like Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party in the 1930s, doesn't "recruit its supporters from the centre-right but instead from the leftist camp" who are disgruntled because the liberals in power are not sufficiently Pro-Government Welfare State.

Wouldn't it follow that the "Far Right" would then be categorized as Capitalist Free Marketeers, with all the varied Socialist interests groups lumped on the Left? The most prominent Exemplars of the Pro-Free Market Euro-Right of course, would be Boris Johnson and Daniel Hannan of the libertarian wing of the British Tories, Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party, Geert Wilders and the Party of Freedom in the Netherlands, sometimes free marketeer Nikolas Sarkozy, and Hungary's own "Center-Rightists" Fidesz.

This is why, for example, we see the great animosity which exists between the working class-centered British Nationalist Party and Farage's pro-liberty/pro-sovereignty UK Independence. And it also explains why libertarian Wilders is written off by Euro-Fascists as a "Zionist" and "pawn of the Jews."

Why the gross mislabeling of Jobbick and other Euro-Fascist groups as "Rightwing"? They have absolutely nothing to do with Pro-Capitalist Right. And as a matter of fact, are even furious at the Left, for not being Leftist enough.