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Right Turn
Voters in recent European elections appear to be looking to their right. At the end of last month, two far-right parties in Austria got 29 per cent of the vote, between them in a general election.
Not so long ago, the hard right-wing Swiss Peoples Party became the biggest political grouping in Switzerland. In Belgium, the right-leaning Vlaams Belang party is big in Flanders. The coalition government in Denmark cannot survive without the backing of the anti-immigrant People´s Party.
The Northern League in Italy, which is clearly anti-foreigner, is a key player in the ruling right-wing coalition government.
It is worth noting, as more than a footnote, that it was young people who helped the far-right parties in Austria´s election. (The voting age was reduced to 16 before it was time to go to the ballot-box). An example of teenage electoral power par excellence.
There is no use denying that there are signals of a European electoral swing to politicians who offer a more rigid approach to solving the malaise of unemployment throughout much of the Continent. Berlin, the capital of Germany, is a microcosm of a problem that is increasingly cancerous. The unemployment rate surrounding the Brandenburg Gate has been hovering around the 30 per cent mark for at least a decade. (The core of it is youth unemployment). There is smouldering dislike of the considerable and long-standing Turkish minorities who run the cheap cafes and clean the toilets. The folk of Berlin don´t like them but they need them.
Almost always, the far right parties use an anti-immigration mantra to win seats in parliaments. In its most extreme form the argument goes like this: get rid of the non-indigenous population and then there will be plenty of jobs for the boys and girls at home.
The snag is that western Europeans are having fewer babies. Italy, Spain and Germany are the main culprits. France and Britain are the exceptions because the climbing birth rates in those countries are due to high immigrant maternity.
Lest we forget, there was an Austrian, latterly a denizen of Berlin, who instituted a grotesque and radical answer to the question of dealing with those thought not to be home-grown.
He ended his days in a bunker near the Reichskanzlei in 1945.
