The new rise of the far right in Europe (elections Belgium)

bm

Looking through the first results: it doesn't look as baaaaad as I feared.

The municipal counselors of 589 cities and towns in the three regions of Belgium (308 in the Flemish Region, 262 in the Walloon Region and 19 in the Brussels-Capital Region) as well as the ten provincial councils will be elected in the elections.

City and provincial councilors are elected for a six-year term.

Newly elected councilors will take office in January 2007, with a term ending in 2013.

Voting in Belgium is obligatory for everyone who is registered on the electoral roll.

The 2006 local elections are the first to have been organized by Belgium's three regions. Up until now, the federal state had always been in charge of organizing the local poll.

Will be a listener on this thread (thanks for posting).

In Antwerp, the Vlaamse Block got about the same % as the last time = seems, they've reached the zenith.

However, in some small communities, they've got more than 25%. (Strongest party in three smaller towns.)

[Personally, I think this is mainly due that in other countries especially the voters of the extreme far right (= those, who are easily persuaded by simple populistic slogans) mostly don't vote at all. But since in Belgium you have to vote ...]

Well, that's something.....

Vlaams Belang is claiming what it calls a spectacular victory in Flanders.
But translating that victory into political power may be as difficult as ever - all other parties (mostly, at least, there is one or another community as an exemption) won't work together with them.

Especially in Antwerp the ultra-right ("VLAAMS") didn't gain as much as I've feared - though quite plenty:

BM, thanks Walter

The news of what's happening in some of the smaller communities continues to be discouraging (to me).

Actually, you should remember to things:

a) you must vote in Belgium,
b) local elections often reflect people's general discontent with the government .... and their mayor/mayor's party etc.
(Provincial parliament results looked a bit better.)

The problem is post WW2 the nazi ideology was never stomped out.
It should have been crushed and pulverized, because its roots were not removed it will keep growing. Europe has always been the cradle of anti-semitism and right wing fascism, it has to take responsibilty for its **** that it has sent round the world.
Europeans have never realy accepted their hand in the rise of nazism, it was Britain that produced the Holocaust denying historian and the BNP.
We should all be concerned, the best way to deal with nazis is to outlaw them and their insignias, round them up and lock them up.

Difficult. Can you lock up an idea? Martyrs for a cause are a potent influence.

This is not surprising and it is the only the beginning.

A growing community of European muslims who not only refuse to assimilate but insist on imposing their cultural and religious mores on their new homelands will inevitably lead to the Right in Europe coming to power.

There is tolerance for other cultures and there is submission to other cultures. The one's that were there first will become nationalistic.

It is basic human nature, and the political parties that seem to repond to it will thrive.

The question remain whether Europe can moderate the inevitable extreme swing of the pendulum by coming to grips with reality and not try to make strained arguments for why there is no real problem.

Well, you offer one of the possible reasons of why the neo-nazi deology rises again.

I'm sure, others have different ideas about that.

I'm sure they do. Let's hear them.

I'll bet it's real tough being a conservative in Europe what with the fast and loose use of "neo-nazi."

Europeans on A2K are fond of telling us Yanks that our distinction between left and right is amusing since in the States, as compared to Europe, there really is no distinction at all. In Europe, one supposes there are Commies duking it out with Neo-Nazis every day.

Perhaps the Right in Europe is really as wild-eyed and foul as neo-nazi implies. Surely Europeans know more of this than do I. It may, however, explain why Europeans tend to be so opposed to anyone laying claim to being of The Right in the US. If so, than they have obviously lost sight of the lesson with which they love to provide us.

I mean, we are not talking about conservatives and right-wing parties (they've lost in those local elections).

We are talking about the ultra-extreme-right parties.
And probably you missed that: that party in Belgium was declared unconstutional two years ago - they just changed their name and wrote their program differently.

Might well be that we see the Right differently than you in the USA do.

But we had some more deadful experience with them.

It sounds like you could out-nazi a nazi.

Europe suffered rather badly at the hands of left wing authoritarian reformers as well. All well-established political philosophies and theories run the risk of becoming mere doctrine in the hands of authoritarian leaders. American politics generally lacks the European obsessions with political theories of the left or the right. We are relatively pragmatic, and I like it that way.

Whether it is called a resurgance of the right or something else, I believe most Western European nations are going to face intense and growing public reactions to the increasing economic and social contradictions arising from the side effects of their stagnant social democrat policies.

Whether or not it will actually happen depends upon whether or not the Right in Europe can come to lead, but there is already geo-political speculation about how Europe (at least the Western version) is bound to become an extension of the muslim Caliphate.

It is hard to imagine that even the fanatical worship of multi-culturalism and diversity will lead to Europe ceding itself to Islamist immigrants. However, when the Goths were at the doorstep of Rome, there was no shortage of Roman intellectuals opining how the barbarians were a natural wave of change and not to be resisted.

The prime question of the next 10 to 20 years will be whether or not Europeans are so compelled by their New Age philosophy as to commit cultural suicide. It's incredible that we might even consider such a fate for self-absorbed Europeans, but it's out there.

The Pope's visit to Turkey should illustrate a fundamental problem between liberal Europe and fundamentalist western asia. Europe (and America) bends over backwards to accommodate Muslims, Muslim nations (including Euro-Turkey) have no qualms about quashing non-muslim faiths.

Where are the Muslim nations that even tolerate the expression of other faiths? Turkey would become a member of the EU and yet it cannot do away with legal proscriptions against non-Islamic faiths.

Sadly, we have Western liberals railing against fundamentalist Christians, while fundamentalist muslims are not only tolerated, they are appeased.

Witness: Austria is prohibiting all references to St Nick from public schools. Why? Because he is seen as a threatening figure of authority. What utter bollocks! Muslims, on the dole, in Austria have had a fit about Christian symbols in public, and the weak kneed, culturally correct establishment in Austria has folded.

I fully expect that Walter and his confreres will argue that much is being made about nothing.

Perhaps.

I am no prophet, and predictions of the future are, generally, feeble at best, but what we can see happening in Europe and what we can project for the future has nothing to do with precognition and everything to do with reason.

Muslim immigrants in Europe are not subject to the subtlety of Western thought. They are an unrelenting force, and they cannot be repelled by moral relativism.

If the European Left remains in power, Europe will inevitably become muslim.

I doubt this will happen however because Europeans are slowly, but surely coming to the conclusion that the liberal notions of a European society which they love, are in stark contrast with their ever-expanding muslim immigrant population.

In Europe, roughly, 10 percent of the population is muslim.

Seems immaterial. 90% are not.

In Liberal societies, (US and Europe) 10% (or less) of the population is homosexual.

Seems immaterial. 90% are not.

The homosexual 10% (which may be a wildly exaggerated percentage) drives, to a major extent, drives Liberal policies.

Is it that difficult to imagine that a ideological group that not only equates the minority position with that of the majority, but in some weird way casts the minority position as being the trump.

Irrespective of which approach may or may not make the most sense, I prefer to go down cleaving to Western (and Christian) traditions than being absorbed by The Faithful.

Very well said.