text: ". Subject: H: fyi to discuss when you come up for air... Sidhttp://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/15/europe-s-new-politics-of-fear.print.htmlEurope's New Politics of Fearby Denis MacShaneApril 16 2010There is a new divide in Europe. Not an iron curtain but an iron intolerance as politicians revert to blaming minorities fortheir nations' woes. In Western Europe it is Muslims. In Eastern Europe they are Jews Roma and gays. In theNetherlands Geert Wilders surged to an election victory in March on the back of anti-Muslim anti-Quran populism. InHungary the Fidesz Party won big in recent elections with attacks on ""Jewish capital... which wants to devour the entireworld."" To the right of Fidesz is the openly anti-Jewish Jobbik Party which won just two seats fewer than the Socialists. Itsleaders want to wear the neo-Nazi uniform of the pre-1939 Hungarian Guard when they take their seats in Budapest'sParliament.Contemporary political scientists do not like to highlight anti-Semitism. They prefer the term ""radical populism"" but toanyone with half a sense of European history the parallels with an older Jew-baiting politics can no longer be dismissed.Economic dislocation and a rapid loss of confidence in traditional politics gave rise to ultranationalist movements in thefirst half of the last century. Now a global recession and the hunt for someone to blame as jobs and incomes disappear isproducing the same toxic politics.The Fidesz leader Viktor Orban was a youthful evangelist for liberalized open markets after 1990. Now he strikes a muchmore nationalist tone. His Socialist opponents had to accept an austerity IMF package. Unlike Greece—which is beinghelped so far by its euro-zone partners—Hungary was alone as boom-time euro loans to buy houses and cars had to bepaid back in an ever-devaluing forint. Blaming the Socialist government globalization and international capital was easy.But Fidesz went further. In a bid for votes on the far right a Fidesz parliamentarian Oszkar Molnar says it's time to give""primacy to Hungarian interests over those of global capital Jewish capital.""Like Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France Jobbik has the support of about 15 percent of Hungarian voters. TheCzech right-wing ODS Party has had to dismiss its leader former premier Mirek Topolanek after he attacked the Jewishorigins of the current Czech prime minister and castigated the gay transport minister. In a new book The Populist RadicalRight in Poland the Oxford-educated Warsaw political professor Rafal Pankowski writes: ""Antisemitism is crucial to thePolish populist right. The number of Jews in Poland today is minimal but the anti-Jewish prejudice serves as a code for ageneral hostility to diversity and to Polish [liberal] democracy."" For the time being criticism of nationalist politics issuspended as Poles mourn President Lech Kaczynski and other national leaders killed in the air-crash tragedy this month.But the record of his party activists—including Michal Kaminski Poland's best-known M.E.P. and leader of a small right-wing group in the Strasbourg Parliament—is disturbing. An admirer of the late Chilean dictator Augusto PinochetKaminski uses ugly language about gays and says he will apologize for the killing of Jews on Polish soil in World War IIwhen ""Jews apologize for killing Poles.""Mainstream political parties have sought to play down the rise of minority bashing. But Fidesz is affiliated with the center-right European People's Party which groups Angela Merkel's ruling Christian Democratic Union Party in GermanyNicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement government in France and ruling conservative parties in Sweden Italyand Belgium. When Austrian rightist Jorg Haider entered a coalition in Austria a decade ago the European Union heldVienna in a political quarantine until Haider was removed. But Fidesz has a massive majority built on attacking ""Jewishcapital"" in language even Haider didn't dare utter.So radical populism—anti-Muslim in Western Europe anti-Jewish in Eastern Europe and anti-foreigner and anti-immigrant rhetoric everywhere—is no longer fringe politics. In Britain's general election all the main parties are seeking toappease anti-foreigner feeling with language on immigrants that they would not tolerate if applied to British citizens livingand working abroad. Comparisons with prewar Europe should not be overdrawn. Fascism is dead and not coming back.But a new politics of intolerance is afoot in Europe and no one knows how to deal with it.http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/05/how-marine-le-pen-is-changing-french-politics.print.htmlB6EitWhat a Tea Party Looks Like in EuropeMarine Le Pen is moving her father's rabble-rousing far-rightparty away from the fringe and redefining French politics inthe process.by Tracy McNicoll and Christopher DickeySeptember 05 2010amuel Bollendorff / The New York Times-ReduxMarine Le Pen is the heir apparent to the leadership of the National Front the right-wing party her father Jean-Marie (left)leads todayJean-Marie Le Pen the 82-year-old firebrand of France's far right—the man who for decades has played on the inchoatefears xenophobia knee-jerk racism and ill-disguised anti-Semitism of many of his supporters—had just finished speakingto the faithful on a farm not far from the English Channel. As members of the youth wing of his National Front partyfeasted on barbecue and apple pie they were thrilled to see the grand old man hold forth still the ""provocateur"" tauntingthe establishment the ""toreador"" who hides the sword in his cape and lets the press run at him like a bull. Even theseyoungsters knew however that Jean-Marie's time in the ring is nearing an end. The old man himself made it clear he's.determined to step down. All eyes this day were on his daughter Marine. ""She has the will the courage the temperamentnecessary and the competence"" Le Pen told reporters at the farmhouse. ""It seems to me indisputable that she is ourcamp's best candidate for 2012.""Tall blonde plain-spoken and thick-skinned Le Pen's youngest child at 42 is the heir apparent to his party. She'sexpected to win the contest for its leadership in January and she's a passionate advocate of its core message: strongFrench nationalism relentless Euro-skepticism and a lot of hard-nosed talk about fighting crime and immigration. She's afresh face a new look and with rising poll numbers placing her third in a crowded field of possible 2012 candidates anew threat in French politics. In the eyes of many she's more effective—and thus more dangerous—than her father.It's a measure of the Le Pens' enhanced power that they've managed to push President Nicolas Sarkozy to the right andcast their own party as mainstream. Over the summer Sarkozy essentially gave up his flirtation with the left which beganafter his election in 2007. He had cherry-picked popular Socialists for his centrist government dividing their party. But inelections this past March Sarkozy's UMP party managed to keep control of only one out of 22 regional governments. Sohe decided to swing back to the right by playing on fears about public safety and immigration. He proposed takingcitizenship away from some criminals of immigrant background and launched a campaign against Roma (or ""Gypsies"")booting hundreds out of the country. While the measures proved popular in opinion polls Sarkozy ironically did not. Hisabysmal approval ratings remain in the low 30s.The younger Le Pen takes great pleasure in watching Sarkozy squirm. ""I think I get on [his] nerves quite a bit"" she says.""My profile is much more complicated for him to deal with than that of my father."" The old man could be painted as acreature of the past a purveyor of old prejudices with a ""sulfurous"" reputation says Marine. Today however the Frontwants to bill itself as ""neither left nor right."" If that means losing some fringe elements (many of whom support Marine'srival Bruno Gollnisch) well ""tent pis"" she says.Other right-wing movements in Europe are also pushing into the political mainstream. The government of Prime MinisterSilvio Berlusconi in Italy has long relied on its alliance with two groups that used to be considered extreme—one of themthe former Fascist Party under Gianfranco Fini the other the secessionist Northern League of Umberto Bossi. A falling-outbetween Berlusconi and Fini has left Bossi as the current kingmaker in Italian politics. In the Netherlands the militantlyIslamophobic Geert Wilders won enough seats in the last elections to become a pivotal figure in the drawn-out process oftrying to build a new coalition government.Yet these movements often differ in significant ways from the right wing that's made in the U.S.A. Put aside the usualcaricature of ""people in pointy hoods and the Ku Klux Klan"" Marine Le Pen says and she still believes ""the American rightis much more to the right than the National Front."" She might agree with those who want to manage American frontiersmore effectively and prevent massive illegal immigration but she's also a big believer in the state's ability and obligationto help its people. ""We feel the state should have the means to intervene"" she says. ""We are very attached to publicservices A la frangaise as a way to limit the inequalities among regions and among the French"" including ""access for all tothe same level of health care.""Le Pen grew up in a household that was all politics all the time with her father the object of sometimes violent attacks bycompeting factions on the right as well as by the left. When Marine was just 8 someone set off a 20-kilo bomb in thefamily's Paris apartment building. Miraculously no one was killed or seriously injured but the front of the building wasbrought down. The crime has never been solved. ""The worst part wasn't just the attack it was that not a single politiciansent a word of condolence"" she says. ""It was difficult but it builds character it hardens you.""That's a real asset in political life anywhere. If Sarkozy finds himself facing off against Marine Le Pen in the presidentialrace a year and a half from now he may find himself wishing her old man had stayed around a little longer.With Barbie Nadeau in Rome"