The old joke about mixed feelings, when your mother in law drives your new sports car off a cliff, describes pretty well how a political scientist feels most of the time. What is most interesting to him, qua political scientist, is what is most appalling to him, qua human being. The chaos in Iraq is really interesting, for example, when looked at through the lens of international relations and the study of political factions. Of course it also means children blown apart in the market place.
I felt that way when I read Sarah Wildman's piece, "Guess who's coming to seder", in the New Republic.
Filip Dewinter, the 44-year-old leader of Vlaams Belang. Dewinter's party, like its far-right counterparts across Europe, has a long history of racism and xenophobia. But sitting in his office, filled with sleek Italian-style furniture and overseen by a massive Rubens painting of Nicholas Rockox, a mayor of Antwerp in the mid-seventeenth century, Dewinter's anger takes a surprising turn. "We should stand with the Jewish community, and we should do everything possible to protect them," he says. "Jewish values are European values!" Then he launches into an earnest plea for Jews to come home to his extreme-right--"right-wing," he gently corrects--party.
Dewinter is at the forefront of Europe's new philosemitic far right. Along with his French homologue, Marine Le Pen, daughter of Holocaust minimizer and Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Dewinter has spent the last few years proclaiming his support for Jews and championing their rights. No matter that Vlaams Belang's founders were Nazi collaborators or, simply, that the idea of the Jew as "European" is itself a novelty for his base constituency. Since 2003, Dewinter has loudly and consistently spoken out against attacks on Jews--calling Judaism a "pillar of European society" to Time magazine and condemning anti-Semitism and, very specifically, anti-Zionism, to Haaretz and New York Jewish Week. This fall, when elections fell on Sukkot and religious Jews would have missed going to the polls, it was Dewinter's party that helped collect their proxy ballots.
What is happening is this: "extreme right-wing" parties in Belgium and France have decided to embrace the Jews and Israel. In American language, these parties would be described as "right-wing populist." They have virtually nothing in common with American conservatives. Their only real principle is anti-immigrant sentiment, but the immigrants de jour are Muslims, and the Muslims hate the Jews about as much as the European right used to hate them. Acting on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Eurofascists have decided that the Jews are a pillar of European civilization.
Philosemitism is a very clever strategy on the part of Europe's neofascists. There is only a small chance that they will attract enough Jewish voters to make a difference, though that may change if they keep with the program long enough. But by "standing with the Jewish community" they are making a claim to respectability. Hey, we don't hate Jews anymore, so voting for us doesn't make you a Nazi. We just hate Blacks, and browns, and Muslims generally.
The rise of neofascist parties in Europe is a mere symptom of demographic decline. The older nationalities of Europe are getting literally older, and they aren't making babies. The Muslim immigrants are making lots of babies. Right wing parties extending a hand to the Jews, this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. All of this is appalling. But it's damn sure interesting.
Recent Comments