Rising tensions over immigration fuel concerns about European far-right extremism…

I have just returned from a holiday in Spain. The main news story while I was there was an argument between the central government in Madrid and the regional government in the Canary Islands about who should take responsibility for the daily stream of refugees and economic migrants arriving on those islands on flimsy small boats from West Africa. Over 22,000 have arrived so far this year, and some charities are warning that there may be another 150,000 – many fleeing the conflict in Mali – waiting to come. The UK, with a population of 67 million compared to the Canaries’ 2.2 million, has taken over 15,000 of these ‘small boat’ refugees.

Immigration has become a toxic issue all over Europe. While I was in Spain the election season began in Germany. In regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony in former East Germany the far-right, anti-immigration party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), won over 30% of the votes and became the strongest party in Thuringia.

The Austrian writer and essayist, Robert Misik, writing in Social Europe (the online social democratic journal edited by Robin Wilson, my friend and former fellow editor of the Belfast magazine Fortnight) warns that the post-war European order which we have become familiar with was of “liberal democracy, moderate parties in government (turning from centre-right to centre-left), modest compromises, pluralism, media and artistic freedom and the rule of law. That order is everywhere embroiled in a defensive struggle that is becoming increasingly desperate.”¹

He says the impact of the results in Germany, although anticipated, go far beyond these provincial elections. “The ruling centre-left, three-party coalition in Berlin no longer knows how to help itself and is dragging itself into the last year of its term, while the ultra-right—including barely camouflaged Nazis—has been able to win relative majorities on the local scale and a significant share of support on the national level.

“As they achieve such electoral success, the ultra-right parties can no longer be dismissed as fringe phenomena. Not so long ago, the general perception was that they would have to moderate themselves to have a chance of winning majorities or entering governments. No longer.”

Misik says the opposite seems to be the case. The more they “engender polarisation and hatred” the broader their support base appears to become, as what he calls the “polarisation entrepreneurs” of social media fuel resentment and hatred of immigrants. Bjorn Höcke, the sinister leader of the AfD in Thuringia, openly declares that “well-tempered cruelty” is needed to drive migrants and refugees out of Germany. He has been convicted of repeatedly shouting ‘Alles für Deutschland’ (‘Everything for Germany’), the banned slogan of the Brownshirts, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party.

In his own country, Austria, Misik writes that the right-wing populist Freedom Party demands the homogenisation of the people: “differentiation and heterogeneity are purportedly bad for the nation.” At its rallies, the party increasingly resorts to violent language. The party leader, Herbert Kickl, boasts that he wears the accusation of ‘right-wing extremism’ like a medal. The party’s leading European politician, Harald Vilimsky, recently described the trio of female presidents of European Union institutions—Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, Roberta Metsola of the European Parliament and Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank—as three ‘witches’, who would be “made to feel the whip”. The Freedom Party’s rhetoric “could not be more anti-democratic and openly National Socialist,” said an artists’ open letter, led by the Nobel Prize winning writer Elfriede Jelinek and the celebrated film and theatre director Milo Rau, published at the end of August.

Misik concludes: “We are confronted with fascist mass parties grasping for power and with a followership that derives pleasure from the cult of cruelty, a language of contempt and a rhetoric of violence. The followers would not tip over into full-blown fascism without the leaders to agitate them; the leaders would not escalate into full-blown fascism without the followers to encourage them.”

We in Ireland are very fortunate that we have no significant fascist parties. But we should not be complacent. I have seen the snarl of hatred and cruelty on the faces of the thuggish young men, followers of far-right leaders like Gavin Pepper (now a Dublin city councillor), Philip Dwyer and Derek Blighe, as they harass and attack homeless asylum seekers on the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal. I have seen them call those vulnerable young men “pigeons” and “animals”. It is not a huge leap from calling people animals to beating and even killing them.

And it’s not only the asylum seekers who are afraid of the far right. My daughter, the Irish Times journalist Sorcha Pollak, was writing last week about the scores of volunteer and community groups which have sprung up around the country to help asylum seekers and refugees and in response to anti-immigrant protests (these are the real heroes of the hour in my opinion).² “There’s been an over-reliance [by the State] on community groups, without recognition that the threat of attack from far-right groups is exposing us to danger”, one volunteer in Phibsboro for All in north Dublin told her. A volunteer in the IPO-asylum seekers help group in south Dublin (the group’s goal is “keeping the men warm and dry…we just want them feel someone cares about them”) says many of their volunteers have pulled back because they are afraid of the aggressive behaviour, verbal abuse and “cameras in your face all the time” of the far-right activists.

A group in north Cork echoed what many volunteers believe: “What we really need is positive messaging from the government that these people are not to be feared. The Government is shying away from doing that properly.” If I was a conspiracy theorist (which I’m not), I might think the Government is quite content to do very little, allowing the climate of fear and aggression around asylum seekers to become a deterrent for any more vulnerable young men fleeing war or poverty who are contemplating coming to this country (I exempt decent Green ministers like Roderick O’Gorman and Joe O’Brien from this suspicion).

For their part, the gardaí have issued several statements that despite fearmongering about “unvetted, military age men” posing a threat to local communities, women and children, there is no evidence that crime has increased in areas where asylum seekers are housed (or homeless). But they have arrested very few of the far right aggressors. There seems to be confusion about whether or not aggressively videoing asylum seekers without their permission constitutes an offence and, of course, the absence of any effective hate crime legislation makes it difficult to bring offenders to court. But it is striking how few people have been arrested and/or charged in connection with the burning of multiple accommodation centres (or buildings believed to be planned for accommodation centres) or attacking homeless asylum seekers in their tents.

Amandine Branders, a clinical psychologist working with refugees rescued from the Mediterranean by a Médecins Sans Frontieres ship, says experiencing violence or abuse in Europe can be particularly devastating for new arrivals because “they come here with so much expectation. They have this hope that there is humanity and humanity is what I’m going to find in Europe. [They think Europeans] were supposed to be the good guys. It confirms, somehow, the lack of hope in the world.”³

I know that the asylum issue is complicated and difficult, for all of Europe, not just Ireland. I know that national governments have the right to decide who to let into and who not to let into their countries. I know that Sinn Fein have toughened their immigration policy, believing that being too soft on refugees and asylum seekers was one of the reasons they did so badly in May’s European and local elections. But we are not Spain or Italy or Germany or Britain, having to cope with huge numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. I hope the traditional compassion for and solidarity with the poor and the persecuted which is one of the more attractive traits of Irish people will not be lost as this now prosperous country, with its full employment economy, lines up with the rest of ‘Fortress Europe’ in closing our gates to all but a very few of these unfortunates.

¹ socialeurope.eu/the-ascendant-far-right-the-lust-for-cruelty

² ‘You feel you’re doing the State’s work: Volunteers step in to help asylum seekers’, Irish Times, 13 September

³ Sally Hayden, ‘Rescue ship tries to save minds as well as bodies in Mediterranean’, Irish Times, 16 September

Andy Pollak retired as founding director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in July 2013 after 14 years. He is a former religious affairs correspondent, education correspondent, assistant news editor and Belfast reporter with the Irish Times.