European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate Edited by Clara Sandelind 1st edition, 1st printing Print: ScandBook, Falun 2014 Design: Tobias Persson Cover Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen, ©Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 ISBN: 978-91-87379-22-2 FORES, Bellmansgatan 10, 118 20 Stockholm 08-452 26 60, [email protected] www.fores.se © 2014 European Liberal Forum. All rights reserved This publications can be downloaded for free on www.fores.se. Single copies can also be ordered in print by emailing [email protected]. Published by the European Liberal Forum asbl with the support of (member organisations’ names). Co-funded by the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum asbl are responsible for the content of this publication, or for any use that may be made of it. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) alone. These views do not necessarily reflect those of the European Parliament and/or the European Liberal Forum asbl. About the publishers European Liberal Forum Founded in the fall of 2007, the European Liberal Forum, asbl (ELF) is the non- profit European political foundation of the liberal family. ELF brings together liberal thinktanks, political foundations and institutes form around Europe to observe, analyse and contribute to the debate on European public policy issues and the process of European integration, through education, training, research, and the promotion of active citizenship within the EU. Square de Meeûs 38/40, 3rd floor, B-1000 Brussels. www.liberalforum.eu Fores – the green and liberal think tank Fores – Forum for Reforms, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability – is a green and liberal think tank. We want to renew the debate in Sweden with belief in entrepreneurship and opportunities for people to shape their own lives. Market-based solutions to climate change and other environmental challen- ges, the long-term benefits of migration and a welcoming society, the gains of increased levels of entrepreneurship, the need for modernization of the welfare sector and the challenges of the rapidly changing digital society – these are some of the issues we focus on. We hold seminars and roundtable discussions in town halls, parliaments and board rooms, we publish reports, books and policy papers, we put together and chair reference groups around policy issues, we participate in the media deba- tes, and we support policy makers with relevant facts. We act as a link between curious citizens, opinion makers, entrepreneurs, policymakers and researchers, always striving for an open-minded, inclusive and thought provoking dialogue. Bellmansgatan 10, 118 20 Stockholm. Learn more about us on our website www.fores.se. Contents About the study x Preface by Kenan Malik ?? Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. A Breakthrough Moment or False Dawn? The Great Recession and the Radical Right in Europe 15 Chapter 3. Is it getting worse? Anti-immigrants attitudes in Europe during the 21th century 41 Chapter 4. Not that different after all: radical right parties and voters in Western Europe 65 Chapter 5. Populism, Social Media and Democratic Strain 99 Chapter 6. The Danish People’s Party in Nørrebro 117 Chapter 7. Landskrona: Good or Bad News for the Sweden Democrats? 147 Chapter 8. Responding to the Populist Radical Right: The Dutch Case ?? Chapter 9. Acting for Immigrants’ Rights: Civil Society and Immigration Policies in Italy ?? Chapter 10. Conclusion ?? About the study Författare x xi xii xiii xiv Preface Kenan Malik Kenan Malik is a London-based writer, lecturer and broadcaster. His books include The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics (2014), From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy (2009) and Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (2008). xvi Golden Dawn in Greece. The Front National in France. UKIP in Bri- tain. Sweden Democrats. The True Finns. Throughout Europe groups once seen as fringe organizations are dominating headlines, and often setting the political agenda. The challenge that such groups pose to mainstream political parties, and the instability they have unleashed upon the mainstream political arena, has created a sense of panic about the rise of ‘populism’. But what is populism? Why is it a problem? And how should it be com- bated? What are considered populist parties comprise, in fact, very different kinds of organizations, with distinct historical roots, ideological values and networks of social support. Some, such as Golden Dawn, are openly Nazi. Others, such as the Front National are far-right organizations that in recent years have tried to rebrand themselves to become more mainstream. Yet others - UKIP for instance - have reactionary views, play to far-right themes such as race and immigration, but have never been part of the far-right tradition. What unites this disparate group is that all define themselves through a hostility to the mainstream and to what has come to be regarded as the dominant liberal consensus. Most of the populist parties combine a visceral hatred of immigration with an acerbic loathing of the EU, a viru- lent nationalism and deeply conservative views on social issues such as gay marriage and women’s rights. The emergence of such groups reveals far more, however, than merely a widespread disdain for the mainstream. It expresses also the redrawing of Europe’s political map, and the creation of a new faultline on that map. The postwar political system, built around the divide bet- ween social democratic and conservative parties, is being dismantled. Not only has this created new space for the populists, but it is also trans- forming the very character of political space. The broad ideological divides that characterized politics for much of the past two hundred years have, over the past three decades, been xvii all but erased. The political sphere has narrowed; politics has become less about competing visions of the kinds of society people want than a debate about how best to manage the existing political system. Poli- tics, in this post-ideological age, has been reduced to a question more of technocratic management rather than of social transformation. One way in which people have felt this change is as a crisis of political representation, as a growing sense of being denied a voice, and of poli- tical institutions as being remote and corrupt. The sense of being poli- tically abandoned has been most acute within the traditional working class, whose feelings of isolation have increased as social democratic parties have cut their links with their old constituencies. As mainstream parties have discarded both their ideological attachments and their long-established constituencies, so the public has become increasingly disengaged from the political process. The gap between voters and the elite has widened, fostering disenchantment with the very idea of poli- tics. The new political faultline in Europe is not between left and right, between social democracy and conservatism, but between those who feel at home in - or at least are willing to accommodate themselves to - the post-ideological, post-political world, and those who feel left out, dispossessed and voiceless. These kinds of divisions have always existed, of course. In the past, however, that sense of dispossession and voicelessness could be expressed politically, particularly through the organizations of the left and of the labour movement. No longer. It is the erosion of such mechanisms that is leading to the remaking of Europe’s political landscape. The result has been the creation of what many commentators in Britain are calling the ‘left behind’ working class. In France, there has been much talk of ‘peripheral France’, a phrase coined by the social geo- grapher Christophe Guilluy to describe people ‘pushed out by the dein- dustrialization and gentrification of the urban centers’, who ‘live away from the economic and decision-making centers in a state of social and xviii cultural non-integration’ and have come to ‘feel excluded’. European societies have in recent years become both more socially atomized and riven by identity politics. Not just the weakening of labour organizations, but the decline of collectivist ideologies, the expansion of the market into almost every nook and cranny of social life, the fading of institutions, from trade unions to the Church, that traditionally helped socialize individuals – all have helped create a more fragmented society. At the same time, and partly as a result of such social atomization, people have begun to view themselves and their social affiliations in a different way. Social solidarity has become defined increasingly not in political terms - as collective action in pursuit of certain political ideals – but in terms of ethnicity or culture. The question people ask themsel- ves is not so much ‘In what kind of society do I want to live?’ as ‘Who are we?’. The two questions are, of course, intimately related, and any sense of social identity must embed an answer to both. The relationship between the two is, however, complex and fluid. As the political sphere has narrowed, and as mechanisms for poli- tical change eroded, so the two questions have come more and more to be regarded as synonymous. The answer to the question ‘In what kind of society do I want to live?’ has become shaped less by the kinds of values or institutions we want to struggle to establish, than by the kind of people that we imagine we are; and the answer to ‘Who are we?’ defined less by the kind of society we want to create than by the history and heritage to which supposedly we belong. Or, to put it another way, as broader political, cultural and national identities have eroded, and as traditional social networks, institutions of authority and moral codes have weakened, so people’s sense of belonging has become more nar- row and parochial, moulded less by the possibilities of a transformative future than by an often mythical past.