Tories and Extremists: Revisited
There was a certain degree of excitement at the beginning of the month about the Tories’ association – through the new European Conservatives and Reformists group – with Michal Kaminski, of Poland’s Law and Order party, and Roberts Zile, of Latvia’s Freedom and Fatherland party.
We covered the issues here, and also looked at the response of the Tories: which was to point out that Labour was ‘in bed with’ some pretty ghastly sorts in the Party of European Socialists grouping.
I pointed out, at the time, that there were some dismal parties in the European Peoples’ Party grouping as well:
If they’d stayed in the European People’s Party, they’d have been in alliance with Berlusconi’s The People of Freedom Party. That party is formed, in part, by the National Alliance, whose roots are in the Italian Fascist movement. Granted, Fini and the National Alliance has moved some distance from its fascist past, but the thought still makes your flesh crawl, doesn’t it?
I was thinking, in particular, of the initiative to fingerprint Roma and Sinti people in Italy. Not good.
John Rosenthal has another example of the unsavoury types in the EPP:
It also includes the Hungarian Fidesz party of the former — and according to current polls, likely future — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Iran’s Press TV liked a recent television interview with Fidesz MP Oszkar Molnar so much that it devoted an article to it under the title “Israel plans to devour the world: Hungarian MP.” “I’m a Hungarian nationalist,” Molnar is quoted as saying:
I love my homeland, love the Hungarians and give primacy to Hungarian interests over those of global capital — Jewish capital, if you like — which wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary.
For evidence that such comments are hardly unusual for Molnar, see veteran Austrian journalist Karl Pfeifer’s report here. Moreover, as Pfeiffer and others have documented, Fidesz has a long history of coquetting with openly racist and anti-Semitic currents in Hungarian politics and society. In a recent article in the Berlin alternative weekly Jungle World, Pfeiffer notes that:
In spring 2008, the journalist Zsolt Bayer, who is close toFidesz, published an article in the conservative dailyMagyar Hirlap, in which he railed against Jews [i.e., purportedly Jewish authors] whose “mere existence justifies anti-Semitism.” “Let’s not let them piss … in the basin of the [Hungarian] nation,” Bayer wrote. A few days after the publication of the article, Orban posed for a photograph with Bayer. Viewers of Hungarian television also saw images of a close friendship [between Bayer and Orban].
Writing on the same episode in a piece for the website of Austrian public television ORF, Hanna Ronzheimer comments:
That anti-Semitism is becoming increasingly acceptable in polite company [in Hungary] is also the fault of Fidesz. With its political mottos and its simplistic and absurd portrayals of [Hungary’s] supposed enemies, it nourishes already existent prejudices about Jews as cunning capitalists and traitors against the nation.
According to a study conducted by the Hungarian sociologist Pal Tamas and cited in the German daily Handelsblatt, some 50% of Fidesz voters are receptive to anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
I do genuinely believe that the European Union is a powerful moderating force on this sort of extremism. It is, however, a political organisation. Alliances must be built with some parties and not others, if the day to day business of the European Union is to be conducted, effectively. Nevertheless, it is depressing that it is so difficult that moderate British parties, with a proud record of opposing extremism of all sorts, end up having to cut deals with people like this.
Nevertheless, it is unsurprising that the Kaminski failed to gain traction. There isn’t much that one could say about the politics of the European Union which would really surprise or shock people, these days.
Comments
| 29 October 2009, 1:52 pm |
Exile
I am delighted to hear that.
I am not a supporter of UKIP – because I am a supporter of the European Union and the UK’s constructive membership of that institution – but I admire UKIP.
Specifically, I admire the way the way that Farage stood firm against the siren calls of a ‘pact’ with the BNP and fought hard against BNP entryism.
| 29 October 2009, 1:57 pm |
Real conservatives aren’t European federalists. A lot of what has been said about the new faction is complete lies of course. That said, it is impossible to deny to all wings of the EU parliament are full of loons, troofers and historical revisionists.
The Tories had to do this because they are now just one of a tiny minority of mainstream parties that believe Europeans should have a say on European government. We would of had that Constitution vote if it wasn’t for Labour or the Liberals.
The Labour Party and most other mainstream parties dont care what ordinary British, German or Polish citizens think. It has to be this way, the only alternatives are Exile’s UKIP or the BNP.
| 29 October 2009, 2:13 pm |
Miliband was droning on about Kaminski on the Today programme this morning. Hague made a decent defense calling on the Chief rabbi and Israeli government as witnesses but Miliband just kept repeating the same trite points. He really is obssessed with this issue seemingly to the detriment of UK foreign affairs. I wonder why?
| 29 October 2009, 2:21 pm |
This blog http://esbalogh.typepad.com/hungarianspectrum/ contains the most intelligent, insightful, and well-informed commentary on Fidesz I’ve read anywhere. Not least as it isn’t written to hammer home a point or prejudice.
Fidesz appear to be a really rather dodgy lot (I say this as someone who has no objection whatsoever to the Tory party’s alliances with PiS or TB/LNNK), and Orban a petty demagogue in the making (indeed there is some past form there) – very much ambitious progressives of the “radical right” (whereas Kaminski’s party, for example are traditionalist conservatives).
Their links with Jobbik (and indeed, sort-of, partial, overlap with them) is another reason to be concerned about them
There are loads of parallels, for better and worse, between contemporary Hungarian and Italian politics. Although thank God there is as yet no Magyar Berlusconi.
To some extent the need to make, erm, pragmatic alliances, is partly related to the (generally utterly poisonous) consequence of proportional representation in those countries that have adopted it.
Well, I have mixed feelings about UKIP – I don’t think Farage’s stance against the BNP is of any particular pertinence, as UKIP and BNP are two very different kinds of party…..and no way could they have united, for all of UKIP’s opportunistic anti-immigration line: and if you want to talk about a British party that has dodgy allies in the European Parliament…UKIP are in league all of their own.
Anyway in the interests of balance I greatly look forward to reading a piece here by David T on some of Labour’s ex-Stalinist or otherwise extremely questionable European Parliamentary allies. Romania, Slovakia and Lithuania might be good places to start.
Although I am not holding my breath.
| 29 October 2009, 2:24 pm |
“Hague made a decent defense calling on the Chief rabbi and Israeli government as witnesses but Miliband just kept repeating the same trite points”:
Stuart, to me it came across as Milliband sticking to the salient and unanswered points against Kaminski in the face of Hague’s whataboutery about the dodgy people Labour were in bed with.
| 29 October 2009, 2:32 pm |
I think Hague’s point was that if the Chief Rabbi and Israeli Government didn’t think Kaminski an anti-semite then he probably isn’t.
| 29 October 2009, 2:38 pm |
“I admire UKIP.”
Really? The party that a few years ago had a manifesto cover the BNP would have been proud of – with 3 white babies in nappies and the statement: “Concerned about their future? This is their country, make sure it stays that way.”
And Farage – who in an interview with the Guardian earlier this year, poured out his gushing admiration of his political hero Enoch Powell: “I admire him for having the guts to talk about immigration, society and how we want to live”
I’ve got an idea who he means by “we” and not sure its much more inclusive than the BNP’s conception.
Still Farage and his ilk do have one use – they split the far right vote.
| 29 October 2009, 2:52 pm |
As I am fairly Eurosceptic, I’ve toyed with voting UKIP in the past, but can’t bring myself to do so.
Reasons why not: 2004 London mayoral candidate who boasted “I’m not campaigning in the [London Borough of] Camden, because too many poofs live there”
Their European Parliamentary election material that year focused on the expansion of the EU to 25 states from May 2004, implying that letting Latvia, Poland, etc, into the EU would, as a matter of fact, lead to mass immigration to the UK not from Poland, etc, but specifically from Morocco and Turkey. (cue “ooh Scary Muslims!” sounds)
And the fact that their most recent campaign solely focused on immigration. And nothing else.
Plus there are loads of, erm, witty, quips that the various men called Godfrey associated with them don’t seem able to refrain from making on various topics. What was the one about being concerned about women’s working hours because they don’t clean behind the fridge sufficiently frequently?
In a way their lack of concern for political correctness is refreshing and endearing…but can’t hide a sore lack of judgement as well
Still, they don’t have a neo-Nazi and anti-Christian pagan mystical thing at their core, unlike the BNP. And they don’t have the leftist collectivist economic policies of the BNP either.
UKIP are eccentric and little-Englanderish (which latter term is not intended here as necessarily a term of abuse), the BNP are vile scum.
| 29 October 2009, 2:58 pm |
Not that long ago the Chief Rabbi was talking about a “tsunami” of antisemitism in the world and the Israeli government is not normally coy about identifying antisemitism and antisemites.
That both would excuse Kaminski doesn’t surprise me and doesn’t encourage great faith in their judgement on this issue.
If one day the Chief Rabbi ever took an independent stand on an issue that put him in disagreement with the Israeli government – now that would be novel.
Still – it’s good news for Stephen Pollard, the Jewish Chronicle editor, who until now must have been feeling quite lonely in the Jewish community with his defence of Kaminski.
| 29 October 2009, 3:13 pm |
David Rosenberg: You.ve got the wrong Chief Rabbi. This is the Chief Rabbi of Poland we are talking about, who is now rowing back a bit on his previous statement to the NS, which he has never denied making:
“I do not comment on political decisions. However, it is clear that Mr Kaminski was a member of NOP, a group that is openly far right and neo-nazi. Anyone who would want to align himself with a person who was an active member of NOP and the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne (which was established to deny historical facts of the massacre at Jedwabne) needs to understand with what and by whom he is being represented.”
http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/21411/chief-rabbi-poland-kaminskis-no-antisemite
| 29 October 2009, 3:15 pm |
The harder UKIP try to leave Europe, the more popular they get, and so the more embedded they become in EU politics.
The more they draw attention to European corruption, the more votes they receive, and the more corrupt they become through their own alliances with the likes of Lega Nord.
Why do UKIP politicians leave the room in Brussels when BNP MEPs enter, and then shake hands with Lega Nord MEPs?
I am kinda sympathetic to UKIP’s idealism, but it’s so impractical for them to actually succeed.
As more and more extremist parties become legitimised in Europe, and British parties are faced with a choice between dodgy alliances and isolationism, their domestic opposition to the BNP will increasingly come across as contrived and opportunistic, unfortunately.
| 29 October 2009, 3:22 pm |
So is this indicative that the Tories are:
1) Barely concealed nasty fascists showing their true colours
2) Guilty of simply a negligent oversight,
3) Simply picking dodgy bedfellows borne of necessity and a common cause, in the best tradition of having the Soviets as Allies is WW2. In this case, as a reaction to the all to clear undemocratic way the Lisbon Treaty aka the re branded European constitutional is being weaseled through by Europhiles intent on the UK becoming a vassal state of a United States of Europe super state with a centrally controlled foreign policy, regulations its own president et al in short order.
Take your pick?
| 29 October 2009, 3:31 pm |
Tory,
A poll taken this year found that most Brits think the British media is way too negative on the EU
“Some 48% of respondents indicated that written press reports about the EU tend to be unnecessarily negative. Even those who consistently expressed unfavourable opinions about the EU and the UK’s membership, mostly agreed that press reports were too negative (45% versus 27% who saw them as objective and only 18% who felt they were positive).”
Also they found that most UK citizens admitted to not knowing enough about the EU to make informed decisions on many of the EU agendas.
This puts a damper on the UKIP, BNP and hard right Tory myth that the “media” is bamboozled the British voters on the subject
http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/press/press_releases/2009/pr0998_en.htm
| 29 October 2009, 3:51 pm |
Oy gevalt! that Chief Rabbi…thanks Amie for pointing that out! (in the early days of Jewish Socialist magazine we surprised people with a cover line “Chief Rabbi interview” – some readers were disappointed that it was actually an interview with the Moscow Chief Rabbi – whose name oddly enough was Adolph…)
Anyway if I have maligned our esteemed Chief Rabbi here in the UK (soon to be called Lord Sacks of Aldgate – seriously!) – I’m sorry – and, if you are out there checking the blogs, Johnny Sacks, please let us now where you stand. Do you reckon the Pinochet-admiring, homophobic, Chroby-sword wearing guy is a little unlikely to really be a friend of the Jews or do you agree with the Israeli government and Pollard about him?
| 29 October 2009, 3:55 pm |
Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m a Euro-Enthusiast and I think that UKIP is a silly party.
It is not, however, a Nazi party.
Although I’m not a supporter of “open borders” – I’m neither a libertarian or a lunatic – I’m positive about immigration. I am the child of immigrants who positively chose Britain. In my mother’s case, it was English literature and her specialism in 18th century English/British politics, and in my father’s case, it was the desire not to live in a country which operated an apartheid system.
I do not think, however, that it helps anybody to turn the ordinary mundane discussion about immigration into a sort of bear trap. That has brought us to where we are now. You will know, from your own experience, of people who are brown, and/or immigrants or the children of immigrants to this country who have serious concerns, based in part on access to resources and in part on the speed of demographic change, with immigration.
I wasn’t aware that Farrage had his “Enoch Was Right” moment – and anybody who has read *that* speech must realise how outrageous, in any era, the disgusting race bating contained in that screed is. To make a point about “white babies” is a bit weak however. Most people in this country *are* white. And, to be frank, after a few generations, the descendants of “brown” immigrants will, by and large, be as brown as the late Jade Goody was.
| 29 October 2009, 4:06 pm |
Also they found that most UK citizens admitted to not knowing enough about the EU to make informed decisions on many of the EU agendas.
Well I could reject the European constitution simply because it was too long, even without reading it. The length of the document on its own is enough to reject it as it speaks volumes about the underpinning mindset.
| 29 October 2009, 4:08 pm |
“A poll taken this year found that most Brits think the British media is way too negative on the EU…”
You mean an EC-commissioned poll, published on the EU’s Europa website, finds that British people are in fact positive about the EU? Wow, that’s unbelievable! Howabout they put that claim to the test, and allow us a referendum on the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty?
| 29 October 2009, 4:12 pm |
The increasingly hapless Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs admirably demonstrates Labour’s bankruptcy when it comes to ideas, morals and of course finances. After 12 years of one of the most corrupt and dissolute governments to have graced our Democracy the best defence this bunch of chancers can come up with is, not to attack Tory policies, not to attack Tories themselves but to attack a foreign politician.
The loathsome spectacle of the Office of this Secretary of State being dragged through the gutter by a squalid nobody, the dignity and standing that that office demands clearly beyond him, is an uncomfortable and sad low point in British political history.
To use the deaths of 300 Polish Jews to attempt to win votes, to stand on their graves and use them as a stage for his electioneering must sicken many people, Jewish or otherwise.
When contrasted with his actions towards living Jews we get a clearer picture as to his true stance. This governments cowardly refusal to denounce the Goldstone Report and their refusal to sell the arms necessary for Israel’s defence against terrorists sheds light on his real motivation. The fact that many Labour MPs depend on the Muslim vote is a pointer as to why Miliband sidelines the concerns of the Jewish community. With 2 million Muslims in the UK and only 300,000 Jews do the arithmetic.
When a government gives the nod to the release of a Libyan terrorist in exchange for trade deals can you believe it is below them to arrange affairs so that Muslims will look kindly upon Labour in the forthcoming election?
A Foreign Secretary who supports the entry of Turkey into the EU and cravenly tells us that terrorism is acceptable in some circumstances and is effective.
Any wonder that Labour funds Hizb ut tahrir, has radical Islamists as advisors and funds the IPPR think tank which funnily enough recommends we partner with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
The age of McBride and Campbell seem to live on, and they don’t have the decency to dress it up in diplomatic language…just pure out and out villainy and abuse.
| 29 October 2009, 4:22 pm |
Re UKIP. Wasn’t one of its manifesto’s authors wrapped up in the NF Political Soldiers bunch?
Farage has told the BNP to take a hike which was doubtless done entirely out of political principle. Bear in mind though, if the UK was to get a hard-right demagogue with a good shot of gaining power, he/she would be wise enough not have the Swastika armbands, Italian bombers or Klansmen in their closet that Griffin does. Pim Fortuyn anyone?
| 29 October 2009, 5:04 pm |
” Wasn’t one of its manifesto’s authors wrapped up in the NF Political Soldiers bunch?”
Were they? Not heard that. I’d be interested to hear more though.
| 29 October 2009, 5:13 pm |
It seems anti-semitism is not restricted to the Conservative Party.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5grTwhDYst–dWwa9YVi4TOyDNokAD9BKQI6O0
| 29 October 2009, 5:25 pm |
Dave
It’s this feller. Although to be fair it appears to be Third Way, rather than the full-on Holland and Griffin nastiness.
| 29 October 2009, 6:29 pm |
You are the ones so enthusiastic for the EU, which subjects us all to the legislative will of Stalinists, Trotskyists, neo-Fascists, neo-Nazis, Eastern European kleptomaniacs and other neocon crazies, and people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland. Soon to be joined by Turkish Islamists, Turkish ultra-nationalists, and Kurdish Marxist terrorists. The problem is the EU itself.
It is the Czech climate change hysteria opponents, the Polish moral and social conservatives, and the Latvians who remember being sold to Stalin, who have the raw deal here, being required to associate with Cameron’s Tories. But why are some Nazi roots acceptable, yet others not? It may exist in German, but I have never come across in English a full study of the SS Divisions of various nationalities after they had gone home. Yet the movements and subcultures that they became turn up an awful lot. And, except in Latvia, we love them.
We loved Alija Izetbegovic, SS recruitment sergeant turned Wahhabi rabble-rouser, and founder of one of the two entities to which the terms “Islamofascist” and “failed state” are both properly applicable. We love the other Islamofascist failed state, created by the Kosovo “Liberation” Army of heroin-trafficking pimps whose black shirts defer to their fathers and grandfathers. We love the pro-war Danish People’s Party: the coalition of the willing, no matter who the willing may be. We love those advocating Flemish secession, now that that would be in the service of global capital. Ahmadinejad’s oblique, if any, Holocaust denial causes uproar, yet that of Croatia’s Franjo Tudjman – historically, geographically, ideologically and sartorially far closer to the events – did not.
No one ever mentions that the Irish Republic’s Eurofederalist, big business-loving Fine Gael goes back to the Blueshirts, admittedly far from the worst, with their advocacy of Commonwealth membership and their main focus on preventing in Spain a Soviet satellite state which, like the Soviet Union, would have been a de facto member of the Axis at the start of the War. But for some reason, the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party is a problem.
Why?
| 29 October 2009, 6:57 pm |
with 3 white babies in nappies
Tosser! Only someone completely and utterly obsessed with skin melanin would make such a gigantic leap. My advice: travel, learn a language, grow up…or emigrate and leave the vast majority of Britons, who couldn’t give a stuff about somebody’s colour, in peace.
| 30 October 2009, 10:34 am |
“That both would excuse Kaminski doesn’t surprise me and doesn’t encourage great faith in their judgement on this issue”
Well quite – how dare the Israeli government decide not to cooperate in tarring and feathering a man once the Left has deemed him irrevocably racist? Because obviously a bunch of Leftie intellectuals are in a much better position to judge anti-semitism than the government of the world’s only Jewish state.
Kaminski was seventeen years old when he was in the NOP. If that condemns him to eternal opprobrium then you can all stuff your ‘dont tar all Palestinians with the same brush’ meme where the sun doesn’t shine, because by those lights they are an entirely lost people who should be caged away from the rest of the world forever. Or are you only an irrevocable anti-semite if you’re a *white* kid who once joined an anti-Jewish organisation?
Kaminski simply said that he doesnt feel a moral equivalence can or should be drawn between organised mass murder on the grand scale as government policy and the single action of a group of bandits whom he happens to share nationality with. That’s it. But despite the generally enlightened views on this site, it seems a depressing number of you just can’t help yourselves when someone alleges teh racism. You just have to go all Salem on the target, and that’s profoundly dissappointing.
| 31 October 2009, 4:42 pm |
David please correct, my name is Karl Pfeifer
Kind regards
Karl
Hello David,
I shall be pounding the streets of Wandsworth come June trying to get votes for the UKIP. You never know your luck – they might win and all this will become moot.