Updated: The European far right has abandoned nationalism ...
... but not Trumpism
The EU election, just by virtue of being an election for the EU as a whole, implies a rejection of nationalism in the traditional sense. In this election, arguably for the first time, the political groupings, including the far-right, were seen as representing Europe-wide political positions.
Brexit has generated this outcome in two ways. First by removing the only member of the EU which would commonly see itself as distinct from "Europe" and second by failing so miserably. That lesson will be reinforced when Britain eventually seeks re-entry, giving up all the special exemptions it used to have.
The result is that instead of advocating national exits from the EU, or even advocating specific national claims, all parties are now promoting political agendas which are much the same at national and EU level. On the other hand, there is no real sign of the far-right embracing a European national identity.
This is most obvious in relation to migration, which is the core issue for the far-right. AFAICT, there has been no challenge to freedom of movement within Europe, particularly not for EU citizens. Rather the far-right (along with mainstream parties) seeks tight restrictions on entry imposed at the Europe-wide level, focused particular on excluding asylum-seekers.
This is better understood as cultural xenophobia, focusing on white Christian identity, than as any kind of nationalism. For want of a better word, it's Trumpism.
This post was a response to a piece by Cyril Hedoin, with some illuminating insights on the idea of the nation.
Update: My fellow blogger at Crooked Timber, Speranta Dumitru points at that some claims above are not quite correct. RN in France (Le Pen) wants a double border, with checks at the French border as well as on entry to the Schengen zone. The ultra-right Zemmour wants this and a third border in the Mediterranean.
But neither is proposing to abolish Schengen as Le Pen did until recently. Instead Le Pen suggests a magical QR technology which allows EU citizens to cross the border with no check, while foreigners are kept out. And Zemmour’s third border would have to be operated by the EU as a whole, unlike the current Schengen borders.
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Sometimes, notoriously with Trump, there is room for argument whether "fascism" is the right word. At other times, not.
Lu voted last Sunday in the Spanish Euro-election. In Spain, it is by national PR with party lists, in rank order and non-amendable. The electoral administration prints the lists and sets them out in 34 neat piles on a table. The voter picks one and puts it in the envelope supplied. I assume there was a curtained alcove for privacy, but nobody seemed to to bother with this. With nothing to do, I idly peered at a few lists. Among the many no-hopers, I spotted one from the "Falange Española de las J.O.N.S."
This has exactly the same name as the 1934 Falange, after it swallowed up the likeminded “Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista”. In other words, true-black fascists. Using the identical pre-Franco name strongly indicates that the ideology is unchanged too. These are people who think that Franco didn’t go far enough in murdering communists, separatists and anarchists, and some probably believe that he betrayed their martyred leader by turning down a prisoner exchange. It’s as if Nigel Farage were to campaign in Clacton under the party label and flag of Mosley´s “British Union of Fascists”. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Flag_of_the_British_Union_of_Fascists.svg/1200px-Flag_of_the_British_Union_of_Fascists.svg.png
The falangists got 9,643 votes in all of Spain, or 0.06%, just ahead of Spanish Food Sovereignty, and under half “none of the above”. You have to ask how they got round the requirement or 15,000 signatures to field a list. The loophole is that you can replace these by a mere 50 signatures of elected officials, including local councillors. These can only sign one no-hoper petition, but there are a lot of them. If you want to worry about the falangists, it’s that there are apparently 50 serving town councillors in Spain willing to play with fire for a bad joke.
PS: are there any of Mosley´s British fascists alive today? The BUF was dissolved in 1940. Suppose that up to the end it was admitting new members. Let’s say the age cutoff was 15 years old. Any such recruits would be at least 99 today. Demographically it looks possible that there are centenarian British fascists still alive.
But centenarians tend to be people who make sensible lifestyle choices, avoiding booze, ciggies and motorbikes, getting married, exercising, not volunteering in crises for particularly dangerous jobs and missions like paratrooper, bomb disposal, front-line ambulance driver, etc. This does not at all fit the profile of our hypothetical teenage fascist, a reckless nihilist. I think the original British fascists are all gone.
I wouldn't say that the far right has abandoned nationalism on all issues. Gender issues, in particular, vary quite a bit across far right jurisdictions. The Polish far-right is anti-abortion. The English far right is anti-trans. The Hungarian far right is pro-natalism in the usual creepy right-wing way. Hungarians and Serbs are irredentist; French, Italians and Austrians are not. The English far right is terrified of white European migrants; most other far rights are not. Etc.
Immigration and anti-democracy are unifying themes. But otherwise, the European far right is a gorgeous mosaic of, uh, turds.