Far right ideas abound in Europe

The Peninsula Newspaper Wednesday, 02 May 2012 00:17 We should recognise that the rise of the extreme right trend in Europe was not in response to Christian fundamentalism and its demands to play a greater role, or to Judaism and its support to Zionist settlement projects even when they were against Western interests, or to the so-called yellow and red danger in the East and South Asia and its religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It has come in response to future fears and concerns in the light of the growing presence of Islamic, Arab and Gulf populations in European communities. (1) Regardless of the French election campaign and results, the rise of the extreme right and its agenda welcomed by many European countries today was remarkable. The Opinion poll published by the French newspaper “Le Monde”, noted that a large segment of French youth aged between 18 and 24 years, tend to back the extreme right during the 2012 French elections. The opinion poll said that the new generation in France backs Marine Le Pen more than other candidates Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate, and President Nicolas Sarkozy, the so-called friend of Arabs and Muslims. Marine Le Pen, the woman candidate of the extreme right got record votes and the newspaper “Le Liberation” said “the extreme right has never been so powerful in France”. She is a lawyer of 43 years, and the youngest daughter of the founder of the right wing party National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen who decided to accomplish the 40 years process of struggle launched by him which had been full of scandals, racism, and hostility towards immigrants and Muslims of France. His most favourite slogan during his election campaign was “France for the French people only”. Marine Le Pen believes that Islam is growing and threatens every household in France. “Fighting Islamic expansion in France or what so-called Islamisation of France is not shameful. War against Islam must continue and not interrupted at all”, she said. Marine Le Pen also criticised Muslims for they forced the French people, foreign tourists, including one million Japanese, to eat meat slaughtered according to Islamic law, describing the halal meat as epidemic diet. She called the French government “not to involve religion in French food” and supported the president’s ban on the hijab and veil. She also called to stop building mosques, ban the worshipers to pray in the squares near the mosques, ban immigration, saying that she does not recognise any French achievements made by immigrant French people. Zinedine Zidane of Algerian origin is not a French citizen, wondering how a person, who ignores the words of France’s national anthem, can play in the national football team! (2) Many Western mass media have severely criticised the recently grown Saudi, Kuwaiti, UAE and Qatari investments, in the aftermath of the collapse of many world economies especially American and European ones since 2008. These Gulf investments had pumped a lot of liquidity in the sluggish European economy and invested in defaulted institutions and companies or on the verge of bankruptcy. The French foreign trade with the Arab countries during the past year mounted to146.365bn French francs. The GCC share was 37.793bn francs, 81.059bn francs with the Maghreb countries, and 27.511bn francs with other Arab countries. However, Arab investments in Paris and its suburbs were most remarkable. Relationship with Qatar, welcomed at time when Paris used to search for alternatives to develop its economy, has turned to vitriol and cheap method of attack against Qatar. Qatar, which had the lion’s share in the French press reports which hailed Qatar’s bold steps to support the French economy and change of the stereotypical image of Arabs and Muslims, had become prone to defamation and muttering campaigns. The French papers headline differed in colours and contents such as: Qatar buys Paris football team, Qatar, a key partner in Lagardère group of Media and Sport and Aviation, Qatar, a key shareholder of the French oil company Total, Qatar has a large share in the group of companies LVMH “Louis Vuitton Samoens Hennessy,” Qatar invests in the French energy market and real estate, Al Jazeera satellite channel gets the largest share of the rights to broadcast the European Champions League matches, Qatar buys hotels in Paris and acquires historic palaces, Qatar involves in political deals and French politicians flock to Doha. The article of Le Libération imagined that most of the future of the French state in 2022 will be owned by Qatar. The website of “Mediabar” said in an article entitled “sale of France and Europe to Qatar.” (3) During the past years many right-wing parties with extreme right-wing trends become popular and succeeded in getting the votes in large numbers in many countries from Sweden to Hungary, Austria to the Netherlands and now France, tomorrow Britain. Their popularity will not decline and will increase as it focus to target other party as politically, economically, culturally, demographic burden, because they cannot integrate into the European model. The Arab and Islamic countries and specifically the Gulf countries which seek to support their economy are accused of having political and ideological agenda. The speech of such people is able to create fear of (Islamophobia and Arabphobia and the new term of Gulfphobia) and re-produce the elements that believe in hatred and hostility, which may carry out terrorist acts to achieve their goals and slogans. Anders Bering Brievik, who killed 77 people in Norway last year and exploded a bomb in the center of Oslo, confirmed in his trial carried directly in international mass media, the existence of sleeper cells that could strike Europe any time. These cells are composed of individual cells that work separately and aim to “unite all national activists in Europe” and train them to follow Al Qaeda and Islamic jihadists. Brievik holds “satanic socialist democrats and intellectual Marxists who want to turn their country into a multicultural society without consulting the people” responsible for that.