Secular Café: Fascism on its way back within the EU

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Fascism on its way back within the EU Dec 11th 2012, 17:29 This is a worrying trend. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20677068 Quote: With Europe embroiled in its worst economic crisis since the 1930s, are politicians really alert to the nature of that threat? As with many developments in the eurozone crisis, Greece has become a testing ground for the rise of the extreme right. Graffiti in big bold red letters is scrawled across the entrance to Athens University. Capitalism is killing you, it says, but fascism won't save you. Politics has become dangerously polarised. Golden Dawn - with 18 seats in parliament and its popularity growing - denies that it is a fascist party but its supporters wear black shirts and use neo-Nazi symbols. They are nationalistic, xenophobic and aggressive. In the past few weeks, they have smashed up immigrant market stalls, shut down a theatre production they did not like and applauded the flag of the former military dictatorship. And it gets worse. "Recently it has come to the point that we see victims of racial attacks almost every day," said Christina Psarra, at the Athens headquarters of the medical charity Medecins Du Monde. Some of the victims report attacks by men dressed in black. One man from Sudan showed off gouges in his back he said were slashed by men in black with Greek flags. "This will not only affect migrants in the future," Ms Psarra predicted. "In an area close to Athens with many gay-friendly bars, they have distributed black leaflets saying 'You are next'." Even Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has compared the situation in Greece with the last days of the Weimar Republic in Germany - a country that had debts it could never repay and turned to Adolf Hitler. It is a pattern that Europe has seen before: demagogues offering simple solutions to complex problems. Golden Dawn is arguably the most extreme right party to win parliamentary seats in the EU since the founding of the union... ...Jobbik, for example, is the third largest political party in Hungary. It has made its name with outspoken attacks on the Roma minority. And a few days ago one of its MPs caused outrage with a speech in parliament. A list of names should be compiled, he declared, of Jews who pose a threat to national security. It was another chilling echo of the past and it has led many critics to argue that the EU and its member-states must do more to fight against extremism.

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