Issue No. 595
Opinion
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18 - 24 July 2002 Issue No. 595 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Keeping bad company
The extreme right is making inroads into European politics and Arabs have no reason to celebrate, writes Amr Elchoubaki
The performance of the extreme right in the French elections was extraordinary. For the first time ever it reached the second round of presidential elections and its political and ideological agenda is now a fact of life in contemporary France. The mounting influence of the extreme right is evident across Europe -- Italy and Austria being obvious examples. What does this mean for the Arab world?
Europe's extreme right has edged its way from the political fringe to centre stage on a wave of hostility towards immigrants, particularly Third World immigrants, particularly Arabs. Parties from the extreme right cynically blamed unemployment in European countries on immigrants. Their arguments were laughable, immoral, but effective.
Jean-Marie Le Pen did everything he could to discredit the immigrant community. He blamed immigrants for the rise of crime. He accused Muslims of staging a cultural and religious invasion of France. And he lamented the threat immigrants pose to the racial purity of white, Christian France. Le Pen called for job discrimination in favour of French people, wanted to take France out of the EU, re-institute the French franc, and opposed globalisation and US domination.
Le Pen's cultural and economic recipe is simple. He wants to cleanse France's cultural legacy of the "impurities" that have seeped into it at the hands of less-than-purely-French intellectuals. He wants to install trade barriers to protect local products. And wants French citizenship denied to children who do not have at least one "purely" French parent. And he wants to deport all illegal immigrants.
For the past two decades these demands have been voiced, and loudly so, on the sidelines of French politics. What Le Pen did, in the last elections, was to bring these demands into the mainstream. Le Pen contested the elections as an outsider, a challenger to the established elite and a man with a radical formula for reform. He transformed himself from a populist agitator into a credible protester. His success was due to the incompetence of conventional politicians and public concern over security and immigrants.
There is little to celebrate, at least from the Arab point of view, about the rising fortunes of Le Pen's and like-minded groups in Europe. Europe's extreme right looks down on all outsiders, on all non-Christian, non-white Europeans. It has made little secret of its hatred for blacks and Jews, but its hatred for Arabs and Muslims is even more intense.
In doctrine, Europe's extreme right stands against everything supporters of the Palestinian struggle believe in. The moral strength of that struggle is precisely located in its being against all types of racially-motivated occupation. The liberation of Palestine is more than a national endeavour, it is a struggle against racism and inequality worldwide. This is why the Palestinians have friends abroad. This is why their cause is morally superior to that of their adversaries.
What Israel is trying to obtain, as it flouts long- established international norms and ignores UN resolutions, is a "special license", an exemption from universally-accepted moral codes. And this is exactly what Europe's extreme right is fighting for -- special treatment, the privileging of one group of people on the grounds of who they are, not what they do. The doctrinal similarities are clear. Europe's white-skinned and Christian community is, according to the extreme right, a modern day version of the chosen people.
Obviously, there is no ideological common ground between the Arab cause and that of Europe's extreme right. The opposite is true. Everyone truly opposed to racism is morally allied to the Palestinian cause. Practically speaking, the extreme right, with its racist views, has no chance of forming a government in any European country. To hope that the extreme right, just because it is suspicious about the Jews, might do the Arab cause good is morally and politically wrong.
There was a time when the Arabs allied themselves with the former Soviet Union in the hope that the latter would liberate Palestine for them. This search for ready-made political backers is a symptom of mental laziness. The Arabs should seek out their natural political supporters, should develop alliances. It is not enough for them to depend on the sympathy of traditional supporters, those who find the Arabs generous and culturally interesting. This is not the kind of support the Arabs need, and the number of such minded people is dwindling anyway.
The Palestinian cause is morally and politically solid, and this is why it deserves the support of Arabs, Jews, Europeans, and non-Europeans alike. The Palestinian people's real allies are the peace and human rights activists who demonstrated in Europe and, risking their lives, went to the occupied territories to make their opinions known. Leftist, liberal and centrist European parties have repeatedly expressed opposition to Israel's racist policies. The Arabs should forge close links with these parties, not wait passively for Europe's extreme right to back them, and for all the wrong reasons. Arabs must work more closely with Europe's enlightened political forces. They have to be more pro-active. And they have to do something about democracy and human rights at home.
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