Ha! Ha! Bloomberg says the rise of the European right is all about ‘speaking in code’ about immigration
….implying that they don’t have a point—no legitimate reason to be scared to death about how Europe is being overrun by invaders (no speaking in code here)?
Hey! Adrian! Those “indigenous workers” you refer to “perceive” more clearly than you ever will! The migrants aren’t after your job yet! Dr. Adrian Pabst at the University of Kent.
From Bloomberg:
(Bloomberg) — Not so long ago, the U.K. Independence Party was dismissed by a future prime minister as a bunch of “closet racists,” Danes were embarrassed to admit that they voted for the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party and France’s National Front finished third in 2011 local elections.
How quickly the tide rises.
This year, UKIP could win about 15 percent of the vote in the U.K.’s May polls, while forcing a national reckoning on immigration. The Danish People’s Party will probably be the largest political party in soon-to-be-announced elections. And polls show the National Front running neck-and-neck for first in the popular vote in local elections that begin March 22.
How in Europe, a bastion of western liberalism, have a handful of stridently anti-immigration and anti-European Union leaders managed to burst from the margins of civil discourse to the gates of political power?
The common threads are a sense of voter insecurity in the aftermath of the European debt crisis, the failure of established leaders to create an alternative vision and, most important, the decision by the extremist parties to begin speaking in more muted language. They rely on code words to evoke surrogate issues such as welfare or national identity.
They criticize immigration, not immigrants. They speak of national values, not of religion. In Denmark, the People’s Party used halal food to raise questions about Danish values. In the U.K., stopping immigrants from perceived abuse of the National Health Service has become an electoral linchpin.
“The change in rhetoric is about getting a mainstream audience and getting a hearing in the media. Otherwise these parties get demonized or shut out,” said Adrian Pabst, who teaches politics at the University of Kent.“There is an active scaremongering, but it’s also a reflection of popular fears and real concerns with how indigenous workers perceive their future.”
Our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ series is here. For new readers, we write often about Europe because many countries there are ahead of us in western civilization’s downward spiral, and we need to learn from them! So, where is our American UKIP?
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