Not the right sort of far-right… the BNP’s curious inability to win friends and influence people in Europe. June 20, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Politics, European Politics.trackback
Thanks to Leveller for drawing my attention to this…
The British National party’s (BNP) efforts to form a coalition with other extremist groups in Europe have ended in failure.
Party leader Nick Griffin had hoped to form a grouping with parties such as Italy’s Northern League and France’s Front National.
Parliamentary groupings require 25 MEPs from at least seven countries, which triggers up to a million euros funding for staff and office costs.
“It appears at present we are below the threshold,” Mr Griffin said after talks at the European parliament in Brussels.
Pity them their plight…
The BNP grouping has only attracted 12 MEPs, despite wide gains for the far-right in the recent elections.
As the piece notes, for some curious reason…
The far-right often struggles to work together across national boundaries.
Who’d thunk it? That far-right political entities basing their platforms on often xenophobic and reactionary policies towards others beyond their self-defined concepts of nationality and ethnicity might find it difficult to reach out and engage…er… like… er… minds… How does it work in practice?
Well, perhaps like this…
In the last parliament the Greater Romania party broke up the far-right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group after a spat with Mussolini’s daughter, Alessandro, who said all Romanians were criminals.
And why should that be a surprise?
What’s fascinating is the way in which there is an effort, perhaps not dissimilar to that of Libertas, to carve out a space between mainstream conservatism of the EPP mode and the further right… note that…
Geert Wilder’s Dutch Freedom party, which mostly sells itself on an extreme variant of anti-Muslim thought, also rejected the BNP, despite being sufficiently extreme to be banned from entering Britain.
Mr Wilder is understood to be attempting to appeal to mainstream Dutch voters, and is furiously avoiding associations with the likes of the BNP or the National Front.
A bid, yet again for a ‘respectable’ far-right. And not only Wilder’s faction, but also…
The Danish People’s party is also avoiding Mr Griffin. It has also tried to avoid Jean Marie Le-Pen’s National Front, after he again denied the Holocaust at the parliament.
One may have reservations about some aspects of the left and further left policies on Europe, but generally they’ve managed to operate well together within their groupings. Let’s be thankful the far right hasn’t quite got there yet.
Somehow I doubt that the Greater Romania Party will be interested this time around either… at least, not if the BNP are lashing up with those mad Hungarian fascists who actually march around in uniform. I suppose the lesson is, if you want to get nationalist wingnuts together, it helps if they’re not from neighbouring countries.
That sounds about right…
. It certainly makes sense. It’ll become like the – what is it, the old mathematical puzzle where you try to use the fewest number of colours.
The four-colour problem
That’s it, and particularly relevant because it aplied to maps of countries.
those mad Hungarian fascists
Some of whom have been finding work doing quote-unquote “security” for Shell on our own west coast (and haven’t the media gone silent on the whole Bolivia topic, eh? )
By the way, the Phoenix has been giving details on how ‘crime correspondent’ Paul Williams has been enjoying Shell hospitality in the recent past…