Germany is now considering banning the “far-right”. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which is the German domestic intelligence agency, has classified the Saxony branch of the political party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) as a “ring-wing extremist” group and thus a “threat to democracy” – which could be a step towards banning it by declaring it unconstitutional. Ironically, BfV itself has a record of having been in bed with real neo-Nazi terrorism, as it came to light in 2011, for instance. In any case, according to the head of the Saxony’s BfV, Dirk-Martin Christian, the political party is “undoubtedly” of a “extremist [far] right” persuasion. This development should be seen as part of a larger European context today.
AfD was founded in September 2012 by former members of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) who opposed some of the Eurozone policies. The core of its supporters were small business leaders, journalists and economists, and their manifesto stated that the eurozone currency area had shown itself to be a failure, with southern European nations “sinking into poverty under the competitive pressure of the euro.” Gradually it moved further to the “populist” camp, with a larger popular appeal, by opposing mass immigration policies and Brussels. Its voters today include mostly people form the center-right, some from the center-left, and, yes, some neo-Fascists as well.
It should be noted that the so-called “anti-immigration” left is on the rise in Germany, the new “Die Linke” (“The Left”) democratic socialist party being widely seen as a natural competitor to the right-wing AfD. There is in fact plenty of room for agreement between the so-called “far-left” and the populist right, both of which employ anti-war and anti-NATO rhetoric and see support for mass immigration as a kind of betrayal of working-class interests. The lines between right and left-wing can often become blurred. Right-wing populism in the West has its long history of voicing anti-elite and anti-Establishment themes, while calling for protectionism and some kind of welfare, allegedly to defend “common sense” and the “average citizen” against corrupt elites. Whether one likes such platform or not, those are popular points, and are not necessarily identified with Fascism, according to historian Federico Finchelstein – although other scholars such as Roger Eatwell, Emeritus Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bath, have noted that, in contexts of crisis, it can “degenerate into leader-oriented authoritarian and exclusionary politics.”
In France, particularly, there is also the De Gaulean legacy, which inspires some “populist” groups today. According to Ali Rıza Taşdelen, a journalist and author of “French Social Democracy from the Paris Commune to the Yellow Vests”, former president Jacques Chirac might have been the last (mainstream) representative of such a tradition: he, for one thing, opposed the American invasion of Iraq, favored a Parlin-Berlin-Moscow friendship, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder. This was a stance within the political mainstream, mind you. The irony is that today a politician like Chirac would be considered a “far-right” and “pro-Russian” monstrosity – like Marine Le Pen is. According to Taşdelen, de Gaullist groups and parties today “still oppose the US and NATO and are in favor of friendly relations with Russia and Bashar al-Assad.”
Back to the AfD, it is one of the only actors in Germany today vocally demanding an investigation into the terrorist attack on Nord Stream, denounced by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh as a sabotage act clandestinely carried out by the United States. It is no wonder it could be banned.
Ironically, the very trend of banning or marginalizing such voices (today considered “fringe”) is actually part of what I have been describing as the overall Maidanization of Europe. It includes banning Russia and Soviet flags in Victory Day (in Germany), criminalizing pro-Palestine demonstrations, and, yes, persecuting “pro-Russian” political parties in a neo-Mccarthyist manner, as we have seen in France, Poland, and, of course, Ukraine itself, which thus far has banned 11 political parties.
The Maidanization of the continent includes Europe turning its back to the Venice Commission’s own stance. Olga Stefanishyna (Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration) recently claimed “there is no Russian minority in Ukraine”, and that the Europe Commission shares this view, as I wrote. Bear in mind that, according to the 2001 Ukraine’s census, which is to date its only census since its 1991 independence, “ethnic Russians” were 17.3% of the Ukrainian population. By echoing Kyiv’s ultranationalist take, and giving green-light to Ukraine’s membership talks, the EU is turning a blind eye to minority rights – just as it is ready to turn a blind eye to some many other things.
It is not just the EU. Consider this: just after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an address in the Canadian House of Commons in September, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka received a standing ovation as a hero when claiming to have fought “against the Russians” during World War II (he fought in the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, under the command of Nazi Germany). It is not just about the past: by early 2022, Ukraine had already become a new global hub for the (real) far-right, neo-Nazis included. European and Western support for Ukrainian thus nationalism needs to whitewash the latter’s Azov regiment, notorious for its Fascism. The SITE Intelligence Group, specialized in tracking extremist groups, in fact warned in February 2022 that there were European (real) neo-Fascist militias ready to join Ukrainian neo-Nazis in their struggle.
Thus, in the name of combating the “far-right”, populists, war critics and “pro-Russian” forces are to be banned in Europe. However, real fascism itself and even neo-Nazism might very well be welcome as long as it has pro-NATO and a radically anti-Russian stance – as it often does, since the Cold War years. What a peculiar situation might ensue, then. Imagine this: on the one side, pro-welfare populist and conservative parties that oppose an “open-door” mass migration policy and call for economic nationalism plus some European strategic autonomy in the de Gaullean tradition.
On the other side, ultra-nationalist groups connected to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi underground, including the usual paramilitary thugs and their swastika tattoos. The former are to get banned for its “far-right” and “pro-Russian” heresies, while the latter might very well be tolerated, their “civilian” leaders giving speeches in Parliament, while their thugs, under the protection of European intelligence agencies, carry out terrorist acts and act as volunteers or mercenaries in a future frozen conflict in Ukraine side by side with Azov. Does such a scenario sound far-fetched? There would in fact be nothing new about any of this: it is a widely known fact that during the Cold War years, with the Gladio Operation, NATO funded European neo-Nazi and neo-Fascist groups as a covert anti-Soviet army.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Zeev Sternhell wrote in his masterpiece “The birth of Fascist ideology” that far from being a “parenthesis” in European history, as Benedetto Croce would have it, (real) Fascism is actually “an integral part of the history of European culture.” The hard truth is that by welcoming today’s post-Maidan Ukraine, and everything that comes with the package, into its bloc, Europe might also be welcoming back and embracing that dark side of itself – a side that had never completely left the scene, really.
By Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts