The rise of these movements poses semantic problems. From the 1930s to today, the far Right has needed to set up a threat that it can oppose.ĭoes populism - in which we can also sometimes note left-wing hues - make up part of this same dynamic? Today, they say, the Muslim works away from within, while Islamic states - rich foreign powers like Qatar - try to gain a monopoly hold on France with their money. That is how the Jew was presented in the 1930s, working in concert with the Bolshevik attacking the nation from the outside. Just as Jews then appeared as a minority rotting away at France from within, infiltrating the state and the circles of power, so too are Muslims in France presented as a body foreign to the nation yet eating away at it: the enemy within. Even so, there is an analogy with the 1930s.
From this point of view there is an evident break with the old fascisms. Or better, Marine Le Pen presents herself as a rampart against the new anti-Semitism of the youths in the banlieue and against jihadist "Islamo-fascism." Like other European far-Right parties the FN is trying to establish good relations with the State of Israel.
But anti-Semitism has disappeared from political discourse. In the FN there are still nostalgists for l’Algérie française and old-guard anti-Semites. Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism as the major preoccupation of the far Right - especially in France - even if militant anti-Semitism has not gone away This notion does not seek either to play down the danger or to make it more acceptable, but to understand it, the better to combat it more effectively. This is an open process, for within the tendency I call "post-fascist" there are also political movements born in recent years that are not fascist in origin, for instance UKIP in England or the Lega Nord in Italy, which are converging together with this current indeed, Matteo Salvini and Nigel Farage have good relations with the Front National. Or it could take on new characteristics and integrate into the system, like the Movimento Sociale Italiano did in the 1990s, becoming a component of the traditional Right. This could end up - if the European Union were to break apart and the economic crisis were to deepen - transforming into a clearly fascist alternative. Post-fascism is a concept that attempts to grasp a mutation process that is still underway the FN is no longer a fascist movement, but it is still far-Right and xenophobic, and it has still not broken the umbilical cord that links it to its fascist matrix. Why call these parties "from the fascist matrix" post-fascists and not-neo-fascists? How do you characterise this post-fascism? If it still advanced neo-fascist arguments it would not get a hearing, and could certainly not hope to reach the second round of the presidential election. After all, it has made a considerable effort at ideological mutation, and that is one of the keys to its success. As for France, the Front National does have a fascist matrix, and there are certainly neo-fascists in the party, but its discourse is no longer fascist. There are clearly neo-fascist or neo-Nazi movements, like Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, etc., whose radicalism is often linked to the extent of the crisis, even if in Greece the rise of Syriza did put a lid on this dynamic. Beyond these markers, we can see notable differences. In his Les Nouveaux Visages du Fascisme, historian Enzo Traverso analyses the mutations of the European far Right movements that have emerged from "the fascist matrix." 1 According to Traverso, the Left has to "offer political perspectives again" in order to occupy "the immense void" that is today being filled by both jihadism and a "post-fascism" that excludes Muslims.Īre Europe’s far-Right movements (the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary…) adopting the same codes as fascism or Nazism?Įnzo Traverso: First of all, these movements do share common traits, including their rejection of the European Union, their xenophobia and their racism, in particular in its Islamophobic dimension. June 2015 press conference of far right 'Europe of Nations and Freedom' bloc within European Parliament. This interview with Enzo Traverso was first published in L'humanité.
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