Episode 1
In Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, the EU...new measures against immigration have multiplied across Europe in the past few years. This phenomenon is growing in parallel with the unprecedented rise of far-right parties and movements in Europe, who, for some voters, embody the solution to this “scourge”. All over Europe the political landscape is changing in ways unimaginable since the Second World War. European society seems to be closing in on itself, blaming immigration for all its ills. Is this true, or is it scapegoating? Is immigration really a problem in Europe? Let’s start with a little history. (1/4)
A history of cycles
Late 2010, early 2011: In a number of Arab countries, revolution is stirring. While some hold back the tide with social reforms or repression, others are swept up in it. One by one, the populations of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt topple their authoritarian regimes and put democratic governments in their place. But one regime’s counter-revolutionary resistance will mark the beginning of the end for the ‘Arab Spring’. Bashar al-Assad refuses to let the people of Syria take their future into their own hands and instead unleashes hell. The repression is horrific, the country becomes a battlefield. As life becomes unlivable, the Syrian population flees, not just to neighbouring countries, but to Europe as well. Between 6 and 8 million people are displaced within and outside of Syria. This represents nearly 60% of the original population of 13 million Syrians. In 2015 the pressure at the borders of Europe reaches its tipping point. Millions of refugees wait in Turkey to access the continent. Europeans must choose. Continue to feign ignorance of the situation, or open the borders. Chancellor Angela Merkel chooses humanity. With a cry of “Wir schaffen das!”, she decides to welcome the majority of refugees. Other European states, however, do not follow her example. Welcoming refugees does not seem to interest them to the same extent.
The crisis was now Europe-wide. Yet, not only were the Syrian refugees a minority of the total displaced population, but European states also experienced other waves of migration, even before the European project had begun. The French immigration historian, Pascal Blanchard, points out the significance of these phenomena, going as far back as the French Revolution: “The effect of immigration is a constituent part of all our concerns [...] The question, in the first instance, is not whether that effect is “positive” or “negative”, as it is first and foremost a fact. A specific fact, that for more than two centuries has been an essential part of our identities, our demographies, of the changes to our regions [...]”. [1] Immigration was indeed a cyclical phenomenon throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. While Europe certainly saw massive emigration during the crises of those centuries, for the most part it welcomed migrants. In France, the colonial empire contributed to the growth of the Arab and Black populations in the country. Similarly in Britain, migrants arriving from the country’s Asian and African colonies changed its demographics.
There were waves of migration after both World Wars. The war-torn belligerents sought an international workforce, mainly European. Thus did Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Belgian and Italian workers lend their hands to the reconstruction of France and Germany. France also appealed to its colonial workforce, extending their rights to French citizenship. Algerians and Moroccans led this contingent, followed by Senegalese and Malians. Germany began to welcome the population who would become its largest diaspora, the Turks. Belgium drew from its significant colony in the Congo. In summary, “white and Christian” increasingly became just one part of European society’s makeup. Today, more than a quarter of French people are of non-European origin. The grandchildren of migrant workers still live in France and are French nationals. But this attitude of openness and desire for integration were shattered by two major events.
In France, the Algerian War of Independence opened a rift in society: On the one hand there was the future heart of the far-right party, Le Front National (FN), who wanted to keep Algeria in the French colonial empire, and on the other were those who believed in settling the argument in the name of the people’s right to self-determination, even at the cost of Algerian independence (Wilson, 1919). Despite the Évian Accords of 1962, many Algerians continued to come to France. The peace agreements opened doors for them, with advantages in procedures and integration not offered to other nationalities. For example, the 1968 agreement gave Algerian immigrants special status in France. Other nationals from the former French colonies benefited similarly after their respective independence movements. While there was some opposition to the new arrivals, it was on the whole minimal and only emerged among a few movements who were nostalgic for “la Grande France”. The tide began to turn with the first oil crisis. In 1973, Arab countries at war with Israel decided, in a major blow, to put an embargo on oil production. The crisis reached Europe. European economies lost fuel, industries had to issue layoffs, and unemployment increased. The “Trente Glorieuses” ended with the triple assault of deficit, inflation and falling production.
And the far-right returned...
Double-digit growth gave way to a single-digit stagnation. Social crises intensified. The political class was once again confronted with a fracturing society. The year before the oil crisis, a former member of the Waffen-SS, Pierre Bosquet, and a former Poujadist who had served with the French army in Algeria, Jean-Marie Le Pen, formed Le Front National, an openly racist far-right party, nostalgic for colonial France. The oil crisis was a first stepping stone for this party who, in the 1980s, accused immigrants of exacerbating France’s woes by stealing jobs that they believed should rightfully be offered to French people. But while Jean-Marie Le Pen was largely marginalised by the political class and public opinion, he was given a golden opportunity to enter the limelight by none other than the President of the Republic himself, François Mitterrand.
Jean-Marie Le Pen complained of being silenced, claiming that he was being barred from access to television and newspaper platforms. It is necessary to add here that at this time French society was still traumatised by the crimes of the Nazis on their soil during the Second World War. At the time of the trial of former Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie [2], (the first trial for crimes against humanity held in France) the far-right represented the devil incarnate, the risk of a return to war. Le Pen wrote to the President to vent his feelings, complaining his movement was being “ostracised”. François Mitterrand saw Jean-Marie Le Pen’s arrival on the scene as an opportunity to put a spoke in the far-right’s wheels. He manoeuvred for the FN president to appear on a few minor programmes, particularly L’heure de Vérité [Truth Hour] on February 13th 1984, where he would have almost an hour and a half to roll out his political beliefs, including his view of immigrants.
The field of fire was now open. Elsewhere in Europe, far-right parties were given little room to grow. Behind the Iron Curtain, the communist regimes of eastern Europe quashed dissident voices, including those of the far-right. There was no question of allowing the gangrene of fascism to corrupt the “great cause of the people’s liberation” that was communism. As a major belligerent of the Second World War, Germany attentively surveilled the development of prospective far-right movements, in order to prevent another war from starting in the country. Even today, surveillance of parties deemed “far-right” is tight and repression powerful. However this has not stopped the party Alternativ für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) from achieving electoral success and even strengthening its position in the Bundestag. The United Kingdom, traumatised by The British Union of Fascists support for Hitler under the leadership of Oswald Mosley [3], and by the links between the former King Edward VIII and Nazi dignitaries, acted likewise. However, there are now small-scale far-right movements all over the country. Spain and Portugal, who were under dictatorships until the 1970s, are among the only countries to have experienced the far-right as a major po litical force. A pattern both countries quickly broke free from after the falls of General Franco and Salazar.
Even though history has taught us the risks of far-right movements taking power, the political and social upheavals of the 21st century have still brought about the return of a number of these parties, just about everywhere in Europe. In a conversation with Le Taurillon, Fabienne Keller, MEP for the Renew Europe Group and rapporteur to the European Parliament on migration issues, declared that immigration “is the fuel” [4] for this old engine, which is revving up once more. The refugee crisis of 2015-2018 just gave it a particular jumpstart. But it was the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016 that opened Pandora’s box. As the world’s liberal democracies reeled at the result, nationalist and sovereigntist leaders and candidates rubbed their hands in anticipation. From that moment on, access to supreme power was no longer an illusion but a real possibility. The proof: that the world’s foremost power, the leader of the free world, and the world’s exemplary democracy had opened its doors to a populist leader firmly anchored in the right.
Immigration remains more of a fixation than ever for far-right movements in Europe who seek to defend a “European way of life”. And their ideas are finding resonance. They are taking hold in more and more voters’ minds, often through social media. They have been hitting Europe hard, election after election, throughout the 2020s. Sweden and Finland, habitual social democrats, have turned to the right. The Netherlands, once a bastion of liberal democracy, has seen Geert Wilders win a plurality of votes. Slovakia has chosen to give the far-right a chance to participate in government. Italy has installed nationalists at the head of government for the third time in its history. All campaigned with one objective: to reduce immigration with an aim towards its total prevention, labelled as the cause of social crises, a danger to European society, and a vector of instability. Such discourse is becoming harder to dismantle, as more people’s minds become wedded to this caricature. With the European elections fast approaching, it is critical to deconstruct stereotypes, to re-establish truth, to pinpoint contradictions in the far-right’s claims and to finally shed light on this poorly-understood phenomenon.
Notes [1] Pascal Blanchard, “Quelle place donner à l’immigration dans l’histoire de la République”, L’Humanité, September 24th, 2014. [2] Klaus Barbie was extradited from Bolivia to France in 1983, before being judged by the court of assizes in Rhône in 1987. [3] The British Union of Fascists was created in 1932 by Sir Oswald Mosley. [4] Interview with the author, December 22nd, 2023.
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