By Leigh Phillips
EU Observer
BRUSSELS - Like chocolate and mustard, or orange juice and toothpaste, the various flavours of far right in the new European Parliament just don't seem to go together and are already having trouble cooking up a united bloc in the chamber, despite the gains the extremists made in the European elections on the weekend.
The ‘softer' far-right parties so far seem more interested in jumping aboard the UK Tories' proposed European Conservatives grouping than cobbling together a nationalist bloc, but it is an open question whether the attraction will be requited.
The European elections on the weekend delivered a moderate advance of eight seats on the number of MEPs in the last parliament, eliciting fears that they might club together in a political grouping in the parliament, a move that would open a tap to thousands of euros in EU funds.
However, while it is still too early to make any definitive predictions, there seems to be an unbreachable antagonism between the more moderate parties and their cousins further to the right.
Some of the new MEPs from the likes of Dutchman Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) or the Danish People's Party may well be opposed to migrants, Muslims and minorities, but they are reluctant to embrace the militant nationalism of the more classically ‘fascistic' parties such as the British National Party, France's Front National or newcomer Jobbik from Hungary, with its paramilitary Hungarian Guard straight out of the 1930s.
At the same time, even such a division - the far-right ‘classic' and far-right ‘lite' as Glyn Ford, centre-left MEP and longtime monitor of parties to the right of the conservative mainstream, describes the two rough wings of European extremism - simplifies a situation that is further complicated by personal rivalries, competing nationalist narratives and in some cases just an inability to play together nicely....(Click for remainder.)
EU Observer
BRUSSELS - Like chocolate and mustard, or orange juice and toothpaste, the various flavours of far right in the new European Parliament just don't seem to go together and are already having trouble cooking up a united bloc in the chamber, despite the gains the extremists made in the European elections on the weekend.
The ‘softer' far-right parties so far seem more interested in jumping aboard the UK Tories' proposed European Conservatives grouping than cobbling together a nationalist bloc, but it is an open question whether the attraction will be requited.The European elections on the weekend delivered a moderate advance of eight seats on the number of MEPs in the last parliament, eliciting fears that they might club together in a political grouping in the parliament, a move that would open a tap to thousands of euros in EU funds.
However, while it is still too early to make any definitive predictions, there seems to be an unbreachable antagonism between the more moderate parties and their cousins further to the right.
Some of the new MEPs from the likes of Dutchman Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) or the Danish People's Party may well be opposed to migrants, Muslims and minorities, but they are reluctant to embrace the militant nationalism of the more classically ‘fascistic' parties such as the British National Party, France's Front National or newcomer Jobbik from Hungary, with its paramilitary Hungarian Guard straight out of the 1930s.
At the same time, even such a division - the far-right ‘classic' and far-right ‘lite' as Glyn Ford, centre-left MEP and longtime monitor of parties to the right of the conservative mainstream, describes the two rough wings of European extremism - simplifies a situation that is further complicated by personal rivalries, competing nationalist narratives and in some cases just an inability to play together nicely....(Click for remainder.)
