Author:
Publication: The Observer, UK
Date: May 5, 2002
The Standard Comment is familiar.
In an era of globalisation, governing parties have little room for manoeuvre,
so meaningful political choice is close to non-existent. The government
always wins. Broader voter apathy is giving disillusioned voters experimenting
at the margins more influence. All over Europe, in response to crime and
growing immigrant populations, there is are-emergence of fatal DNA in the
European values gene, amurky cocktail of racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism,
anti-immigration and calls for ultra-hard-line criminal justice policies.
Europe, we learn from conservative
Americans, commentators and British Eurosceptics, cannot be trusted. The
pro-Palestinian leanings and too-ready critism of Israel by mainstream
Europeans opinion, writers the Washington Posts commentators Charles Krauthammer,
for example, is part of a general cultural disposition that incubates anti-Semitism
and racism. France's Jean-Marie Le Pen, far from being an outlier and outcast
as he rails against immigrants and crime alike, is, in truth, the standard-bearer
of a European truth that dare not speak its name. Just as European peoples
turned to fascism in the 1930s, so they are now playing with racism at
home and anti-Israel policies abroad. The English- speaking peoples, always
on the side of good against evil over the last century, must now keep their
distance from Europe and express total solidarity with Israel in its fight
against terrorism.
This will certainly be one of the
undercurrents in the demonstration tomorrow in Trafalgar Square by an expected
20,000 British Jews concerned that the so-far isolated incidents attacks
on individual Jews are the forerunners of much worse to come and that they
must make a strong protest now. The BNP's winning of three council seats
in Burnely is portrayed in the same light. Emotions are running high. We
stand on the edge of a slippery slope.
If this porridge of views did describe
reality it would be serious indeed, but the elision of a disparate trends
into one great, allegedly growing recist, anti-Semitic. European force
is to make a profound mistake. There are dangers ahead but they loom as
much from Charles Krauthammer's US and Sharon's Israel as from Europe.
We must never drop our guard against anti-Semitism or racism but sweeping
generalisation make matters worse. We need to disentangle the various strands
and hit hard at what needs to be tackled rather than invoking ghosts from
the past.
In the first place, European democracy
is robust and well entered.
American commentators need to be
extraordinarily careful before launching attack on Europe when the US is
so compromised: 4.5 million American felons, mostly black are disqualified
from voting in the American South, a contemporary version of the Jim Crow
laws that effectively disenfranchised black after the Civil War. Right-wing
militias recruit violent members under anti-Jew, anti-Israel programmes
that make Le Pen look moderate. Indeed, the Vichy sloganwork, family and
patriotism- that is at the core of the heart of the Republican right, and
just as menacingly justifies extravagant US nationalism and unilateralism,
if Americans could but see it.
Le Pen may have given this supremely
conservative credo a more overtly recist tinge, and sickeningly 17 per
cent of French citizens voted for it, but nobody in Europe or the US should
imagine that in similar circumstances (the peculiar French voting system,
political cohabitaimmune. As impressive has been the French reaction. One
million French hit the streets on 1 May in protest and the recognition
that voting matters fundamentally has suddenly become the new common currency.
In the English council elections, there was ax sharp rise in voter turnout
where voting to block the British National party mattered. The indication
in French, although we may be confounded are that Le Pen will not advance
much beyond his first vote, a relying to the values of democracy and tolerance
that is as inspiring as the initial vote was depressing.
Paradoxically, the votes for Le
Pen, along with parallel parties in Holland, Germany, Italy, Denmark and
Britain, are an important democratic signal. For the poor, urban, working
class, especially those in port cities and regions particularly exposed
to immigrant, ranging from Dover to Marseilles, fear of crime and concern
about immigrants has become an overwhelming preoccupation. This needs to
be taken seriously.
New Labour has been right to respond
in a way that the European Left has not, even to the point of flirting
with highly conservative responses; it gives the right wing nationalist
parties little political opening. But even more sense of mobilisation against
crime is needed along with a powerful public rhetoric that it matters,
marrying a policy of both carrot and stick in response. Mentoring crime-prone
families, providing disciplined educational structures for their children
and equipping prisons with powerful rehabilitative programmes are as important
as tough custodial sentences or, say, electronically tagging repeat offenders.
The important political truth is to act, and to be seen to act, decisively
and purposefully.
As for race, there are three strands
in play. There is the longstanding concern about asylum-seekers. There
is a second prejudice against Arabs in general and Islamic fundamentalism
in particular, a culture which has been particularly impervious to well-intentioned
efforts at integration and assimilation all over Europe. And, Lastly, there
is strongly sympathy for the Palestinians despite the horrors of suicide
bombing. But to critise the more powerful state in this cruel conflict
is not anti-semistic .Israel's critics criticise it for its actions, not
for Jewishness, a moving on from the old categories that is long overdue
noxious anti-Semitism does exit in the refugee camps but this has an obvious
cause -and obvious remedy.
The more festering racist concern
in Europe, including Britain, is anti-Islamicism: at least as many, if
not more, mosques as synagogues have been vandalised, made much worse by
the hostility around since 11 September.
One of the reasons for the West
scrupulously observing international law and resection international rules
of justice in Afghanistan, the West Bank or in any action Against Iraq
is that we need the Islamic community, whether in immigrant communities
or within its own countries, to recognise that there are universal codes
which it self needs to observe. The way it treats its criminals and its
women alike cannot be justified by cultural mores or ancient religious
texts; it need to conform to common universal standard of justice, of which
on the West's side fair and transparent treatment of asylum-seekers would
be part. Some delicate work needs to be done to persuade Europe's Islamic
community that universal principles trump cultural exceptionalism, and
that refusing to acknowledge this truth helps in part to legitimate an
ugly backlash. Religious school which further these differences needs to
be curbed rather than expand.
All this is emotional and cultural
dynamite, but the lesson of the last six months is that inactivity is more
dangerous. Before the irrationalities and high-octane emotionalism of those
who foster racist hatred and those like Krauthammer who claim they can
detect it, we have to stick to universal principles and a clear understanding
of what really is at work. Better forensic mine sweeping than indiscriminate
carpet-bombing.
