Anti-Semitism Worldwide 1997/8

The demise of communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 presented Europe with the opportunity to unite and become a stabilizing force in the world today. Across the continent, a new consensus emerged in favor of democracy, pluralism, human rights and the rule of law. For a brief, euphoric moment, there was a high tide in favor of European integration, a hope that a common European purpose might yet assert itself beyond the individual interests of the nation-states. Yet, within five years, disillusion had set in. Instead of a new dawn, Europeans began to see how former Yugoslavia, an internationally recognized multinational state, was subdivided according to the dictates of fanatical nationalist warlords. At its first great test since the end of the Cold War, Europe seemed not only to have fallen badly short but to be letting the demons of nationalism in through the back gate.

Since the early 1990s, a new specter has been haunting post-communist Europe, and not only in former Yugoslavia -- the sanctification of the "ethnically pure state." The quest for self-determination, an irreproachable ideal, casts a cloud over the integrity of individual states, the inviolability of their borders and even the validity of all postwar treaties. The Russian invasion of Chechnia, the ethnic conflicts in Armenia, Azerbaijan and in the Balkans, as well as the movements toward regional separatism in Western Europe, are only a few of the new challenges to the stability of old and new nation-states.

The new ethnic nationalism usually proclaims, as in former Yugoslavia, that people are born with their ethnic identities, which are immutable -- you are a Serb, a Croat or an Albanian because your father was one before you. This primary identity rejects cultural diversity, it fragments and divides rather than seeking to integrate or co-exist with neighboring ethnic groups. Often it is a reaction to the leveling and homogenizing tendencies of modernity and, in the case of ex-communist states, a reaction against the rigors of the totalitarian experience. But the erasure of the Soviet past has not always brought with it a true sense of unity, freedom or the mutual recognition of self-determination by the ethnically mixed populations of Eastern or South-Eastern Europe. Thus we are witnessing, simultaneously, a post-communist liberation and a regression to the pre-war past in the Baltic States, Transcaucasia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and former Yugoslavia; a return to history that is taking place against a modern backdrop of decentralization and fragmentation rather than the tyrannical unity and centralization which characterized the failed fascist and communist experiments.

What has happened since 1989 recalls in many ways the centrifugal forces that caused the disintegration of four empires in 1918 -- the tsarist Russian, the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian and the German. War and revolution brought down these multi-ethnic and multi-confessional empires in the maelstrom events of 1917-18. In the name of national self-determination, East-Central Europe after 1918 was to be made safe for Western-style democracy. But the new map of Europe which restored Poland, reduced Germany, Austria and Hungary, enlarged Romania and created new states in the Baltic region, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, did not result in peace. The multinational empires became multi-ethnic states which masqueraded as homogeneous nation-states while discriminating against their ethnic minorities. Worse still, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, they rapidly became authoritarian and quasi-fascist. Their fate lay between a revanchist Germany -- embittered by the Versailles Treaty -- and a communist Russia driven by a messianic ideology of revolutionary expansion. Neither Britain nor France was strong enough in the interwar period to guarantee the independence of Eastern Europe against the pressure of such powerful neighbors, themselves in the grip of Nazism and Stalinism.

Since 1989, as East-Central Europe struggles painfully to make the transition to market capitalism and pluralist democracy, the echoes of this past still haunt the present. Just as the fiction of Homo Sovieticus has given way, in the former Soviet Union, to the primary ethnic identities of Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Balts, Georgians or Armenians, so too, the Yugoslav identity has been erased in favor of a Croat, Serb or Muslim one.

Czechoslovakia split into Czech and Slovak republics, while in Slovakia itself there has been a revival of the interwar intolerance toward Hungarians, Roma (Gypsies) and Jews. There have been moves to rehabilitate its wartime clerico-fascist leader Monsignor Jozef Tiso, who collaborated with the Germans in the genocide of Slovakia's Jewish population. Similarly, in Romania, the cult of the wartime fascist dictator and Hitler's ally Marshal Ion Antonescu has been renewed, as has, to some extent, the pre-war Iron Guard, whose mystical, religious nationalism had such devastating consequences. The downfall of the communist dictator Ceaucescu did not prevent Romania from harassing Hungarians in Transylvania, or the large Roma minority, or renewing the anti-Semitic traditions of the interwar period. As in other East European countries, Jews find themselves retrospectively scapegoated by the nationalist press for all the evils of postwar communist misrule. The xenophobic, populist discourse of the authoritarian nationalists, with its paranoid hatred of ethnic minorities, Roma (surely, the pariah people of Eastern Europe today) and Jews, is the darker face of the return to the demons of the past. In countries like Romania, Slovakia and Croatia it has been further nourished by the return of virulently anti-communist exiles from the Western diasporas, where their pre-war ideology remained frozen in a strangely distorted time-warp. Even the more economically successful, nationally homogeneous nations like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are not free of this misplaced nostalgia for an authoritarian, ethnocentric nationalism derived from the pre-communist past, though their future integration into the European Union appears assured.

The reassertion of national consciousness in East-Central and South-Eastern Europe, unpleasant though many of its manifestations may be, is not surprising when set against the effects of four decades of virtual slavery, and an economic deprivation whose end is not yet in sight. The communist repression of the national past, and of cherished religious symbols, was bound to produce some kind of backlash, as was the disappointment that followed exaggerated expectations of a rapid rise in the standard of living.

Western and Central Europe, too, are experiencing, from a very different starting-point, the re-emergence of the politics of an authoritarian right. The incomparably more affluent Western societies are far from basking universally in the prosperous, contented boredom envisaged by visionaries of the global common market. The effects of recession, of significantly high unemployment, (especially in France), and homelessness, of urban decay and rootlessness, not to mention a growing anomie and moral confusion, have created a new reservoir for the illiberal politics of the radical right.

Disaffection with established parties and elected politicians is rife, calling into question the liberal democratic consensus and encouraging a powerful challenge from national populist movements which voice the discontent from below. The National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, the Freedom Party in Austria under the photogenic J?rg Haider, the National Alliance of Gianfranco Fini and the Lombard League led by Umberto Bossi in Italy, as well as the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, each expresses, in its own way, the present crisis of confidence.

Only Great Britain with its flourishing economy and revitalized "New Labour" seems currently immune to these trends. Yet even in Britain, the level of racist incidents is among the highest in Europe, suggesting that social problems relating to immigration are far from having been resolved.

The most visible target of the new populist politics has indeed been immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from the Third World, or, more recently, from East and South-East Europe, into the European Community. Almost every Western industrial society in the past two decades has, to some extent, become multi-ethnic and multi-confessional, with significant minority communities in most of its major cities. This has exacerbated fears and anxieties about law and order, jobs, housing and education, not to mention the more irrational reflexes aroused by differences of culture, religion and race. In France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Austria, Belgium and parts of East Europe, it has led to a resurgence of racially motivated violence and resentment against the very existence of a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society. Opinion polls across the European continent, through the 1990s, consistently show high levels of prejudice toward immigrants, foreign workers, asylum-seekers, refugees and especially Roma. In France, the main targets are Arabs from the Maghreb and, to a lesser extent, Africans; in Germany, they are Turks and asylum-seekers; in Britain, Asians (especially Pakistanis) and Afro-Caribbeans; in Italy, they are primarily Africans; in Austria, they tend to be Slavs; in Eastern Europe, Roma are an especially favored scapegoat.

Alongside this general xenophobia there is also anti-Semitism -- more intense in Russia and Eastern Europe than in most of Western Europe - but still ideologically important to the agenda of the far right. In Eastern Europe anti-Semitism was always closely linked to ethnic nationalism, being exclusivist, authoritarian and populist in character. It has survived the decimation or practical disappearance of Jews, except in Russia, Ukraine and Hungary. The Jews are frequently blamed for communist rule and the disasters it inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe in the postwar era. This brand of anti-Semitism postulates a worldwide "Jewish conspiracy," linked today to the state of Israel, world Zionism and influential American Jewry.

In Western Europe, anti-Semitism is part of a more general populist and xenophobic backlash against foreigners. Sometimes, as was recently demonstrated in Switzerland, hostility toward Jews is generated by revelations and pressures relating to a country's failures during the Holocaust.

The new populism and its leaders (most of them fairly articulate and intent on maintaining a respectable façade), usually abide by the democratic rules of the game. Such slogans as "Germany for the Germans," "France for the French," "Austria for the Austrians," offer simplistic, reassuring answers to those beleaguered citizens who feel abandoned or betrayed by the established parties, and to all who feel angry at the influx of foreigners which has changed the character of their land. In Italy, the radical right-wing National Alliance, heir to Mussolini's fascism, has become not only respectable, but even a government coalition partner -- credible to large numbers of voters in a democratic state where political corruption had become endemic. The movement is careful to repudiate the anti-Semitic legacy of fascism, (the 1938 Race Laws in Italy) but it remains ultra-nationalist and fundamentally xenophobic.

The populist demagogues flourish, as always, in a climate of fear -- anxiety about unemployment and recession, suspicion of alien and different cultures, and apprehension about the future. In France, Le Pen's Front National has consistently won 10-20 percent of the vote in regional, cantonal and national elections. With over 60,000 members and 239 regional councilors (out of a total of 1829), and with strong regional bases in Provence, Alpes, Cote d'Azur and Ile de France, the radical right in France is solidly established as a part of the political landscape. Denied equitable representation at the national level by the electoral system, it has gained formidable strength regionally and municipally, to the extent that one day it could seriously challenge and perhaps replace the conservative right. The campaign against Arab immigration and the fear of Islamic influence has encouraged increasingly draconian legislation, whose declared aim is zero-immigration in what was traditionally Europe's most hospitable country. In Germany, despite the electoral failure of the Republikaner in the 1994 national elections, the German government also changed its liberal asylum laws as a result of neo-Nazi violence and pressure from below. In Austria, J?rge Haider's Freedom Party enjoys the support of about 23 percent of the electorate, and, despite its open xenophobia, Haider is potentially a future leader of the country. His terminology about the threat of Umvolkung (ethnic transformation) resulting from further immigration from the south or east is at times reminiscent of that of the Third Reich. In Belgium, too, the far right Vlaams Blok, which adopted an extreme anti-immigrant stance, is well positioned. In Antwerp in 1991 it won 25 percent of the vote and in the last general elections its support remained stable. Significantly, as in some other European countries, the populist right enjoys the support of neo-Nazi groups.

It is tempting to dismiss the neo-Nazi movement and violent skinhead gangs who have envenomed race relations in Europe in recent years as politically insignificant in view of their small size, lack of leadership, coherent organization or ideology. Except in Germany, their numbers do not usually exceed a few thousand, and since they are generally in the 14-25 age group, they have no major influence on electoral politics. But the wave of racist violence in Germany in the early 1990s, with brutal attacks on Turks, Third World immigrants and handicapped people, as well as the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and Holocaust sites, was a chilling reminder of the fascist potential still lurking in the lower depths of European society. In 1992 alone, there were 2,506 racist attacks (nearly double the previous year) , 697 cases of arson and 17 deaths caused by neo-Nazi skinheads in Germany. Their message of hate is relayed through skinhead music, pioneered by racist rock bands in Britain, and computer games as well as racist literature. Denial of the Holocaust is a consistent feature of their propaganda as it is of their counterparts in Britain, France, Italy and many other European countries. The light penalties meted out by German courts for their criminal activities and the relative passivity of the government and police (somewhat corrected in recent years) suggests a dangerous complacency in responding to extremist violence from the right. Moreover, the extremely high levels of unemployment in contemporary Germany suggests more than an echo of the last years of the Weimar Republic, though most Germans still remain cushioned from its effects by the generosity of their welfare state.

A closer parallel to Weimar, however, is Yeltsin's Russia, where the loss of empire, national humiliation, 25 million Russians living outside its borders and now subject to discriminatory legislation in the non-Russian former Soviet Republics -- as well as the continuing economic chaos -- favor a home-grown fascism, strongly tinged with anti-Semitism. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's electoral success in the early 1990s, almost a quarter of the popular vote, was a worrying symptom of Russian social and national pathology.

The fall of communism in Russia did not banish the demons of the past; on the contrary, it revived them, with consequences that cannot be foreseen but which are potentially dangerous not only for Jews, but for Russians and for the world at large. The ravages of an economy dominated by criminal Mafia elements, a strong, xenophobic communist opposition allied to ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic elements, and the effect of a "savage" capitalism barely rooted in the Russian culture and mentality, bode ill for the future.

Neither Western nor Eastern Europe is immune from the specter of economic disintegration, chronic political instability, moral nihilism and despair in which both fascism and anti-Semitism have traditionally flourished. The future of the old continent, and its ability to contain the ghosts of the past, will ultimately depend on how far an increasingly federal Europe can effectively transmit democratic values and freedoms to the popular grassroots and underprivileged peripheries. It is here that fear of rapid change and loss of identity provide the motor for nationalist delusions and racist fantasies that can undermine the dream of a new Europe officially committed to multiculturalism, ethnic and religious pluralism and individual liberties.