The far right reboot

Ten years ago next Sunday, the populist Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, was shot dead and a week later his party, the Pim Fortuyn List, went on to win 17% of the vote and four ministers in the new government. Last week in Holland, his political heir, the firebrand anti-Muslim and anti-EU campaigner Geert Wilders, brought down the government by refusing to back swingeing budget cutbacks brought on by the euro crisis.

And, in Norway, we heard a mass murderer, Anders Breivik, boast about his anti-Muslim crusade in language that sounded like a perverse looking-glass echo of something we heard a decade earlier, when Islamic extremists crowed about the crime that changed the world, the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

These are events that make us all stop and look at ourselves, stop and examine the causes of extremism, within us and without us. At what point does nationalism slip over into chauvinism, or even xenophobia? To what extent is political correctness right – because it shows tolerance and forces us to suppress our baser instincts – and to what extent is it wrong – because it sometimes seems to give minorities greater rights than the majority? To what degree should people in a country like Scotland balance the preservation of our own identity against the right of others to express their identity while living here? As bans on face-covering Islamic veils are introduced in more and more European countries, is this an assault on the very individual liberties that lie at the heart of Western culture, or a necessary measure to ensure the cohesion (and security) of our societies? Amnesty International last week reported that Muslims in many countries now face exclusion from jobs and education if they wear traditional dress. Should we be more tolerant – or should they make more effort to fit in? For Europe's far right, the answer to such questions is easy.

Before we go further, let's define what we mean by "far

right", because it's a catch-all term that covers a multitude of sins, and sinners – neo-fascists, xenophobes, homophobes, anti-Islamists, anti-immigrationists, white supremacists. Often they are not at all right-wing on economics, and advocate left-wing policies, such as a big welfare state and high public spending. Very often, "populist" is a better term: many of these politicians claim to be doing nothing more evil than "saying what ordinary people think", "breaking taboos", "standing up for the common man". Scratch the surface of such talk, however, and you usually find a racist. Their xenophobia is directed above all at immigrants, particularly Muslims. They are united by a belief that the distinct identities of Europe's various nations are being destroyed – by immigration, EU integration, and globalisation.

Ten years ago I wrote a book, Preachers Of Hate, about the rise of the far right in Europe, in which I suggested that the danger – apart from the obvious threat posed by the extreme right movements themselves – was that their policies were increasingly being aped by mainstream parties in an attempt to neutralise the effect. I noted the increasing anti-immigration rhetoric and policies of Britain's then Labour government and other centrist governments across Europe. This shift had the desired effect – if "desired" is the right word. Over the next decade the far right's influence began to wane, as mainstream governments stole their policies. So why is populism experiencing a new lease of life now, after several years of apparent decline? And could it herald a further ramping up of intolerance and xenophobia?

Back in 2002, extremist politicians were on the up in Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Denmark and other countries – but not always for the same reasons. In Austria, Joerg Haider (who died in a car crash in 2008) tapped into residual Nazi sentiment in his homeland and also into the resentment caused by the influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. As in many other countries, Austrians saw the incomers as a threat to their own jobs, benefits and housing. Haider's Freedom Party came second in the 1999 general election and took its place in a coalition government – an event so shocking that the European Union briefly imposed diplomatic sanctions against Austria. Until then, the extreme right had been seen as a fringe phenomenon – skinheads and bovverboys; Haider was tanned, articulate and charismatic.

The new breed of smart-suited designer fascists also strode to the fore in Belgium – specifically in the Flemish-speaking northern half, Flanders. Here it was extremism with a nationalist face. The Vlaams Blok party demanded that Belgium be divided in two, so that the Flemish could have their own nation state and stop "subsidising" the French speakers down south. It would be a white Flanders, too, with immigrants "encouraged" to leave. (I once heard its leader call for the deportation of "all those Ali-Babas".) The party was disbanded after being declared racist by a Belgian court, but re-emerged – virtually unchanged – as the Vlaams Belang (The Flemish Interest).

In the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn was a special case. Flamboyant, gay, a former Marxist, every bit the product of the Dutch permissive society, it was precisely his belief in Holland's liberalism that led him to his reactionary views on Islam, which he viewed as incompatible with Dutch values.

All across Europe, the new populists declared political correctness to be incorrect, and demanded to get "forbidden" subjects out into the open. They blamed rising crime on foreigners. They raised the spectre of churches being converted into mosques. They didn't discuss the genocides and starvation and war that drove refugees towards Europe: it was just time to close the doors. In effect it was the rule of the saloon bar. In civilised countries the things you blurt out when you're drunk in the pub don't become government policy. But now there were parties willing to do just that, and they were winning more and more votes.

The far right was anti-establishment, railing at the corruption and sleaze of the conventional centre. The big parties have failed you: vote for us.

European integration became another stick with which to beat the status quo. Britain was not the only country where each new step towards the EU's goal of "ever closer union" fuelled anger at the loss of sovereignty. Almost all the far right parties wanted to repatriate powers or even take their country out of the Union.

In the late 1990s, the majority of European countries had left-of-centre governments. Slowly, one by one, they either lost power or made concessions to the far right that would have been unthinkable in the past. In the UK, David Blunkett, while slamming what he called the British National Party's "vile racism", slipped into using their kind of language: he once spoke of asylum seekers' children "swamping" our local schools. This kind of talk had the effect of convincing voters that they could get BNP policies without actually voting for racists. In liberal Denmark, the far right did not win an election, but they did so well that they obliged the government to adopt their policies, forcing an abrupt slamming shut of the door that Danes had traditionally held open for foreigners.

As the decade wore on, the far right became more and more redundant as mainstream parties mimicked their rhetoric and policies. In Germany, where a survey showed that almost one-third of voters felt their country was "overrun by foreigners", Chancellor Merkel declared that attempts to build a multicultural society had "utterly failed". Soon President Sarkozy in France and David Cameron in the UK followed suit. All governments took steps to curb immigration.

The trouble is, you give a dog a bone and it wants another one. Now extremism appears to be on the march again. This time it could be the economic crisis – and the austerity measures being imposed on hard-pressed voters – that has stoked the populist cause.

In the Netherlands, Wilder's anti-immigration Party For Freedom won 15% of the vote two years ago – and a key role in parliament, propping up, while not participating in, the government. His inflammatory anti-Islamic rhetoric earned him a ban on entry to Britain for a while. But it was a different populist cause that he turned to last week when he decided to bring down the government – tapping into the grudge felt by ordinary folk over the spending cuts.

In France, Marine Le Pen did the same. In the election campaign she pledged to take France out of the single currency and restore the franc, to pull away from European treaties, and to reserve jobs for French nationals. Marine is also a "designer" populist – much more so than her father. Untainted by charges of anti-Semitism, she comes across as a modern French woman – twice divorced, independent, strong-willed and "in touch".

Now, in time-worn fashion, the two candidates going forward to the second round of the presidential election, the right-wing Nicolas Sarkozy and the socialist Francois Hollande, are competing for her votes. Again, history repeats itself: to win or retain power, mainstream politicians have to ape the populists. And again, the populist vote belongs to neither right nor left, but to both.

Sarkozy said he "understood the anxieties" of Front National voters: "They are about respecting our borders, the determined fight against job relocation, controlling immigration, putting value on work, on security."

Hollande, for his part, suggested that potential left-wing supporters had voted for the far right because of "social anger". He said many did not share the Front National's obsession with immigration, but voted for the populist candidate because they were "opposed to privilege, financial globalisation and a failing Europe". The fact is, however, that Le Pen's support increased precisely towards the end of the campaign when she began to stress her anti-immigration views.

In any event, both candidates will now crank up their populist credentials in order to win those crucial votes. The danger is that this will increase the far right's appeal by legitimising its causes and making them appear to be mainstream. Voters who once felt they were on the fringes will now say: it's not extreme to be anti-Muslim – everyone is.

Witness, for example, the leader of Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democratic Union in the German parliament, Volker Kauder, who recently declared: "Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany." He may have added that individual Muslims "of course" enjoy all state rights as citizens, but that's a subtlety lost on many ordinary burghers who just feel they see too many headscarves and long beards around.

Meanwhile, in Norway the excruciating trial of Anders Breivik continues, like some far-right theatrical performance, complete with celebrity star. It turns out the best way to get your views heard is to kill dozens of people. Let's hope we don't find that little bit of history repeating any time soon.