On the Auschwitz anniversary, Europe cannot ignore its far-right problem

On January 27, 1945, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated. An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 and 1.1 million of them were murdered.

As Europeans mark the 80th anniversary of this dark chapter of history, their leaders are releasing&nbsp, statements&nbsp, about the “civilisational rupture” the Holocaust represented and the need to “resist this hatred”. However, many of these declarations fail to take into account the political reality of Europe, where the Nazi and fascist successors are now popular and even in power.

Far-right organizations and figures have, of course, repeatedly honed their crimes against Holocaust victims and pledged to fight anti-Semitism, but that does not imply that they have abandoned their Nazi and fascist pasts. Instead, they have implemented a strategic alignment that, with the support of the political mainstream, allows them to continue to spread the same vile notions of white supremacy and hatred.

So how did we get here?

For decades, Europe’s far right openly embraced anti-Semitism. Figures like Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front in France, and Jörg Haider, founder of the Freedom Party in Austria, disrupted the political consensus of post-war Europe by embracing Holocaust denial rhetoric.

They were vocal about their hatred, but they continued to exist on the sidelines.

However, over the past few decades, and especially with the start of the US-led “war on terror”, the far right gradually shifted its rhetoric towards open Islamophobia. Far-right leaders, like Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, portrayed themselves as defenders of Western civilisation against a new “enemy”: the Muslims.

They adopted&nbsp, Christianity – and, symbolically, Judaism – as cultural markers to rally the majority who embrace the “values” of the “Judeo-Christian world” against their contemporary “other”. By using Islamophobic imagery, they capitalized on people’s fears about globalization and immigration, calling Islamophobia an invasion and a threat to Muslim communities.

This rhetoric fits into the narrative that Israel accepted to support its ongoing oppression and occupation of the Palestinians, as well as the Muslim world’s that the “war on terror” imposed. The extreme right finally accepted Israel, which is not surprising then. While in the past, they questioned Israel’s right to exist, they now question a Palestinian state’s right to exist, referring to Palestine as Judea and Samaria.

In 2010, after a trip by far-right leaders from Austria, Belgium, Germany and Sweden, their parties signed the so-called&nbsp, Jerusalem Declaration, &nbsp, which expressed the commitment of these forces to Israel’s “right to self-defence” from “Islamic forces”.

This approach has worked quite well by embracing Israel’s use of anti-Semitic language and beliefs in favor of Islamophobic ones. &nbsp, As a result, today, at the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, the far right is the strongest it has been since World War II.

The political landscape of&nbsp, 2022-24&nbsp, reflects this success. In 2022, Giorgia Meloni and her post-fascist Brothers of Italy won the Italian snap elections, she became the country’s first far-right female prime minister. In the 2023 Dutch elections, Wilders ‘ far-right party came out first and after months-long negotiations, formed a coalition government.

In 2024, Portugal, which had long lacked strong far-right representation, saw the Chega party grow its parliamentary seats from 12 to 50. The National Rally won the popular vote in France, but it lost the parliamentary seats. In the UK, Reform UK became the third largest party with 14 percent of the vote, it is currently polling&nbsp, at 25 percent, one percentage point behind the ruling Labour. In Germany, Alternative for Germany (AfD) claimed victory in elections in the state of Thuringia. The Freedom Party is set to take over the government in Austria after winning the election with 29 percent of the vote.

Following the elections of 2024, the far-right unified to form the third-largest section of the European Parliament known as the “Patriots for Europe.” They adopted the phrase “Make Europe Great Again.”

While the far right’s rise is a victory for its own movements, it also reflects the failures of Europe’s political establishment. Center-right parties have largely supported anti-immigration and anti-Islamophobia, ratifying these positions rather than challenging them. Meanwhile, centre-left parties have struggled to address these issues effectively, leaving them vulnerable to the so-called culture wars. The far right has also been able to profit from the mainstream’s failures in government, which have increased socioeconomic unrest, particularly among the working class.

The far right served as a uniting force for centrist parties in coalition negotiations in a number of nations for years. The growing number of coalitions that include the extreme right in Europe demonstrate that this is no longer the case. This alleged cordon sanitaire has long since passed.

The far-right has become more and more popular as a result of this normalization, making its members no longer reluctant to express their extremist ideas in public. In Austria, the Freedom Party openly&nbsp, talked&nbsp, about “remigration” as part of its election campaign last year, while a member of the AfD called for a “Srebrenica 2.0 in Germany” among her peers.

These calls are an evolution of the same anti-Semitic and racist ideologies that caused the Holocaust’s horrors. Simply put, the defense of whiteness has converted Muslims to their “enemy” in the name of Islam. The far-right ideology of today’s core still emphasizes the replacement theory and white supremacy.

The far-right’s dramatic rise and its normalization of racism and genocidal intent cast a long shadow over the European mainstream’s claim that the Holocaust was a “civilizational rupture,” that it was unique and exceptional, and that it was unique.

The ideologies and factors that led to the Holocaust have historically fostered imperial genocidal violence outside of Europe. And European politics still includes them a lot. This implies that such genocidal violence is still a possibility. The denial of the genocide in Gaza and the country’s unwavering support for it by some European nations are just some examples of this.

The solemn statements made today to commemorate the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation ring hollow in this regard. The rise of the far right is a chilling reminder of how fragile European commitment to “never again” is, 80 years after the Holocaust’s end.

Source: Aljazeera