ABSTRACT
Classification of political parties on the far right is never straightforward. For the purposes of this analysis, we shall examine the German Republikaner, the French Front National (FN), the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and the Lega Nord in Italy as illustrative of the extreme right’s relationship to Europe and the European Union. Stöss locates the German Republikaner on the ‘extreme right’ because they have a view of society which is anti-liberal, anti-socialist, and based on völkisch, ethnocentric nationalism. They also reject the universal human rights of freedom, equality and justice, and favour a hierarchically ordered, national community (Volksgemeinschaft), and an authoritarian state with expansionist ambitions.1 Uwe Backes shows up the shortcomings of clear categorizations, however, when he observes that the programme of the Republikaner contains many points also contained in the German Christian Democrats’ programme. The Republikaner present themselves as a party ‘with one foot in the majority democratic culture and one foot in the extreme right-wing subculture’. They appeal, therefore, not only to right-wing extremists but also to the democratic majority.2 Many of the same comments can be made of the French Front National, in terms of both its extremist ideology and the ambivalence of its policies and appeal. As an heir to Mussolini’s Fascism, it is easy to classify the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) as a party of the extreme right. The case of the Lega Nord is more difficult to make. It has been portrayed as a tax-revolt movement which reflects the attitude of Italy’s rich northern regions3 and as a racist exclusionary party of the (northern) extreme right created to curtail the civil rights of immigrants from the south of Italy and from abroad.4 Much of the Lega’s language is overtly racist. The Lega advocates a separation between the North, the Centre and the South of Italy on the grounds that the North carries the weight of the parasitic South and a Centre mired in bureaucratic inertia. For the purposes of analysis here, we shall use the term ‘extreme right’ to apply to these various parties, while acknowledging that it does not entirely do justice to the situation of parties which have proclaimed a minimal commitment to the democratic order in which they operate, but which also draw much of their support from an anti-democratic political subculture.
