Farrukh Dhondy | Shifting Tides: AfD’s Rise Versus British Political Counter-currents

“For aeons there were night and day

Then something entered mud and clay

And chemicals turned into trees.

Then the oceans bred amoebae

And soon, by some odd miracle,

Earth experienced the spectacle

Of creatures that could swim or walk

Or brandish teeth and tentacle

And even now I find it strange

Observing the infinite range

Of creatures evolution bred —

Or was it God who did arrange

For Adam, Eve and dinosaurs

Who were destroyed by meteors —

My brain tells me that this is crap

But, good believer, what says yours??”

— From The Rubaiyat of Aesop’s Goal by Bachchoo

The success of the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in the small German state of Saxony-Anhalt is certainly one of the symptoms of the rise of the far right in Europe. Their election, short of the governing 50 per cent compels them to negotiate with smaller parties to form a coalition which they would control.

They are clearly a resurgent nationalist and far-right party. The Jewish leadership in Saxon-Anhalt, and in mainstream Germany, reacted with dismay, at their success. Why? AfD campaigned to alter the school curriculum, abandon holocaust studies and concentrate not on the atrocities of Nazism but the triumphs of Germany:

Less Hitler and more Bismark?

Their central policy, one that is embraced by every far-right party and group in Europe, is their pledge to restrict the rights of ‘non-white Germans’ which means minorities in the state, long-resident and recent immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees…

It isn’t yet quite clear how they would enforce this pledge which even extends to expulsion and ethnic cleansing, but 43% of Saxony-Anhalt’s voters endorsed it.

To one or other degree, the parties of the far-right in Europe, for instance that of Marie Le Pen in France and Reform, led by Nigel Farage and Restore led by Rupert Lowe in Britain, echo these policies of ethnic cleansing through deportations, closing borders, getting rid of human-rights statutes that protect genuinely desperate refugees, withdrawing from institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and affording substantive opposition to some regulations of the European Union.

What is startlingly disturbing, if entirely predictable, is that the Orangebooby, Aka Trump, has congratulated AfD on their elections result. What a small state of Germany has to do with Orangyboob, remains a mystery. Not to most of us, of course, as we know he sees the appeal of AfD as being anti-immigrant and supportive of all the causes of his bigoted and demented egotistical policies.

Again, not so surprising, is the congratulations and jubilation received by AfD’s leader from the Hitler-saluting billionaire Elongated Tusk (a la Pinocchio?) as he has always said that he is “aspirationally Jewish” as he went to a Jewish preparatory school and professes to have many Jewish friends.

I hope he gets some abusive texts on X from Saxony-Anhalt’s Jewish community. And then again what-the-flabbergasticuck has master Hitler-salute to do with elections in a minor state of Germany? Yes, no prizes for guessing — anti-immigrant affinity — especially anti-Muslims!

Question: How seriously should we, gentle reader, take this popular rise of the far right in Europe? I confess I have no avenue of evidence, or even instinct, to provide an answer to the question in any part of Europe apart from the UK.

My previous riposte to any concern about the rise of the right-wing in Britain is now, perhaps, sanguine and outdated. I used to point to the abject failure of Oswald Mosely who started the British fascist movement in the 1930s and was humiliatingly defeated, by a resistance group of Jewish and left-wing Brits, at what has come to be known as the Battle of Cable Street in London’s East End. The bulk of Brits, despite support from one of the famous Mitford sisters, I’d argue, were not inclined to support Mosely. He disappeared from the political spectrum.

And so with Enoch Powell, a Tory who made a bid for the leadership of the Party with a speech in 1968 which came to be known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech in which he attacked immigrants to Britain as invaders who would cause an internal civil war through which, presumably, they would overwhelm the country.

He expected huge public support. None came. A few meat-porters from a market in London and a fragment of the Docker’s Union marched in his favour, but he had to abandon his parliamentary seat in Wolverhampton and seek political refuge and virtual exile in a Northern Ireland protestant constituency.

Those were my arguments, but perhaps times have changed.

Even the very narrow victory for those advocating leaving the European Union so as to stop Johny foreigner coming and working here, began the slide down the slippery slope. Now the Reform Party, headed by prime EU-leaver Nigel Farage, is promising military action against refugees from war, terror, prejudice — and yes some simply seeking a better life — who arrive on Britain’s south coast in dangerous rubber dinghies across the English Channel from France.

Despite an apparent rise in the popularity of the anti-asylum-seeker, anti-immigrant policies advocated by the British right and far-right, there are two prompts to a counter-current.

Firstly, Farage is being investigated by a parliamentary committee for breaking rules on huge donations he received from abroad. Secondly, the polls show that British voters would overwhelmingly vote to rejoin the European Union. Watch this space?