Guest commentary: Western European Nativism — ‘The apple does not fall far from the tree’

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By Rodolfo F. Acuña / Guest contributor

Many of us forget that since World War II Western Europe has become a continent of immigrants. Like Americans, many Europeans have a difficult time accepting this new reality. Massive immigration has triggered a disturbing xenophobic reaction that has led to the rise of neo-fascist movements in what we know as the European Union.

Massive waves of immigration began after World War II composed of vastly different peoples. This has changed Pleasantville, Europe, and you see on the streets of London, Amsterdam or Vienna dark skinned people. As in the U.S. not every European appreciates this new racial diversity that has brought change with color breaking their decor. Many Europeans nostalgically romanticize their quaint past, which now seems marred by cigarette butts, chewing gum stains and graffiti.

During the final months of the Second World War and immediately after the war more than nineteen million refugees and exiles migrated from Eastern Europe to Germany alone. An estimated 4.5 million migrants moved from East Germany to the West before the construction of the Wall in August 1961. Likewise discrimination toward refugees was worsened by competition for scarce housing and even for religious beliefs.

American cultural symbols such McDonald’s, Burger King and hip hop music widened the cracks. Europe was multilingual, and it still is, but today the sounds seem foreign. Many Germans and others have become as culturally uptight as the Parisians. People are courteous almost to the point of rudeness, resenting even fellow Europeans.

Xenophobia is not uniquely European or for that matter American. However, these two sectors of the world have a special responsibility because they monopolize world resources. It is not enough to say that everyone is xenophobic or ethnocentric, especially when hatreds are played out.

As in the case of the United States, right-wing extremist and opportunistic politicians exploit the anti-immigrant hysteria. Fear of foreigners has taken on a life of its own, and European nativists look to the United States for inspiration. Today, many Europeans are nervous; remembering the excesses of fascism and Nazism and racist speech is strictly forbidden, forcing European nativists to use American websites.

Nativist and racist emotions tested the thin line between nationalism and racism. Memories of the holocaust are fresh. Labels like neo-fascist and racist still carry some meaning. Being a Christian people Europeans rationalize their sins and relieve their guilt by reinventing history. The moral authority of nativism depends on the immigrant bashers creating a paradigm that says Europeans are entitled to the bounties of their nation-states.

Alain de Benoist, the godfather of the French “New Right,” created a cultural and political space where these right-wing ideas can be expressed without fear of comparison to the racism of the Third Reich. Benoist, a rabid anticommunist, said “Better to wear the helmet of a Red Army soldier, than to live on a diet of hamburgers in Brooklyn.” Using populist rhetoric similar to Pat Buchanan, Benoist trumpeted “the right to difference.” His disciple French politico Jean-Marie Le Pen says: “I love North Africans, but their place is in North Africa.” (Le Pen’s National Front is hardly a fringe group and has gained votes in in the legislature).

Since Le Pen and Benoist other politicos have benefited from immigrant bashing. In 1991 France’s prime minister, Edith Cresson advocated that undocumented immigrants be deported by the planeload. Jacques Chirac, leader of the neo-Gaullist right, talked of noisy, smelly immigrants. Former conservative president, Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, warned of an “invasion.” Characteristically, France refused to honor the Schengen agreement that stipulated passport-free travel among its signatory countries of the EU. In Austria Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party more won 26 percent of the vote in the national elections, 18.2 percent of the vote in 2008. By 2012 there was a shift to the right that included southern, eastern and northern Europe.

The free movement of labor is a natural part of globalization. The simple fact is that European prosperity was built on the labor of immigrants. However, as in the U.S., European Union politicians have built careers on immigrant bashing. Austria’s Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider, and France’s National Front head Jean-Marie Le Pen lump globalization and labor migration into the same phenomenon. They play to the fears of voters of an alien invasion.

Racial incidents toward immigrants have escalated. In the summer of 2000, a bomb apparently targeting foreigners exploded at a Dusseldorf train station, injuring nine immigrants, six of them Jews, as they returned home from a German-language class. That same weekend, in the eastern town of Eisenach, neo-Nazi skinheads kicked two African asylum-seekers. The attackers spat upon them and chased them, shouting “Sieg Heil!” Spanish marauders burned the houses of Moroccan migrant workers. In 1995, a passing motorist handed two Gypsy children begging at an intersection in Pisa, Italy a gift-wrapped package. When the children unwrapped the package, it exploded. The 13-year-old girl lost a finger and the 3 ½ year-old boy lost an eye. Italy is today the scene of intense anti-foreign frenzy. In The Hague, the Netherlands’ capital and home of the World Court, six Turkish immigrants died in a fire where arson was suspected.

Much of the Post World War II migration to Europe is from Europe’s former colonies. After the breakup of their empires, the chickens came home to roost. Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and France had the world’s largest colonial empires. Centuries of exploitation kept what we know as the Third World in a dependency that still exists.

The presence of the victims of colonialism was noticeable by the 1960s in Britain, the Netherlands, and France. On the streets of London, Ugandans, Hindus, Kenyans, Middle-Easterners, and other former colonial subjects, mingle with native British subjects. Many do not have any country other than England to which to migrate.

In the streets of Amsterdam the scent of marijuana is blamed on the immigrant. In the 16th century the Dutch took Surinam (1667), formerly Dutch Guiana. To maintain their colonial enterprise the Dutch took East Indians, Indonesians, African slaves, and decimated the American Indians to Dutch Guiana. At least a third of the population of Surinam lives in the Netherlands, an estimated 300,000 (This migration peaked in the mid-1970s when Surinam achieved independence, and it does not meet the time frame of the first wave although part of it). About 300,000 Dutch Indonesians also live in the Netherlands, 180,000 of whom are Eurasian. They are joined by Turks and Moroccans from poorer countries.

Few economists would deny that German workers owe their high standard of living to the foreign workers, who made it possible for heavy industry to remain in Germany for several decades after the U.S. began subcontracting its industrial work abroad. A labor shortage forced West Germany to take in unskilled gastarbeiters (guest workers) by 1955. The government signed first contracts with Italy, followed in 1960, by contracts with Greece and Spain and a year later with Turkey. Germans actively pursued other workers from Portugal, Morocco and Tunisia, and the former Yugoslavia.

The 1973 recession changed government policy and repatriations accelerated. The Turkish migration especially unsettled Europeans as did that of other Moslem nations. They could not be as easily absorbed, and it became almost impossible to gain citizenship. Politicians fanned the anti-Turk hysteria similarly to how U.S. politicos have framed anti-Mexican hysteria. In 1980 and 1981, Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic Union party stirred up anti-Turk feeling in Germany. Chancellor Kohl, in 1982, broadcast that he would reduce the foreign presence in Germany by one million over the next three years by reducing family reunification privilege. Reminiscent of Hitler’s “the Jewish Problem,” the CDU sent leaflets to every German household entitled “Dealing with the Foreigner Problem.”

But, the big fear is a dozen miles across the Mediterranean in what some Spanish civil servants call Europe’s “southern flank.” Africa is the fastest growing region of the world. Indeed, the world’s poorer countries are growing twice as fast as Europe’s did at its peak in the late 19th century. The income gap between Africa and Europe is widening rapidly. As Africa grows younger, Europe grows older.

By 2025 Turkey will have twenty million more people than united Germany. Sudan’s population will equal that of France, and, Egypt will have as many people as Spain and Italy combined. Europeans fear that undocumented migrants, slipping into Portugal or Spain, will make it to their countries.

Fears of the African wave are racist. In the Almeria region, Algerians form the largest group of immigrants after Moroccans, along with growing numbers from sub-Saharan Africa. Still, until recently, Spain was tolerant of immigration. Yet the European Community has pressed Spain to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants. This has led to the imposition visa restrictions on travelers arriving from North Africa.

The hyperbole has stirred hatreds. In the Spanish town of El Ejido, they shouted “Moors out of here.” With baseball bats and iron bars they attacked migrant workers and burned their homes, cars and businesses. The four-day rampage led to at least fifty-two injuries and twenty-three arrests. This riot came on the heels of a law that allowed 80,000 undocumented immigrants to get residency. The irony was that Spain’s prosperity rested on the immigrant.

France’s colonial experiences and class-based attitudes have conditioned their prejudice toward these brown skinned people. Marseilles is the gateway to France for tens of thousands of immigrants, mostly North Africans, from across the Mediterranean, and the hysteria is strongest there.

A pretext for this hysteria is that Europe is overcrowded or that the newcomers are taking jobs away from the native born. This is a myth. Immigration is vital to Europe’s continued economic health. Like the U.S. and Western Europe as a whole has a low birth rate. In good times, Germany would have to maintain a net growth of 200,000 immigrants a year. Without immigration, by 2050 Germany will still lose 15 percent of its population. The anti-foreigner hysteria is standing in the way of European prosperity

Italy would have to add about nine million immigrants by 2025, about 300,000 a year, just to keep its population at 1995 levels. It is incredible but France only has about 3.5 million immigrants, making up just over 5 percent of the nation’s population. Yet France created a 6,700-member police unit to stop the undocumented entrants. The truth be told, if France wants to maintain its pre-2008 growth, it must import two million immigrants by 2025. The European Union as a whole would have to import about thirty-five million. This makes talk of a zero immigration policy irrational.

Like many Americans, many Europeans blame the foreigner for violence. Tough controls supposedly are “to assure the safety of those others.” As one columnist put it, “To reduce racism at home, many countries need to have racist controls on immigration.”  Like some Americans, some Europeans reinvent history, blaming the immigrant.

It is irrational. Immigrants dominate most labor-intensive industries which are the core of their exports. Europeans send textiles, metal manufacturing, engineering, food processing, to Third World countries to maximize profits. What is happening is that as with the US, fear of the immigrant is used to divert attention away from changes in the economy and to appeal to xenophobes.

Xenophobia, racism, and Islamophobia in Europe are ugly, and part of what people call globalization. It leads to totalitarian politics that we should beware of — remembering that “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

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