A Backlash Swells in Europe After Charlie Hebdo Attack :Matthew Karnitschnig, William Horobin and Anton Troianovski See note please
Europe’s Ascendant Anti-Immigration Movements Try to Capitalize on Deadly Paris Attack
Europe’s ascendant anti-immigration and nationalist movements tried to capitalize on a deadly attack in Paris this week to trumpet a theme they have pressed for years, but rarely before with this much urgency: a loss of cultural identity.
“This bloodshed shows that anyone who ignored or laughed off the concerns about the threat Islamism poses is a fool,” said Alexander Gauland, a leader of Alternative for Germany, an upstart party that wants to limit immigration and take Germany out of the euro.
In the past, such rhetoric would be quickly dismissed as the ramblings of the political fringe. But these parties, from France to the Netherlands to the U.K., have been on the march in recent years, fueled by growing public discontent over a sense among many Europeans that their traditional way of life is threatened.
Europe’s persistent economic woes and the growing—and oft-resented—influence of the European Union in national affairs have provided an opening to these movements, which critics say prey on their citizens’ basest fears. These groups have long targeted Islam, whose growing presence on the continent they say threatens Europe’s cultural mores.
The radicalization of a generation of dispossessed Muslims in Middle Eastern wars in Iraq and Syria has only deepened fears, helping these parties to score their best showing ever in May’s European Parliamentary vote.
“Western governments have to realize that we are at war,” said Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.
Europe’s establishment parties worry that the attack provides the nationalists more ammunition to sow xenophobia. Those tensions bubbled to the surface in France on Thursday.
Marine Le Pen, the French leader of the National Front, the party which finished first in last year’s European elections with 25% of the vote, claimed her party had been excluded from a march of unity with other political groups on Sunday. “Believe me, this will be a stain on the French political class,” said Ms. Le Pen, who will nevertheless meet with French President François Hollande on Friday at the Élysée Palace.
“The National Front has one foot in the Republic, one outside of it,” Socialist Party spokesman Carlos de Silva said on BFM TV television channel. “The National Front is not welcome at this march, which aims to defend something that National Front is not.”
Tensions rose further when Bernard Monot, a European member of Parliament for the Front, said in a message on a Twitter account registered to his name that the rally without the Front would be “the club of those responsible for Islamist terrorism in France.”
ENLARGE The tit-for-tat over the march reveals the deeper difficulty Mr. Hollande faces in negotiating rising tensions in French society over immigration and identity. With opinion polls showing his popularity at a record low for any French president, he is under pressure on many fronts. The economy is barely growing and Mr. Hollande has failed to meet promises to repair France finances and bring down unemployment.
Fears of terror were on the rise even before the Wednesday attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people. A new survey of 1,005 people by polling company Ifop showed 80% of French people thought there was a high terrorist threat in France, the highest ever since the poll began after the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001.
“I don’t think it will be long before Le Pen reverts to type and strikes an ‘I told you so’ posture, accusing not just this government but past governments for their failure to manage immigration or recognize its dangers,” said James Shields, professor of French politics at Aston University and author of books about the far-right in France.
ENLARGE French people will be looking for a strong reaction from their leader, analysts say.
“Mr. Hollande has to show there can be no doubt over the terrorist attack,” said Jerome Fourquet, an analyst at Ifop.
Mr. Hollande has already been tested by clashes between groups in French society. In July last year, his government took the confrontational step of banning pro-Palestinian groups from holding a rally in Paris after earlier marches were marred by violent clashes near synagogues.
The attack in France on Wednesday came at a particularly sensitive moment for Germany, where growing weekly anti-Islam demonstrations in the eastern city of Dresden have roiled the nation over the past month.
The demonstrations, organized by a group calling itself Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, have been repeatedly dismissed as xenophobic across the mainstream political spectrum. But they have kept growing, reaching 18,000 people on Monday and spawning similar protests in other cities.
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Now the Paris tragedy has given the group, known by its German initials as Pegida, an opportunity to claim vindication.
“Islamists…have shown today in France that they are not capable of democracy, but seek solutions via violence and death,” the group said. “But our politicians want us to think the opposite.”
It invited protesters at the next demonstration, scheduled for next Monday, to wear mourning ribbons in memory of the Parisian victims.
Germany’s upstart populist party, Alternative for Germany, has also seized on the attacks as justification for its demands for overhauling immigration, and is testing a closer alliance with Pegida.
“The massacre of Paris also shows how fragile and in need of protection the core values of our society are,” said Mr. Gauland of Alternative for Germany.
German officials are struggling with how to respond. The normally soft-spoken chancellor, Angela Merkel , condemned the protests in unusually strong terms in her New Year’s address and has continued to call for tolerance.
“We have a very good relationship with the great majority of Muslims in Germany,” Ms. Merkel said Thursday.
ENLARGE But a new study released on Thursday of German attitudes toward Islam showed the reality was more complicated. The Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German foundation, found that the share of non-Muslim Germans who viewed Islam as incompatible with the Western world rose to 61% in November 2014 from 52% in 2012.
In the U.K., Nigel Farage, the head of the small but fast-growing U.K. Independence Party, said the attacks called into question the multiculturalism in some European countries. UKIP has recently been gaining support in Britain with its anti-EU and tough-on-immigration message, including recently wooing two lawmakers from Prime Minister David Cameron ’s Conservative Party.
Speaking on Britain’s LBC radio on Thursday, Mr. Farage said Britain and some other countries “have a really rather gross policy of multiculturalism,” by encouraging “people from other cultures to remain within those cultures and not integrate fully within our communities.”
Mr. Cameron responded by saying it wasn’t the time to be scoring political points. “Today is the day to stand full square behind the French people after this appalling outrage and simply to say that we will do everything we can to help them hunt down and find the people who did this,” Mr. Cameron told news media. “The cause of this terrorism is the terrorists themselves.”
Write to Matthew Karnitschnig at matthew.karnitschnig@wsj.com, William Horobin at William.Horobin@wsj.com and Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com
Europe’s ascendant anti-immigration and nationalist movements tried to capitalize on a deadly attack in Paris this week to trumpet a theme they have pressed for years, but rarely before with this much urgency: a loss of cultural identity.
(Update: Charlie Hebdo suspects take hostage after shots fired).
“This bloodshed shows that anyone who ignored or laughed off the concerns about the threat Islamism poses is a fool,” said Alexander Gauland, a leader of Alternative for Germany, an upstart party that wants to limit immigration and take Germany out of the euro.
In the past, such rhetoric would be quickly dismissed as the ramblings of the political fringe. But these parties, from France to the Netherlands to the U.K., have been on the march in recent years, fueled by growing public discontent over a sense among many Europeans that their traditional way of life is threatened.
Europe’s persistent economic woes and the growing—and oft-resented—influence of the European Union in national affairs have provided an opening to these movements, which critics say prey on their citizens’ basest fears. These groups have long targeted Islam, whose growing presence on the continent they say threatens Europe’s cultural mores.
The radicalization of a generation of dispossessed Muslims in Middle Eastern wars in Iraq and Syria has only deepened fears, helping these parties to score their best showing ever in May’s European Parliamentary vote.
“Western governments have to realize that we are at war,” said Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom.
Europe’s establishment parties worry that the attack provides the nationalists more ammunition to sow xenophobia. Those tensions bubbled to the surface in France on Thursday.
Marine Le Pen, the French leader of the National Front, the party which finished first in last year’s European elections with 25% of the vote, claimed her party had been excluded from a march of unity with other political groups on Sunday. “Believe me, this will be a stain on the French political class,” said Ms. Le Pen, who will nevertheless meet with French President François Hollande on Friday at the Élysée Palace.
“The National Front has one foot in the Republic, one outside of it,” Socialist Party spokesman Carlos de Silva said on BFM TV television channel. “The National Front is not welcome at this march, which aims to defend something that National Front is not.”
Tensions rose further when Bernard Monot, a European member of Parliament for the Front, said in a message on a Twitter account registered to his name that the rally without the Front would be “the club of those responsible for Islamist terrorism in France.”
ENLARGE The tit-for-tat over the march reveals the deeper difficulty Mr. Hollande faces in negotiating rising tensions in French society over immigration and identity. With opinion polls showing his popularity at a record low for any French president, he is under pressure on many fronts. The economy is barely growing and Mr. Hollande has failed to meet promises to repair France finances and bring down unemployment.
Fears of terror were on the rise even before the Wednesday attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 12 people. A new survey of 1,005 people by polling company Ifop showed 80% of French people thought there was a high terrorist threat in France, the highest ever since the poll began after the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001.
“I don’t think it will be long before Le Pen reverts to type and strikes an ‘I told you so’ posture, accusing not just this government but past governments for their failure to manage immigration or recognize its dangers,” said James Shields, professor of French politics at Aston University and author of books about the far-right in France.
ENLARGE French people will be looking for a strong reaction from their leader, analysts say.
“Mr. Hollande has to show there can be no doubt over the terrorist attack,” said Jerome Fourquet, an analyst at Ifop.
Mr. Hollande has already been tested by clashes between groups in French society. In July last year, his government took the confrontational step of banning pro-Palestinian groups from holding a rally in Paris after earlier marches were marred by violent clashes near synagogues.
The attack in France on Wednesday came at a particularly sensitive moment for Germany, where growing weekly anti-Islam demonstrations in the eastern city of Dresden have roiled the nation over the past month.
The demonstrations, organized by a group calling itself Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, have been repeatedly dismissed as xenophobic across the mainstream political spectrum. But they have kept growing, reaching 18,000 people on Monday and spawning similar protests in other cities.
Related
Now the Paris tragedy has given the group, known by its German initials as Pegida, an opportunity to claim vindication.
“Islamists…have shown today in France that they are not capable of democracy, but seek solutions via violence and death,” the group said. “But our politicians want us to think the opposite.”
It invited protesters at the next demonstration, scheduled for next Monday, to wear mourning ribbons in memory of the Parisian victims.
Germany’s upstart populist party, Alternative for Germany, has also seized on the attacks as justification for its demands for overhauling immigration, and is testing a closer alliance with Pegida.
“The massacre of Paris also shows how fragile and in need of protection the core values of our society are,” said Mr. Gauland of Alternative for Germany.
German officials are struggling with how to respond. The normally soft-spoken chancellor, Angela Merkel , condemned the protests in unusually strong terms in her New Year’s address and has continued to call for tolerance.
“We have a very good relationship with the great majority of Muslims in Germany,” Ms. Merkel said Thursday.
ENLARGE But a new study released on Thursday of German attitudes toward Islam showed the reality was more complicated. The Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German foundation, found that the share of non-Muslim Germans who viewed Islam as incompatible with the Western world rose to 61% in November 2014 from 52% in 2012.
In the U.K., Nigel Farage, the head of the small but fast-growing U.K. Independence Party, said the attacks called into question the multiculturalism in some European countries. UKIP has recently been gaining support in Britain with its anti-EU and tough-on-immigration message, including recently wooing two lawmakers from Prime Minister David Cameron ’s Conservative Party.
Speaking on Britain’s LBC radio on Thursday, Mr. Farage said Britain and some other countries “have a really rather gross policy of multiculturalism,” by encouraging “people from other cultures to remain within those cultures and not integrate fully within our communities.”
Mr. Cameron responded by saying it wasn’t the time to be scoring political points. “Today is the day to stand full square behind the French people after this appalling outrage and simply to say that we will do everything we can to help them hunt down and find the people who did this,” Mr. Cameron told news media. “The cause of this terrorism is the terrorists themselves.”
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