Continent of Fear: The Rise of Europe's Right-Wing Populists

[Francesca9]

Source: Spiegel

All across Europe, right-wing populist parties are enjoying significant popular support. Led by charismatic politicians like Geert Wilders, they are exploiting fear of Muslim immigration and frustration with the political establishment -- and are forcing mainstream parties to shift to the right. By SPIEGEL Staff.

He is a politician who claims to have nothing against Muslims, and that he only hates Islam. He is a charismatic man with peroxide-blonde hair, elegant, eloquent and precisely the type of politician that has put fear into the hearts of Germany's mainstream political parties in recent weeks.

He is Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician of a stripe that doesn't yet exist in Germany: a populist who stirs up hatred against Islam and the establishment, and who has taken away many votes from the traditional parties in his native Netherlands. So many, in fact, that they now can hardly form a government without giving him a share of power.

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,719842,00.html

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It's not just in the US

[southmost]

1. It's has never been just the US

It's just that the US has been so damn successful at it.

[dipsydoodle]

2. I'd say its an age related issue in the UK

Those of us old enough to remember are acutely aware that those who emigrated here from the Caribbean in the '50s under the assisted passage scheme and the Asians who came from Uganda as a result of Idi Amin's antics , both sets being high immigration levels , all adopted out way of life in every shape and form. The same cannot necessarily be said for some latter day Muslim immigrants who persist in making a rod for their own backs.