Lecture 10

                      Ethnic/national intolerance and radical right in Europe

                                        Building a united EU

                                       What is radical right?

*      Movements, political parties or regimes of `organised intolerance' who are ready to use
violence in order to assert the exclusive primacy of `traditional values' over all other competing
ideologies (Ramet)

*      Radical right groups or parties share a lot of common characteristics and ideology:
nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism, intolerance of ethnic minorities, etc.

                                            Assumption:
                                       (Scheuch & Klingemann)

*      The potential for radical right exists in all industrial societies

*      There are always certain people who cannot cope with fast economic and cultural developments

*      There are always certain people who can be mobilised by right-wing movements or parties who
promise them a better, simpler society

*      It is a `normal pathological' condition

                                     `Rebirth' of radical right

*      Mobilisation of radical right usually happens in times of social and cultural change

*      The rebirth of the radical right in the West can be understood as a result of a general
modernisation shift in the wake of `1968' (Minkenberg)

                                         New radical right

*      New radical right is different from the old because its antidemocratic rhetoric is less
harsh, it is `playing by the rules', emphasises ethnocentrism rather than classical biological
racism

*      New radical right does not only represent `modernisation losers'

*      Not concentrating on the Jews anymore

                                         New radical right

*      Scapegoating immigrants (and asylum-seekers) as a threat to the national community (Le Pen's
Front National in France; Haider's Freedom Party in Austria; the Flemish Bloc in Belgium...)

*      Using nationalistic myth of organic and ethnically pure nation (supposedly under threat from
immigration); emphasis on `traditional values'

                                           European union

*      25 member states + Bulgaria, Rumania

*      Where are the borders of the EU? Where does the EU end? What about candidate countries?
Western Balkans, Turkey,...?

*      Who are the `Europeans'?

*      European supra-national identity?

*      National identity and the question of belonging

                                                Exam

                                             16.12.2005

                                             20.12.2005

                                              6.2.2006

                                              8.2.2006

                                               Revise

*      Basic concepts and definitions

*      Nationalism

*      Xenophobia

*      Racism

*      Ethnocentrism

*      Ethny (ethnic group), nation, `race'

*      Post-communism and intolerance