Fascists across Europe could benefit from European Union money - with legitimate parties suffering cuts to their funding.
In September 2012 I reported why nationalist political parties like the UK’s BNP and France’s Front National party would be rubbing their hands in glee. Their positions are set to be potentially strengthened by gaining monies of €400,000 for 2012, funded by the European Parliament. Monies are set to be allocated over the next two weeks.
If successful, they will gain this money from a €30 million fund, because the Alliance of European Nationalist Movements (of which the BNP and Front National are members), is officially recognised by the European Parliament for the first time. They have had a further boost with the EU’s Secretary General recommending they get the money.
Parties such as the European Socialists have been receiving this money for some time and their funding may decrease because of this development. The funding would serve to strengthen the Nationalists’ position within the European Parliament. This is worrying given their stance on immigration including free movement within the EU.
Comments from Front National leader Marine Le Pen only last month – where she compared Islamic prayers to the Nazi occupation – had many in dismay.
The European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefcovic announced new rules for the funding of pan-European political parties and their associated think tanks. One of these changes now requires EU funding only be given where these parties and foundations observe the values of the European Union, “namely respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”.
The last part, on minority rights, is a new addition. This was meant to make it harder for parties like the BNP to gain this funding. However it looks likely now they will be able to convince the European Parliament and European Commission they meet all of the conditions.
Having campaigned against the BNP in the 2010 local elections in Barking and Dagenham and against the London Regional Coordinator Robert Bailey for my own council seat, I have experienced first-hand how nasty the BNP and parties like them can be. All the Labour MEPs have signed a petition. I would urge you to do likewise. Let’s hope this possibility of the Nationalists receiving money remains unfulfilled.
Check out Hope Not Hate – www.hopenothate.org.uk/stop-funding-the-bnp – for more.
See also:
• Le Pen’s Fascists bar press from their Reichsparteitag – December 17th, 2012
• Why we should worry about the poison of Le Pen – February 17th, 2012
• The “New Right”: Gaddafi lovers, Holocaust deniers and ‘up market’ fascists – December 14th, 2011
• Griffin’s friends the KKK come to Britain – October 19th, 2011
• Griffin runs for the hills when confronted with fraud allegations – October 11th, 2011
11 Responses to “European fascists set to benefit from EU funding”
tmgrio
So political parties should only receive funding if their policies are acceptable to (self named) progressives?! This shows that so called anti-fascism is a kind of fascism in that anti fascists seem to believe that people should only be allowed to think in a way which is acceptable to their “progressive” sensibilities. Personally I’d classify the BNP as racist rather than fascist.
Axel
are you saying that fringe left wing parties are going to lose EU money to fringe right wing parties?
Old Albion
Axel, this lot don’t know what they are saying. They speak of a Utopian left-wing society .Whilst wanting a far-left socialist world , just like old ‘Uncle Joe’ wanted.
Naturally anyone who is opposed to thier fantasy must be silenced.
They have learnt nothing from history.
LabanTall
To be fair, in campaigning against mass immigration the BNP are a threat to the profits of UK capitalists, who are thriving on the cheap labour from Eastern Europe. As Marx puts it :
“The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it“
And this is why the post-68 British “left” are paper tigers, running dogs of capitalism. No one’s profits are threatened by pro-immigration parties, by the SWP or the Labour Party.
If they were really a threat to capitalism, they’d be harassed by the State, find it hard to get bank accounts, have vexatious legal actions against them. Their public sector members would be dismissed. Wealthy individuals would fund groups solely devoted to giving them a hard time – up to and including physical assault. Laws would be changed for the same purpose. Members on their way to demonstrations would be ‘preventatively’ arrested, held until the demo was over, then released.
Now does left-wing politics attract that kind of reaction?
Instead, the UK left is so cosy in the elite’s warm embrace that the majority of their activists come from the public sector, and a disproportionate number from the higher education sector. If they’re so dangerous to our rulers, why aren’t they all worried about being fired? I don’t think Alex Callinicos loses too much sleep on that account.
Newsbot9
Yes, keep talking about your views, then projecting.
Keep claiming it’s a right to kill off those you don’t like.