Guardian
Editorial
May 8, 2012
There are two areas of concern about the rise of the extreme right in the anti-austerity vote that has been cast in Greece and France. The first is the existence of the parties themselves and what their leaders hint at or say. In the case of Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the leader of Golden Dawn who introduced himself to Athens city council last year with a Nazi salute, there is not much hinting. That a party of black shirts linked to anti-immigrant attacks, and considered the fringe of the fringe at the last general election three years ago, should now take 7% of the vote, more than double the threshold required for getting into parliament, is a shock in itself.
Just as worrying, though, is the steady tramp of mainstream politicians marching towards them. Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, promising to repeal a law giving citizenship to the children of legal immigrants, and Nicolas Sarkozy adopting the language of the Front National in the last two weeks of his doomed campaign are the two most recent examples. The contamination of the political debate affects everyone. François Hollande felt he had to harden his position on immigration by saying that in a crisis a cap on economic migration was not only necessary but indispensable. This leaves indelible marks. If Mr Sarkozy pick-pocketed Marine Le Pen's programme, he did so at the risk of alienating the centrist vote. Mr Sarkozy is now history, but Ms Le Pen is still very much present, trying to convert the 17.9% she won in the first round into parliamentary seats in June. She will do so in the knowledge that Mr Sarkozy's cameo appearance as president has weakened the centre right.
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