The continuous decrease of GDP, “auspicious for extremism”

The globalization, the economic and social situation or, in some cases, the politics calculations and strategies are facts that, in specialists’ opinion, create the premises for appearing some attitudes and actions influenced by extremist trends.

The interwar period can be an example in this respect.

The sociologists have explained that precisely the heavy conditions of life from then have led to an explosion of the right extremist.

Nowadays Europe functions, though, after other prototypes, with an influence pole for the 27 member states of the Union at Brussels.

A question addressed to the analyst in foreign politics Cristian Mititelu was if those happened in the last years in Europe really represent a favorable context for developing the extremist on the continent.

Cristian Mititelu: When in crisis situations the GDP decreases for two, three, four years consecutively, the field is auspicious for appearing an extremism of right or left. Although a part of the Occident passes through an economic crisis, the left parties did not manage to capitalize, to take advantage of this situation.

Is it surprising, though, that we discuss about right extremism and fertile soil in a very large number of countries? In Austria, Holland, Sweden, France, at declarative level, people believe in European values, but right there, easily, the parties with right discourse and radical discourse gain field and even enter in government.

Cristian Mititelu: All of them have a high standard of living. In these countries has arrived very much people from the third world, firstly, inclusively from the Islamic world, which provokes another genre of controversies, and, lastly, surely that exists a certain dissatisfaction also regarding the arrival of so many people from the Eastern Europe. We have to put sometimes into the position of a citizen who is used with a certain way of living, with a certain structure of those who live on his street, in his neighborhood.

For many times, at Brussels, we observe differences and also the fact that they don’t always reach a consensus, given that Brussels should be precisely the equilibrium factor. In what measure does Brussels respect and manage to fulfill this role?

Cristian Mititelu: Brussels cannot dictate to the 27 independent states what to do, what measures to take in order to combat these phenomena. I believe that the problem can be put as some debates and open discussions.

In what measure are virtual environments tools for the extremist trend?

Cristian Mititelu: There are demagogue people who were managing before to mobilize the others through discourses and public appearances, nowadays they are doing it under the protection of anonymity or, easier and faster through the internet.

Can we think about anti-Semitism in Europe of 2012?

Cristian Mititelu: There are cases of anti-Semitism, obviously, as well as cases of anti-Islamism.

Translated by
Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University