Word: european
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Read: "Why So Few Care About the European Parliament Elections...
...rickety organization. Now outfits such as the BNP are learning from past mistakes: they're slicker, and combine old-fashioned grassroots activism with Internet campaign techniques borrowed from the Obama playbook. They're also well placed to exploit the disillusionment with traditional politics that has seen voter turnouts in European and national elections plummet, and membership of big parties dwindle. As the global economy limps along and Western nations struggle to balance the needs of longtime citizens and newer immigrants, nobody should doubt that the far right is well positioned to attract yet more followers. (Read: "Europe's Voters Reward...
...against it to its advantage. Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission is currently investigating complaints that the BNP is breaching the law because it admits only "indigenous Caucasians" as members and employees. Griffin defines that group as "of English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh descent, or closely related, assimilated European peoples" but can only name one nonwhite Briton - a mixed-race comedian called Charlie Williams - whose British roots go far enough back that the BNP would consider him for membership. Williams died in 2006. But while the EHRC has a statutory duty to follow up on the complaints...
...right parties in western Europe tend to steer away from signs and symbols that might recall the darkest period of the continent's history. But Hungary's Jobbik - its name derives from job, a word meaning "right" or "better" - garnered 14.8% of the votes in the country's European elections with a campaign themed around the Arpad stripes, the nationalist flag that was co-opted by Hungarian fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. The party's chairman, Gabor Vona, 30, also chaired the Magyar Garda - or Hungarian Guard - a private militia that appeared at Jobbik rallies and marched through scores...
Jobbik may look different to its corporatized Western European counterparts, but it's being lifted by the same underlying forces: fears of invasive foreign cultures and of global competition, and a profound disaffection with mainstream politics. The excitement with which Hungarians embraced multiparty politics after the fall of Communism has curdled, with confidence in mainstream parties damaged by their perceived failure to tackle the country's economic woes. "It is a kind of vacuum," says Attila Pok, a historian with the Institute of History at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. "A great number of voters do not believe...