Rise Of The Far-right And The Migration Debate In Europe

Brecht Jonkers

Political developments across Europe, and in particular the rise of “populist right-wing” parties and groups, and the migration debate that accompanies it, are cause for deep concern.

On one side, from a purely historical and civilisational viewpoint, this is all just a very normal, logical and in many ways ironic consequence of Europe’s imperialist past. This is especially the case with regards to countries like the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

Simply put, you can’t expect to conquer and enslave half the world and then complain when some of the descendants of the enslaved and deprived decide to leave their plundered homelands and settle in the imperial core. Actions have consequences, and the continuous imperialist and neocolonial predations on the Third World have caused hundreds of millions of people to lead precarious existence.

People can’t be blamed for doing whatever they can to survive. The instinct to survive is very strong in all living creatures, especially humans. This includes travelling to the land of the imperialist powers that stole their homeland’s wealth in the first place, and try to make a living off of the stolen wealth in the west.

On the other side, it is a fact that these waves of labour migration often have negative side effects. These apply to both the country of origin (brain drain, population reduction, lack of development opportunities due to the absence of proper workforce) as well as the country they end up in (clash of values, lack of social cohesion, further atomisation of society into a patchwork of individuals without social and cultural roots).

It must not be forgotten that more often than not, labour migration is often encouraged by some of the most powerful globalist, neoliberal and imperialist institutions in the world. These include the World Economic Forum (WEF), World Bank, IMF and the Bill Gates Foundation. This is not to suggest that these ‘liberal’ institutions are united in some sort of a “cultural Marxist” plot to wipe out the white race or any such conspiracy theories. The actual reasons for all of this are far more tangible.

Mass influx of an impoverished and desperate labour force into the west allows for an artificial increase in workforce. And not just any workforce, but a desperate one that will agree to just about anything in order to survive. This means lower wages, precarious and dangerous working conditions, unregulated long working hours, infringement on holiday and free time rules, etc. Not only does this provide the capitalist elite with cheap work force, it also helps to put pressure on the existing domestic proletariat and the trade unions, in order to roll back previously gained workers’ rights achievements.

This is not new. Marx called these types of workers lacking class-consciousness and undercutting the more organised workforce, “lumpen proletariat”. This is an unknowing and “unconscious” weapon in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

In Western Europe, this has all been tried before, and not that long ago either. When the economic boom after World War II occurred, Western European countries invited tens of thousands of Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese and later Moroccan and Turkish workers into France, Belgium, West Germany and the UK to work in the coal mines and steel factories. Thousands of them have died since then due to health complications and lack of safety precautions during their time working.

German journalist Günter Wallraff already noted in 1985 in his highly successful book, Lowest of the Low, how the West German “miracle economy” was based on brutal exploitation of mostly Turkish migrant workers. Of course, over time and with generations being born in the west, these communities started to organise and demand their rights.

The Southern European communities are by now fully anchored in society and absorbed into the domestic working class. This has, by and large, happened to the North African and Turkish communities as well.

This necessitates, from the perspective of the globalist elite, a continuing and never-ending stream of impoverished new potential workers from ever more varied origins: Afghan, Somali, Eritrean, Congolese, Malian…

To facilitate the globalist economic exploitation of this incredibly varied group of working class arrivals, the liberal ideology tries to remove them from their cultural and social roots. This makes them all individual atoms in a rootless society, in a “global world” without religious, cultural or ethnic expression. Of course, the same is then extended to the “native” population of the west as well (although it could be argued that most of the western world has already abandoned any cultural or religious roots long ago in favour of Americanised globalism).

As was written in the manifesto of Feniks when this anti-globalist movement was founded in Belgium, one of the main issues with the globalist approach to migration, and labour migration in particular, is that the benefits are privatised (in the hands of the bourgeoisie factory owners and financial elite). The costs, on the other hand (social security, financial compensation but also law enforcement) are often collectivised. This is a new twist in the age-old capitalist mantra that profits are made individually but crises are borne collectively.

This is a complex issue that can’t be solved with either denial or hysteria. It is difficult to repose much faith in either the present-day liberal-left or the populist right to figure out a solution anytime soon. But it does need to be addressed in a way that is both humane for the “migrant descent” communities that have been living in the west for decades now, as well as fair to the host culture of the European countries they live in. As far as such a domestic, indigenous European culture still exists in a continent that has become increasingly Americanised and thrust into the abyss of hedonistic globalism.

Europe