Losers, Parliamentary Democracy and European Fascism

Possibly the most divisive of issues in modern democracy is what to do about the poor and those apparently unable to help themselves. The basic tenet of a modern Western economy is that people are expected to sustain themselves by working. Some people obviously cannot work due to physical disabilities, and so clearly must be supported by a social safety net. Others are unable to secure work for whatever reason. This is the open-ended category of social losers. Still, the original welfare state had a fairly strict definition of who was worthy of support.

The parties that built the welfare state, the Liberals, Socialists and Social Democrats, have always been the champions of losers, but the fulfillment of the welfare state in its original design in the 1960s left these parties suddenly with less of a cause. For a while they survived as the parties of technocrats, the managers of the welfare state, but this was not enough. To stop a slow decline over the past generation or two these parties have persuaded most of the rest of the political spectrum in Europe to expand the definition of those entitled to social support, so that no loser, of whatever kind, is let down. Even nominally conservative parties have been persuaded to join this bandwagon. This change coincided with the great influx of immigration from non-European cultures. The old leftist adage that «it is society's obligation to support those who cannot support themselves» was now applied to a changing kind of society where a large portion of the social support recipients were illiteral immigrants.

Nevertheless, there are always sceptics who ask, who are the losers? Excessively liberal and ill-defined categories of social benefit recipients can create considerable social friction. In some cases these categories appear to be more or less based on a self-declared status. Ordinary citizens react to this state of affairs with anything ranging from mild irritation to political opposition to violent demonstrations. The danger to democracy is that government leaders are not easily able to judge the strength of the reactions, leaving them to simmer over a long time. Here is dangerously fertile ground, not merely for populism, but for fascism.

Fascism feeds on lingering discontent, because such unresolved conditions can lead increasing numbers of people to the conclusion that parliamentary democracy cannot solve society's problems, and that more drastic policies are therefore needed. This is what happened when fascism first emerged in Europe. Today fascist movements are again growing in many parts of Europe, and many analysts are asking themselves why. In my view the answer is near at hand. Many European governments have been calling on their citizens to sacrifice their economic interests for the greater good of their nation, at the same time that little or no improvement seems to come out of it. Just as in the 1920s and 1930s, perceived outsiders (not Jews this time, but gypsies/Roma people, illegal immigrants, drug addicts and “drifters”) are blamed for the bad times, and the government is blamed for coddling them. The situation is superficially similar, yet starkly different in Western and Eastern Europe. In the East, from Greece to Romania to Ukraine and Russia, the problems are unlikely to be solved by simple measures. In Western Europe, however, my view is that if governments could pay some more attention to their citizenry, the danger of fascism can be reduced.

I am fully aware of treading on dangerous ground here, but the issue cannot be shoved under the rug. The Norwegian mass murderer of 2011 tried to justify his actions by pointing to ineffectual immigration policies. While this argument is both disgraceful and disgusting given the context and the many victims, we need to recognize that ordinary citizens in European countries are calling for a tougher policy line on social benefits, crime and cultural issues. Their calls should not go unheeded simply by appealing to our generosity and our disgust of fascism.

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