AND HIGH TIDE IS A WAYS OFF :

Right-wing tide surges straight to the heart of Europe (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 22/04/2002, Daily Telegraph)

EUROPE'S rising Right-wing tide swept into the core countries of the European Union yesterday, rocking Germany's Social Democrats and threatening France's socialist government.

Over the last two years, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Norway have all turned against the centre-Left consensus that had such a lock on Europe during the 1990s, opting instead for law-and-order parties promising tax cuts, deregulation, and a much tougher line on immigrants.

But the pace is now quickening as ever more radical figures build mass support, often outflanking the conventional centre-Right with wild rhetoric.

Even Holland, the model of easy-going tolerance, has fallen under the spell of Pim Fortuyn, an anti-Islamic populist who came from nowhere last month to take control of Rotterdam.

Just across the border, the Flemish Vlaams Blok far-Right movement is now the biggest party in Antwerp, much to the horror of Belgium's press and the political establishment.

In both Rotterdam and Antwerp, Muslim populations dominate very large quarters, living in uneasy truce with a white working class that has never accepted the legitimacy of mass immigration from the Third World.

Now France's industrial cities, led by Marseilles, are following suit, and the political earthquake can no longer be ignored.

Still think this is just a fluke that's peculiar to the circumstances in France? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 21, 2002 9:59 PM