An unholy alliance of extremists

A continent that not so long ago thought its modernity eternally secure now finds precious liberties under siege. In France, the attack by extremists on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo marked an assault on the pivotal Enlightenment value of freedom of expression. Elsewhere — most recently in Germany — Islamophobic extremists are challenging the tolerance on which Europe has built its peace. This is an unholy alliance against democracy.

The response to the killings in Paris was heartening. Leaders found the right words. French President Francois Hollande looked uncommonly presidential as he said that France had been attacked because it was a nation of freedom. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seems to have been making the important connections between the various threats to Europe’s democratic order, talked of an assault on the “values we all hold dear”. Days earlier she had called on her compatriots to boycott the swelling protests in some German cities orchestrated by the self-styled Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

The crowds pouring into the squares and streets of Paris holding aloft Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) placards, and the vigils in cities across Europe, were a reminder that, for all their disenchantment with ruling elites, people will not lightly surrender their liberties. From time to time you hear it said that we are living in an age when authoritarianism will flourish at the expense of democracy. I am not so sure that freedom and human dignity will be so easily given up. As Hollande said, liberty will always be stronger than barbarism.

The purpose of the murderers in Paris, of course, was to frame a different conflict. They are as eager as the thugs and neo-Nazis behind the demonstrations spreading out from the German city of Dresden to light fires of hostility between Islam and the West. Nothing better suits the followers of Al Qaida and Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) than talk of a clash of civilisations. What they pray for as they go about their murder is that they will provoke a backlash against all Muslims.

On the other side, the populist right casts Islam as a threat to what they say is Europe’s uniquely Christian heritage. This is a battle between fundamentalists jointly wedded to pre-Enlightenment intolerance and united in their social conservatism. The fundamentalists want Sharia; the xenophobes ethnic and cultural homogeneity. In the clash of identity politics, neither side has time for ideas, for debate or diversity.

The task for mainstream political leaders is to ensure that the outpouring of solidarity with the murdered journalists and police officers, and an implacable defence of freedom of expression do not tip over into ugly nationalism. Most obviously, the danger in France is that last week’s outrage will confer respectability on the Islamophobia of Marine Le Pen’s National Front. The polls already suggest she could win the first round of a presidential contest.

Europe’s populist right comes in all shapes and sizes. The National Front in France was rooted in anti-semitism before Le Pen judged Islam a better target. In countries such as Hungary, where an authoritarian prime minister publicly disdains the liberal democratic tradition, old anti-Jewish hatreds are allowed to flourish. In Britain, the chosen scapegoats of the UK Independence party are immigrants from the post-communist east.

The protests in Germany, amplified by the darker chapters in the nation’s history, notionally have been directed against Berlin’s generosity in welcoming refugees from the wars in the Middle East. Yet they risk throwing struggling members of a fearful working class into the arms of racists and neo-Nazis.

Another important connection well drawn by Merkel in her recent warnings about the myriad threats to European democracy has been the way these groups draw succour from Moscow.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, condemns alleged “fascists” in Kiev but bankrolls the far right elsewhere. Putin’s ambitions, as Merkel has observed, reach beyond Ukraine into the weak states of the Balkans. Shared xenophobia, reverence for a strong state, and cultural conservatism are indifferent to left-right divides.

Europe does have “a Muslim problem”. It has failed to integrate properly many of its immigrants, and a big proportion of those left on the margins are Muslims. The march of Islamophobia into the social democratic bastions of the Nordic states sounds a serious alarm. The thousands of young Europeans fighting in Syria point up an undeniable threat from the radicalisation of the dispossessed. Islamist fundamentalism offers them an identity absent in their own communities.

On the other side of the fence, economic stagnation and austerity serve as a powerful recruiting sergeant for the extremist right. European history is littered with the corpses of scapegoats.

There is no quick fix, even if I wish Merkel’s insights extended to a more urgent appreciation of the need to restore economic growth. The most important thing, though, is to hold on to those values. Ideas are what count.

When Charlie Hebdo was firebombed some years ago Stephane Charbonnier, its leading journalist, reflected that it was not the work of French Muslims but of “idiot extremists”. Charbonnier perished in the latest attack. The rest of us should hold on to his reflection.

—Financial Times