In any political movement there are several strands. In the UK we are fed the message that Remain voters are socialist even though one of its most prominent supporters is the arch conservative Ken Clarke and the billionaires Soros and Branson are obviously supporting Remain for their own profit. In the EU itself the strands are even more extreme with a far right EU a distinct possibility in a decade or two.
It is the EU right wing movements that should be holding the attention of socialist UK pro-Remain campaigners. They must decide whether they believe that the EU will resist being far right.
Poland has elected PiS (Law and Justice Party) which has refused to accept any migrants and has openly supported far right marches. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz Party had a massive win in the April elections in Hungary and promises to make helping migrants into a criminal offence. In Germany AfD, the anti-migration pan German party, is the official opposition. In Austria the far right Austrian Freedom Party is now part of the government having narrowly failed to win the presidency. The right wing coalition of The Five Star Movement and The League (previously Northern League) now governs Italy . Golden Dawn is growing in strength in Greece and has 18 seats in their Parliament. In France Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party (formerly National Front) is second in the polls. In the Netherlands the Party for Freedom (Geert Wilders’ party) is the second largest in their House of Representatives.
In most of these countries the far right is growing year on year. Most of these far right parties see a far right EU as the ultimate goal, having accepted that it will be almost impossible for any country to leave the Eurozone.
At present the far right EU Parliamentary group Europe of Nations and Freedom has 36 MEPs. Given the success of AfD, 5 Star etc it is to be expected that the number of far right MEPs will increase dramatically in the March 2019 elections, with perhaps 15% or more of the 678 MEPs.
Across the EU there are far right parties that are major parties of opposition or even parties of government. We must never forget that the Axis, an alliance of European National Socialist states, first started an EEC around 1943-4. Remain are many strands.
This post was originally published by the author on his personal blog: http://pol-check.blogspot.com/2018/06/do-remain-want-to-be-part-of-far-right.html