Europe's New Rising Tide: The Far Right

Report: Islamophobia the 'unifying factor' among male youth
By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 7, 2011 12:52 PM CST
Europe's New Rising Tide: The Far Right
Women on a market in The Hague, the Netherlands on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007.   (AP Photo/ Evert-Jan Daniels)

It's not just young American men who are getting kicked around in this era: Nationalism, immigration, and cultural identity have their European counterparts turning in droves to the arms of far-right politics, according to a new report. British think tank Demos used Facebook questionnaires to get information from 10,000 followers of far-right groups from 11 countries, along with Facebook advertising data from 450,000 fans of those organizations. Of the latter pool, two-thirds were under 30, 75% were male, and they were more likely than average to be unemployed. And with the euro zone crisis deepening, many are worried economics could worsen these trends, reports the Guardian.

"As anti-Semitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, '20s and '30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century," said a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. "Voters now are turned off by crude, blatant racism," said one expert on right-wing groups, so increasingly anti-immigration and other hard-right groups are arguing that they are defending "domestic traditions." (More Europe stories.)

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