The far right’s hands across the water
by digby
I have a piece up at Salon today about some lines of convergence between the far right in Europe and the far right in America:
Europe’s far right has been vocal about all this for some time. And yes, their problems are different than ours. But we are now starting to see a similar impulse emerge in the U.S. as well, despite the fact that we managed to keep it somewhat at bay for nearly 15 years — at least as a matter of acceptable mainstream discourse, if not reality, for many individual Muslims caught in the government maw. We are certainly no strangers to xenophobia and nativism and this fits nicely into that niche for a lot of rank and file right-wingers. But this also fits into another niche that fueled the conservative movement for many decades — the original Threat From Within known as Communism. That paranoia, conflated with a free-floating fear of “the other” was one of the far right’s most successful organizing principles. And it’s that extremism that holds the real danger to our way of life if it once again finds its way into the conservative mainstream.
Islamic extremism and terrorism is a grave danger, no doubt about it. That it’s mostly a danger to fellow Muslims doesn’t seem to mitigate the West’s increasing hysteria about it. But America isn’t going to be instituting Shariah law or forcing women to wear veils any time soon. It might do some other things in reaction to that paranoia that are threatening to our way of life, however. We shouldn’t forget that when it comes to extremism, these are the people who openly celebrate it as a virtue.