The Netherlands: Far-right party still leading in Dutch polls, despite leader’s criminal guilt

Volendam is a village of clogs, canals, cheese – and anger. A former fishing village-turned-tourist-haven north-east of Amsterdam on the Markermeer lake, it offered one of the country’s strongest turnouts for far-right populist Geert Wilders the last time the country went to the polls.

Wilders was found guilty of inciting discrimination at a rally where he called for “fewer Moroccans”. His supporters in this overwhelmingly white, conservative town see the trial and verdict as political persecution of a maverick anti-establishment champion.

“We don’t like what the government does so we support him,” said Wim Keizer, curator of the Volendam museum, a small building filled with tableaux of families and fishermen in traditional dress, including a dog-drawn cart and the cabin of a North Sea fishing skiff.

Wilders’ Freedom party (PVV) has risen from being a rightwing gadfly of the Dutch establishment to one of the most powerful forces in national politics, remaking the image of a nation once regarded as a beacon of liberal values. It is currently leading in polls ahead of national elections next year.

Read more: Far-right party still leading in Dutch polls, despite leader’s criminal guilt | World news | The Guardian

European far-right politicians in Russia to support Putin

Nationalist supporters of Russian President Vladimir Putin brought together controversial far-right politicians from across Europe on Sunday in an effort to demonstrate international support for Russia and weaken European Union commitment to sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in Ukraine.

Putin's critics pointed to the irony of St. Petersburg, his hometown, welcoming neo-Nazis as Russia prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

The meeting drew about 40 protesters, who held signs denouncing fascism, and about eight of them were detained by police.

Among the more prominent Europeans at the gathering was Nick Griffin, the expelled former leader of the anti-immigrant British National Party, who accused the U.S. of aggravating the confrontation in Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have been killed in fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatists.

"The people running the U.S. and their puppets in the European Union are doing everything they can, whether deliberately or just by stupidity, to drag us into a terrible war," Griffin said.

He spoke out against the EU sanctions, as did Udo Voigt, a senior figure in Germany's neo-Nazi fringe National Democratic Party, who was among several members of the European Parliament who attended the St. Petersburg gathering. Griffin lost his seat in the EU body last year.

Read more: European far-right politicians in Russia to support Putin - Yahoo News

European Parliament: Will the Euro-skeptics unite in Brussels?

The mainstream media likes to lump together under the label “far right” all European political parties opposed to the European Union and to pro-immigration policies. Because I see big differences among these parties, I have always rejected this approach.

The question is now one of more than academic and rhetorical significance. The so-called far right parties will have substantial representation in the newly-elected European parliament. If these various parties find enough in common to unite, they could play quite a significant role.

To this end, Marine Le Pen, head of France’s Front National Party, has been wooing leaders of “far right” parties throughout Europe. The results have been mixed.

Nigel Farage of Great Britian’s UKip Party has refused to work with the Front National. He reiterated his stand today, stating that a deal with Le Pen’s party “isn’t going to happen.” Farage added, “We’ve got to find a group of people that we think are part of our political family with views that are consistent with classical liberal democracy.” (emphasis added). The Front National manifestly is not such “a group of people.”

Le Pen’s outreach program was far more successful when it came to Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party in Holland. Wilders agreed last year to ally his party in the Euro-elections with the Front National and with Austria’s extremist anti-EU party.

The alliance struck me as unnatural. For example, Wilders is a friend of Israel; the Front National has a long history of anti-semitism.

Lucas Hartong, the most senior member of the European parliament from Wilders’ party, also found the alliance unnatural. He refused to campaign in the EU elections and warned that Wilders’ alliance with the Front National and the Austrian extremist bunch would prove to be an electoral disaster.

Exit polling indicated that Hartong was right. It showed Wilders’ party finishing fourth in the elections. Now it appears that the party came in third (or maybe tied for second) and will take 4 of 26 seats. Still disappointing, but not disastrous.

Wilders’ party suffered when Jean Le Pen, father of the Front National and of Marine, decided to speak out on election eve. The aging racist opined that the Ebola virus will solve Europe’s problem with immigration from Africa.

Read more: Will the Euro-skeptics unite in Brussels? | Power Line

European parliamentary elections: better together

Divided we fall - United we win

This week's European parliament elections are the most important of their kind for years. Since the last vote in 2009, Europe has been buffeted by banking failures and sovereign debt crisis, while Europeans in and out of the eurozone have been compelled to undergo prolonged austerity programmes.

The social damage of these measures, however necessary some may argue they were in economic terms, has been profound, lowering living standards and calling into question the long-term sustainability of European welfare and employment models. Hostility to the European Union has increased to new levels in many nations, fuelled by tensions over migration, and often matched by a wider domestic disillusionment with the national political classes of the member states, whose authority has rarely seemed more compromised.

Meanwhile, the EU is confronted with a foreign policy crisis in Ukraine which exposes the limits of Europe's influence in its own near-abroad. This is resetting relations with Russia into a more confrontational form at the same time as a relatively weakened United States redirects its principal focus towards Asia, and hopes of greater stability in Turkey and the Arab world recede. Europe's defence response is in disarray, with a poll this week showing four Germans in five opposed to future military missions. In such circumstances, elections to a parliament which has just acquired new powers might logically seem a moment of importance, and the way we cast our votes this week a matter of consequence, not least because the parliament can shape the next European commission, which must wrestle with these issues, one of which may include Britain's future in the EU.

In some respects, Europe's politicians have tried to rise to the occasion, although their efforts have been ignored in Britain. Elsewhere, the main European parliamentary blocs have attempted a pan-European debate, in which differing approaches to austerity and its legacies have been clearcut. But the elites' worthy attempts to connect with the public in Europe founder on the reality that the elites are widely and in some ways rightly perceived (the ludicrous Strasbourg-Brussels shuttle, for instance) as part of the problem.

Most of the main party blocs favour shifting more authority to the centre, to the Brussels institutions, the parliament prominent among them. The problem is that the elite debate excludes growing numbers who want far less power at the centre (or none at all), and overlooks the 70% or so of the population in many countries, including Germany and France (where a poll this week found only 39% support for the EU), who do not want more power at the centre and who favour significant reform of the EU.

Read more: European parliament elections: better together | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

US Presidential Elections: Republicans blast Occupy movement at debate

"Go get a job right after you take a bath," Newt Gingrich told the audience at the "Thanksgiving Family Forum," when asked about activists protesting over the last two months in major US cities including New York and Washington.

The forum, organized by a number of right-wing Christian organizations, was attended by candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, both Mormons and more moderate candidates, did not attend. 

The protesters seek an overhaul to what they see as major socioeconomic inequalities fostered by mainstream US politics and systems of finance.

Another frontrunner in the race, former pizza boss Herman Cain, slammed the OWS movement by claiming that "freedom without responsibility is immoral."

For more AFP: Republicans blast Occupy movement at debate