http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/040209/njScholarEuropesRight.html
New Jersey Jewish News - Tuesday 31st March 2009
Scholar: Europe's Right is embracing its Jews
Old hatreds fading as nationalists turn anger on Muslims
by Debra Rubin, NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex
A wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric in Europe is being met
by a surprising countertrend: right-wing political factions, including
those rooted in Nazism, who have embraced Jews and Israel as "the
quintessential guardians of European culture".
So argues Matti Bunzl, director of the program in Jewish culture and
society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who contends
that the European far Right is becoming "genuinely philo-Semitic".
Such parties have thrown their support behind Jewish candidates, have
had their leaders appear at pro-Israel rallies, and have written
extensively about the virtues of Jews.
"It is not an aberration," said Bunzl, an anthropologist who specializes
in the history and culture of European Jewry.
Bunzl presented "The New Philo-Semitism: Israel, Islamophobia, and the
Right in Europe" at a March 23 program at Trayes Hall on the Douglass
campus in New Brunswick. The program was sponsored by Rutgers
University's Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life
in conjunction with the Henry Schwartzman Endowed Faculty Seminar.
Bunzl cited numerous instances of this newfound fondness for Jews.
Austria's Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis after the war, has run
Jewish candidates, and its website "celebrates Jewish contributions to
civilization".
Filip DeWinter, a Flemish nationalist in Belgium, whose party grew out
of Flemish Nazism, has praised Jews as law-abiding citizens.
"Why would a Flemish nationalist need to say nice things about the
ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Antwerp?" asked Bunzl. "Is it a
Belgian fluke? Too much chocolate perhaps?"
One explanation he offers is Islamophobia -- antagonism toward Muslim
immigrants or Muslims whose families have migrated to European countries
in recent generations.
"Even strong support of Israel among the Right is driven by Islamophobia
and perception of Israel as a bastion of European civilization," said
Bunzl, author of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Hatreds Old and New in
Europe. For European nationalists, "the Jewish state is trying to
preserve its European values against the onslaught of Muslims. It is a
European state trying to defend itself and its Western culture and
democracy".
Bunzl finds little solace in this perception.
To him, tikun olam, the concept, he said, "that I think we all believe
in, is the idea that Jews should repair the world and work for social
justice. I cannot stomach that the far Right has come to love Jews
because they now hate Muslims."
He also said he thinks right-wing philo-Semitism has picked up steam
since the formation of the European Union in 1993, which downplayed
nationalism in favor of European culture and identity.
Because Jews have lived in and integrated into societies from Poland to
France for many hundreds of years, contributing their talents yet
maintaining their own traditions, they in essence are now the paradigm
for the "perfect European" in the eyes of the far Right, said Bunzl.
"But this is no cause for celebration," he cautioned.
Bunzl is a self-described rarity, having been born in 1971 into a Jewish
family in Vienna. After growing up in the 1980s and hearing anti-Semitic
rhetoric from the far Right, he said, makes the recent phenomena
particularly fascinating to him.
"In the 1980s I was scared of the far Right," said Bunzl. "Austria was a
scary place."
Now Jews in Europe have "become infatuated with the far Right” and the
number casting votes for them is "growing fast," although Bunzl
acknowledged that most Jews still vote for centrist or left-center
candidates.
Still, he wondered, "how high a cost" will Jews pay for supporting
nationalist candidates?
"We have to be careful who our friends are," he said.
The Neo-Nazis of Mongolia: Swastikas Against China
By Mitch Moxley Monday, Jul. 27, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1910893,00.html?iid=digg
_share
Nazi paraphernalia adorns the Tse bar, a far-right hangout in the
Mongolian capital
James Wasserman
ENLARGE +
Nazi paraphernalia adorns the Tse bar, a far-right hangout in the
Mongolian capital
In the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, "Shoot the Chinese" is
spray-painted on a brick wall near a movie theater. A pair of swastikas
and the words "Killer Boys ...! Danger!" can be read on a fence in an
outlying neighborhood of yurt dwellings. Graffiti like this, which can
be found all over the city, is the work of Mongolia's neo-Nazis, an
admittedly implausible but often intimidating, and occasionally violent,
movement.
Ulan Bator is home to three ultra-nationalist groups claiming a combined
membership of several thousand — a not insignificant number in a
country of just 3 million people. They have adopted Nazi paraphernalia
and dogma, and are vehemently anti-Chinese. One group, Blue Mongolia,
has admitted to shaving the heads of local women found sleeping with
Chinese men. Its leader was convicted last year of murdering his
daughter's Mongolian boyfriend, who had merely studied in China. See
pictures of race riots continue in China's far west.
The neo-Nazis may be on society's fringe, but they represent the extreme
of a very real current of nationalism. Sandwiched between Russia and
China, with foreign powers clamoring for a slice of the country's vast
mineral riches, many Mongolians fear economic and ethnic colonization.
This has prompted displays of hostility toward outsiders and slowed
crucial foreign-investment negotiations.
Fifty-year-old Zagas Erdenebileg is the leader of Dayar Mongol (All
Mongolia), the most prominent of the neo-Nazi groups. "If our blood
mixes with foreigners', we'll be destroyed immediately," says
Erdenebileg, who has run unsuccessfully for parliament four times. He
loathes the Chinese — whom he accuses of involvement in prostitution
and drug-trafficking — and reveres Genghis Khan, who he says
influenced Adolf Hitler. I ask him if he considers his adoption of the
beliefs of a regime that singled out and executed people with Mongol
features from among Soviet prisoners of war to be in any way ironic. "It
doesn't matter," he shrugs. "We share the same policies."
If Erdenebileg is the elder statesman of Mongolia's neo-Nazis, Shari
Mungun-Erdene, the 23-year-old leader of the roughly 200-strong
Mongolian National Union (MNU), is the new kid on the block and sports a
swastika tattoo on his chest. The MNU takes vigilante action against
law-breaking outsiders, Mungun-Erdene says, mainly Chinese. When I ask
what kind of action, he replies, "Whatever it takes so that they don't
live here." At other times, though, he comes across as an overzealous
adolescent. He opens his laptop to show photos of his neo-Nazi buddies.
But beside the folders entitled "Guns" and "Skinheads" are others with
names like "My Car" and "Mom in Japan."
Dagva Enkhtsetseg, program manager for the Open Society Forum, an Ulan
Bator – based organization that promotes public participation in civic
life, points out that the neo-Nazis don't enjoy broad support. A
graduate in Mongolian nationalism, she argues that hard-line
nationalism's allure is subsiding as more young Mongolians are exposed
to globalization or study abroad. That was evident during the
presidential election in May, when bogus accusations that Democratic
Party leader and eventual winner Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj was part Chinese
fell on deaf ears. "In the past that would have worked," Enkhtsetseg
says.
The neo-Nazis still pose some threats, however. In May, a newsletter of
the international development charity Voluntary Service Overseas
reported allegations that two Peace Corps volunteers were "severely
beaten" outside a pub after a confrontation with Dayar Mongol members.
(Erdenebileg denies his group's involvement.) One 25-year-old American
living in Ulan Bator, who didn't wish to be named, said he was accosted
by neo-Nazis at a nightclub for cavorting with a Mongolian woman. "After
they showed a swastika, my initial thought was, This isn't going to be a
normal fight," he says. "They wanted to send a message." That message,
delivered by spray paint or fists, translates to "get out."
See pictures of the golden eagle hunters of Mongolia.
See TIME's China covers.
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