CSM: Today's election in the Netherlands "a litmus test for Europe's far-right politics"

[pampango]

Today’s radical-right leaders are not swastika-carrying fascists. They are savvy and media-friendly. They hobnob with a “globerati” that see Islam as a totalitarian ideology bent on destroying the West. They prefer confrontation to compromise or dialogue; they often define political opponents as “enemies.” Most want to reduce or abolish the European Union. ... They seek to channel public emotions and fears and speak for the common man.

A long shift to right-wing populist extremes in a region known for its liberality and well-ordered prosperity has taken place below the radar. But the July 22 killings by Mr. Breivik brought a largely unwanted focus to it. Breivik shot and killed 69 people at a youth camp run by Norway’s ruling center-left party – the children of an elite class that he saw as aiding and abetting Muslims bent on destroying “Christian Europe.” Norwegian voters this week sharply rejected the radical right Progress Party with which Breivik was once associated. In local elections, the radical party slipped from 18 to 11 percent of the vote, and from the No. 2 to the No. 3 party in Oslo. Norwegian voters boosted the ruling Labor party – whose children Breivik targeted.

“The strength of the DPP (Danish Peoples Party),” says Copen­hagen-based anthropologist and media scholar Peter Hervik, speaking of the party that helped pass 49 laws restricting immigration and lately tried to engineer border-control stations in Den­mark, “is that the minority government is entirely dependent on it. What the DPP means when it opposes ‘multiculturalism’ is the presence of visible Muslims and migrants.”

The DPP and an obliging media have helped make Denmark the hub of the Scandinavian radical right. “Since 2000, the DPP has become one of the most successful right-wing parties in Western Europe,” says Susi Meret, an expert at Aalburg University in Arhus. “Wilders is there all the time.” For European radicals, the DPP is a giant oak under which to gather and learn, a model of organization and discipline. “The Sweden Democrats copied their program wholesale,” says Tufts University political scientist David Art, author of “Inside the Radical Right.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2011/0914/Denmark-s-election-a-litmus-test-for-Europe-s-far-right-politics

It sounds like polling is predicting a victory for the left-wing opposition, though it may be a very close call.

"A Voxmeter poll gave the Social Democratic-led bloc 94 of Parliament's 179 seats, compared with 81 seats for the government side.

Another survey, by Ramboell, shows the opposition bloc ahead by nine seats, while pollster Megafon put the gap at seven seats.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9PKAT301.htm

It would be great to see the DPP lose its influence on the government.

[pampango]

1. Denmark exit polls predict election of country's first female prime minister

Denmark's social democratic leader looks set to become the country's first female prime minister by a narrow margin, according to early general election exit polls on Thursday night.

But the projections were too close for certainty, and suggested the election could turn on late results from Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which have four seats in the 179-strong chamber in Copenhagen. The uncertainty was compounded by the fact that the exit polls were released hours before voting closed.

The centre-right coalition has been in power for a decade, notching up a trio of election victories, but as a minority government propped up in parliament by the far-right, anti-Muslim and anti-European Danish People's party, whose influence has been central, forcing the passage of dozens of new laws countering immigration.

The far right party and its success over the past decade has made it the model for like-minded parties in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands who have chalked up notable gains over the past two years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/15/denmark-election-exit-polls

Let's hope the exit poll projections are right.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, pampango.

[brooklynite]

3. There is NO ELECTION in the Netherlands...

this is about the election in Denmark.