Far Right Extremism in Western Europe

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There is considerable evidence to suggest that Western Europe has experienced an upsurge of far-right extremism such as Front nationale in France, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the Danish Peoples Party in Denmark and the British National Party in the UK. Consequently, they often advocate nationalistic traits (e.g. Almeida, 2012, p137) as part of their ideology and reinforce this through the manipulation of racial discrimination whereby they create the ‘other’ in society for them to attack for their failings as a country. It has been argued elsewhere (Fennema, 1997; Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie, 2005) that such parties would be better off branded as ‘anti-immigration’ because of their common approach on blaming the ‘other.’ In particular, the British National Party (BNP) claims to pursuit white supremacy as opposed to multiculturalism as evidently outlined in their 2010 manifesto. Research shows that BNP’s rise in electoral votes to 1.9% in 2010 has become significant in British politics which could initiate a danger towards the British citizens. This is a topic that is currently the subject of much research and debate around Europe, where in many countries there has been majority support for far-right extremists. So why do people vote for and support these parties? Is it simply a reaction to immigration or an expression of deep-seated racial prejudice? I examine the support for the British National Party as to why people may have positive feelings towards the BNP by using UK data to test the phenomenon which Western Europe would probably agree as compelling evidence that racist affiliation to be the main explanation of maintaining British sovereignty. Other factors are underlined on voting for far-right parties especially around... ... middle of paper ... ...ying racial inequality where they can use ethnic minorities as a tool in order to gain votes. The data file used is a condensed version of the 2010 British Election Study. The survey contains data on approx 3000 individuals, and is representative of the British adult population however the main focus is on the support for the British far right political party, the British National Party (BNP). This variable is measured on a 0-10 scale, where 0 refers to strongly dislike the BNP and 10 refers to strongly like the BNP. We will treat this as an interval level variable which makes OLS Regression the appropriate method of analysis. The condensed dataset contains variables related to a number of different potential explanations for why people might like the BNP. However my independent variable will refer to ethnic groups (racist appeal) such as Blacks, Asians and Whites.

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