A young neo-Nazi killed two people in an attack on a gay bar in Slovakia on October 14. Meanwhile, the extreme right supports the conservative government of Sweden and will lead the Italian Executive. In this context, a debate has been held in the European Parliament about the extreme right and the whitewashing that the right is doing, and the European Vice President for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourová, has been blunt: “The European Commission is working with the Member States to try to provide a response to this threat from these violent extreme right-wingers in the EU through Europol, which is in contact with the Member States and public agencies to continue working on all this and to exchange information and collect of intelligence to assess assessments of right-wing extremists.”
A young neo-Nazi kills two people and injures another in an attack on a gay bar in Slovakia
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“Political extremism affects our societies”, said Jourová, “and can even lead to murders as we have seen last week in Slovakia. The Russian military aggression against Ukraine is giving extremist movements an opportunity to create those narratives and exploit them in order to further that anti-European sentiment.”
Jourová continued: “We are aware of Russia’s support for white supremacists and other far-right extremist groups worldwide. They have done it, they have encouraged them with propaganda, they have instrumentalized their speeches and, in addition, they have sowed polarization among European societies”.
“Hate speech and political extremism can affect security, radicalization and extremism”, Jourová defended: “We must continue to fight against hate speech”.
“The war has also had an impact on the extreme left and on anarchism”, the Czech commissioner assured: “Their narratives are drawing the attention of non-violent militants and are focusing on key issues that have to do with the nature of the war”.
The president of the European Socialists in the European Parliament, Iratxe García, proponent of the debate, has pointed out, for her part, the responsibility of the traditional conservative parties: “Some in the European Union are normalizing the daily deterioration of our democratic systems, the separation powers and freedom of the press. These government alliances that we are seeing between conservative and now also liberal parties, with extreme right-wing parties, whiten attitudes that go beyond any red line. The problem is not that they are ultraconservative parties, that falls within political pluralism. The problem is that far-right populisms undermine institutions, use democracy to weaken freedoms and rights.”
“You can be very conservative while respecting certain principles”, said García: “This should be our red line. And it was until the PPE and Renew [liberales] They decided to open the doors to parties like Vox, the Swedish Democrats. Alternative for Germany, the Lega and Brothers of Italy. We can call them whatever we want, neo-fascists or far-right populist fascists. The name is not important. We all know what we mean, even if some don’t want to see it.”
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