On June 2, The Guardian ran the headline “Copenhagen Flirts with Fascism.” In addition to a demonstration that the authors have no idea what fascism is except that they don’t like it, the article is a barometer of elite European sentiment about the resurgent conservative wing of European politics. Replace “Copenhagen” with “The Hague” or “Rome” or any other European seats of government that have been taken over by right-wingers and you have the general liberal attitude toward the conservatives who have ridden anti-immigration sentiment into power across Europe.

The conventional view attributes this trend to racism. A fairly typical op-ed in The Crimson by Toussaint G. Losier in the wake of last spring’s French elections blamed “European xenophobia and racist intolerance” for right-wing political successes. Europeans are indeed more racist than Americans are. A 1997 Eurobarometer poll found that a third of the citizens in EU countries described themselves as “very racist” or “quite racist.” But racism does not explain why the extreme rightist groups most associated with race baiting, such as Austrian Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party and Frenchman Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front, have seen their public support crumble. Meanwhile, center-right parties have maintained or increased their power.

Right wing parties have succeeded because no one else has been willing to address immigration, the dominant domestic political issue in Europe today. The issue itself has little to do with traditional divisions between the left and the right.

Consider Ayaan Hirsi Alis, a Muslim Somali refugee turned Dutch political activist. Before death threats convinced her to flee the country, she made her name documenting a culture of forced marriages and sexual abuse in the Netherlands’ Muslim immigrant population and railing against the orthodoxy of multiculturalism that refused to pass judgment on practices she unapologetically labeled “backward.” Alis is not affiliated with a right-wing party and the Dutch are famously tolerant people who put up with everything. Neither Alis nor her country fit the usual profile of claustrophobic bigots. The better-known politician Pim Fortuyn built an entire movement out of assaulting the medieval attitudes about gays and women held by some immigrant Muslims.

Americans have a hard time understanding European anti-immigration attitudes because immigrants have been an indispensable part of this country’s success. But European economies are not designed to accommodate streams of newcomers. After World War II, Western Europe opted for social safety nets and generous pensions instead of unmitigated American-style capitalism. Europeans have the right to do as they like with their own countries and, like a more free-market system, the welfare state has its advantages and disadvantages. Europe’s unemployment rates would be intolerable in the United States, and the United States’ economic inequality would be intolerable in Europe.

That difference shapes the experience of a newly arrived immigrant to the United States or Europe. An immigrant to the United States will received few benefits from the government and is quickly forced to look for work. Because jobs are available, he will usually manage to get by and integrate into society. In Europe, society is unable to offer jobs and instead puts immigrants on the dole. The largely Muslim immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia receive enough government money to scrape by in miserable ghettos where the most entertaining thing to do all day is listen to the radical ranting of a local fundamentalist imam.

The result is a segregated population of angry young men with too much time on their hands, with predictable consequences for public order. The synagogue burnings that sparked global concern about the rise of European anti-Semitism were committed almost entirely by unassimilated Muslim immigrants. In Denmark, a Muslim group offered cash prizes to anyone who would kill nationally prominent Jews. Muslim immigrants in Germany, France, Britain and Spain have been linked to the Sept. 11 attacks. Immigrants are also greatly overrepresented among common criminals.

The solution favored by the liberal European elite has again proven just how out of touch it is with the majority of the people. Rather than restrict immigration to levels their economies can absorb and promote linguistic and cultural integration, the European Union wants to deal with racism by criminalizing “hate speech.” On Nov. 7 the Council of Europe adopted a measure that bans “acts of a racist and xenophobic nature” committed online. While not promoting speech codes, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance issues rhetorical condemnations of xenophobia and sends representatives to flagellate themselves in front of Europe’s former colonial subjects at events like the World Conference against Racism in Durbin.

The ruling left-leaning parties and European Union bureaucrats completely failed to acknowledge the public’s concern about immigration. They instead stuck to a utopian ideology of multiculturalism and closed their eyes to the contradictions spawned by their social choices. Fortunately, the center-right has co-opted the far-right’s immigration platform, and with it their popularity, while steering clear of extremism. Instead of blasting all European conservatives for imaginary fascist tendencies, liberals should thank them for saving Europe from the real thing.

Ebon Y. Lee ’04 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.