Go far and take a right

Antisemitism has been around in our world for hundreds of years. It was is a fixed phenomenon in European politics and culture as well - some say it even belongs to the European DNA. At first, antisemitism based mainly on religious reasons. Christian Europe blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, the Messiah, and considered that one of the biggest reasons why Jews deserved to get it. Later on, antisemitism developed into a faux-science about human races and took other political aspects. Putting the religious quarrel aside, it was believed that Jews were secretly working together to take over the world. Much of nazism and partly facism, too, was based on this belief.

In the past couple of years, there's been a lot of discussion about the far-right activity increasing in politics again. It happened in Finland too, when all of a sudden a party called "True Finns" won a lot of votes in our parliamentary elections. It was a big shock, widely debated and discussed on domestic level, and even the foreign media paid attention to what was happening in our little country.

Is far-right ideology and propaganda the same today? We have seen the phenomenon resurfacing not only in Finland but in Greece (a whole political party), France (le Pen) or even in Norway to some extent (the Breivik case - although this was the act of one single individual). Instead of the far-right movement being 100% antisemitic, it is more turning into racism against everything foreign. Not only may it be targeted against the increasing Muslim population in Europe, it is also possible that Europeans start turning against other Europeans. The European Union - as beautiful it is as an idea - is causing problems with e.g. the common currency in crisis. The South sucking money from the North keeps tensions building and the far-right parties use these tensions as fuel to create the vision of everything national, domestic and whatever is considered "familiar" being good. Everything else foreign is a threat, "bad for us" and must be eliminated. Hence, Jews might fall in to this category, again.

Antisemitism is on the rise, probably due to some of the old factors (15% of Swedes and 35% of French consider Jews having too much power in the world) but it is also the prolonged Israel-Palestine conflict that fuels Muslim immigrants in Europe to assault Jews. This is a "new" factor causing increase in antisemitic crimes after the WWII incidents. Whereas most antisemitic crimes in Poland, Germany and Austria are (still) done by indigenous people, in Sweden it is the Muslim minority picking up the fight. Even the ever-so-liberal Holland is showing increasing abuse and violence against Jews, mainly done by inhabitants of the country with North African roots. The conflict surpassed a long time ago from being a quarrel about two nations and borders. It is a conflict between ideology and religion. A Muslim (from e.g. Sweden) attacks a Jew (in Sweden). Basically these two individuals might not be a Palestinian and an Israeli but they fight the same fight in a foreign territory.

And all of this, what does it boil down to? Is it political? Is it racial? Is it religious? Is it cultural? Is it all of these factors together? Personally, I'm not a big fan of Karl Marx but he did have a point when saying that religion is opium of the people. Many bloody wars have been fought throughout the history of mankind in the name of religion (let's not get even started with the Crusaders) and this seems to persist today, tomorrow and forever. We just can't get along, can we?