The longstanding effort to keep extremist forces out of government in Europe is officially over.
For decades, political parties of all kinds joined forces to keep the hard-right far from the levers of power. Today, this strategy — known in France as a cordon sanitaire(or firewall) — is falling apart, as populist and nationalist parties grow in strength across the Continent.
Six EU countries — Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech Republic — have hard-right parties in government. In Sweden, the survival of the executive relies on a confidence and supply agreement with the nationalist Sweden Democrats, the second-largest force in parliament. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islamic firebrand Geert Wilders is on the verge of power, having sealed a historic dealto form the most right-wing government in recent Dutch history.
Meanwhile, hard-right parties are dominating the polls across much of Europe. In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is cruising at over 30 percent, far ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. Across the Rhine, Alternative for Germany, a party under police surveillance for its extremist views, is polling second, head-to-head with the Social Democrats.
French culture has a long and bloody history specifically centered around getting rid of religious rule (read christianity), and implementing laws that essentially amount to freedom from religion. This is unlike a lot of other countries which focused on freedom of religion.
When large muslim communities form, this often leads to the imposition of their religious expressions upon others. This specifically clashes with French culture, where religion is a private matter, for private spaces. Hence why many french react strongly when muslims complain about how the very laws they relied on to rid themselves of the yoke of Christianity is somehow specifically discriminatory against them.
No, it’s not discriminatory against islam or muslims in particular. It’s a defence mechanism against the imposition of regressive, anti-humanist values on the general population by organized religion.