SOURCE Project-Deliverable (3.7): Annual Societal Security Report 4

Published: December 2018
Authors (VICESSE): Reinhard Kreissl, Norbert Leonhardmair, Michaela Scheriau

Full Text: Available Here

Executive Summary:

The SOURCE Annual Societal Security Report (ASSR) 2016 was investigating reactions to the so-called refugee crisis of the year 2015 across Europe. In this report, focussing on the interplay of national and European policy reactions we set out to demonstrate the strategic exploitation of the political situation created by the uncontrolled influx of asylum seekers from the Global South by nationalist populist parties, who were putting the blame for the course of the events as they developed in the summer of 2015 on the European Union. While several initiatives to manage the influx of asylum seekers were launched at the European level, a significant number of Member states refused to adopt this joint policy approach designed to distribute the incoming refugees evenly across Europe. This non-compliance created a kind of prisoners’ dilemma among collective actors: had all (national) players co-operated a win-win scenario might have emerged, but since some national governments defected, the “crisis” produced negative outcomes, not only for the asylum seekers, but also for European institutions and many of the Member States.

During the research for the ASSR 2016 we identified citizen groups who took controversial positions on the treatment of refugees in their countries. Some NGOs were active in supporting asylum seekers together with civil society organisations acting as first responders. A significant “welcome culture” emerged across Europe in almost all Member States.

But we also found a substantial number of outspoken anti-migration groups, who fiercely opposed any support for refugees and who were waging anti-migration campaigns. Often, these groups were loosely linked to nationalist-populist parties in their countries. Anti-migration protests sometimes turned into open hostility and led to acts of physical violence. Asylum seekers were attacked and refugee camps burnt down.

While mainstream policy and media discourses since 2015 have been focussing on presumed security threats from Islamist terrorists infiltrating Europe as refugees applying for asylum, the violent and vigilant anti-migrant actions went comparatively unnoticed and were downplayed as isolated, individual or local eruptions and actions of single frustrated citizens.

In some countries, however, law enforcement agencies began to link the dots and identified a growing network of protest groups advocating a right-wing nationalist agenda beyond the refugee and asylum debate, engaging in new forms of sometimes criminal protest. Intelligence reports on these groups were released in Austria and Germany and some national law enforcement agencies began to see them as a new security threat emerging from the far-right end of the political spectrum, some of them acting as self-declared militant arm of a neo-populist movement, adhering to a white supremacist, nationalist ideology.

We suggest to take these groups and their vigilant anti-asylum actions as the tip of a hitherto unexplored iceberg of what we call “heterodox politicisation”. Recentanti-migration protest in Europe went beyond the well-rehearsed narrative of right-wing nationalism, calling for ethnically homogeneous nation states. Protesters also were addressing in a more general sense the limited capabilities of the state and public policy, questioning the legitimacy of the existing political-institutional order. Migration policy (or the failure thereof) is but one area, where new forms and narratives of political protest and activity develop.[1]

The events of 2015 shed light on a more complex syndrome of political discontent. Some of this discontent is absorbed within the institutional arrangement of the modern democratic state and channelled into votes for right-wing, neo-populist parties, exploiting xenophobic sentiments and fears of the electorate. Recent national elections have seen these parties on the rise in most European countries.

The events of 2015 boosted grass-root protest groups critical of the states’ capabilities to handle emerging problems (and to provide security in a situation of perceived threat!) but not all of the groups fuelled by a growing political discontent can be labelled as outspoken right-wing extremist or xenophobic. Declining trust in the institutional set-up of the modern state[2] and a feeling and/or experience of general disenfranchisement can support very different narratives and activities outside the established arena of civic political involvement cutting across established dichotomies of left/right or authoritarian/democratic used to categorise civic political protest. A closer look at the subterranean discourses emerging below the radar of established approaches of political analysis reveals strange mixtures linking tropes of radical critique of globalisation and political economy with a metaphysics of Nature, spiced with a wide variety of conspiracy theories, populating the blogosphere and virtual space.

The groups developing around these narratives, their activities and the lessons to be learnt for societal security are the main topic of this report. Since very little has been written about these groups and research so far has mainly focussed on the international growth of networks in the right-wing extremist segment of the spectrum[3] we move into uncharted territory with this analysis. We collected data from different sources to develop a first, exemplary account of this hitherto unexplored phenomenon.

[1] The German populist protest movement PEGIDA made international headlines as one of the dominant actors on the political scene, criticising the federal government for its presumed failure to manage the refugee crisis and to “protect” mainland Europe from the influx of Islam. Fuelled by xenophobic sentiments PEGIDA launched a full-blown attack against, what they saw as a non-responsive, elitist, and incompetent government.

[2] See European Commission (2017), Trust at Risk: Implications for EU Policies and Institutions. Report of the Expert Group, Brussels

[3] see for the Russian connections of Austrian extremists, Györi L. (2017) Russian Connections of the Austrian Far-Right. Political Capital, Budapest; for Hungary Szabados K. (ed.) (2017), The Truth Today is what Putin says it is. Political Capital, Budapest