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21 september 2013, europe is not (too) right

Hungary's youth, it seems, are even more inclined than their parents to support the extreme right jobbik party, with 29% approving, against 40% for the (quite) right of centre fidesz. In the real-life elections (12 april 2010) they got 16%, which they may yet improve on next year, and which already has the jewish world in such a spin that the annual world jewish congress decamped to budapest to protest against the party. Unfortunately, the rise of the far right (26 march 2011) in hungary is far from an isolated incident, and astounding results, like the french national front getting 46% of a second-round vote, just keep on coming. In that same poll of hungarian youth, many more thought the country joining the eu to be more disadvantageous than a plus, which is a consistent driver of people across the continent towards a group of parties outside mainstream acceptance of europe, though few these days elicit enthusiasm. Other significant factors are an increasing hard anti-establishment mood, with politicians everywhere taking the rap for economic underperformance and seen as not representing the increasing numbers of radical hopeless and dispossessed, and anti- immigration feeling, usually islamic. Prolonged recession continues to press ever-heavier weights of inequality on the eu edifice of open borders and labour market freedoms. As it is the best hope of europe surviving and thriving in this globalised world, work is needed to support that edifice, including through reforming it to be better able to bear those weights that are likely to be with us for some time. Opportunists such as jobbik will always thrive in such times, as they did in the 1930s, but economic prosperity and stability can drive them back.