From: "Julian Gollop" <gollop at bol.bg> To: "LBO" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Right wing extremism in Bulgaria Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 20:51:56 +0200
I have been living here in Bulgaria for some 6 months, and there is still a lot of learn. One thing that alarms me is the growth of right wing extremism and the complacency of the Bulgarian public. The so-called 'Attack coalition' gained over 8% of the vote in last years general election, despite being formed jus 2 months prior to voting. It's leader, Volen Siderov, is a racist, anti-semite, holocaust denying bigot. He is a fascist in all but name.
Here is an escellent article from the bulgarain Helsinki committee on the phenomenon: <http://www.bghelsinki.org/index.php?module=resources&lg=en&id=254>
HOW SHOULD WE THINK OF ·ATTACK"? Krassimir KANEV
The ·Attack" coalition's penetration of the parliament was, for Bulgarian political life, like a foul-smelling skeleton falling out of the closet, where it had remained hidden for years. It came as a shock not only to politicians, but also to political pundits; a shock which quite understandably shook the approved interpretations of the Bulgarian political process. But even before the elections, some of them made an attempt to force the advance made by ·Attack" into the channel of speculative patterns regarding the Bulgarian transition, which look a lot like the schemes of a ·transition from capitalism to socialism", only turned inside-out. According to them this group is, in the words of Ahmed Dogan, ·a normal tumour"; something which, as Andrey Raychev and Kuncho Stoychev are trying to convince themselves, exists in ·normal" democratic countries and is the Bulgarian equivalent of the parties of Le Pen in France, Haider in Austria, Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands or Umberto Bossi in Italy. In other words - we've become ·normal" and now we've got a ·normal" far-right party. It seems to me that this way of regarding ·Attack" just as appropriate as if we were to think of Bulgaria as being France or Austria; it is as far from reality as Bulgarian political and social life are far from the standards of such advanced democratic societies. In those societies, it would not be possible for a group using such forms and degrees of expression of racism and xenophobia to achieve parliamentary representation, nor even to be present in the public sphere. It would be impossible for such an aggressive Holocaust denier as Volen Siderov to find any place for himself there, other than in the dock in a court of justice. In this sense, if we are determined to find a political equivalent for him, we should look towards Adolf Hitler and Radovan Karadzic, rather than the European far right.
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