Thread by @astroehlein

OK, let’s spend a minute in a thread to explain why the @EU_commission’s decision to put migration under a portfolio named, "Protecting our European Way of Life," is a dangerous mainstreaming of far-right ideas.

@EU_Commission The phrase is very similar to terms used by hate-merchants like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who uses phrases like this to scare Hungarians about migrants & pretends to protect voters against the fake threat he’s invented.

@EU_Commission It’s the typical us-vs-them demagoguery and demonization of minority groups we see in the rhetoric of all far-right groups in Europe.

@EU_Commission The truth is, of course, that immigrants are part of European history and culture. It’s impossible to tell Europe’s story without migration.

I'm an immigrant to Europe. I'm European. I don't need protecting from myself, thanks.

@EU_Commission In as much as @vonderleyen’s @EU_Commission wanted to include new immigrant integration efforts under the new portfolio, that may be fine, of course. But then call the portfolio, “Human Solidarity,” or something. Don’t adopt the language of the far right.

@EU_Commission @vonderleyen Don’t, Orbán-style, pretend to be “protecting our way of life” from people who are in fact very much part of the “our” in “our way of life.” Don’t normalise the far-right framing of hate and us-vs-them division.

@EU_Commission @vonderleyen So, the big question now: why didn’t the Commission see this framing as problematic before they went public with it?

There are two possible explanations: either they knew what they were doing, or they didn’t.

@EU_Commission @vonderleyen If it’s the former, that may be shocking but sadly not surprising. For years, we’ve watched some mainstream, center-right politicians in Europe adopt the language of far right and even try to copy their policies.

@EU_Commission @vonderleyen Some centre-right politicians seem to think they can head off threats to their party from those further to the right on the political spectrum by adopting their challengers’ rhetoric and ideas. The results can be disastrous, of course. Maybe ask Mr Cameron about that?

Or look at what happened in Belgium’s last election, where some politicians in the right-wing NVA repeated Islamophobic lies and various far-right tropes, apparently thinking this would help them drain support from the even-further-right Vlaams Belang.

But what the NVA ended up doing was sending votes to the Vlaams Belang in large numbers. The NVA had simply normalized the ugly framing, making people feel comfortable voting Vlaams Belang – choosing the original instead of the NVA’s imitation of it.

As an aside, the non-extremist parties in Belgium are currently trying to maintain a “cordon sanitaire” to keep Vlaams Belang away from power – but they’re fighting on the back foot, because NVA’s foolishness let the far-right rhetoric into the mainstream already.

We‘ve seen normalizing of the far right in Brussels at the EU level, as well. In recent years here, @ManfredWeber of the @EPP helped to boost anti-democratic Hungarian PM Orbán and his ruling party, Fidesz, at nearly every opportunity. hrw.org/news/2019/03/0…

No one did more to mainstream Fidesz’s far-right policies and rhetoric at the EU level than Weber through the EPP’s repeated refusal to #ExpelFidesz despite Orbán’s countless transgressions against fundamental democratic values and the stated values of the EPP.

Weber has been a kind of bad gatekeeper for the centre right in Europe, always letting terrible ideas into the garden of the political mainstream.

Weber perhaps thought he was being clever and helping his chances at becoming president of the European Commission. He failed spectacularly at that, but we’re all still stuck with the far-right language & policies he helped normalize.

So, if the framing of the new European Commission portfolio was a deliberate effort to try to mollify and copy the far right for political gain, it would be sad to see, but it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen it.

However, maybe it is the latter: maybe the Commission simply didn’t know they’d chosen far-right framing for the portfolio name, because the shift in public rhetoric has moved so far to the authoritarian right, they just thought it was normal.

See also: Overton window.

If that’s the case, the Commission is a kind of victim of the normalization of far-right language as well as an unwilling perpetuator. If so, they could simply fix the name and move on.

Sadly, however, it appears the Commission is now doubling down on the name, suggesting we’re looking at the former: this is some kind of misguided attempt to try to head off the far right by deliberately adopting their language.

It’s a calculation, a miscalculation, in fact, that ignores all the times when such a strategy has gone horribly wrong for others in Europe trying to do it.

But framing, rhetoric, language, blah, blah, blah –

Why does any of this really matter?

Because normalizing the far-right’s ugly rhetoric is a dangerous step toward normalizing their abusive policies that threaten democracy and human rights.

A major threat to our freedom in Europe today is this ugly combination: 1st, anti-democratic demagogues attacking minorities to get/keep power; and 2nd, mainstream politicians who think echoing them will stop them but only end up normalising the assault on our fundamental values.