Topic > Far-Right Extremism in Western Europe - 1263

There is considerable evidence to suggest that Western Europe has experienced a wave of far-right extremism such as the Front nationale in France, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the People's Party in Denmark and the British National Party in the United Kingdom. As a result, they often uphold nationalistic traits (e.g. Almeida, 2012, p137) as part of their ideology and reinforce it through the manipulation of racial discrimination by which they create the “other” in society to attack for their failures as a country. It has been argued elsewhere (Fennema, 1997; Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie, 2005) that such parties would be better off being labeled “anti-immigration” because of their common approach to blaming the “other”. Notably, the British National Party (BNP) claims to pursue white supremacy in opposition to multiculturalism, as evidently outlined in their 2010 manifesto. Research shows that the BNP increased electoral votes to 1.9% in 2010 has become significant in British politics and could create a danger to British citizens. This is a topic that is currently the subject of much research and debate across Europe, where in many countries there has been majority support for far-right extremists. So why do people vote and support these parties? Is this simply a reaction to immigration or the expression of deep-rooted racial prejudice? I examine support for the British National Party as to why people might have positive feelings towards the BNP, using UK data to test the phenomenon that Western Europeans would likely agree is compelling evidence that racist affiliation is the main explanation for the maintenance of British sovereignty. Other factors are highlighted in voting for far-right parties, especially around… half of the paper… where they talk about racial inequality where they can use ethnic minorities as a tool to get votes. The data file used is a condensed version of the 2010 UK election study. The survey contains data on around 3000 individuals and is representative of the UK adult population, however the main focus is on support for the far-right UK political party , the British National Party (BNP). This variable is measured on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 refers to a strong dislike of BNP and 10 refers to a strong dislike of BNP. We will treat this as an interval level variable which makes OLS regression the appropriate analysis method. The condensed dataset contains variables relating to a number of different potential explanations for why people might like BNP. However my independent variable will refer to ethnic groups (racist appeal) such as blacks, Asians and whites.