Pan-European nationalism
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- This article is about those who claim that Europe is, or should be, a single nation. For the history and ideology of nationalism in Europe, see Nationalism.
The idea that Europe should be united politically has been present in European culture since the Middle Ages, and inspired several proposals for some form of confederation. With the growth of nationalism in the 19th century, several pan-national ideas of Europe developed, some of them based on Aryanism and other race theories. After Nazi policies and the Holocaust discredited these racial theory, the emphasis shifted to cultural pan-nationalism.
Within the larger current of pan-European thought, there are those who explicitly support the idea that Europe is a single nation, or that it should seek to become one. In French, this concept is known as Nation-Europe or Europe-Nation and it is almost always associated with right-wing and neo-fascist groups, and especially with the New Right (Nouvelle Droite). The term European Nationalism is sometimes used in English.
Support for the idea is politically marginal. Paradoxically - since a single nation-Europe implies the disappearance of existing nations - it is found mostly on the fringes of nationalist parties.
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[edit] History
Some of the 19th-century nationalists were supporters of a form of European unity. The Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, the founder of Young Italy and an inspiration for Young Ireland, also founded an association called Young Europe in 1834. (Mazzini sought no European state: he saw Europe as inherently composed of nations). The International Paneuropean Union or 'Paneuropean Movement' was founded in 1923 by Richard Nikolaus Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi. It survived the Second World War, and had some influence on the formation of the European Economic Community. (Coudenhove-Kalergi first proposed An die Freude as European anthem).
Towards the end of the Second World War, Nazi-German propaganda emphasised the 'European' nature of the strugle against the Soviet Union. Howeevr, no concrete proposals for a pan-European structure replaced the earlier ideas of German hegemony in its Lebensraum.
After the war, the Swede Per Engdahl crated a European Social Movement (with the same name as a small French collaborationist party, founded in 1942 by Pierre Costantini) alongside Maurice Bardèche.
Shortly afterwards Francis Parker Yockey created the European Liberation Front which only had a brief existence. Much the same fate awaited the European Popular Movement crated at the end of the 1950's by Otto Strasser
In 1960, parallel to the foundation of Jeune Europe by Jean Thiriart, the latter, with Otto Strasser and Oswald Mosley, briefly created the National European Party. Mosley promoted European Nationalism in his book Europe a Nation, and through his (British) Union Movement. Jeune Europe disappeared in 1969. It was succeeded by several pan-European movements of less importance, such as Comité de liaison des européens révolutionnaires and the European Liberation Front (the second organisation with this name).
[edit] Current groups
In France, pan-European nationalism is now represented represented by the Réseau Radical which has a Eurasian outlook and is explicitly anti-semitic and anti-american. It is led by Christian Bouchet.
In Belgium the principal European-nationalist organisation is the group Synergies européennes led by the college lecturer Robert Steuckers. It is considered part of the New Right.
