In an article from 2002 entitled "Democracy Is Under Threat From The EU, Not The Far Right" we find the following passage:
All over the continent it seems, so-called extreme rightwing parties are springing up and gaining votes from the older, more established mainstream political groupings. Even at home, the BNP is winning local election seats and increasing its national profile.And:
It would be easy to accept the liberal elite’s interpretation of these events and seek to dismiss all these so-called ‘new-wave’ parties as racists or even fascists, and crudely try to play on people’s fear of immigrants as the reason for their growing success. To do so would, I believe, be a grave mistake.His thesis is that far-right parties have gained support because of their 'sovereigntist' inclinations and their support for the death penalty. He concludes:
Far from being indicative of a crisis of democracy, the growth of the new-wave parties may in fact help to save democracy. It may finally jolt the Euro elite into listening to its people and delivering the kind of Europe they want to see.In Clark's opinion "[n]o longer should we think in simple terms of left and right." To be fair, Václav Havel, one of his bête noires, has said something similar, but Clark's article reads like an attempt at softening opposition to the far-right.
