saying so openly. Neo-fascist movements like the British National Front exist
in many countries, but in recent decades most have been of only peripheral
significance. The electoral success of neo-fascist movements fluctuates, largely
with economic conditions, because fascism is a political reaction of the
disenchanted lower-middle and working classes, allied through apopulist
streak. The Front National (FN) in France, for example, experienced a
modicum of electoral success in the 1990s, quite overtly playing on the racist
attitudes of the unemployed and poor of the French working class against the
North African immigrant population, and on the discontent of the business
sector after a lengthy period of socialist economic policy. The FN’s previous
modest successes were surpassed by its performance in the French presidential
election held in April/May 2002, in which its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen,
received some 17% of the votes cast in the first round, advancing to oppose the
incumbent president, Jacques Chirac, in the second ballot (amid opposition to
Le Pen from nearly all the defeated first-round candidates, Chirac was re-
elected with a comfortable majority). Le Pen focused his campaign on crime
and immigration, suggesting a link between the two.
In Germany the strains of integrating the former East German state with the
Federal Republic, combined with problems ofimmigrationfrom Eastern
Europe, have encouraged what was previously an insignificant neo-fascist
movement. The successes of Le Pen, the Freedom Party of Jo ̈rg Haider in
Austria and the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, together with strong electoral
performances from far-right and anti-immigration groups in Denmark, the
Netherlands, Norway and a number of other European countries, illustrated a
trend towards increased sympathy for the far-right. While relatively few of
these groups or their leaders could be properly described as neo-fascist —the
label is much too widely and easily used, and none possess the militarist focus of
fascism itself—there is no doubt that a complex of attitudes that lay behind the
success of parties such as the GermanNational Socialist(Nazi) party and the
Italian Fascist Party of Mussolini has been rejuvenated because of analogous
social and economic conditions which arose in a period starting some time in
the late 1980s and developing in the late 1990s.
Neutralism
Neutralism, which is not to be confused withneutrality, is the status of many
if not most of theThird Worldcountries who have decided not to be formally
involved in alliances with the world’s major economic and military powers, and
which remain free to accept aid and support from wherever it is offered. The
conditions attached to aid by donor nations, frequently involving some level of
commitment to democracy or stipulation of what should be purchased with
Neutralism