WreathOfLaurels
Courtier
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2016
- Messages
- 592
- City
- Wellington
- Country
- New Zealand
I think this might have been discussed elsewhere but I'm interested in the connections between the European monarchies both current and former, Monarchist groups and the European far right, as there seems to be considerable overlap between the two in some cases.
I was thinking about this as in a lot of countries which have lost their monarchies (Italy, Germany, France etc...) there are often ties between monarchist groups and certain segments of the far right as local laws often forbid the use of former facist/nazi regalia and symbols, so they hide behind monarchist instead - somthing which causes more mainstream legit monarchists a great deal of distress, particularly if those monarchies were linked with the far right during the 1930s. Likewise some pretenders are closer to these groups than is good for comfort - Vittorio Emmanualle di Savoia is the prime modern example but there are others.
On the other hand the far right in countries like Sweden and the U.K are often republican in thinking as their monarchies are deemed to be too foreign in terms of ancestry or too liberal politically - I know for a fact that there is a strong republican strain in parties like UKIP and the Sweden Democrats respectively.
It seems that what's happening is that these groups use monarchism to make often unpalatable social and sometimes economic views look more digestible to the public, and others try to adopt republican stances to look more progressive, depending on where they are and what kind of audience they are pitching to, i don't think that's the whole case as local conditions play a role as well.
This isn't about the relationship between far right regimes and monarchies during the interwar period as that was mostly motivated by anti communisim more than anything else and is covered in other threads on this site. This is about what's happening in contempary Europe and espically the fears over Islam, culture, and immigration. Does anyone else have anything to say about this?
I was thinking about this as in a lot of countries which have lost their monarchies (Italy, Germany, France etc...) there are often ties between monarchist groups and certain segments of the far right as local laws often forbid the use of former facist/nazi regalia and symbols, so they hide behind monarchist instead - somthing which causes more mainstream legit monarchists a great deal of distress, particularly if those monarchies were linked with the far right during the 1930s. Likewise some pretenders are closer to these groups than is good for comfort - Vittorio Emmanualle di Savoia is the prime modern example but there are others.
On the other hand the far right in countries like Sweden and the U.K are often republican in thinking as their monarchies are deemed to be too foreign in terms of ancestry or too liberal politically - I know for a fact that there is a strong republican strain in parties like UKIP and the Sweden Democrats respectively.
It seems that what's happening is that these groups use monarchism to make often unpalatable social and sometimes economic views look more digestible to the public, and others try to adopt republican stances to look more progressive, depending on where they are and what kind of audience they are pitching to, i don't think that's the whole case as local conditions play a role as well.
This isn't about the relationship between far right regimes and monarchies during the interwar period as that was mostly motivated by anti communisim more than anything else and is covered in other threads on this site. This is about what's happening in contempary Europe and espically the fears over Islam, culture, and immigration. Does anyone else have anything to say about this?