Europe: Surge to The Right

They range from jackbooted skinhead youths assaulting foreigners in Germany to sedately dressed middle-aged couples dining off lace tablecloths at a banquet outside Amiens -- under a poster urging the eviction of immigrants from France. Their leaders include old nobility, yuppie types, an ex- paratrooper who boasts of being born in a house with a dirt floor, and former communists. But whatever their appearance or origin, the far-right- wingers who are emerging across the European continent share an alarming attitude, if not exactly an ideology: a virulent nationalism expressed mainly as raw hatred of foreigners, particularly immigrants. They also share momentum: West and East, their influence is on the rise.

That might seem paradoxical. In western Europe the headlined trend is toward unprecedented economic and even political unity. The fear of Bolshevism that played so great a role in prompting the growth of European fascism between the two world wars has virtually disappeared with the disintegration of the Soviet empire in the East.

But in the former communist satellite nations, the red downfall has lifted the lid off long-suppressed ethnic nationalism, while prompting some people with no tradition of democracy to look for an alternative form of "strong" government. In the West, right-wing movements have inherited some of the generalized protest vote that used to go communist. Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front does well these days in the industrial suburbs of Paris that were long known as the Red Belt.

East and West, economic distress is also spurring the rightist revival. In the East, the breakdown of command economies has led to chaos and suffering that the painful birth of free markets has not yet relieved. Western Europe, though far more prosperous, nonetheless has been experiencing some of its highest unemployment rates since World War II. It has been easy for demagogues to blame immigrants who snatch away the jobs of the native-born -- though that happens far more often in right-wing mythology than in reality. The movement toward west European integration has also provoked a nationalist backlash in some countries. France's Le Pen lately has been drawing cheers by sneering at unity-advocating "federasts."

The power of the far right should not be exaggerated. In no European country is an extremist party close to taking power. Only in Austria, and possibly France, does it even have an outside chance of muscling its way into a government coalition. On the other hand, the rightists in some countries are exercising more influence on mainstream politicians and parties than their vote counts might indicate.

And rightist sentiment is popping up in some unexpected places. In Belgium the anti-immigrant Vlaams Blok party increased its representation from two to 12 seats in November's parliamentary elections. Sweden, long considered the & socialist's dream of the earthly paradise, gave its Social Democrats their worst electoral defeat in 60 years in 1991. The European Community warned at its Maastricht summit in December "that manifestations of racism and xenophobia are steadily growing in Europe."

A rundown on that growth, from the Atlantic to the Urals: