Stanley, while I’m increasingly concerned about what is going on in Europe, I think there are a few points that need to be made about that somewhat excitable piece:

1. While there are certain extremely unpleasant elements within it, Vlaams Belang is not Europe’s ‘most extreme’ rightwing political formation – there are plenty of candidates for that unsavory position, nor did it “almost” capture city hall in Antwerp in the recent elections. Its vote within the city remained roughly static (I posted about the reasons for that the other day). Given the cordon sanitaire that all other parties have put around the VB there was never any chance that it would take the city, particularly given Antwerp’s changing demographics. It’s also important to understand that while the VB’s rise has a great deal to do with immigration issues, it also benefits from very longstanding tensions between Belgium’s francophone minority (the historically dominant group) and the Flemings, who now outnumber them and are far more economically productive (but that’s enough Belgian politics for now) .

2. Le Pen’s tilt towards Arab nationalism *outside* France is, alas, nothing new. It’s dog-whistle politics designed to appeal to the anti-semitism that lurks within certain strands of French political thought, nothing more, disgraceful certainly, but a phenomenon as old as the Dreyfus case, and with roots deep in the dislocations that followed the French revolution.

3. ‘Civil war’ in France? It would be foolish to deny that France has a very real, and worsening, problem in its suburbs, but to describe it as a ‘civil war’ is an exaggeration. What you do have is a dangerous mix of criminality, unemployment, and alienation. Throw in Islamism as a unifying ideology and the potential for very serious trouble ahead is clear, but bad as what is happening now is, it’s not civil war.