All for Latvia!

All for Latvia
Visu Latvijai!
Leader Joint leadership of
Imants Parādnieks and
Raivis Dzintars.
Founded 14 January 2006
Dissolved 23 July 2011
Merged into National Alliance
Headquarters Riga
Ideology Pro-European
Latvian nationalism[1]
Political position Far-right
Colours Maroon
Website
visulatvijai.lv

All For Latvia! (Latvian: Visu Latvijai!) was a nationalist[1] and far-right political party in Latvia, led by Raivis Dzintars and Imants Parādnieks. Formed in 2000, it entered a right-wing nationalist coalition in 2010, and ultimately merged with the For Fatherland and Freedom Party in 2011 to form the National Alliance.

History

All For Latvia! started as a political youth organization in 2000.

After a ban on symbols similar to the Nazi swastika or the Soviet hammer and sickle in 2003, members of the organization protested outside the Latvian parliament with ethnographic symbols bearing reversed versions of the swastika associated with the Nazi regime. All For Latvia! leader Dzintars Raivis defended the protest, arguing that "the swastika is by no means something Hitler thought of."[2] The swastika symbol has featured prominently in Latvian folk symbology for centuries.[3]

The organization became a political party in January 2006, running in that year's elections. It received 1.48% of vote and no seats in the parliament. Following that election, All For Latvia! organized remembrance processions honoring the war dead of the Latvian Legion who fought against the Communist Soviet Union on the side of Nazi Germany during World War II.[4]

For the 2010 elections for the Saeima, All for Latvia! joined forces in the National Alliance with the more established national conservative party For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK to field a common list of candidates.[5] At the election, the list won eight seats, six of them for All for Latvia!. Deputy Visvaldis Lacis, representing the party and a former member of the Latvian Legion, was elected chairman of the parliamentary committee of the Latvian government responsible for dealing with the Russian minority.[6]

On 23 July 2011, the For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK Party and All For Latvia! merged to form the National Alliance.[7]

In April 2013, All For Latvia! officially established cooperation ties with the National Democratic Alliance,[8] a major political association in the Russian Federation, which "aims to create a Russian democratic state, which will break cleanly away from the Eurasian imperial legacy, opting instead for a European cultural and civilizational identity, based on the ideas of freedom and progress" and is "sustaining a course for consistent rapprochement and cooperation with the European Union and NATO".[9]

Ideology

Latvian nationalism

All For Latvia! supports making Latvian citizenship laws more restrictive, by introducing strict limits on the number of people who can be naturalized into Latvian citizenship in one year. All For Latvia! would like to increase the percentage of ethnic Latvians from the current 59% of the Latvian population to at least 75%, by providing financial support to ethnic non-Latvians who would like to leave the country and ethnic Latvians from abroad who would like to return to Latvia. All For Latvia! supports a greater role for the Latvian language and proposes to make it the only language of instruction in publicly funded primary and secondary schools, starting from 2015. The party is opposed to European federalism.

All For Latvia! supports protectionist economic policies to increase the role of locally owned businesses. It is supportive of the traditional family, opposed to homosexuality, gambling and favours more restrictive regulation of alcohol sales. It believes that the common interests of the nation have a higher value than the interests of individual people.

Accusations of Fascism

Nils Muižnieks, a political scientist and former Latvia's minister for social integration, later head of Council of Europe's Commission against racism and intolerance, described All For Latvia! as racist in 2005.[10]

The Independent correspondent Jonathan Nathan described the party as "reportedly neo-Nazi",[11] political scientist Karlis Dauksts called it "a neo-fascist" organization,[12] and its supporters were called a "fascist legion" by a columnist of a Russian newspaper in Latvia Anatoliy Kamenev.[13]

All For Latvia! party leader Raivis Dzintars replied to accusations of Fascism by stating that there were "times when you could be called a fascist only because you replied in Latvian to a question asked in Russian."[14]

Aleksandrs Mirskis, MEP from Harmony Centre was successfully sued by All For Latvia! (and other "National Alliance") members for calling them "Fascists" in public. In April 2013 Mirskis was found guilty by Riga District Court in smearing reputation of the plaintiffs and was asked to pay them damages.[15]

Election results

Election year # of
overall votes		 % of
overall vote		 # of
overall seats won		 +/– Government
2006 13,469 1.5 (#10)
0 / 100
 Increase

References

  1. 1 2 "Annual row over march of SS veterans does little for Latvia's image abroad". The Irish Times. 29 April 2011. Retrieved 23 May 2011.
  2. ↑ "Latvian youths protest ban of Nazi-style symbols," Agence France Presse, 23 January 2003.
  3. ↑ Elita Grosmane, Ornaments Latvijā: materiāli mākslas vēsturei (Riga: Zinātne, 1994) p. 18
  4. ↑ "Latvia bans SS veteran march," Ria Novosti, 14 March 2006.
  5. ↑ Candidate list from official website of the Central Electoral Commission (in Latvian)
  6. ↑ Markus Salzmann (20 November 2010). "Former Nazi soldier appointed to Latvian parliamentary committee". World Socialist Web Site. Archived from the original on 27 October 2012. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
  7. ↑ "Latvian political parties undergo major upheaval". Baltic Times. 12 July 2011. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  8. ↑ "Latvian Nationalists of All For Latvia! make friends with Nationalists in Russia". ves.lv (in Russian). 2 April 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
  9. ↑ National Democratic Alliance. "National Democratic Alliance Manifesto". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
  10. ↑ N. Muižnieks. Latvia. In: Racist extremism in Central and Eastern Europe. Ed. C. Mudde. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0-415-35593-1 — p. 107
  11. ↑ Nathan, Jonathan, "A hatred that refuses to die: The Royal Court is to stage a play about the annual procession of Nazi Waffen SS veterans in Latvia, and the way it still divides families in the country today." The Independent, 22 March 2011.
  12. ↑ "Neither Russia nor Europe are going to like new Latvian coalition - expert," Baltic News Service, 22 October 2010.
  13. ↑ Anatoliy Kamenev, "Ethnic Russian commentary complains about nationalism in Latvia's new parliament," Excerpt from report by Latvian newspaper Chas website, taken from BBC Monitoring Europe, 19 October 2010.
  14. ↑ "Labeling VL as unstable partner suggests that coalition is making excuses to cooperate with leftists - leader," Baltic News Service, 8 October 2010.
  15. ↑ "Mirski will have to pay 500 Lats to each of the leaders of the VL-TB/LNNK for offending them". ves.lv (in Russian). 3 April 2013. Retrieved 3 April 2013.

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