A few weeks ago, a man was killed in a brawl in Chemnitz, Germany. Since his death there have been a number of manhunts and protests where demonstrators can be seen making the Nazi salute. Foreigners, a Jewish restaurant owner and left-wing activists have been attacked with the complacency of the police and the German Minister of the Interior, who said he himself “would have taken to the streets” if he hadn’t been minister. The electoral breakthrough of the German far right in recent years has had an effect on political and social issues in a reactionary way.

In Sweden, a far-right party also gained influence in the elections that took place on Sunday, reaching close to 18% of the vote. Made up of former neo-Nazis, this party campaigned against the refugees to whom all the other political parties are now becoming more harsh.

In Europe, the far right is, for the moment, gaining influence mostly on the electoral level. In Austria, a party founded by a former SS officer currently shares power with the traditional right-wing party. In Hungary, Victor Orban, the proudly xenophobic prime minister, has refused to welcome refugees. In Italy, another far-right party, the League (La Lega), is also in government.

These electoral successes for the far right have already had very real consequences across Europe. This summer, the Italian government—which includes the far-right Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini—refused to let migrants’ boats that were rescued in the Mediterranean Sea set anchor in Italian ports and criticized the humanitarian organizations that tried to rescue them. Refugees have been forced to go back to Libya and the hell that they face there. As the months go by, Europe is becoming a fortress to which men and women who are fleeing wars, dictatorships and poverty are being refused access.

Campaigns against refugees have been used by these xenophobic parties not only as a way of gaining votes by speculating on fears and prejudices but also as a way of making us forget about the other social issues we are faced with and the responsibility of the capitalists. Once in office, not a single one of these parties is able to solve any of the workers’ problems, quite the contrary. In Austria, the government has extended working hours to the joy of the bosses: it is now legal to work 12-hour days (as opposed to 10) and 60-hour weeks (as opposed to 50). In Italy, the ruling party promised to reduce poverty, lower the legal retirement age, increase pensions and create a minimum income. These promises are all fading away. In reality, the far right actually defends the capitalists’ interests. Their role model is Donald Trump, the multibillionaire whose raging against the elite didn’t stop him from passing the most advantageous tax reform for the rich the US has ever known. For workers, the far right is not a solution, it’s part of the problem.

By turning refugees into scapegoats Marine Le Pen and her friends seek to set workers against each other, oftentimes against the poorest of workers. Dividing workers in this way is dangerous. Xenophobes never hold capitalists responsible, instead they clear them of any responsibility at all. And yet the capitalists, not the refugees, are the ones who lay workers off, close down factories and ruin entire cities. The cause of this endless crisis is capitalism and nothing else.

The far right relies on the deepening of the crisis and the worsening of workers’ living conditions to gather more votes to start with and then to grow stronger. Higher electoral scores can lead to physical aggressions and beatings with batons as was seen in Chemnitz, or worse. These recent events are a warning. If migrants, Muslims or Jews are the first to be targeted by far-right thugs, they will attack, as the fascists did in the past, all workers who want to defend themselves. And beyond that, the whole society is under threat.

For the working class, it’s a question of survival. Nothing can be achieved through election schemes: the class struggle alone allows workers, whatever their nationality, religion or skin color, to fight for their interests. In the past, workers were only ever able to improve their living conditions and defend themselves through the class struggle.

But we must also get rid of the threats that capitalism poses including the threat of the xenophobic far right. In order to do so, we will have to push the class struggle to its limits and expropriate the parasitic capitalists who ruin the whole of society.