Remember the shrieking headlines about “fascism!” when Giorgia Meloni was elected Italian PM? Somehow, though, for all the pearl-clutching by the mainstream media, the blackshirts have conspicuously failed to march on Rome or anything.
That isn’t deterring the mainstream media one whit, though. They’re still gibbering about the “far-right” (is there any other kind of “right” in the legacy media lexicon?) and “Trump”. Because, if there’s one thing the legacy media love more than a statist Big Daddy, it’s the bogey-men hiding under their collective beds.
And if there’s one thing they really, really hate, it’s the common peasants not doing as they’re told to by the great and good of the chattering classes.
From Finland in the north to Spain in the south there is a political surge pushing more nationalist agendas and feeding on suspicion about poorly controlled migration.
“Poorly controlled migration” isn’t a “suspicion”: it’s a hard reality storming the beaches of Europe daily in flotillas of dinghies.
The European trends can’t be easily lumped together but one thing is becoming clear: middle-class voters everywhere are becoming more hard-nosed, less sentimental about grand visions, and more demanding that government leads the way to economic recovery. They have become fearful about their futures.
I mean, it’s not as if there’s not an energy crisis (brought on by elite policies), a cost-of-living crisis (brought on by elite policies) or a migration crisis (brought on by elite policies). It’s not as if jihadists are striking at the heart of Europe several times a month, a wave of migrant-perpetrated rapes brutalising the women of Europe or mass riots by Middle-Eastern and African migrants and their children burning France.
Vox is likely to emerge as king-maker, the essential ally of a conservative-led People’s Party (PP) government in Madrid, marking the arrival of the most ultra-nationalist party since the days of Franco. But although it ticks the expected boxes – blaming Eurocrats for ruining farmers with net zero targets, despairing of expanded gay rights, demanding penalties for insulting the Spanish flag and crown, calling for the closure of mosques where jihad is advocated [and] claiming the Socialist government of Pedro Sanchez colludes with former Basque terrorists – it also underwrites an economic program of privatisation, deregulation, stronger property rights, tougher action against squatters and tax cuts.
Note how they slip in the trigger-word, “Franco”. If it was Italy, they’d be whispering, “Mussolini”, and in Germany, it’d be shrieking about “Nazis”. Oh, wait, they screech about “Nazis” everywhere.
But, on which of those things is Vox wrong? Net zero is ruining farmers. Mosques are preaching jihad. Militant alphabet activism is not only grooming children, but increasingly making it all but illegal to hold traditional Christian beliefs. Sanchez is reliant on Basque separatist EH Bildu.
And the left-elite have completely stuffed European economies.
How dare the common muck even notice any of this.
But what really seems to be panicking the left-elite is that the people of Europe are, more and more, rising up against Brussels.
The right-wing revival has this in common across Europe: it is fuelled by the politics of command, whether it be refugee quotas (Poland is furious at the 20,000 euro fine being charged for every migrant it refuses to take as part of an EU quota, at a time when it has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees) or the imposition of climate-change targets that involve expensive redesign of German homes. In Stockholm, the radical Sweden Democrats, which prop up a minority centre-right government, want to repatriate powers from the EU – for example, securing an opt-out in justice and home affairs to let Sweden impose stiffer border controls.
The Times
The public school elitists at the Times have never forgiven the oiks of Britain for voting for Brexit. If European voters start agitating for an en masse “Euxit”, the gig really will be up.