Posted on 04/21/2002 8:41:02 PM PDT by Timesink
Right-wing tide surges straight to the heart of Europe
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels
(Filed: 22/04/2002)
EUROPE'S rising Right-wing tide swept into the core countries of the European Union yesterday, rocking Germany's Social Democrats and threatening France's socialist government.
Over the last two years, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Norway have all turned against the centre-Left consensus that had such a lock on Europe during the 1990s, opting instead for law-and-order parties promising tax cuts, deregulation, and a much tougher line on immigrants.
But the pace is now quickening as ever more radical figures build mass support, often outflanking the conventional centre-Right with wild rhetoric.
Even Holland, the model of easy-going tolerance, has fallen under the spell of Pim Fortuyn, an anti-Islamic populist who came from nowhere last month to take control of Rotterdam.
Just across the border, the Flemish Vlaams Blok far-Right movement is now the biggest party in Antwerp, much to the horror of Belgium's press and the political establishment.
In both Rotterdam and Antwerp, Muslim populations dominate very large quarters, living in uneasy truce with a white working class that has never accepted the legitimacy of mass immigration from the Third World.
Now France's industrial cities, led by Marseilles, are following suit, and the political earthquake can no longer be ignored.
The second-place finish of Jean-Marie Le Pen is all the more stunning given that the Right-wing vote was split so many ways - shared with the Hunting and Fishing Party; a rival National Front candidate; another candidate promising zero-tolerance on crime; and Jean-Pierre Chevenement extolling "sovereignty".
Taken together they amount to a devastating defeat for all the forces of the French Left, challenging the long-held assumption that the French nation is fundamentally committed to a bedrock welfare state in a "social Europe" with high taxes.
The shift to the Right is subtly different across the mosaic of Europe's tribal nations.
In Germany, the Christian Democrats increased their vote from 22 to 37 per cent in the depressed rust-belt land of Saxony-Anhalt, carving into the core support of the Left by turning the election into a verdict on Chancellor Schröder's failure to make a dent on Germany's four million unemployed.
The pro-business Free Democrats went up from four to 13 per cent.
While in Denmark last November, the free-market Ventre Party swept the country after 80 years in the wilderness, promising to preserve Denmark's public services, but also tapping into fears that mass immigration threatened the nation's cradle-to-grave welfare model, and the tight-knit feeling of Danish society.
In Brussels last night, European Union officials were remaining studiously silent about the surging fortunes of M Le Pen's French National Front.
Nobody wants to repeat the disastrous mistake made two years ago when the EU reacted precipitously to the triumph of Jorg Haider's far-Right Freedom Party in Austria by issuing a formal warning that Vienna would face punitive measures if Haider's party was allowed to join the ruling coalition.
The move was widely viewed as an attempt to overturn the result of a free democratic election in a member state before there had been any violation of civilized conduct or human rights.
In the end the EU was forced to climb down ignominiously.
At the time, the Left controlled most EU capitals. Now Silvio Berlusconi is in power in Rome, backed by a coalition including the "post-fascist" Alleanza Nazionale, which boasts Allesandra Mussollini as one of its leaders, as well as the anti-immigrant Northern League of Umberto Bossi, who recently excoriated the EU as a relic of "Stalinism".
In Madrid, Spain's centre-Right prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, holds the chair as the EU's rotating president, and no EU initiative can get off the ground without his blessing.
Certainly the European press has NOT been more supportive of Israel than the Palestinian Muslims, which raise the question: Are they a shadow of a declining political force? Or, are they a reflection of a rising tide.
Could this be the beginning of the end of the EU itself? I think it is. The fundamental problem is that people in the industrialized West are all so busy with economic endeavors that they are failing to replace themselves by having children. I don't think there's a single Western European country with a birth rate that approaches the level necessary to sustain a constant population. The result is a vacuum that sucks in humans from surrounding cultures to perform the less desirable jobs. We are luckier than the Europeans because the people close enough to get sucked in by our own birth dearth are mostly Hispanic, and hence Christian. They basically have the same sorts of values we do. Plus, our immigrants do not arrive here on a mission from Allah to destroy us as infidels. Their immigrants do, and that's a big difference. The debates we have here about whether Islam is a peaceful religion are academic compared to the ones going on now in Europe. They have huge sections of their cities full of Moslems, and the idea has now been planted in their heads that these people could turn into suicide bombers or worse. So they are getting real upset with this, and they want their governments to stop the influx of these people, because they are starting to get scared. Will this wake them up to the fact that their geography is being occupied by another people because they are not bothering to have and raise children? No, they'll blame the politicians, or the Moslems, or somebody else for the fact that Nature is quietly sweeping them from the planet, which is what Nature does to anything that doesn't reproduce. This is probably hiccup one -- of three or four -- before the Europeans discover that they are outnumbered in their own countries and can no longer even set government policy. In another hundred years or so, what's left of their culture will probably begin an exodus from Europe, with their first choice being the largest Christian country, los Estados Unidos de América. The Spaniards will get in; I'm not sure about the rest. |
The Jews probably face a much more secure future, in fact, if someone like Le Pen comes to power. I don't see how it does them or Israel any good to have France or Italy or Spain as a MAJORITY muslim nation as each of them is becoming.
That's provided he's not some Hitlerite, but I don't know enough, and I really don't trust the media who will smear anyone with that brush if they even hint they are opposed to mass immigration.
You're pretty spot on there, Buck. I guess you'd have to support whoever you deemed most likely to be ineffective in the Gubmint so they do less damage. I sure wish the checks and balances were better in this country. Bush needs to get those conservative judicial appointments through!..Have a good week!
Let's hope so ---the pendulum is swinging back the other direction. No one but a certain group of elitists wants one-world government ---it's time it come crashing down.
It needs to be said, again and again,
The NSDAP was the German acronym for "National Socialist Democratic Workers Party."
The English abbreviation of "NAZI" came from the word: "Nationalsozialistiche."
At its heart, it was:
1. Anti-Jewish
2. Anti-Christian
AND believed in supreame power of the central state, offering rights to certain "protected" classes while demonizing it oppostion.
Sound familiar?
That's true. Given the choice between living in Mexico and living in Afghanistan, I think most of us would pick Mexico.
An alternative explanation is that the white europeans were perfectly content with the welfare state as long as the free loaders looked like they did (ie. white). However, no f-ing way are they about to have free loaders who are muslim, african, turkish or whatever. In a very ironic way, immigration may have caused a rejection of the welfare state. In a very odd way, immigration may be good for europe because the welfare state ends.
There really isn't much chance of him winning the runoff though but his placement will definitely send a message to the French politicians. If they don't figure it out, they're dead meat.
Yes, but what's your point? Are you saying Le Pen is Hitleresque, or what?
I think most countries set up a welfare state to provide for their own people. It doesn't matter what color the outsiders who come to crash in on it are ---I've heard British people complaining a lot about white Irish who move over to get in on their dole.
Remember that the failure to reproduce is the result of variety of movements - the overpopulation scaremongering of the early '70s, women's liberation leading to abortion and postponement of childbearing, the hedonistic nihilism that was the ultimate underpinning of the '60s.
The fact that it all ended up in a crass, commercialistic rush to "make money" was just the forseeable outcome of a generation dedicated to self gratification, without regard for the future of either their families or their country.
Are you SURE it's from a British paper?
>:P
That's the same answer the LePen voters are coming up with, but it won't solve the problem. Take Sweden: there are only about 8 million Swedes. At their current birth rate (and it is still declining), in six generations -- call it 120 years -- there will not be enough Swedes in Sweden to occupy a decent-sized town. What are they going to do, put up a fence?
All these people are either going to change their priorities, or they will be overrun by people from other cultures. That can't be stopped; it's Nature At Work.
Their countries are close enough to India and China that they get the part about overtaking the world real well. China will probably overrun Russia. The Indians will be coming their way. They probably see what they are doing as defense.
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