Here is some good news: Europe’s sensible parties have held a meeting in Prague. Of course, the mainstream media – that is the socialist, Europhile media in thrall to every word that proceedeth from the mouths of the dictatorial Brussels bureaucracy – do not refer to a meeting of the sensible parties, and prefer the description “far right parties.” Or they call them “populist parties.” Well, I will accept these definitions and simply add the explanation that “right” as in “far right” means politically and morally right; and these parties are “populist” because they are increasingly popular.
The Prague conference was organised by the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedoms (MENL) and hosted by Tomio Okamura. His anti-Islam and anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party won 10.6% of the Czech vote in last October’s parliamentary elections.
Mr Okamura said, “In Europe or in our country people should behave as European or they should leave. We want a Europe which respects national individuality, national identity and freedom.”
Among the parties attending were representatives of Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, the Freedom Party of Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria, Italy’s Northern League and the Dutch Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders. They met as Austria’s Freedom Party became the junior coalition partner alongside Sebastian Kurz’s conservative People’s Party in Vienna. The Freedom Party is no mere sleeping partner in a token coalition: its parliamentary representatives were appointed to important cabinet posts including the Ministry of the Interior, the Defence Ministry and the Foreign Ministry.
Holland’s Geert Wilders hailed the Freedom Party’s entry into the Austrian government as a sign that a “sister party in the European Parliament group is being taken seriously.”
And Marine Le Pen said it was “very good news for Europe” that the Freedom Party has become the first populist party to enter government in any member state of the EU. L e Pen denied that any of the parties is xenophobic:
“We are in opposition to the European Union because we believe it is a catastrophically disastrous organization. Migration is close to being unbearable, our respected cultures are being destroyed. But we are not xenophobes. We like diversity. I like the Dutch to be Dutch, I like the Czech to be Czechs, I like the French to be French, I like the Italians to be Italian.”
Of course, the unelected socialist, federalist hegemony which runs the EU defines “diversity” differently. They despise and aim to dismantle the genuine historic diversity of the ancient and independent European nations. By “diversity” the leaders of the EU mean their catastrophic policy of welcoming into Europe untold millions of people who refuse to integrate into European societies and who wish to replace our traditional values and customs by an alien an antipathetic ideology – Islam.
Wilders is among those politicians who have recognised the peril of the Muslim insurgency and he has described the EU as “an existential threat to nation states.” He went on to praise eastern EU member states such as Hungary for having closed the door to migrants. And not Hungary alone, but Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have all refused to accept the EU’s diktat of immigrant quotas. This refusal has really put the wind up the EU bureaucrats and they have sued Hungary, Poland and the Czechs over their low intake of immigrants.
Thus the Commissioners are trying to bully the member states of northern Europe as they have previously bullied the Greeks. It won’t work. The Commissioners’ policies will blow up in their faces – for these northern states represent a far more powerful opposition to the EU politburo than a relatively poor, politically and economically unstable country such as Greece could ever be.
The Prague conference of the sensible parties is good news indeed. But we should temper our rejoicing with a dash of realism. The monstrous edifice of the EU was not built in a day – it was in the planning as long ago as the 1920s – and it will not be dismantled in five minutes. But the economic, political, social and demographic pressures on the EU structure are not going to diminish. On the contrary they will intensify – as they are bound to do given the ten years’ financial decline which shows no signs of reversal and the relentless flood tide of alien immigration. The EU apparatchiks will bluff and they will bluster, but they know their days are numbered. Too many cracks have appeared, and the cracks have become fissures and the fissures turned into a great ravine.
In the 5th century, the civilization that was Rome was threatened by barbarian incursions as our European way of life is today. The emperor called the philosopher and poet Sidonius and said, “I know what I will do: I will close the gates of the city.” Sidonius replied, “Too late, sir. The barbarians are already within the gates.”[pullquote]
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Very belatedly, even the EU’s contemptuous and unaccountable elites have come to understand this. Thankfully, so have the leaders and supporters of Europe’s sensible parties. It’s too early for celebrations. But we may take heart: our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.
Jim Lincoln is correct but the sentiment expresssed within Ancient Briton’s misquotation is both powerful and true.
Thank you Peter, for drawing attention to this much needed and all too rare expression of sanity.
One of the most useful consequences of the Brexit vote is the way in which it exposed the hidden contempt so many Left wing commentators have for the public they always claim to be champions of.
After June 23 2016 they had to find a way of explaining the public’s rejection of the Socialist wisdom foisted on them by their moral and intellectual betters. Hence the sudden widespread use of the term “populism”. To the shocked anti-Brexiteers the explanation for the vote was now simple. The electorate (as the great and the good of the Lib/Left always suspected) were revealed as a foreigner-hating mob misled by demagogues and charlatans.
As a mere ignorant “mob” of course there would no need to listen to their concerns. Their supposed ignorance, bigotry and general foolishness must be fought and beaten down.
Quite so. The term Populism (used as a sneering insult) has never been more popular!
Has it occurred to the author that all these countries represented in Prague have some variation on a theme of proportional representation, which permits the growth of what were initially very small movements into substantial parties ? Alongside the demise of the old dinosaurs ?
Any ideas as to how to repeat that process in Britain or the US ?
We need one or both of the big parties to die, neither of them seems to represent the real divisions in society anymore and I’m surprised the Tory Party hasn’t folded. Labour at least seem to have found something that works for them, a middle class socialist dreamer, but the Tories are still stuck in New Labour mode and unlikely to change so IMO the best conservatives can do is try and destroy the Conservative Party and create something to replace it.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Non est, non, oratio Ciceronis.