Victory Italian-Style

It’s no secret that European politics has been steadily shifting to the right in recent years. The Social-Democratic and Socialist center-left has been collapsing across Europe. There has been a concurrent rise of the hard left and of the nationalist right, although power is mostly now held by the (useless) center-right.

There have been breakthroughs by populist, anti-immigration Right-wing parties across Europe. The Danish government, which rules with the backing of the nationalist Danish People’s Party (DF), has announced that it will take zero (0) U.N. refugees in 2018, citing the fact that too few of the refugees already in Denmark have found work or integrated. In short, they are an economic and social liability. Denmark has also recently passed “forced assimilation” legislation to end the parallel societies existing in the country’s Muslim ghettos—(e.g., “mandatory day care for a minimum of 30 hours a week for children up to six years old living in one of the 25 residential areas, which includes courses in Danish values ‘​​such as gender equality, community, participation and co-responsibility’). As race-realists, we would say that such legislation misses the point insofar as Denmark’s unique indigenous genetic heritage is still being destroyed.

In Austria, the nationalist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) currently rules in Austria as a junior partner in a coalition led the by the young, savvy conservative leader Sebastian Kurz (pictured with Heinz-Christian Strache). The previous time the FPÖ was in government, in 2000, the European Union voted sanctions to punish the Austrians for the audacity of having allowed Right-wing populist party in power, democracy be damned. This is one metric of how far we have come: with populists in power in several European countries, there is no longer a consensus among the 28 member states to punish the Austrians for “voting wrong.”

In Hungary, we have for years had a patriotic government under Viktor Orbán (pictured below), who has regularly and explicitly denounced the threat posed by replacement-level Afro-Islamic immigration and multiculturalism. In Poland, a somewhat less interesting national-populist regime has also come to power. The EU institutions regularly denounce these governments as “violating the rule of law.” For the most part, as in the United States, liberals in Europe seem to consider that “violating the rule of law” in practice means “doing what liberals dislike,” no matter what the people want or what the law actually says. In both Hungary and Poland, the populist governments have maintained their popularity and have pledged to protect each other by vetoing any EU sanctions from Brussels.

Great Britain’s ongoing withdrawal from the EU is causing no small of angst in the British government and passionate hysteria among liberals. In practice, not much seems to be happening. The end result will likely be a minor modification of Britain’s economic relation with the Continent: the EU budget will have have a big hole where the British taxpayer contribution used to be, while Britain may suffer (at least in the short term) from reduced access to the European common market.

By far the most interesting and possibly significant development has occurred in Italy. In June of this year, an unprecedented government came to power led by the nationalist Lega Nord (LN) and the populist Five-Star Movement (M5S). The Lega was formerly a regional party whose main concern was frustration with southern Italy’s being a massive economic liability to northern Italian taxpayers; however, they also opposed immigration. Under the young and charismatic Matteo Salvini, the party has re-focused on being anti-euro and, especially, anti-immigration.

The Five-Stars Movement are in contrast a strange, uniquely Italian phenomenon, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo. The M5S is a kind of pure-populist party, focusing on direct democracy, transparency, hatred of the (overpaid and corrupt) Italian political class, and . . . free money. Indeed, southern Italy, where unemployment is rampant, voted for M5S on the basis of a promised universal basic income. Italy has the highest percentage of young people Not in Education, Employment, or Training (the so-called NEETs) in the entire EU.

The M5S-LN government is an example of the “beyond-left-and-right” populist anti-globalization alliance which had been theorized and promoted by the French civic nationalist Alain Soral. One doubts such a strategy could work in many other countries. In Italy, however, one is struck at how successful the new government has been. This is somewhat surprising, given the usual chaos and instability associated with Italian politics. In practice, there has been an effective division of labor between the Lega and the Movement: led formally by the independent prime minister Giuseppe Conte (who handles international summits), Mario Salvini deals with immigration and policing as interior minister and M5S’s Luigi Di Maio  serves as economy minister. The globalist Italian establishment and liberal newspapers have completely lost control of the situation.

Salvini has thrived in his new role. Viciously attacked on a daily basis, he replies with “un bacio e un sorriso” (a smile and a kiss), and knows instinctively what makes for a killer tweet, an energizing embrace of the crowd, or don the suit and tie for a formal speech. Salvini has ostentatiously taken on the EU by blocking access of NGO ships bringing illegal immigrants onto Italian shores. We need more time to see what will be the result in practice (Salvini has pressured other EU states to take on Italy’s migrants . . . which hardly resolves the issue), although a further drastic reduction of migrant flows to Europe via the central Mediterranean seems likely.

Left-wing Westerners have abandoned the very notion of law enforcement concerning immigration. There has also been progress in this area under the new Italian government. Domenico Lucano, the mayor of Riace in southern Italy, a village of 1,800 people, made a name for himself by welcoming 450 migrants. Lucano, a communist sympathizer according to Le Monde, has been arrested for facilitating illegal immigration and organizing fake marriages so migrants can get residence papers. In enforcing immigration legislation in accordance with the will of the Italian people, the populist government is restoring both democracy and the rule of law.

SEE VIDEO HERE

Crucially, Salvini has broken new ground in discourse. In a recent European conference on security, Salvini argued against Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn’s claim that Europe needed migrants for economic reasons:

I’m paid by citizens to help our young people start having children again the way they did a few years ago, and not to uproot the best of the African youth to replace Europeans who are not having children anymore. … Maybe in Luxembourg there’s this need, in Italy there’s the need to help our kids have kids, not to have new slaves to replace the children we’re not having.

Asselborn, with all the self-righteousness of the representative of a tax haven, responded: “Merde alors!” In short, Salvini, like Orbán, argues that Europeans need more children, not more migrants. This is an absolutely true statement from both an economic and, far more importantly, a biological point of view.

Furthermore, the Lega has become steadily more popular with Salvini in power, overtaking the Movement as the party with the greatest public support. I have long thought there is a huge craving in among our people for patriotic government. Salvini is reaping the fruit. The Movement and the Lega are now polling at a combined 60%, which means they could handily win new elections, with possibly an even bigger majority, if necessary. Certainly, Italians are very tired indeed of having to bear the brunt of the migrant crisis, with often gruesome African crime and the EU’s incoherent economic management.

Furthermore, both M5S and the Lega understand the need for cultural change as part of political change. Di Maio has he would purge the journalistic “parasites” appointed by the Establishment parties to RAI, the national public broadcaster. The government has since appointed Marcello Foa, whom the mainstream media complains has euroskeptic and anti-immigration views, to head RAI. I am actually not sure what Foa’s real views are, but any step towards genuine political and ideological pluralism in the media would be step in the right direction after decades of cultural hegemony by the left.

This is how we should assess the success of nationalist governments: To what extent do they slow, or even reverse, our demographic decline and replacement? To what extent do they push the culture towards a recognition of European ethnic interests and of the biological realities of human life more generally?

All is not perfect however. In leaving the economy in the hands of M5S, the Lega risks worsening Italy’s economic underperformance. The Movement, whose ideology is generally vague, will make the labor market more rigid and increase government deficits. The Lega has supported M5S’s tearing up of EU deficit rules, but one wonders whether this will be sustainable in the long run. In any event, the government’s recently passed €15 billion budget, meaning a deficit of 2.4% of GDP, will fight illegal immigration and poverty in Italy.

M5S represents a democratic tendency, that is to say a chaotic and entropic one, which is useful in breaking through the liberal system, making it own up to its own claims and contradictions. But in the end we want societies governed by right values, values in line with biological and ethical truths. Hopefully, if M5S’s popularity declines or if its policies become too costly, the Lega will be able to extricate itself. Certainly, the Lega has potential allies both on the conservative and the nationalist right which it might be able to turn to.

Italy is then a good case study of how European nation-states, which are all inherently authoritarian, can “flip” rather decisively, as we have also seen in the Visegrád countries. I wish I could be as hopeful for France. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN, yes, she renamed her father’s party . . .) is rather demoralized. The regime plays with Le Pen like a cat with a mouse, threatening massive fines for alleged campaign finance irregularities, which would bankrupt the party. The presidential and majoritarian institutions of the Fifth Republic mean that the French regime is quite secure for now, although it is true that President Emmanuel Macron has grown unpopular with stunning speed. These same institutions, which make it hard to “flip” France, would also probably make any future nationalist regime there rather more solid than the one in Italy.

Translation: “The time of the Brussels bureaucrats is over. Values, pride, freedom of peoples and nations: in May the revolution of common sense will come all over Europe. We’re Ready. @MLP_officiel”

Western politics will, I believe, be increasingly dominated by right-wing parties with populist rhetoric. However, I am not sure how much these will actually reduce immigration. The forces aligned against them are enormous. The incentives are quite clear: a little populist rhetoric pays, actually shutting down immigration (let alone remigration) is much more difficult—as President Trump has found.

However, we should take heart: we are making progress. On the basis of these trends, we can at least say that even if (if!) America and Northwest Europe are lost, Southern and Eastern Europe would be preserved as homelands for Europeans.

On a less positive note, I would observe that the organizational capacity of Southern and Eastern Europe is depressingly low. These countries, for whatever reasons, are not capable of producing jobs and social well-being to the degree that young people want or expect, and many of them are going to Northwest Europe. Peripheral Europe is suffering a brain drain. This certainly “re-Europeanizes” Northwest Europe to an extent, but it is hardly promising for the future. In the end, the “Nords” will have to awaken too and come to understand both ethnic realities and the supreme value of our European heritage.

************

Original article

ER recommends other articles by The Occidental Observer

About the author