The Rise of the European Populists

The progress of populist nationalist parties in Europe is starting to get on the radar in America. Dalibor Rohac’s Wall Street Journal article, “The Rise of the European Populists,” is a harbinger of what will surely be a media storm of hostility when, as seems likely, the European nationalists join the governments in several countries. Rohac’s take is that European elites have “spent decades stifling serious debate about the costs and benefits of European integration, Brussels has now provoked a political backlash that threatens to erode the union even further.”

The result is that “ugly” nationalist parties  that oppose immigration have been able to gain support by voicing real grievances about the Euro, the bailouts in Portugal and the ongoing crisis in Greece. The True Finns will be part of the ruling coalition in Finland, and Marie LePen’s National Front is labeled a contender to unseat Nicholas Sarkozy in next year’s elections. Rohac’s use of ‘ugly’ to describe these nationalist parties because they oppose immigration is typical of the demonization of normal, healthy desires to preserve one’s people and culture that are only vilified when expressed by Whites.

It’s refreshing to see Rohac’s statement that “Europe’s elites have been so convinced for so long that their brand of rapid and deep integration is the answer to Europe’s problems that they never bothered to make their case to Europe’s people.” But of course, it’s not just economic policy and the virtues of the Euro that have been enacted without popular input.

The same can be said for immigration: Throughout the Western world, massive non-White immigration has been a top-down phenomenon, a project of political, business, and media elites, as well as ethnic activist organizations, particularly the organized Jewish community. For example, polls of pre-1965 Americans have never showed support for the transformative immigration favored by the elites.

It’s doubtless the case that the current crisis of the Euro has helped nationalist parties who also oppose immigration. But the negative consequences of immigration have also been more and more apparent, particularly Muslims who are never going to assimilate to a European Christian culture. Let’s have a public discussion and vote on multiculturalism. I’d love to hear all the arguments for why multiculturalism is wonderful–arguments that necessarily would have to fly in the face of social science research.

In any case, the rise of European nationalist parties is certainly good news. Europe is light years ahead of America when it comes to organizing around explicitly anti-immigration parties. The revolution, if there is to be one, will begin in Europe.