Mainstream journalism gradually catching up to the obvious:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/european-union-far-right.htmlHans Kundnani’s mixed heritage—he was born of a Dutch mother and Indian father—frames his very readable critique of the European project (the EU), Eurowhiteness. When his parents arrived in the UK in the 1960s his Indian father was, he tells us, in some ways less of an outsider than his mother – he could vote, she could not. In his lifetime however, non-white Commonwealth citizens were “reimagined as immigrants” while the rights of Europeans continually grew.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/news/ethnonepotism/Continuing:
the focus on divisions within the bloc obscures a much more disturbing development taking place beneath the surface: a coming together of the center right and the far right, especially on questions around identity, immigration and Islam. With European parliamentary elections next year, this convergence is bringing into clearer view the possibility of something like a far-right European Union. Until recently, such a thing would have seemed unthinkable. Now it’s distinctly plausible.
Actually, I had warned about it well over a decade ago.
For the past decade, European politics have widely been understood in terms of a binary opposition between liberalism and illiberalism. During the refugee crisis in 2015, for example, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Mr. Orban were seen as political opposites—she the figurehead of liberalism, he of illiberalism.
Since then, the convergence between the center right and the far right in Europe has gone further. The lesson that center-right parties drew from the rise of right-wing populism was that they needed to adopt some of its rhetoric and policies. Conversely, some far-right parties have become more moderate, albeit in a selective way. At a national level, parties from the two camps have governed together, both formally, as in Austria and Finland, and informally, as in Sweden.
Yet the most striking illustration of this convergence is the harmonious relationship between the European center right and Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, who became prime minister of Italy last year. As soon as she indicated that she would not disrupt the bloc’s economic policy and would be supportive of Ukraine, the European People’s Party was willing to work with her—and its leader, Manfred Weber, even sought to form an alliance with her. The center right, it turns out, doesn’t have a problem with the far right. It just has a problem with those who defy E.U. institutions and positions.
The two, in fact, can agree on a lot—something that plays out most clearly in immigration policy. In contrast to its progressive image, the European Union has, like Donald Trump, sought to build a wall—in this case, in the Mediterranean—to stop migrants from arriving on its shores. Since 2014, more than 28,000 people have died there as they desperately tried to reach Europe. Human Rights Watch said earlier this year that the bloc’s policy could be summed up in three words: “Let them die.”
The European Union’s distinctive approach to migration depends on what might be called the offshoring of violence. Even as it has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees, the bloc has paid authoritarian regimes in North African countries to stop migrants from sub-Saharan Africa from reaching Europe, often brutally.
We have covered this double-standard extensively.
today’s far right speaks not only on behalf of the nation but also on behalf of Europe. It has a civilizational vision of a white, Christian Europe that is menaced by outsiders, especially Muslims.
...
figures like President Emmanuel Macron of France have also begun to frame international politics as a clash of civilizations in which a strong, united Europe must defend itself.
In this respect, Mr. Macron is not so far from far-right figures like Mr. Wilders who talk in terms of a threatened European civilization. His electoral success in the Netherlands could be a prelude, many fear, to a major rightward shift in the European parliamentary elections next June. That would give the far right substantial power to shape the next commission even more than the current one—both directly, with the possibility of far-right figures in top positions, and indirectly, with their concerns channeled by the center right.
This is why I said back in 2015 that Hungary should have been nuked the moment it refused to accept refugees. The reason all of the above is happening is because Hungary was not held accountable promptly and ruthlessly.