11/10/2013
As Americans fighting open borders and globalism in our own country, it can be instructive to see how people are doing it in other Western countries. The New York Times just ran a piece entitled Right Wing’s Surge in Europe Has The Establishment Rattled [By Andrew Higgins, November 8, 2013]. The article, surprisingly evenhanded, focuses on Denmark and describes the growth of right wing parties in various countries of Europe. Here are some excerpts:
As right-wing populists surge across Europe, rattling established political parties with their hostility toward immigration, austerity and the European Union, Mikkel Dencker of the Danish People’s Party has found yet another cause to stir public anger: pork meatballs missing from kindergartens. A member of Denmark’s Parliament and, he hopes, mayor of this commuter-belt town west of Copenhagen, Mr. Dencker is furious that some day care centers have removed meatballs, a staple of traditional Danish cuisine, from their cafeterias in deference to Islamic dietary rules. No matter that only a handful of kindergartens have actually done so. The missing meatballs, he said, are an example of how “Denmark is losing its identity” under pressure from outsiders.
While the particular issues may be different, what we have in common with the Danes is the loss of identity thanks to mass immigration and state-enforced multiculturalism.
The issue has become a headache for Mayor Helle Adelborg, whose center-left Social Democratic Party has controlled the town council since the 1920s but now faces an uphill struggle before municipal elections on Nov. 19. “It is very easy to exploit such themes to get votes,” she said. “They take a lot of votes from my party. It is unfair.”
Boo-hoo, Mayor Adelberg. So you think it’s "unfair" for voters to remedy a situation which your party has imposed. Sounds familiar.
It is also Europe’s new reality. All over, established political forces are losing ground to politicians whom they scorn as fear-mongering populists. In France, according to a recent opinion poll, the far-right National Front has become the country’s most popular party. In other countries — Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland and the Netherlands — disruptive upstart groups are on a roll.This phenomenon alarms not just national leaders but also officials in Brussels who fear that European Parliament elections next May could substantially tip the balance of power toward nationalists and forces intent on halting or reversing integration within the European Union. “History reminds us that high unemployment and wrong policies like austerity are an extremely poisonous cocktail,” said Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister and a Social Democrat. “Populists are always there. In good times it is not easy for them to get votes, but in these bad times all their arguments, the easy solutions of populism and nationalism, are getting new ears and votes.”In some ways, this is Europe’s Tea Party moment — a grass-roots insurgency fired by resentment against a political class that many Europeans see as out of touch. The main difference, however, is that Europe’s populists want to strengthen, not shrink, government and see the welfare state as an integral part of their national identities.
In the United States, the welfare state is closely linked with multiculturalism. Yet notice that in some European countries, opponents of mass immigration support the welfare state. Of course, a welfare state may be easier to maintain in a more homogeneous country. Here in the U.S. it becomes a system of transfer payments between the races.
Immigration opponents in Denmark support their own Danish welfare state. Well, it’s their country, and they're not asking us to pay for it. I admire them for defending their own culture, and wish them the best. And I applaud them for rattling the establishment. We need that here.
For the rest of the article, click here.
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