With the EU election over and national conservatives standing significantly stronger in most EU countries—including the two largest, Germany and France—mainstream party leaders are showing just how little they learned from what happened. Instead of listening to the people who are increasingly rejecting Europe’s dominant center-left paradigm, some are still working towards alienating them. Because, as Rod Dreher wrote in his recent column, “it is always easier to blame the supposed evils of those one hates than face up to your own side’s failures.”
During a live television event on Sunday night, Chancellor Scholz’s ruling Social Democrat (SPD) party’s co-leader, Lars Klingbeil, called the members of the national conservative AfD “Nazis” while the AfD co-chair Alice Weidel was there with him in the studio.
“The result of the European elections is a wake-up call for many people to realize that the Nazis have become stronger in this election,” Klingbeil said shortly after the provisional results came in.
Naturally, Weidel snapped and asked who he was referring to exactly. “You know that I mean the AfD and you,” the SPD chief replied. Weidel asked, “You just called me and the party Nazis?” “Yes,” Klingbeil answered.
The comment came just after it had been confirmed that, despite the constant demonization from all corners of German society, AfD finished second with nearly 16%, ahead of all three parties of the ruling ‘traffic light coalition,’ including the SPD.
The same is happening in France, where Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin from Macron’s ruling Renaissance party equated Marine Le Pen’s election winner National Rally (RN) with the Nazi regime.
The minister’s comments came in response to the center-right Les Républicains (LR) leader Éric Ciotti announcing that his party is open to teaming up with National Rally for the coming snap elections in less than a month, needed after President Macron dissolved the Parliament due to his party’s crushing defeat on Sunday.
According to Darmanin, a pact between Les Républicains and National Rally is equal to “signing the Munich agreement,” the infamous appeasement deal between Nazi Germany and the Allied powers in 1938.
For the LR, the move is only a logical one, as siding with the winner tends to be more profitable than joining the losing side. Especially when the ‘Gaulist’ center-right is on its way toward obscurity, receiving only six seats in the EU election, as opposed to Le Pen’s 30. Some are capable of learning, after all.
Between National Rally, Les Républicains, and Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête, the united French Right could have 44.2% in the coming parliamentary elections, based on the EU election results. Macron tried to outmaneuver this alliance by pitching one of his own, but it seems that the leftist parties (the social democrats and greens) do not want to be in the same camp as the humiliated president.
Instead, an alternative challenger camp is beginning to take shape from everyone on the Left but Macron, including far-left formations. The “Popular Front,” as it will be called, will include the Socialist Party (PS), the green EELV, the Communist Party (PC), and the radical-left France Unbowed (LFI), who reached 31.6% between them in the EU elections.
The obvious counterproductivity of this hypocritical fuss about the “far-right” didn’t escape X-owner Elon Musk, who posted that he didn’t understand the outrage in the center. “They keep saying “far right”, but the policies of AfD that I’ve read about don’t sound extremist. Maybe I’m missing something,” the billionaire wrote.
Of course, these comments are not specific to either Germany or France, as the same message had been repeated by Brussels over and over again in the lead-up to the EU elections.
A month before the EU election, the European Parliament released its official campaign video, meant to increase the historically low turnout. As an institution and not a political organization, the Parliament should have been impartial to stay true to democratic principles, but of course, it wasn’t. The video in question features Holocaust survivors giving testimony of their horrific experiences, urging people to use their vote or “others will decide” the fate of Europe for them.
The love of freedom and the hatred of oppression resonates with everyone, so the message does seem impartial at first. But since the EU institutions and the mainstream parties spent the entire campaign calling sovereigntist, national conservative parties “far-right” or “extreme-right,” you know exactly what the video was trying to achieve and who it referred to under the ominous label “others.”