Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and France’s Marine Le Pen headlined a rally in Madrid on Saturday by Europe’s biggest far-right bloc, buoyed by Donald Trump’s return to power and calling for “a 180-degree pivot”.
Patriots for Europe has realigned extreme-right forces in the European Union. It became the European Parliament’s third-largest force after Orban helped launch it last year to pull the bloc towards the far right.
“Yesterday we were the heretics. Today we are the mainstream… We are the future,” proclaimed Orban, sharing the stage with other leading extreme-right nationalists including Dutch anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and former Czech premier Andrej Babis.
Much like America, I have to ask when the “before” was that they want to make great again. Because it always seems like the “before” in the case of MAGA people was “before slaves were emancipated and women were given rights.”
So I’m guessing 13th century or so here?
I find it incredibly cringe anyway that all these parties just copy the same slogan. Some weird form of international nationalism, where they all just copy whatever the others are doing. It apparently works very well.
I guess in Western Europe it’s largely focused around anti-immigration and anti-EU sentiments, but with this movement being more and more international, I do notice an uptick in rhetoric concerning sexual minorities and women’s rights, with a lot of anti science and elitism/wokeism sprinkled in. It’s very scary. I’m happy that we don’t have a political system where the winner takes it all in my country, as it’s pretty bad already as it is right now.
I don’t know about other countries’ far-rights, but the father of Marine Le Pen was openly racist and said that gaz chambers never existed (he lost a trial about hatred incitement for saying this). He was also proud to have killed algerians during the war. She’s more sweet in front of cameras compared to him, but she’s the same as he. This party was created by old SS, so I don’t think there’s something more to add. There’s no before for them, it’s pure fantasm. They just want control and order.
Obviously this sucks, those asshole fascists can fall off a cliff but holy crap MEGA is a much better acronym than MAGA.
Europe is already great.
These guys are making it not great.
It’s super simple.