Every year the European Parliament awards a so-called “Sakharov Freedom of Conscience Prize.” The official story goes that the winner is selected for his or her contribution to the promotion of human rights. But a quick review of recent laureates belies that unctuous claim. Last year’s winner was an abstraction called the “opposition to Lukashenko,” and the prize has also been awarded to equally nebulous entities such as “Uyghur dissidents in China,” and the “Venezuelan opposition.” In the same tradition, “Afghan women and girls,” left a month ago to their own devices by the prize-givers, have also been nominated for recognition this year. Clearly the high sounding prize, brazenly manipulating the prestige of an iconic Russian scientist who just happens to be dead and unable to disown it, is a political propaganda tool.

The salience of the latter point is compellingly illustrated by this year’s principal nominees, the Bolivian coup regime “acting president” Jeannine Añez and the infamous Russian prevaricator Alexey Navalny.

The in-your-face European Parliament human rights prize nomination of señora Añez, for the notable accomplishment of serving as provisional head of state in an illegal coup regime which deposed the legitimately elected President, should be enough to give the whole game away, shouldn’t it? Fabled European values and the rule of law prattle apparently do not apply to countries where the majority indigenous population insists on having as its leader someone with whom it shares cultural and (why not say it openly?) ethnic affinity. Especially when that leader’s obnoxious policies (think of Mosadegh and Nasser for a moment) audaciously aim to preserve the country natural wealth and use it for the benefit of its citizens, and contrary to the designs of foreign industrial magnates. Mrs. Añez, who looks as Bolivian as apple pie, was fully cognizant of these circumstances when she accepted to front for her foreign sponsors and assume leadership of the coup regime they were installing, by agreeing to serve as the illegal President. By doing so, she violated the human rights of the vast majority of the Bolivian people who supported, as they still do, Evo Morales, the person she seditiously drove out of elected office. The potential that such a usurper might be awarded a “freedom of conscience” prize bearing the name of Andrei Sakharov, a man who was not perfect but stood for things quite opposite to the base political skulduggery to which this wretched, foolish, and power hungry woman had lent herself to, is nothing less than shocking. It is indeed an act of depravity and cynicism that only the amoral leadership of present-day Europe might have been capable of.

The other leading contender, Alexey Navalny, is cut from the same cloth. However, unlike Mrs. Añez, while having enjoyed his intoxicating fifteen minutes of fame, he had never been invested even temporarily with the glory of presiding over a broken and dismembered Russia, as he and his directors had dreamt. Like Mrs. Añez, Navalny is facing the music in a way neither of them had contemplated or was prepared for.

It is conceivable that had the proposal of collaboration been made to them after instead of before Afghanistan, they would have analysed it more soberly and even sceptically. That is merely a hypothetical possibility, of course, since such greedy and ambitious characters are not noted for their steep learning curve. But for all its undeniable unpleasantness, prison is nevertheless a great place to focus the mind. Both Mrs. Añez and her Russian colleague now have an opportunity to ponder not just their fate but also the subtle message underlying the spectacular honours that might soon be heaped on one or both of them.

That message is stark and simple, and it is that they are washed out. They will never seize the prize which they avidly sought, the opportunity to rule and plunder their countries as foreign surrogates, because their usefulness has finally run its course. The most that they can aspire to now is a consolation prize of sorts, the fading Empire’s European puppets’ act of condescension reserved for third or fourth echelon collaborators.

Oh, will they and their ilk ever learn? Most likely not.

Just as the Russian Federation goes to the polls in legislative elections this weekend, the European parliament launched an unprecedented attack on Russia’s sovereignty.

Some 74 percent of Europe’s 669 members of parliament (MEPs) voted on Thursday to approve a report calling for a staggering array of hostile moves towards Russia. The massive irony here is that this amounts to gross and explicit interference in Russia’s internal affairs by the European Union. This aggression is what the EU accuses Russia of without any credible evidence.

(Credibility warning: recall that the European parliament is the same disreputable chamber that voted two years to distort the history of World War Two by insinuating that the Soviet Union was partly responsible for starting the conflagration along with Nazi Germany.)

One particularly offensive theme in the latest report is the allegation that Russia’s elections held this weekend are not going to be legitimate. That’s even before they take place! And in that case, it urges the European Union to not recognize the new Russian parliament that emerges from the ballots. This is an incredibly idiotic way to further sabotage already-frayed relations between the EU and its largest European neighbor. It’s a gratuitous act of aggression.

What is doubly offensive is that Russia claims to have substantial evidence that the United States and its European allies have been interfering in Russia’s election by funding pseudo opposition groups and purported election monitors. One such monitor is Golos which is funded by USAID and the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy, both of which are fronts for the CIA. Then when the Russian electoral authorities restrict the subversive activities of such groups the Americans and Europeans decry “unfair elections”. This is what can be called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One small mercy is that the European parliamentary vote is non-binding which means it can be ignored by the European Commission executive and any of the bloc’s 27 member states. And ignoring such a provocative move is what they should do if relations between the EU and Russia are not to be plunged into further turmoil.

Nonetheless, the European lawmakers’ attack on Russia is deserving of forthright condemnation. At a time when international tensions are becoming more fraught and confrontational, it is contemptible that the European parliament is promoting a hostile policy towards Russia (and China). Dialogue, diplomacy and international law are being undermined by unhinged calls for adversarial actions. The European parliament is being criminally irresponsible.

The rhetoric in the 32-page report approved by the European parliament is irrational, intemperate and incendiary. It repeatedly refers to the Russian government as the “Putin regime” and accuses the Russian state of “repressing” its own population as well as being a “threat” to European neighbors.

The report is a voluminous agitprop screed befitting a Cold War time-warp which advocates that the EU “should counterbalance the efforts of Russia and China to weaken democracy worldwide and destabilize the European order”.

This is while the United States and its European NATO allies build up military forces on Russia’s borders and while the U.S. this week set up a new military alliance – known as AUKUS – with Britain and Australia that is an audacious provocation to China’s security.

Lamentably, the geopolitical climate is one in which the world is sliding dangerously towards war. And to its utter shame, the European parliament – supposedly a bastion of democracy and rule of law – is recklessly pushing this destructive dynamic.

A few other choice hostile declarations in the European parliamentary report are calls for the EU to curb energy imports from Russia so as to “end dependence on Russian oil and gas”; calls for the EU to cut Russia off from international banking systems; and calls for the EU to strengthen cooperation with the United States and other like-minded partners to “defend democracy globally”.

The latter is particularly laughable coming after the United States left European so-called allies high and dry by its unilateral pullout from Afghanistan. Also this week, the U.S. move to form a new military alliance with Australia, providing the latter with nuclear-powered submarines, caused France to howl about being “stabbed in the back” by Washington owing to Paris losing out on a $50 billion naval contract with Canberra.

European lawmakers are voting like pathetic lackeys of the United States despite Europe being treated over and over again as a mere vassal.

Mick Wallace, an independent Irish MEP who voted against the anti-Russia report this week, said his fellow European lawmakers were slavishly following a U.S. agenda and not acting in the interests of European citizens.

“The U.S. does have a vested interest in driving a wedge between the EU and Russia – a financial one. And sadly right now, the EU lacks the courage to stand up to the Americans and follow their own best interests,” commented Wallace.

“The vote against Russia was no surprise,” he added. “The anti-Russia rhetoric has been growing for over two years now. It is primarily driven by the U.S. which has found it easy to persuade some EU members states to dance to their bidding. Obviously, the Baltic states are more than willing to comply, as is Poland, the Scandinavians and some Eastern European countries.”

However, Wallace contended that the majority vote is largely meaningless in practical reality.

He said: “It’s important to remember that while many of the German and French MEPs are voting with the Baltic states, Poland etcetera, it amounts to a bit of game-playing for them, rather than serious intent. Especially for the Germans who see the sense of having a good relationship with Russia, but with their own elections coming up, now is not the time to be making that argument.”

Here’s the kicker though. The European Union is facing a crisis of governing authority among its 500 million citizens. And it’s no wonder when so many of its parliamentarians are cowards, duplicitous, and serving a foreign power against the interests of its own citizens, including putting their security and peace in jeopardy.

Whose parliament is not legitimate?

Mick Wallace, an independent Irish Member of the European Parliament, speaks his mind to Strategic Culture Foundation about the recent violence in Gaza where 248 people were killed by the Israeli military. Among the dead were 66 children during 11 days of bombardment of the Palestinian territory. Nearly 2,000 were injured in airstrikes on the densely populated coastal strip where two million people live in appalling deprivation. Hundreds of homes and civilian infrastructure were destroyed by the Israeli forces armed with U.S. warplanes and munitions. Rockets fired by Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 12 Israelis, including two children. Yet the United States and the European Union stridently declared support for Israel’s “right to self-defense” while not categorically denouncing the slaughter of Palestinians. Mick Wallace condemns what he calls the complicity of America and the European Union in Israeli war crimes. He says the oppression of Palestinians will continue tragically because, effectively, the U.S. and EU are sponsoring genocide. However, he notes, Western governments are increasingly out of step with public opinion horrified by Israel’s wanton occupation of Palestinian territory.

Wallace was elected to the EU parliament in 2019. He is an independent MEP who is affiliated with the European Party of the Left. He is an outspoken critic of American imperialism and European complicity in NATO aggression towards Russia. His weekly podcast frequently explores and condemns Russophobia in EU foreign policy which he says is due to the bloc’s subservience to Washington. Wallace’s outspoken internationalism and anti-imperialism have gained him much popular support in Ireland and abroad.

Interview

Question: American and European politicians commonly declare their support for Israel’s “right to self-defense”. However, you have stated that Israel does not have such a right. Many people would condemn your statement given the barrage of rockets fired at Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Can you explain why you think Israel does not have a right to self-defense?

Mick Wallace: Gaza is the largest concentration camp in the world. Do concentration camp guards have the right to self-defense? The indigenous people, the Palestinians, have the right to self-defense, not the colonizer. Does Israel have the right to self-defense? Does Israel have the right to commit crimes against humanity?

Question: During the recent eruption of hostilities between the Israelis and Palestinians, the European Union showed little leadership in calling for a ceasefire. Why is the EU so ineffective in resolving a conflict which is on Europe’s periphery?

Mick Wallace: It would probably be fair to say that when it comes to foreign policy, the European Union has never been so weak.

Question: European leaders aspire for the EU to be a global political force. But the EU is all too often seen as subordinate to the United States. With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Europe seems too deferential to Washington. Is that a fair criticism?

Mick Wallace: Yes, the EU does not have the courage to challenge the United States on these matters.

Question: You have been especially critical of Germany and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was formerly the German minister of defense, for their appeasement of Israel by not criticizing its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. You have made the point that Germany’s historical guilt from Nazism and the Holocaust is a factor. Can you elaborate on that point?

Mick Wallace: Von der Leyen is a weak European Commission president but her statement on the conflict emphasizing Israel’s supposed right to self-defense was a new low. Sixty-six Palestinian children were killed by the illegal occupier, Israel, while Hamas killed two Israeli children. And yet Von der Leyen could only condemn Hamas. Germany backs Israel because of its guilt over Nazi horror. Yet in appeasing Israel, German politicians are complicit today in crimes against humanity akin to those of Nazi Germany.

Question: Other European countries were also complicit in Nazi crimes against Jews, such as France and the Baltic states, Austria, Romania, and Hungary. During the latest violence, Austrian public buildings were draped with the flag of Israel. Does the specter of the past Nazi horrors and European guilt account for the EU’s failings with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Mick Wallace: There’s no doubt that German guilt for the terrible atrocities committed against European Jews is a factor. The failure of so many German Members of the European Parliament to criticize Israeli war crimes is shocking, but other forces are also at play. Israel is a vital part of the United States Empire, and that’s reflected in EU subservience to the Americans.

Question: Out of 705 European parliamentarians, a sizable majority seems to be supportive of Israel whereas among European citizens there is strong sympathy for the Palestinians suffering from illegal occupation and oppression. How do you explain such a discrepancy between elected representatives and the general public with regard to views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Mick Wallace: Politicians rarely represent their citizens.

Question: Is European guilt over Nazism and fascism a factor in the European Parliament’s attempts at World War Two revisionism whereby the Soviet Union is equated with the Nazi Third Reich?

Mick Wallace: I believe it’s more a case of the European Union, at America’s beckoning, trying to undermine and isolate Russia.

Question: Russia has offered to act as a mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians, claiming to have credible relations with both sides. The American mediation efforts have been a failure as has been shown by the chronic impasse and erosion of Palestinian rights over several decades. Do you think Russia could help find a resolution?

Mick Wallace: I wouldn’t be confident of Russia playing a neutral and fair role – the Kremlin also tolerates much of the lawless behavior of Israel.

Question: What, in your view, is a viable solution to the decades-old conflict?

Mick Wallace: That’s a big question. The two-state solution is long dead. The international community has to end its support for the apartheid state of Israel and must stop the genocide of the Palestinian people. All Palestinians are entitled to live a dignified life in their homeland. But this is unlikely to happen until the international community stops supporting U.S. imperialism, and the sovereignty of all nations is respected.

The Euroskeptics got a lot of press in the run up to these elections and the final result was pretty much in line with expectations, with a couple of exceptions. The pro-EU left lost a lot more ground in Sweden than expected but the Dutch People’s Party were rejected thoroughly in the Netherlands.

Otherwise the polls were mostly in line with the results. And while the early spin tried to put a brave face on results in the U.K. and France Marine Le Pen outpolling sitting president Emmanuel Macron just two years after he beat her in the presidential election is notable.

The results in the U.K. were a microcosm of the trends we’re seeing across Europe. The major parties, both campaigning from the center, lost the confidence of the people on both sides of the divisive Brexit argument.

Those that want Brexit in no uncertain terms bolted to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party while those fed up with Labour’s indecision on not only Brexit but a host of other issues bolted for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.

And a lot of those seats that would have went to the Social Democrats via Labour in the European Parliament now belong to Guy Verhofstadt and ALDE.

But the U.K. isn’t alone in this splitting along ideological lines. Germany has seen the collapse of the Social Democrats give spark to the Greens there as well. The Greens outpolled Angela Merkel’s Grand Coalition partners by more than five points, coming in 2^nd behind the CDU/CSU with 20.5%.

And this is the takeaway. Governing from the center by trying to mask what the EU actually is versus what it was sold as isn’t working. Merkel had to ‘un-retire’ as leader of the CDU to stop the bleeding, thinking she’d weathered the worst of the storm posed by Euroskeptics like Alternative for Germany, who regressed from their 2017 election result with 11%.

The strong performance in countries that are pro-EU by parties that want more integration of Europe, as represented by the gains of ALDE and the Green alliances, was offset by a harder, more confrontational brand of Euroskepticism as represented by Brexit, Hungary’s Fidesz and Italy’s Lega.

Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Nigel Farage’s Brexit are now the best represented parties in the European Parliament. Both are on a collision course with EU leadership intent on squashing both of them.

The full results weren’t even reported officially, and European President Donald Tusk was out in the media calling “Brexit the vaccine for Euroskepticism.” This is him doubling down on the fear tactics of what will happen to anyone who dares think about trying to leave the EU.

The problem for Tusk, of course, is that the political establishment in the U.K. is fraying badly and will not be able to hold onto power through the end of the year.

With this disastrous result one would expect the Tories to dissolve government out of shame, similar to what Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (not a guy with an ounce of shame, mind you) did after losing to New Democracy.

But that won’t happen. And it is obvious why. Brussels and Westminster are still scheming to scuttle Brexit and blunt the rise of Farage from riding a sovereigntist wave into 10 Downing Street later in the year.

Because Labour was so thoroughly rebuked after leader Jeremy Corbyn was suckered into backing a second referendum he doesn’t dare call for a No-Confidence Vote against the government as there’s little chance of him winning a General Election with anything other than an unworkable coalition.

There will be, however, a challenge to his leadership in the near future as the political class in London have been itching to get rid of Corbyn and put one of Tony Blair’s hand-picked globalists back in charge.

A drubbing like Labour just took should be all the impetus they need to pull the plug.

For now, we’ll have to sit through a ridiculous glamour party as the Tories try to figure out who wants to captain its Titanic with an iceberg dead ahead set for impact on Halloween.

But since these elections didn’t end up with an upside surprise for the Euroskeptic parties overall, the usual suspects in Brussels will wrongly take that as a vote of confidence to thwart any reforms to their European project.

Tusk’s statement was aimed directly at his own Polish government as well as Salvini in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary. The EU’s counterattack already began for Italy with the EU threatening to fine Italy $4 billion it doesn’t have for violating budget rules. This came one day after Salvini was handed a loaded gun by voters to oppose EU austerity.

Germany voted for Merkel et.al. to stay the course if not accelerate the program and Italy voted otherwise.

This is a perfect example of why, ultimately, the EU is an unworkable project that should never have been allowed to get to this stage of political integration. Had it simply stayed a free-trade zone like what is on offer in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) it would have been successful.

But that was never the agenda. The agenda was always to create a transnational superstate with no regard for the will of the people it governed. And for years these people were lied to about what the EU was and what its goals were.

And now that they see it some have embraced it and others have rejected it.

That’s why the center can no longer hold and why in the very near future mere anarchy will be loosed upon it because of the hubris of those who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

If we give all Eurosceptics/Conservatives/Right Wingers a free pass and count them as part of this big win for the Right then they have ~171 out of 751 seats – a tiny minority that can be absolutely crushed by pro-system block votes. Furthermore, in our current political system(s) that we live in, we are all at the mercy of the insanity of party-based systems that lack mechanisms to force members of a given party to behave according to their advertised principles. Meaning, that none of these seats that have been won by so the so-called “Right” are guaranteed to vote for those principles, so the actual amount of true Eurosceptics and Patriots is probably vastly lower than ~171. (This number could be counted a few ways but it is always a small minority)

Despite the way the Mainstream Media makes elections results look, changes in party balances and people’s voting habits are generally incremental and not radical. There are exceptions, but most shifts in voting results are best measured in single digit percentages. So from a long-term standpoint, a few more election cycles of this nature could actually yield a real change in EU Parliament dynamics. The question is whether Europe can survive 20+ years till it gets a Parliament against the bizarre and self-destructive economic/migration/military policies that have been forced upon it.

These electoral results (plus events like the Yellow Vest protests in/around France) should be used politically not for the future opportunity to have more Eurosceptics sit in a big room watching their countries be murdered bureaucratically, but to make a strong case for the total and obvious legitimacy of Eurosceptic/Traditionalist views in mainstream political discourse.

Legitimacy is very important. Only “legitimate” viewpoints get to go on TV, get discussed by hundreds of politicians in ugly blue chairs in a big room, and have the chance to become law. This is the historical moment when the sceptics can push the Overton window in the EU far in their own direction so they can finally get a piece of its territory. Using this newfound legitimacy to attain media exposure is critical if they want to have any hope of winning over the Euro-normies.

These Right forces need to work out all their talking points to answer the now boring and ridiculous (although firmly mainstream) views that migration control is racist, that loving your culture is hateful and that taxing the middle-class to death builds wealth. The Liberal elite that rules today was very good at establishing the right talking points and propaganda strategies to intellectually annihilate traditional Christian Europe. Now it is their turn to play defense as their way of doing things has proved to have its own very different set of blatant failings.

One small but important measure towards legitimacy is starting to do away with the term Eurosceptic, because more often than not scepticism can be portrayed as irrational. Sceptics stand against what is an accepted reasonable norm and this is generally a weak and scary (for normies) position to promote. Furthermore, the position of “against” is always weaker than presenting a clear and exciting positive vision of one’s ideology. Counteroffers are stronger than just saying the word “no” to everything.

The second logical step would be to attack the mainstream EU political position with justified allegations of racism and bigotry. In many ways it is the European mainstream who sees the world entirely through race, presenting Non-Europeans as inherently helpless victims. The Right needs to reject this 21^st century “White Man’s Burden” and offer up a worldview were Europeans respect themselves and have respect for others, seeing people in Africa and the Middle-East as equally competent and responsible for developing their own society themselves without Euro-interference. The Right’s offer needs to be clear – mutual respect between the world’s cultures and human dignity instead of cultural masochism, forced tolerance and open borders.

To put it bluntly now is the time for them to sell their recently electorally legitimized Euro-vision that doesn’t look anything like the current suicidal “Eurovision”, because their gained Parliament seats will not yield any major policy gains. Their opponents’ (the status quo’s) job is to make sure that perception of the Right continues to show them as cooky irrational marginal “sceptics” whose backward hateful beliefs are intellectually from the Dark Ages, that have no place whatsoever in serious public discourse.

For the first time in its short history the European parliament’s ‘bloc’ of mainstream parties – Christian Democrats and Social Democrats – will no longer enjoy the majority vote in the parliament. Both these pan European groups took a hammering at the ballot box by populist parties, notably in France, Hungary, Italy and UK and to some extent in Germany.

These new parties, although bundled into one nascent ideology – anti EU – are not however entirely identical in their views, although an anti- immigration agenda it should be said binds them together. In reality, the recently formed ‘Brexit Party’ of Nigel Farage’s which was the clear winner in the UK ahead of all parties, flies slightly different colours to the others, in that its agenda is radical; the Brexit Party has no manifesto which binds its members together who come from different political strands in the UK, other than removing the UK from the European Union. And here’s where the minor but important detail needs to be noted. The other parties, which will no doubt be grouped with Farage’s in the parliament, and will be a recalcitrant gang of MEPs who don’t sign up to the consensus-driven, almost elitest ideology of the Brussels mindset, will be part of the establishment – even if they don’t want to be.

When UKIP swept 24 seats in 2014 and also emerged the winner, what few liked to admit was how quickly it became the acceptable tone of renegade views within the EU dimension; the photographs of Jean Claude Junker and Nigel Farage hugging each other in the parliament speak volumes. For the EU elite, who dream of an EU with much stronger, federalist power base, Farage was the rude boy in the house who ticked the box ‘opposition’.

And this is the role which, probably, the new group from Italy, Hungary and France, will play once the EU’s dazzle and glamour starts to be felt by those members.

But this cannot be the case for the Brexit Party which, no doubt, will enjoy itself with the cackle in the house (which is going to become louder, certainly) but will be seen as a fringe party compared to its partners, in that it is committed to at the very least removing the UK from the EU – which few should doubt, when it should happen, will be a considerable blow to the EU itself, if not a fatal one.

Indeed, the reason why the UK is in the mess that it is in, with a troubled Tory party struggling to pull off Brexit, is the paranoia and dirty tricks played by the EU’s side, terrified that a successful Brexit would mean the ultimate blow for the EU, certainly the EU as we know it. The ‘deal’ offered to Theresa May was a deal with only one real purpose: to reduce the UK to a completely servile state, worse off and in disarray and an example to all who should ever dare to think of leaving the EU.

The EU never believed Theresa May had the courage to deliver a no deal Brexit and so, advised by British Labour MEPs in Brussels no doubt, played their hand well.

But no more.

The Brexit Party’s leverage on the conservatives – the ultimate threat to reduce their power base at the next general elections if a no deal Brexit is not delivered – is powerful and real. The European Union would be foolish to imagine that Boris Johnson, as a new leader and PM, would not go through with it, simply because he, in turn, has no real alternative to stay in power and for the conservatives to keep the seats they hold.

And so, despite the Left’s laughable claim that the European Union elections were not quite the sweeping victory by far rights parties across the Union which was expected (as Greens and Liberals picked up a number of seats), the EU needs now to take its next steps very carefully.

Already, we are hearing idiotic statements in Brussels by the architect of the existing withdrawal agreement that Theresa May leaving and the Brexit Party taking the lion’s share of MEP seats will not affect the present deal. This is both erroneous and stupid.

Firstly, the new officials who will take up their positions are not obliged to continue to run with the same position. Look carefully to see who which EU giants will play a big role in selecting the short list [read Macron and Merkel] and the names being put forward might give you a clue as to the likelihood that a Christian Democrat (as Jean Claude Junker is) will be replaced by a Green or a Liberal (the latter more likely to keep Macron happy).

That is already an indication that a more pragmatic European Commission president is on the cards, which signals a change in the air which could both diffuse a new atmosphere in Brussels (which will have to cope with an ‘opposition’ for the first time ever in the consensus driven EU) and a new approach to Brexit.

There is a clash at the moment though between Macron and Merkel over a new Commission president who will have to face Boris Johnson which media have reported as being seen by the euro elite as someone who genuinely scares them. The EU absolutely hates political leaders from member states which have verve and are considered attractive if not polemic by both other member states and world leaders. Boris Johnson is basically a nightmare and the current Brexit ‘deal’ that the EU is clinging onto will have to be scrapped. That’s the plain truth about the Brexit Party’s victory in the MEP elections and Theresa May stepping down as PM. The EU now knows that there needs to be a new Brexit deal. The tricky bit is making that happen but making it look as though it was not from a position of weakness for the EU to take. Given that the EU appears to be imploding as a credible political entity on a weekly basis, this could be an arduous task to pull off. Of course, it’s not out of the question that EU federalist buffoons like Guy Verhofstadt, a man so bereft of any appeal that he makes a pile of damp towels look exciting, will plough ahead with the suicide pill policy of recent years: keep asking for more money, talk about ‘expansion’ and the need for a new EU army, refuse to acknowledge the growing gap between the electorate and Brussels. The list is endless.

The EU Parliament elections that wrapped up over the weekend may not have been the blowout that some predicted for German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. But the champions of the European political establishment were still badly damaged.

In Germany, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, or CDU party, weathered the polling, with some slippage. But its main ally, the center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, lost nearly half its ground from five years ago. In France, Macron’s centrist grouping lost to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, or RN.

The results reveal a rising political tide buoying rightwing, anti-EU populists: Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini; Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the U.K.’s Brexit Party leader Nigel Farrage.

The trend leaves the partnership of the centrist European People’s Party (with Merkel as its tacit leader) and the Party of European Socialists, or PES, no longer able to run the European Parliament as it has for 40 years. Now they will need the help of external forces.

Marine Le Pen: Capturing anti-EU outrage. (Rémi Noyon via Wikimedia Commons)

All of this was predictable.

For too many years the EU political elites have neglected their  constituencies. Instead, to please Germany and banking interests, they  enforced austerity policies at the expense of lower-income people and employment.

Ultraliberalist Orthodoxy 

For too many years the EU elites have been prone to support an ultra-liberalist orthodoxy that has been ravaging the welfare state. Meanwhile, they failed to adequately address the social consequences of mass immigration. Unable to forge a common policy, they hypocritically preached human rights while striking deals with Turkey and other Mediterranean countries that provided money to keep migrants in detention camps.

Barrier along Hungarian-Serbian border, 2015. (Délmagyarország / Andrea Schmidt via Wikimedia Commons)

For too many years the EU has been accommodating corporate lobbying and hardly responding to the problem of rising unemployment among young people in southern Europe.

The cardinal question is why voters in the lower-middle classes — marginalized and impoverished by ultra-liberal, right-wing policies— are now voting for right-wing and even extreme right-wing parties? Why not leftist parties, in keeping with the classical logic of political alternatives?

The answer appears to be simple: the European left is not seen as an alternative.

The only big European country where the left (in a very mild version of that term) marked gains is Spain. There the Socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez won 33 percent of the vote. But that result mainly reflected public animus towards the corrupt and centrist People’s Party, or PP, which flooded Spanish banks with money just as the “leftist” Democratic Party, or PD, did in Italy.

Spain’s Pedro Sánchez at left: A People’s Party no-vote-getter. (CC-BY-4.0: © European Union 2019)

Italy’s left has more or less disappeared. It has been drowned by the very bourgeois PD, which took 23 percent of the vote, down from 38 percent five years ago.

Mute on Yellow Vests 

In France, during the Yellow Vest era, the most impressive social uprising in recent European history, leftist parties merely held ground. Both the longstanding Socialist Party and the new Left Party got 6 percent. Neither one was able to give a political voice to the Gilet Jaunes. Instead, most of the anticapitalistic insurgency was absorbed by Le Pen’s extreme right-wing Rassemblement National (National Rally) or the Greens.

The liberal-democrats of ALDE — the most avowedly pro-business and pro-EU political group in the EU Parliament — managed to win around 15 percent of the vote. This was a clearly alarmed reaction to the prospect of an anti-European populist takeover.

What Next?

Again, the two traditional leadership groups — the People’s Party and the PES  — will no longer be able to run the show on their own and will need new allies. ALDE will be more than happy to help, as will the Greens, under certain conditions.

The populist and right-wing parties of Le Pen, Salvini and Orban will remain in the opposition. But they will have a stronger say in the appointment of the new commissioners in Brussels. And they may continue to capitalize on the further decline of the middle class.

The “mild” PES  –  which prioritized the defense of Volkswagen over workers’ rights during the past five years — will be pushed to the margin of the new majority. The “harder” European United Left will remain at the margin of the opposition. Both are damned to disappear from the EU Parliament and from European society altogether if they continue to cede monopoly over the social protest movements to the populist and right-wing parties.

consortiumnews.com

One glaring anomaly is that Britain is participating in these elections, even though, in theory, it was supposed to have departed the EU in March. The Brexit wrangling has persisted without a clear result, meaning that the United Kingdom is obliged to hold EU parliamentary elections like the other 27 member states. European parliamentarians elected in Britain may not actually take their seats in Brussels or Strasburg because the Brexit process when complete – whenever that happens – will make their seats redundant.

Another anomaly is that the 2019 elections have been overshadowed with political and media claims in the run-up to the polls that Russia would launch an “interference campaign” to sway voters to vote for political parties opposed to the EU status quo.

Yet on the eve of the ballots being cast, Western news media and various EU security pundits have had to admit that there has been no evidence of the anticipated “Kremlin influence campaign”. Such an alleged Russian meddling campaign in the EU is an echo of the long-running, baseless narrative applied to the US presidential elections in 2016. No evidence has ever been produced to substantiate either scenario.

Russia has consistently and vehemently denied any such notion of “peddling influence” over Western voters. But the great anomaly is that Western media and European security agencies are having to admit that there is no indication that Russia has targeted the EU elections with a campaign of media interference.

The rise of nationalist, anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic, anti-austerity, anti-war, anti-capitalist political movements across Europe is simply due to this: a surge in anti-establishment parties. The surge of protests among European citizens against a neoliberal establishment has nothing to do with alleged “Russian interference” and everything to do with an inherent democratic deficit in the 28-member bloc.

By trying to blame Russia for “malignly influencing” EU citizens and funding “anti-EU parties”, as the government scandal in Austria sought to do this week, is an act of desperate denial politics by the EU establishment as to its own dire political and economic failings. Such official denial and scapegoating of Moscow is only fueling even more popular protest and instability within the EU.

French President Emmanuel Macron this week typically blamed “collusion between nationalist parties and foreign interests for threatening the existence of Europe”. Macron’s elitist views are symptomatic of the establishment malaise which is actually at the core of the problem in the EU’s crumbling cohesion and authority.

Britain’s Brexit referendum held in 2016 was a forewarning of the popular dissent across the EU towards an establishment in Brussels perceived as anti-democratic, beholden to big finance and Neo-liberal capitalist austerity, as well as kowtowing to a Washington-led consensus for illegal overseas wars and NATO expansionism.

The EU status quo has led to massive problems of immigration from pandering to America’s illegal warmongering in the Middle East and North Africa. European citizens have become awake to those problems and are opposed to the degeneration of Europe as an adjunct of Washington’s imperialism. That dissent is also manifest in many European citizens being opposed to the EU’s compliance with US-led sanctions and hostility towards Russia. The fact of that does not mean that Russia is somehow influencing opposition movements. It is simply a fact that European citizens are in revolt against an anti-democratic status quo that is all too often servile to a transatlantic axis that is not in their fundamental democratic interests, like so many other policies that the EU status quo slavishly adheres to.

Emmanuel Macron and other EU establishment figures may push the fantasy that the bloc is under threat from “far-right nationalist parties in cahoots with the Kremlin”.

The fact is that the EU is simply perceived by a growing number of its 512 million citizens as a monolith that is unresponsive to democratic needs. That’s why they are rebelling against the status quo by voting for a range of anti-establishment parties. If the EU can’t recognize the democratic impulse from within its own bloc then its future is destined for further disruption as the Brexit movement portends. Blaming “external enemies” like Russia for its own inherent political problems is being proven for the desperate denial that it is.

The people are speaking this weekend. The EU establishment better listen.

Italy’s Matteo Salvini is riding high right now. Having weathered a couple of cheap legal moves to derail his assault on the European Parliament this May, Salvini is working to galvanize Euroskepticism across the continent into a viable political force.

He’s got his work cut out for himself.

But, he has at least two major allies. Marine Le Pen of the National Rally in France and Viktor Orban, the leader of Hungary. Salvini and Le Pen met last week to announce they would be campaigning together for the European elections as well as a major summit in Milan soon.

This is only the beginning, however.

I’ve been saying for over a year now that Salvini needs to be the person who lays the foundation for a wholesale revolt against the European Union and Italy’s participation in the euro.

His Lega party have skyrocketed in the polls, reversing the dynamic between it and coalition partner Five Star Movement. It’s a coalition that is of the kind which frightens the political establishment in Europe because it isn’t formed on the traditional left-right false divide.

It is a populist one united on the common cause of overthrowing the corrupt, corporatist system which most western governments are fronts for.

And since coming to power last year there have been multiple attempts to drive wedges between these supposedly strange bedfellows. All of them have failed. And part of the reason for that has been the surging popularity of Lega and Salvini.

Having survived to this point and scared the EU a few times with Trump-like ‘big asks’ on the budget and immigration reform, Salvini and his partner in populism Luigi Di Maio are looking towards the EP elections as a first major test of their government.

And being able to bring together groups from all over Europe to agree on a common platform to challenge the French/German axis of power would put them in a good position in the second half of 2019 to push things farther, especially as it pertains to Italy’s insane fiscal situation.

I realized early on that Salvini was two things. He was both a radical who was also methodical. He’s not flaming out in a blaze of glory here. He’s building his case against the EU slowly, allowing history to come to him.

He’s stayed far away from the Brexit debacle, even though he knows he has the power to stop the betrayal of the vote and force the divorce. But rather than do that it’s better to let the process play itself out and reveal the ugly truth of it all while he takes notes and reloads for the next attack on the EU.

If Euroskeptics outperform the current polling which has them at around 30-32% of the seats and Salvini can rally them under one banner to become the biggest party in the EP, then that would send the right kind of message back home to Italy.

There is something big brewing between Salvini and Di Maio. First, they sign up with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, whose second major summit is later this month. This angered both Trump and Angela Merkel.

All in a day’s work.

But the bigger news, in my mind, is the Italian parliament is pushing to repatriate the nation’s gold reserves from the Bank of Italy. Two laws are under consideration:

One law would instruct the central bank’s owners, most of them private banks, to sell their shares to the Italian Treasury at prices from the 1930s.

The other law would declare the Italian people to be the owners of the Bank of Italy’s reserve of 2451.8 metric tons of gold, worth around $102 billion at current prices.

The Bank of Italy is mostly owed by Italian commercial banks who are now both insolvent and at risk of EU banking rules. This puts them at risk of seeing depositors bailed-in and the banks forcibly restructured overnight by the European Central Bank.

Don’t believe me? Go back and look at what happened to Banco Popular of Spain in 2017. It was sold off to Santander for $1 after the ECB declared it non-viable. It wiped out the shareholders over a weekend and life went on as if nothing had happened.

But it did happen and that did nothing to reassure investors that there is even a hope in hell of getting your investment back out of a European bank if that’s how the ECB can act. In some ways, why do you think it’s going to be so difficult for Deutsche Bank to raise the necessary capital ($6 to $10 billion) to merge with equally-insolvent Commerzbank?

If you had a choice between Deutsche and J.P. Morgan Chase at this point what would you do? US banking system may be corrupt but it isn’t stupid enough to toss aside the one thing that ensures safe-haven foreign capital flows, that investors come first.

I may not like Chase, but I’m putting my money on it over Deutsche any day of the week and especially not on a Sunday evening while Mario Draghi is on the scene.

If those Italian banks are dealt with similarly by the ECB as Banco Popular we could easily see their ownership transferred to their creditors and, by extension, the ownership of the Bank of Italy right along with it.

Talk about undermining national sovereignty!

And what’s the only thing of value on the Bank of Italy’s balance sheet? The gold.

Salvini and Di Maio’s government urging the Bank of Italy to sell the gold back to the government at 1930’s prices is a way to ensure that Italy’s gold reserves stay unencumbered and available to back any new version of the lira if things get to that point.

Like Brexit negotiations the nuclear option, clean divorce, must be a credible threat, i.e. a No-Deal Brexit and unilateral withdrawal from the euro.

This threat by the Italians has been simmering for a while and every time it comes up the talking points from the regime press are the same. It threatens the independence of the central bank. The gold could be sold to pay for populist spending programs. Blah blah blah.

No, the real threat is with the Italian gold owned by the Italian people the Italian government could start all over again with a new currency.

And that is what this is all about.

So, first, Salvini goes into the European Parliament with a solid voting bloc to disrupt proceedings and further undermine Angela Merkel’s powerbase. Second, he and Di Maio take that success back to Rome and use that to engage real EU reform of the financial system.

And if they don’t get what they want, if Merkel holds fast to her policy of Germany strip-mining of Europe via austerity, then they go on the offensive with 2410 tonnes of gold in their back pocket. This will be an easy sell as the European economy implodes further.

It’s not like Germany is in a position to drive a strong bargain with its economy rapidly plunging towards recession.

Any small shock at this point will cause a massive run on European assets. We’ve just seen a enormous move into safe-haven assets in the past month.

The European bond markets are ripe for a sharp reversal on any catalyst.

To pull all off their ‘revolution’ in the EP, however, Salvini and Le Pen will likely have to play nice with Poland on Russia, not pushing for sanctions relief just yet. To unite Euroskeptics over the next seven weeks will be difficult. But, Salvini has shown flexibility to this point with his own coalition.

What makes you think he’s not capable of bringing Poland on side?

A policy which she herself has had to pull back on. And no matter how far Merkel has changed her stance and acceded to the reality of the damage her policy has created, Orban is still guilty of the sin of non-compliance.

Actually, he’s guilty of a whole lot more than that. Because Orban has not only stepped on the third-rail of European politics he’s stomped up and down while taking a massive dump on it.

That third-rail, of course, is naming names. Naming the very person who controls so much of EU policy through his co-opting large swaths of the European parliament.

That person, of course, is George Soros.

Now there is a push, ahead of May’s European Parliamentary elections, to kick Orban’s dominant Fidesz party out of the European People’s Party (EPP), a nominal center-right coalition and the largest single party within the EU parliament.

And with each victory over Soros Orban grows even bolder. After a successful re-election campaign predicated on the slogan, “Don’t Let Soros Win,” Orban has banned Soros’ major NGO, Open Society Foundation, as well as forced out his Central European University.

But his biggest sin was equating outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude “When things get tough you have to lie” Juncker with Soros’ attempts to weaken Hungary’s border.

His reward for this, and building a border fence which thwarts Soros and Merkel’s tactic of tying immigrants in the host country in legal limbo for years by being inset from Hungary’s actual border, has been an Article 7 procedure opened up against Hungary for not abiding by the EU’s position on human rights.

Poland is in similar hot water with Merkel but thanks to one of the few reasonable things within the EU’s framework, each country can use the other to veto the actual censuring and concomitant removal of voting rights within the Union that comes with the full application of Article 7.

But this article isn’t really about Orban’s latest troubles with the faux democrats within the EU parliament. It’s about how scared those people are of the rise in Euroskeptics like Orban across the continent ahead of May’s elections.

Orban’s potential expulsion from the EPP is just another symptom of this fear. Recently, France’s Marine Le Pen, found out that the trial against her for tweeting out images of ISIS beheadings back in 2015, will go forward with the potential of landing her in jail for three years.

This is not much different than the kidnapping charge Sicilian prosecutors tried to bring against Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of Lega and all-around bad boy Matteo Salvini in Italy. This was a lame attempt to split Italy’s Euroskeptic coalition and keep it focused on internal trivialities versus mounting a real challenge in May’s elections.

The same is true now for Le Pen. Her National Rally party is polling within the margin of error of President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche with a real chance to send a plurality of French Euroskeptic MEPs to Brussels in a couple of months.

Merkel is struggling with the same thing. And even though support for Alternative for Germany (AfD) has waned in recent polling, down to just 13%, don’t underestimate the voters’ desire to send a strong message to Brussels by voting in stronger numbers for the new or alternative parties rather than how they would vote for them at home.

We’ve seen this in the past with UKIP who shocked everyone in the last European elections in 2014 with the size of the vote for them. It never translated into domestic momentum as typical prisoner’s dilemma concerns are more prevalent in Britain’s majoritarian voting system.

But for the EU parliament where the two-party system doesn’t hold sway and the direct benefits are harder to make a case to voters for, it’s much more likely voters will loosen up a little and throw their support for a smaller, less established party.

And that, along with some serious miscalculations about Brexit which I’ll get to in a minute, has the power elite in European political circles very scared. So scared that they are willing to devote serious resources in Quixotic endeavors of dubious value.

Expelling Orban from the EPP will only give him more strength. It will only give Euroskeptics more ammunition. Orban, like Salvini, revels in being the outsider. He’ll use it to rally others across Eastern Europe and pull a few more seats into that orbit.

According to the latest polling, which you can find an up-to-date tally of here, Euroskeptic parties will take between 215 and 225 seats out of the 705 up for grabs, assuming Britain actually leaves and doesn’t stand for MEP elections, which at this point doesn’t look likely.

If reports are true that Prime Minister Theresa May cut a deal with Merkel in July of last year on the withdrawal agreement. And if that agreement was structured so as to ease the way for the U.K. to rejoin the EU later are true, then there is no way Mrs. May will be able to forestall Brexit on WTO terms at this point, even if it takes another 90 days to do so.

A report from the Bruges Group, since taken down, had the details (see link above). And we’ll know if this is the case if suddenly Theresa May agrees to step aside as Prime Minister just after March 29^th whether or not Britain leaves.

Because she will have either failed to scuttle Brexit and be sacrificed to save the Tories. Or she steps aside for a true Brexiteer in the event of Parliament voting for an extension.

We’ll know this was the case if she does so.

Lots of ifs, I know, but right now everyone is doing the Juncker-Two-Step, lying and cajoling to maintain the status quo and continue forward towards further European integration.

Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank did his part, going full dove for the rest of 2019 to keep markets from imploding.

And if Brexit is settled on WTO terms that opens up their worst nightmare going forward.

Watch Viktor Orban smile the smile of the just at that point.