Trump Fires Up Europe’s Anti-Establishment Movement
By Tyler Durden
Submitted by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,
- “The genie will not go back into the bottle again, whether you like it or not.” — Geert Wilders, MP and head of the Party for Freedom, the Netherlands.
- A growing number of Europeans are rebelling against decades of government-imposed multiculturalism, politically correct speech codes and mass migration from the Muslim world.
- Europe's establishment parties, far from addressing the concerns of ordinary voters, have tried to silence dissent by branding naysayers as xenophobes, Islamophobes and neo-Nazis.
- “In many respects, France and Germany are proving they do not understand the meaning of Brexit. They are reflexively, almost religiously, following exactly the path that has provoked the EU's current existential crisis.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
- “There is a genuine feeling that Trump taking over the White House is part of a bigger, global movement. Our critics, looking at Trump's candidacy and his speech yesterday, would call it the rise of populism. I would say it's simply a return to nation state democracy and proper values…. This is a genuine political revolution.” — Nigel Farage, former head of Britain's UKIP party, who led the effort for the United Kingdom to leave the EU.
- “This disruption is fruitful. The taboos of the last few years are now fully on the agenda: illegal immigration, Islam, the nonsense of open borders, the dysfunctional EU, the free movement of people, jobs, law and order. Trump's predecessors did not want to talk about it, but the majority of voters did. This is democracy.” — Roger Köppel, editor-in-chief of Die Weltwoche, Switzerland.
Inspired by the inauguration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, the leaders of Europe's main anti-establishment parties have held a pan-European rally aimed at coordinating a political strategy to mobilize potentially millions of disillusioned voters in upcoming elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France.
Appearing together in public for the first time, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, Frauke Petry, leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's Northern League and Harald Vilimsky of Austria's Freedom Party gathered on January 21 at a rally in Koblenz, Germany, where they called on European voters to participate in a “patriotic spring” to topple the European Union, reassert national sovereignty and secure national borders.
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The leaders of Europe's main anti-establishment parties appearing together in public for the first time, on January 21 in Koblenz, Germany. (Image source: Marine Le Pen/Twitter) |
The two-hour rally was held under the banner of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), a group established in June 2015 by Members of the European Parliament from nine counties to oppose European federalism and the transfer of political power from voters to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union.
Referring to the June 2016 decision by British voters to leave the European Union, and the rise of President Donald Trump in the United …read more
Source: Trump Fires Up Europe’s Anti-Establishment Movement
