The Phonies Will Be Revealed

Back in the nineties, I was giving speeches and writing articles claiming that nationalism, in some form, would become a major political trend in the West.

It didn’t take a prophet or son of a prophet or any brilliance to predict that a major force would challenge the neoliberal world order. Of course, men like Francis Fukuyama were predicting the “end of history” and envisioning an entire world under the thrall of the wrestling tag team of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. Poor Dr. Fukuyama can be perhaps forgiven for his error; being the son of a Japanese immigrant, he perhaps did not fully understand the inscrutable and mysterious ways of the Occidental mind.

Well, here we are in 2023. Hungary has a conservative regime successfully fending off Third-World immigration. Finland and Sweden have government coalitions, where the leading parties are nationalistic, even if mildly so. In order to fend off the rise of populist-nationalist parties, the leftist government of Denmark has severely limited immigration. Slovakia’s Robert Fico is back in charge again, attempting to implement his unusual mixture of social democracy and nationalism. As I put pen to paper, Geert Wilders’ Party of Freedom, amazingly, led the pack and came out on top in the Dutch elections. Ms. Miloni’s Fratelli d’Italia is in charge in Italy. Yet, for all this good news, there are voices in our circles shouting “elite puppets” and most often “controlled opposition” as mildly nationalist and national-conservative governments take power or come close to the levers of power.

One is tempted to dismiss the naysayers out of hand, but I do not. For every Jesus, there is a Judas. Betrayal is obviously not something unknown in the world of politics. Our opponents, the neoliberal elites, have insane amounts of cash on hand to make sure that people who are bought, stay bought. It would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the power of our enemies. After all, Marine Le Pen is not her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Giorgia Meloni is not Roberto Fiore or even the late Giorgio Almirante. The Sweden Democrats were a lot more edgy in their views in their early days.

A lot of moderation of positions had to be taken in order for the current nationalist-populist parties to be made more palatable to the typical voter. Donald Trump had to offer his pinch of incense to the gods of the Israel lobby to get the evangelical vote. I am sure that one of the reasons Ms. Meloni isn’t taking tougher steps against migrant arrivals is the experience of her coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, who, while he was Minister of the Interior in the Conti government, didn’t let some North African invaders disembark off a ship — an act for which he is still facing criminal charges, though some of them have been dismissed.

I think it’s inevitable that there will be traitors to the cause, perhaps even quite a few. As a student of human nature, I take such things in stride. In fact, I’m quite optimistic overall. The Overton Window has shifted and it’s going to be quite a long while before it shifts in the opposite direction. The middle- and working-class whites of Europe and the US, as well as adjacent aspiring elites, are angry. They are sick to death of the crime and disorder wrecked by Third-World immigrants. They have little patience for the green agenda that openly plans for their impoverishment.

My conviction is that if the new breed of “marketable” mildly nationalistic parties and candidates don’t do what they were elected to do, the voters will look for someone else who can embody Mussolini’s “acta, non verba” philosophy. The great thing about this is that if the moderate nationalists fail, there are already harder-edged political formations that are in existence that could replace them. Let’s say, just as an example, that Marine Le Pen eventually triumphs in the 2027 French presidential elections and, when assuming office, decides to be an all-talk, no-action leader. She can always be replaced by Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest Party. Interestingly, Zemmour happens to have as his side-kick Marion Marechal, Ms. Le Pen’s niece! The very existence of Reconquest ensures that a future Marine Le Pen presidency has to worry about a party that is more militantly anti-immigration than Le Pen is. If elected, Marine would not only have to deal with resistance on the Left but also on the Right if she does not do her job on the immigration front.

Viktor Orbán has done a magnificent job as Prime Minister of Hungary. It is extremely unlikely that he should excessively moderate in his old age. It should be remembered though that during his first term in office (1998-2002) he ruled as a centrist. Orbán does have to worry about a threat on his right. When Jobbik decided suspiciously, out of the blue, to become a globalist center-right party in the mid-2000s, a splinter of real nationalists left Jobbik and founded “Our Homeland.” At the moment, Our Homeland has six seats in the Hungarian Parliament, but it could grow in the, admittedly unlikely, event that Orbán should grow weak in the knees for some reason. Our Homeland is a bit more radical than Orbán’s Fidesz.

In recent elections in Poland, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), which has ruled Poland since 2015, will give way to a coalition led by Donald Tusk, an uber-globalist. I think it likely that PiS will return to power someday, especially if Mr. Tusk opens up the borders to the Third World. If the Polish people are tired of Law and Justice, they have a new party combining libertarianism and nationalism called Konfederacja, an organization that gained 11 seats in the election, but was hoping for more. Still, since PiS remains the biggest single party in Poland, it is likely that the voters may consider them again.

Politics is a messy and difficult business. There are, to use a Churchillian phrase, “no broad sunlit uplands” where we can let down our guard, no matter how successful nationalist movements become. It’s a constant war to secure an agenda. Since the agenda for nationalists is the survival of European and European-descended peoples, we can be sure that, unlike those on the Left, there is no utopia that can be attained and we can relax. The political struggle never ends. Get used to it.