This is how Marine Le Pen has described the approval of the new French immigration law, to which, of course, her party has lent its support. But she said more. The far-right's support for the law means seeing their historic demand for “national preference” satisfied, that “putting the French first” that surely sounds familiar to them. She is the same noisemaker who boosted Trump and opened the door to Brexit (Take back control, America first), and will mark the next European electoral contest. The dividing line is already quite clear: more Europe or more nationalism. Outwardly, the nationalist arc will try to essentialize Europe, and inwardly, it will emphasize the Europe of nations against the idea of the common home. This double dialectic will colonize the word “Europe” during the coming months, and it will be done with old rhetoric. They will talk about recovering what defines us, that indistinct us, from the earth. Nativist purity.
Nationalist self-affirmation consists of the exclusion of what is different, especially internal pluralism, and is the approach that national populism will also take to Europe: Europe for Europeans. The paradox is that this self-affirmation is done at the cost of instrumentalizing that other idea of Europe, the one that was born with the vocation of opening up to the world, the antithesis of our current “Fortress Europe.” This is how communitarize their values, as read in the 2019 manifesto of the European People's Party: “Preserve our unique way of life,” they say there. Basically, they propose a kind of crusade to the old continent, but it is no more (nor less) than a narcissistic movement, since it invites us to look for the reflection of that something authentic, ours, that apparently exists in us, and it does so in a context invaded by emotion: fear, the most narcissistic of emotions.
“I'm afraid that Europeans will vote with fear,” Borrell said recently, remembering Montaigne. And the truth is that emotions usually have their origin in real problems. The increase in war images on our screens and the monopoly of security issues in our public opinions cause the intensification of fear among citizens. Fear sells and, curiously, this is accentuated in the richest and safest places. The key is how to channel it. Far-right politicians talk about the “invasion” of refugees, while conservatives and social democrats end up assuming the ultra agenda and discourse. It has happened in countries like Sweden or Holland and now it is a warning to sailors for the United Kingdom, Germany or France itself. Without forgetting the new Migration and Asylum pact of the EU Council and the European Parliament. At a time when we perceive Europe in decline, this supremacist statement has the danger of being able to console us, since it puts us, even if only for a moment, above the rest, just as Trump's nationalism exploits the idea that the skin White is all that is left to those who, mistakenly, feel “the last in everything”: the privilege of the dethroned.
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#Ideological #victory #extreme #Europe