<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/16/europe-soaked-economic-pessimism-far-right-rise>
"How much does Europe’s future resemble its gruesome past? That question was
already pressing before Donald Trump retook the White House, and turned support
for the European far-right “patriotic” parties into US policy. That is, of
course, what his newly published
National Security Strategy means, committing
the US to “cultivating resistance” in European nations against the supposed
“civilisational erasure” represented by immigration.
With or without US interference, far-right authoritarianism is now an entirely
plausible European future, unless there is drastic change. After all, it is
already the US’s present reality. American exceptionalism once held that such
an outcome was impossible in the world’s oldest continuous constitutional
republic, with its system of separation of powers and no history of despotism.
Yet the country is now ruled by a self-styled king, centralising executive
power, weaponising the justice system, attacking civil society and neutralising
the media.
The advance of the far right rests on a simple, corrosive premise. Since the
financial crash, western publics have been encouraged to believe they are
trapped in a zero-sum game, forced to compete for ever-diminishing resources.
The far right’s message is brutally straightforward: if there is not enough to
go around, why are “our” scarce resources being handed to migrants? Remove the
undeserving competition, it argues, and the “indigenous” population will
flourish once more.
The facts say otherwise. On average, foreign arrivals are net contributors to
European economies. Between 2014 and 2018, for instance, migrants contributed
about €1,500 more per capita than European-born citizens. In Germany, without
migrants the labour force would shrink, condemning the country to an even
deeper economic malaise.
Facts, alas, mean little in the so-called immigration debate, particularly when
mainstream politicians respond to far-right advances by echoing their language
and demonising migrants – assisted by inflammatory and often deceitful media
coverage. Economic pain provides rich fodder for demagogues, especially when
people struggling to get by are persuaded that there is no alternative to the
system producing that pain."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
