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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
I wish them luck. My current view is Brussels delenda est. I am all for unified Europe, but the current ideology of EU and Brussels must be thoroughly purged and dismantled.
Oh? What’s wrong with this particular flavor of pan-Europism?
The EU should be mainly a customs and trade union. No human rights and other bullshits. No hate speech and disinformation fighting. And it should put Europeans first.
IMO it was doomed from the start. Since the mid-20th century practically all institutions are being taken over by big-government leftists, and creating one from scratch that's too big for anyone to take down and too far removed from the people for anyone to keep it in check just meant giving the institution-eating left a giant gift that keeps on giving. An alternate, politically neutral EU was never an option.
The development of the EEC/EU in this direction was surprisingly late. The devil's bargain seems to have been circa 1990: German demands for a Größerer Staat to rival the US were granted by the nationalistic French left, in return for the EU becoming a device for enforcing social democracy across France's competitors. The British Conservatives said "FOMO!", ditched the Eurosceptic Thatcher, and the other countries had little choice but to come along.
However, there are complexities, e.g. the EU has gradually adopted German hard-money/fiscal prudence views, and so that has also become associated with the EU even in the minds of Eurosceptics. The EU's expansion east has also brought in countries who are not aligned with the social projects of the Brussels elites, and this tension has not yet been resolved.
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