Europe

America and Europe, Facing Similar Threats, Can Hang Together — or Hang Separately

Both face shrinking and aging populations. Both either cannot or will not control their borders, despite popular protests. Both suffer from woke political correctness and are pushing back

Consider these European and American binaries.

On December 20, 2024, a terrorist, Taleb Al-Abdul Mohsen, rammed his SUV into a Christmas crowd at Magdeburg, Germany. He killed six pedestrians and injured 299 others.

Eleven days later, on New Year’s Eve at New Orleans, Louisiana, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar smashed his pickup into a festive crowd. He murdered 15 and hurt over 35.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

European Countries Will Pay Syrian Migrants Cash to Go Home

Europe has millions of Syrians who claimed refugee status on the basis of the Assad family, now some are making the calculation it is cheaper in the long run to make a a single cash payment to go home than keep the guests on social welfare programmes indefinitely.

Austria will offer Syrians a €1,000 ($1,000) cash payment “return bonus” to go home, Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said, stating the clearest reason they had for claiming asylum in the first place has now gone. Kronen Zeitung cites Nehammer as having said in a podcast this week: “We are now helping everyone who wants to return voluntarily. There is up to 1,000 euros for this.”

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inEurope, Syrian Refugees

Don’t dare to criticize Islam in Europe or the police will come

In 1984, Soviet dissident Gunnars Astra was sentenced to twelve years in prison in the USSR for possessing a copy of George Orwell’s “1984” and for secretly translating it. In our 2024, it is difficult to grasp the paradoxes of a new 1984. A clear mind and intellectual courage are needed.

We long for the days when the expression “politically correct police” was just an ironic quip by Philip Roth, not a literal description of what is happening in the West.

WTF?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Europe

France and England are the European countries with the highest number of anti-Christian crimes

Church Arson France – Parish of St. Paul in Corbeil-Essonnes

The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) has published its annual report 2024 (referring to 2023). According to the organization, during that year more than 2,400 attacks against Christians took place in Europa.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inChristian Persecution, Christianity, Christianophobia, Europe

Trump’s Triumph—a Turning Point for Europe?

We are witnessing a sea change of political currents both in America and in Europe. Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory has sent shock waves through the liberal establishment on both sides of the Atlantic. But it is a salutary shock.

It forces the European political class , and the German in particular, to abandon some of their illusions and forces us to become more grown up and self-reliant in matters of economic and security policy. Trump’s brutal way of formulating American national interests is refreshing. It tears away the veil of fake moralising and ideological kitsch that have obscured our perception of realities and actual global power issues.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, President Trump

The Usefulness of Haunting

Halloween may be a bulwark of tradition in the fight for Europe’s future.

Although the end of October is a long way away, the first Halloween items have crept into retail stores here in Southern California. Of course, what most Europeans see in Halloween is yet another American importation—and one of ghoulish or even Satanic orientation at that. One could hardly blame such a reaction, especially as this observance is preceded by a long list of other such, including (but not confined to) Black Friday, Santa Claus, KFC, McDonald’s, and on and on. Not being aware of either the slightly-terror-tinged-but-wholesome thing that Halloween was in my childhood, or of its Christian and Celtic roots, one can easily forgive the devout European for this conclusion. But the whole thing is rather more complex. It is not merely a question of Halloween, but of the whole body of weird lore that underlies Europe’s cultures—and in a sense may be a bulwark of tradition in the fight for her future. There is also the question of whether that lore is strictly fictional, or if it contains some unpleasant realities that are ignored only at one’s peril—even if one wields political power.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope

Alarmist Headlines About Europe’s ‘Far Right’ Ignore Failures of the Continent’s Liberal Elite To Heed Voter Concerns

“The far right made big gains in European elections,” reads the Associated Press headline on last week’s European Parliament elections. Lest you wonder why you should dread gains by the “far right,” the lead sentence of the article notes that the European Union has “roots in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.”

For many readers, that juxtaposition is a reminder of the sharp rise in Nazi party percentages in Weimar Republic elections to 43 percent in 1933, 33 and 37 percent in 1932, and 18 percent in 1930, from 3 percent in 1928.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"extremists", "far right", Europe

Time to retire the ‘far right’ slur

Millions of Europeans have not suddenly turned into fascists. We need a new political language.

As the EU establishment struggles to make sense of last week’s revolt in the European elections, one thing is clear: our outdated vocabulary is not up to the task of describing today’s political landscape.

Gains for France’s National Rally, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have been described as a ‘far-right surge’ in newspapers and TV reports, not just across Europe but around the world. Even before the election results came in, labels like far right and extreme right were bouncing off commentators’ keyboards. All agree that the far right is on the rise and ordinary people need to worry. This is Europe’s ‘Trump moment’, explained Politico. Some go further. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is described as ‘neo-fascist’, while academics calmly ask if the AfD is the new Nazi Party. ‘Fascism has arrived’, declared French author Emilia Roig when the election results became clear. Yet with almost a quarter of Europe’s voters having backed a party branded ‘far right’, it is worth asking how accurate this label is and what purpose it now serves.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Elites vs. Populists", "extremists", "far right", Europe, European Union

Europe’s Establishment Press Rattled by Successes of the Right

Mainstream newspapers are doing all they can today, on June 10th, to echo Ursula von der Leyen’s triumphant message that “the centre is holding.” But reporters and pundits are unable to hide their concerns surrounding the shift to the Right which, however much they try to downplay it, they accept will raise serious difficulties for the establishment parties.

Coverage of Viktor Orbán’s performance in the European Parliament (EP) elections is indicative of this, with his 44% share of the Hungarian vote—a proportion that most other European political leaders can only dream of—dismissed as a “stumble” or a loss because it is lower than that achieved in previous polls. Reuters in particular framed Orbán’s smaller-than-expected lead as an example of “strong performances by centrist parties” in eastern Europe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"extremists", "far right", Europe

French far right obliterates Macron’s party in EU election

PARIS — The far-right National Rally is projected to win the European election in France with 31.5 percent of the vote — more than twice that of President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

The shock result pushed Macron to call a snap election Sunday evening.

The National Rally, headed by Jordan Bardella, is set to achieve its highest-ever finish in a nationwide election.

Macron Dissolves French Parliament After Getting THRASHED by Le Pen’s National Rally at European Elections.

French President Emmanuel Macron has dissolved the national parliament following his party’s thrashing by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Elections on Sunday. The nation will now face domestic elections, with opinion polling showing the right-wing party in the lead. The next presidential elections are scheduled for 2027.

Europe swings to the right — led by France

Europe’s center of political gravity is veering to the right.

Center-right and far-right parties are set to take the largest number of seats in Sunday’s European Union election in the most populous nations: Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland.

France led the rightward lurch with such a crushing victory for the far-right National Rally that liberal President Emmanuel Macron dissolved France’s parliament and called an early election. Early results suggested the National Rally would win some 32 percent of the vote, more than twice that of the president’s party.

h/t DS and Mauser

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, WTF?

Don’t Blame the Russians When Europe Votes Right

An Afghan knifeman tried to assassinate a leading anti-Islamist campaigner at a rally in the German city of Mannheim on Friday, and murdered a young policeman in the attack. The stabbing, carried out by a failed asylum-seeker who had been living in Germany illegally for years, was a searing indictment of successive German governments’ mass migration policies.

A week before the elections to the European Parliament, this attempted assassination of a critic of political Islam provided a graphic illustration of why support for the right-wing, anti-migration Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has soared in recent times.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union

Should the U.S. and Europe go their separate ways?

Since at least as far back as 1917, when the U.S. unwisely intervened in World War I to rescue the Western Allies, the major European nations have grown accustomed to American largesse. Americans have played the role of overindulgent parents, and the Europeans have responded as would entitled children who both demand handouts and then resent the parents who supply them.

A large proportion of Europeans have negative opinions of the U.S. They consider us arrogant and selfish. As a result, we have been labeled as “the Ugly Americans” for decades.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Europe: Fear of the Elephant and Its Mahout

In the recent summit in Paris of European Union leaders on Ukraine, there was an elephant in the room: The US Republican Party and its current mahout, former President Donald J. Trump.

According to those who were able to peep into the session, much of the discussion was about what the US will or won’t do in case the volatile mahout rides his elephant into the White House in November.

Trump’s musings about ending the war in Ukraine and taming Vladimir Putin without war and his quip about refusing to support a NATO member not paying its share, if attacked by Russia, took up a disproportionate part of the discussions. Then came the French President Emmanuel Macron’s bombshell about boots on the ground in Ukraine.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEU, Europe, NATO, USA

Revealed: how Putin plans to flood West with migrants

Russia using militias in Africa to ‘weaponise’ flows of people in attempts to influence elections

Russia is using private militias to control and “weaponise” immigration into Europe, The Telegraph can reveal.

The Kremlin has influence over a number of the main routes into the continent and border police are warning that, with the arrival of spring, Russia is likely to “intensify” its efforts to move migrants.

It has been widely feared that Vladimir Putin is using the tactic to destabilise Europe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints, Europe, Russia