A European Establishment Labors To Stave Off Rising Populism – OpEd

By Joe Schaeffer

In all the leading nations of the West, a shaky ruling political establishment bereft of new ideas is falling back on a familiar playbook: Demonize grassroots protest, including the results of actual voting, against it as “far-right” extreme populism and a threat to democracy. Statists of the status quo are brought to the fore as “responsible” change agents for good governance against the unruly tide of unfocused anger represented by the dangerous outsider purveyors of grievance.

As Liberty Nation News asked in 2022, how long can this well-worn ruse work? In France, embattled President Emmanuel Macron on Sept. 5 appointed a longtime European Union apparatchik to be prime minister. Michel Barnier, 73, is best known for being the point man for the EU on Brexit negotiations with England after that country’s citizens voted to leave the supra-national entity in 2016. A dutiful media has described this careerist (Brexit maestro Nigel Farage has called him an “EU fanatic”) as a “conservative,” in much the same way GOP establishment warhorse Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was described as “right wing” some ten years ago.

Other Side of the Establishment Aisle

“Barnier’s appointment reflects Macron’s view that the [July snap runoff] election delivered a parliament with a center-right lean, even though a leftist alliance, hastily assembled to block the far-right from power, came first,” Reuters reports. But what exactly does “center-right” mean to populist supporters who view politics as usual as the number one enemy in their nation today? Barnier has made obligatory statements against massive unchecked immigration into France as he has vowed to defend Macron’s policies, which have done so much to exacerbate the crisis.

Meanwhile in Germany, an increasingly agitated establishment is flummoxed by the continuing success of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party despite it being castigated as “far right” and worse in every dominant media reference. On Sept. 1, AfD won a sweeping victory in the eastern German state of Thuringia and finished a close second in neighboring Saxony. Voter turnout was unusually high.

Germans are fed up with the immigration inundation of their nation in recent decades and the explosion in crime and social unrest that has become commonplace in their communities as a direct result. Or, to put it in establishment terms, they have become thoughtlessly bitter and crudely racist.

Official Diagnosis: Anti-Elite Populism Leads to Depression

“If you were feeling unhappy, afraid or threatened by the changing reality of your life and surroundings –your neighborhood, work, grocery store – would your first instinct be to join a political party reinforcing those negative feelings?” German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle bizarrely wrote Aug. 28 in a pop-psych “news” article ludicrously labeled as a “health” piece. “You might if that very same party told you they –and only they –could fix things for you.”

The astonishingarticleis devoted to “political psychologists” relating the profound negative repercussions that come with voting for the populist “far right.” It cites a new research paper by Maja Adena and Steffen Huck of the Berlin Social Science Center:

“In their paper, published in the journalPlos One,Adena and Huck infer that ‘the initial decision to support a right-wing party… has the most profound negative effect on well-being.’

Adena and Huck wrote that they found ‘causal evidence’ to suggest that while new supporters may experience a positive effect because of their ‘taking a stance,’ ultimately, the negative rhetoric of ‘blaming elites,’ a common theme among populist parties, wears people down.”

Americans may find this eerily similar to “professional” denunciations of Donald Trump supporters in 2016, 2020, and 2024. That this tactic is being rolled out again at a time when the common citizens of leading Western nations are struggling more than ever with debilitating social and economic unrest is yet another symptom of how far removed establishment organs have become from the people they claim to represent.

But state-affiliated DW doesn’t stop there. In 2023, after the AfD captured two local runoff elections in eastern Germany, it flat-out accused the nation’s citizenry of the worst crime imaginable to the Western progressive ruling order: “A study released this week by Leipzig University suggests a simpler, though more disturbing, explanation [for the rise of the AfD]: Many German voters, particularly in the east of the country, hold racist views.”

Can you imagine US state-affiliated broadcaster NPR saying such an outrageous thing? Oh, that’s right, Americanseasily can.

DW leaned on all the same credentialed sources for its smear on the German people so familiar in the United States today. Government intelligence agencies top the list.

“What is particularly concerning for many is that so many German voters appear to be undeterred not only by the AfD’s often overt racism, but also by the fact that the party is under surveillance as a potential threat to the country’s constitutional order: The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the German domestic intelligence agency that tracks extremists, has classified certain parts of the AfD as far-right extremist, and the AfD as a whole as a ‘suspicious case,’” the perplexed outlet exclaimed.

DW lamentably noted, however, that more and more Germans had lost faith in the nation’s intelligence organizations. Apparently, they don’t like being labeled as potential domestic terrorists for daring to vote against the present state of affairs.

Above all, the reactions against the rise of populism in France and Germany display an especially vapid approach to an anti-establishment fervor that is nearing critical mass. Painting wooden political cronies as icons of a “respectable” movement for change and slamming citizens as emotionally crippled bigots is bound to be as successful for tottering French and German elites as those strategies were for the celebrated Never Trump heroes of 2016 and beyond. And all the while, popular outrage grows.

• About the author: Joe Schaeffer, Political Columnist with LibertyNation.com is a veteran journalist with 20+ years’ experience. He spent 15 years with The Washington Times, including 8+ years as Managing Editor of the newspaper’s popular National Weekly Edition. Striving to be a natural health nut, he considers staring at the ocean for hours to be an act of political rebellion.
• Source: This article was published at Liberty Nation