by Daniel Pipes
-- the masses are starting to make their views heard, not just in futile protests but to change their countries' directions dramatically
"The
novelty and magnitude of Europe's predicament make it difficult to
understand, tempting to overlook, and nearly impossible to predict.
Europe marches us all into terra incognita."
That's how I closed an
article 10 years ago on the topic of Islam's future in Europe. Now,
thanks to elections in France and Austria, an answer is emerging:
Europeans appear to be unready to "go gentle into that good night" but
will "rage, rage against the dying of the light."
True, the elites, as
symbolized by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, remain in deep denial
about the issues of immigration, Islamism, and identity. What I call
the six Ps -- politicians, press, police, prosecutors, professors and
priests -- refuse to acknowledge the fundamental societal changes and
enormous tensions their policies are creating. But -- and this is the
news -- the masses are starting to make their views heard, not just in
futile protests but to change their countries' directions
dramatically.
The French center-right
political party, the Republican Party, has just held its first
U.S.-style presidential primary. In the first of two rounds, seven
candidates, including former President Nicholas Sarkozy and former
Prime Ministers Alain Juppe and Francois Fillon, vied for the top two
slots. For months, Juppe and Sarkozy ran first and second in the polls,
with Fillon a distant third. Fillon was so invisible that a commentary
on the French primaries by the excellent Christopher Caldwell ignored
him completely.
But, as has happened
often in recent years -- including with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, and Brexit
and Donald Trump's election in 2016 -- the more conservative option did
far better than expected. In a stunning surprise, Fillon won 44% of the
vote, way ahead of Juppe with 29% and Sarkozy with 21%. The other four
candidates won 7% of the vote.
In the second round,
Fillon went on to crush Juppe 66% to 34%. Fillon will likely win the
first round of the general election and then win the run-off against
either the Socialist Party candidate or Marine Le Pen of the National
Front. He will have offered a way forward between the silly notion of a
"happy identity" forwarded by Juppe and the insurgency of le Pen, which
seeks "temporarily" to nationalize the banks.
Assuming Fillon stays
true to his platform, his becoming president has epochal importance for
Europe. For the first time, a centrist politician espouses a
traditionally patriotic outlook, standing up for indigenous European
culture and mores while opposing further large-scale immigration and
accommodation to Islamism. This greatly damages the insurgent National
Front, an inexperienced party replete with eccentric and often
left-wing views.
Fillon has broken the
Europe-wide taboo against a legacy party stealing the thunder of an
insurgent party. If he rides this tactic to victory, he will chart a
course for politicians of the center-right from Greece to Norway;
already, Merkel has followed his lead with a dramatic course change,
calling for a partial ban on burqas.
The timing of these
events is not fortuitous, but follows on two developments: repeated
major acts of jihadi violence in France, and Merkel's 2015 decision to
allow in uncounted numbers of unvetted migrants. Merkel's decision,
which will likely be seen as a turning point in European history, also
helped fuel the spectacular rise of Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party
of Austria nearly to the presidency of that country, winning 49.7% of
the vote in April and then 46.2% in December, both times running
against the Green Party's former leader.
Granted, Austria has
minor importance and its presidency is largely ceremonial, but the fact
that an insurgent party twice almost reached the 50% mark shatters the
consensus view that insurgent parties cannot gather more than a third
of the vote. They can. Hofer's near-victory has immense implications,
suggesting that if legacy parties do not steal the insurgents' thunder
in time, those insurgents will eventually reach power on their own.
Together, then, the
French and Austrian elections suggest Europeans have two alternate paths
to reject multiculturalism, Islamism, and unceasing immigration:
either by transforming legacy parties or by supporting insurgent
parties.
Whether they will do so
in turn depends mainly on two key developments: the willingness of
legacy center-right parties to adopt insurgent party ideas; and the
frequency and death toll of jihadi attacks.
The terra is becoming more cognita.
Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=17833
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