The enemy which isn't there
Unhinged reaction to Italian and Swedish conservative wins underline a dangerous obsession
Giorgia Meloni has led Italy’s Right coalition to a historic victory with her national-conservative Fratelli d’Italia party the largest party in the bloc. Left commentariat reaction has been unhinged, proclaiming it as the return of “fascism” to power in Italy. In truth, the Italians have put in power a party which is a member of the national-conservative ECR group which includes Sweden Democrats (Sweden), Law and Justice (Poland), National Alliance (Latvia) and JA21 (Netherlands).
Right-of-centre politics, on both sides of the Atlantic (and in Australia) is hysterically branded “fascism” by Left commentariat. This has been done to demonise any nationalist and populist sentiment, and any questioning of orthodoxy on race relations, migration and multiculturalism. Even the display of the British flag is seen as sign of a return to Nazism in the minds of these people.
In reality, the Left is fighting an enemy which either doesn’t exist, or is just a creature of its own making. There is no “fascism” in nationalism and conservatism. There is no “white supremacy” or a desire to return to the days of segregation in the American South, Apartheid South Africa or for that matter Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. In fact, most of Europe’s far right parties have repudiated racialism, historical revisionism and the idea of an all-white society and repatriation of non-Europeans. They did so quite a long time ago. Only Greece’s Golden Dawn would fit that with any congruity, and they’ve since been defeated.
The idea that a large swathe of European voters are “fascist” reeks of the dehumanising tactics Russia has employed against Ukraine and other countries it views as a threat such as the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia and Kazakhstan. We know that “denazification” is little more than code for invasion and genocide, something we all saw in Medvedev’s recent now deleted rant.
But enough about that. The lie about imaginary “fascism” appearing at every corner has been little more than a tool for the Left to enforce police state tactics against opponents. In fact, as with any hysteria on race-related issue, it is a very useful fundraising tool for the very same people who purport to denounce “greed” and “capitalism”. The willingness of people like Eli Clifton (a member of the Islamic Republic lobby) to use defamatory tactics is a consistent pattern with people involved in leftist NGOs. As the behaviour of the corrupt and discredited SPLC shows, they’re not concerned that their lies will actually result in harm being done to innocent people.
The biggest threat to Western democracies doesn’t come from alleged “fascism”, but rather the hysteria of imagining that it exists at every corner. Whether it is from journalists, politicians, or the more violent expression of it in the form of Antifa (a bargain liberals surely cannot sustain), a robust response from the conservative movement is required.