Freedom-Loving Europeans Turn to the Right

Nicolaus Fest is an independent German journalist. Formerly with the tabloid Bild am Sonntag, he drew massive public disapproval for expressing Islam-critical opinions, and eventually resigned to work as a freelance writer.

The following essay by Mr. Fest is taken from the author’s website. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

The Refuge of Freedom: The New Right

by Nicolaus Fest
June 19, 2016

Recently, the author Frank A. Meyer — by no means a confederate of conservatives — wrote in the Zurich Sonntagsblick: “First and foremost, middle class social democracy has retreated in the face of the ideology of religiously cloaked male domination — and left the fight for women’s rights, religious freedom and the strictly secular state to the far right. Leftist politics and journalism have surrendered the banner of freedom to the rightist populists.” Meyer wrote that with Switzerland in mind, but what he says is also true for all of Europe, and it is the shortest and smartest analysis of the present political dislocations.

The concern expressed about the flood of hundreds of thousands of immigrants is far more than frustration at the monstrous sums that are suddenly available for illegal immigrants or the fear of break-ins, sexual assaults and pickpocketing. Unlike many politicians, people all over Europe understand. It is no longer primarily about social questions — day-care slots or rent ceilings. It is about the defense of freedom — indeed, the attacks in Paris and Brussels as well as the hostile societies make that clear. It is about the freedom of the Western way of life.

That is something completely new, and it may revise some determinations about the German character which had been considered immutable. Namely, that the Germans have no feeling for freedom, that they always opt for social safety and that — to paraphrase Brecht — first feed the face and then everything else follows. The success of the rightist parties demonstrates that the “voter bribery democracy” (FAZ) as last conducted by the Great Coalition [CDU/CSU and SPD, Christian Democrats and Socialists] — with child-rearing allowances and minimum wage — is snaring fewer and fewer voters. That the AfD — despite all its mistakes and obstacles against it, without emphasizing its social programs, and from a standing start — could establish itself as a third force in several federal states, is a signal. The widespread antipathy to Brussels, to an oppressive bureaucracy which is hostile to freedom, expresses a desire that would never have been attributed to the Germans. A desire for self-determination and political freedom.

The old political parties in Germany no longer stand for these goals. That is shown in the ever-newly minted discussion about a simplification of tax law, as well as the broken promise of the Soli[1] or the bullying tactics in private health insurance. Whenever the question is whether the individual should not preferably govern his own life — what to do with his money — this is decided by the policies of the nanny state. Even in regard to the liberty-hostile activities of Islam, the Union and the FDP[2] — corrupted not least by their innumerable representatives who are members of Muslim organizations — have given up any resistance. No leading politician asks about the compatibility of Islam with the constitution — in spite of all the attacks, all the daily violence in Islamic countries, all the warnings from experts on Islam, the forced marriages, the honor killings, homophobia and open anti-Semitism. While France bans veiling and Austria sharply curtails the influence of fundamentalist Turkish religious authorities, German politics avoids the very debate. In the EU, the question of freedom also no longer plays a role, if we disregard Peter Gauweiler (CSU) and Frank Schäffner (FDP). And nothing can be expected from German social democracy, as is unfortunately so often the case. It was never, in contrast to its Swiss counterpart, a refuge of liberal-democratic thinking. What was important to the social democrats was not the rights of the individual, but security and wealth-sharing. Even Willy Brandt’s “Dare More Democracy” was not a plea for emancipation and self-sufficiency, but really a light on the way to the welfare state. “More democracy” meant more redistribution, more participation rights, more officials — not more freedom from the state. This open flank explains to me how the Greens could come to own liberal individualism in the 1980s.

But the Greens, too, rolled up the freedom banner and raised the flag of multiculturalism. For its sake they are sacrificing many of the rights they fought for for years. And therefore, not a word about Muslim homophobia, about veiling and oppression of women, about the newest instances of forced marriage of underage girls, about the abuse of Christians and Yazidis in reception camps. If sexual discrimination is not a result of Catholicism or Christianity, it does to exist for the Greens. Not even the mass murder in Orlando causes the Greens to question whether their love for an atavistically brutal doctrine of salvation is contrary to their other positions. So really, the freedom of the individual does not mean anything to this party either.

But it does for others, and everywhere in Europe. The rise of rightist alternatives, therefore, is — claims to the contrary notwithstanding — not a sign of a renaissance of a nationalist mindset or of re-Christianization. Instead, it is the sign of a new debate about freedom. That is what is behind all the questions about nation and identity. Anyone who wants to defend the freedom of the Western lifestyle will find answers only with the new Right. The old parties are as mute as they are unreliable. Their political substance is used up. They still believe that people are politically motivated by property tax, wind power and the premium for electric cars. In fact, for a long time now, “It’s not the economy, stupid!” It is about freedom.

Notes:

1.   Supplementary tax.
2.   CDU/CSU and their erstwhile partners the Free Democrats.
 

6 thoughts on “Freedom-Loving Europeans Turn to the Right

  1. Germany has to be quarantined. Merkel & her accomplices have to be sectioned.

  2. We should always keep in mind that what the quoted Frank Meyer calls ‘the far right’ is actually people believing in what was regarded as basic common sense as recently as 1960.

    Whenever some foaming-mouthed, swivel-eyed lunatic leftist complains ‘you just want to take us back to the 1950s’, my reply is ‘heck, yeah!’

  3. Frank A. Meyer ought to have written, ‘Leftist politics and journalism have surrendered the banner of freedom. Rightist populists have taken up that banner.’

    It’s become very clear that progressives have abandoned every principle of freedom, integrity, and human dignity to their insane quarrel with capitalism.

    • “Smash Capitalism” demonstrators, when tired and cold, go to buy cups of restorative hot coffee and tea from the nearest chain coffee shop – the product of centuries of capitalism. Every sip is thoughtless brazen hypocrisy, a crass failure to register the vital capitalist nature of what they are taking for granted. Thus do they expose their inadequate, uncomprehending and infantilised view of economics.
      See: ” “What’s that?” “A teapot.”” at Liberty GB
      http://www.libertygb.org.uk/news/whats-teapot

  4. Germans by the thousands are turning against the so called refugees

  5. Mr. Ronson is correct. The “far right” is about common sense, the simple understanding that only madmen and traitors turn their countries over to foreigners, and the most reprehensible and primitive ones imaginable at that.

    Two disasters befell the West. The ultra left have succeeded in imposing authoritarian, elitist government on the people, albeit with their enthusiastic consent where redistribution was an option. This is a tragic reversion to rule by unaccountable elites with total control over the instruments of state power and surveillance. Communism lived on after the fall of the U.S.S.R., its poison having been injected into the West for most of the 20th century.

    The other disaster is that European elites were not content with leftist madness in one country but went full multicult/globalist/traitor and imported Africans, “Asians,” and Muslims by the millions. Thus, it is incorrect to say that “It is about the defense of freedom.” It is about holding traitors to account and removing these foreigners from the West. All foreigners should be told politely that a great injustice was visited on them and the people of the West in that incompatible cultures and races were made to live side by side when there was no reason at all for that to have been done. A great intellectual and spiritual weakness befell the West, which weakness has now been remedied. Western liberal ideas were developed for Westerners and all foreigners are free to adopt them to the circumstances of their home countries. The idea of multiculturalism is, however, unworkable and a Great Separation must take place.

    It is a harmful diversion to argue that any of this has anything at all to do with “the ideology of religiously cloaked male domination” and “the fight for women’s rights, religious freedom and the strictly secular state.” The West long since ceased to be male dominated, regardless of what lunatic feminists say, and women’s rights, religious freedom, and the secular state have long since been features of everyday Western life though our resident lunatics fret over a new Inquisition under Francis.

    Westerners must cease to embrace primitivism and primitives must depart the West and, in their home countries, embrace what they will of civilization where they can live free of Western financial support and our cultural oppression. It is time for a gigantic reset in Western thinking.

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