The rise of White Nationalists in Europe is palpable. The communists are feeding on the opportunity of weakening these democracies to allow exploitation of political turmoil.
September 30, 2018
By Simon Schutz
...In last September's elections, (click here) the AfD became the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag in more than half a century, becoming the official opposition to Merkel's ruling "grand coalition" of conservatives and social democrats. Although — or precisely because — the AfD is treated as a pariah in the legislature, its support is growing among German voters.
The AfD was listed as the country's second most popular party in a recent poll, with 18 percent support, beating the mainstream Social Democratic Party into third place, albeit by just a single point....
February 26, 2019
Groups and clubs in Germany (click here) are putting the final touches on their elaborate floats with outrageous caricatures depicting political themes for this year's Carnival celebrations.
In a workshop in Mainz on Tuesday, an artist worked studiously on a float featuring a bull with "USA" emblazoned on the side, with a horned head depicting President Donald Trump's face, a cowbell carrying the Twitter logo, and a rear end expelling flatulence on the globe.
The popular street parades in traditional Carnival strongholds such as Cologne, Duesseldorf and Mainz in western Germany draw millions of dressed-up revelers and schoolchildren every year, and always feature colorful floats that push boundaries with their political parodies that poke fun at the powerful.
Other offerings that will be part of Mainz's parade next Monday included Chancellor Angela Merkel atop a horse labeled "coalition" collapsed with exhaustion — a nod to fatigue in her longtime government — and Queen Elizabeth II jumping over a border crossing with a German asylum application in hand and faithful corgi at her side to escape her nation's Brexit squabbles....
A populist movement based in holding on to ideologies is a work in Europe.
By Ferdinando Giugliano
When Angela Merkel (click here) announced her planned retirement on Monday, few tears were shed in southern Europe. From Greece to Italy, the German chancellor has embodied the cold-heartedness of the rest of Europe to the plight of those in crisis....
...To Merkel’s critics, her faults are obvious: She acted too late during the Greek sovereign debt crisis, pretending Athens’ debt was sustainable when it wasn’t. While she supported three rescue packages, these imposed excessive austerity on Greece, triggering a never-ending spiral of recession and further indebtedness....
...Still, one should not forget the enormous progress the euro zone has made over the past decade. The rescues in Greece — but also Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Cyprus — marked a gradual breaking from the principle that countries in Europe shouldn’t bail each other out. Not only is this a clause in the European Treaties, it is also one of the dearest principles to parts of the German establishment. Merkel didn’t care: she backed the creation of the European Stability Mechanism, a permanent rescue fund which can deploy its multibillion-euro firepower in exchange for an adjustment program of fiscal restraint and structural reforms....
