[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

In more and more nations in Western Europe, politicians whose views reflect those of many if not most of their countrymen – but who’ve been demonized by the legacy media as right-wing extremists – are gradually coming closer to real political power. And the mainstream media on both sides of the pond are freaking out. Take a recent article by Roger Cohen of the New York Times headlined “Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right?” Subtitle: “Anti-immigration parties with fascist roots — and an uncertain commitment to democracy — are now mainstream.”

Americans have grown accustomed to the legacy media claiming that certain politicians represent a threat to “our democracy.” These politicians are invariably labeled as “populists” – a scare word that simply means that they speak for a large segment of the electorate. Which used to be what “democracy” meant. Similarly, when legacy-media types like Roger Cohen describe a European politician as having “an uncertain commitment to democracy” it almost always means that the politician in question dares to bring up issues that matter deeply to the general public but that the European political establishment would prefer not to address.

Cohen’s prime example of a dangerous far-rightist is 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, whom he calls “the new face of the far right in France.” To demonstrate Bardella’s extremism, Cohen notes that “he laces his speeches with references to Victor Hugo and believes that ‘no country succeeds by denying or being ashamed of itself.’” In short, France First! At places like the Times, Bardella’s Gallic version of MAGA is nothing short of fascism – a rejection of the political elite’s desire that Europeans transfer their affection for their own countries to Brussels. Cohen reports that when Bardella spoke up for patriotism in a speech in the town of Montbéliard, the crowd shouted “Patrie!” Patriotism in France – mon Dieu! I hope Cohen never watches Casablanca: when Paul Henreid responds to a bunch of Nazis singing the “Horst Wessel Song” by leading a lusty chorus “La Marseillaise” Cohen will need to pop a Xanax.

The “far-right” cause that exercises Cohen the most is immigration. In fact, few Western Europeans oppose immigration per se – like Americans, what they’re against is mass immigration and especially mass illegal immigration by total nogoodniks. Cohen warns of the danger “that anti-immigrant parties may win as many as a quarter of the seats in the 720-seat European Parliament,” which “could lead to a hardening of immigration regulations Europewide.” An increasing number of Western Europeans know that mass immigration is a leading reason for social problems ranging from severe housing shortages to soaring crime statistics. In recent months, Western Europeans, observing the gigantic pro-Hamas demonstrations in their countries, have recognized that what happened in Israel on October 7 could happen in Europe, too. They’ve learned to take it seriously, moreover, when prominent European Muslims declare, in growing numbers, that their long-term (or perhaps not so long-term) plan is to take over Europe. Just the other day, Anjem Choudary, a prominent British Muslim, happily predicted that the U.K., Belgium, and France would be governed by sharia law within fifteen to twenty years; at any of Europe’s recent pro-Hamas demonstrations, notably one in Hamburg, there were calls for European democracy to be replaced with a sharia caliphate; two days after Cohen’s piece ran in the Times, pro-sharia Muslims and their allies established an “encampment” at the University of Amsterdam at which Jews were violently assaulted, leading to over 120 arrests.

For the likes of Cohen, however, even to speak of such dire developments, and to acknowledge their roots in severely misguided immigration policies, is verboten; and any attempt to tighten those policies, to responsibly enforce immigration law, and to vet newcomers is – to quote his description of Bardella’s party, the National Rally – “nationalist, xenophobic and Islamophobic.” For Cohen, it’s not Europe’s increasingly vocal sharia enthusiasts who represent a threat to European democracy; it’s the growing number of Europeans who take these sharia fans at their word. For Cohen, the fact that parties like the National Rally, the Sweden Democrats, the Alternative for Germany, and Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party in the Netherlands are gaining a degree of acceptance, legitimacy, ,and electability “that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago” doesn’t reflect growing awareness of genuine threats to European values, traditions, rights, culture, and (yes) democracy, but is, rather, an alarming phenomenon.

The whole business couldn’t be more upside-down. For Cohen, upstart parties that address widespread voter concerns about real threats to democracy are in themselves threats to democracy, whereas the cordons sanitaires that establishment parties erected around these upstart parties for years in order to silence their voices were pro-democratic. Similarly, Cohen expresses thankfulness for the EU, European Union, because its unelected honchos serve to keep the power of elected national leaders like Meloni and Wilders in check.

Interestingly, Cohen admits that in Western Europe, as in America, the “core confrontation” at present is between globalist elites and “forgotten” workers. But in his view, the “frustration, even fury” of the latter are being exploited by Europe’s would–be Trumps. The key word here is “exploited,” because in Cohen’s view the solutions proposed by the politicians he calls far-right are the wrong ones: as he sees it, they want to return Europe to its bigoted, belligerent past, while the EU seeks to lead Western Europe into a peaceful and prosperous globalist future. As for mass Islamic immigration, he argues that those immigrants’ exploitation of European welfare systems has been overstated while the promise they represent of growing “labor forces and tax bases” has been ignored. Nonsense: study after study shows that Muslim immigration to Western Europe has been a net burden – not to mention an apocalyptic portent of social, economic, and cultural disaster.

Cohen also raises the “serious question” of whether these “far-right” parties, if they won power, would “ever leave office.” It’s the same bogus question that legacy media routinely raise about Trump. But in Western Europe, as in America, it’s not these “far-right” parties that have displayed a readiness to hold onto power illegitimately – it’s the establishment parties that, with the help of the legacy media, have systematically promoted hoaxes, covered up inconvenient facts, engaged in smears, and/or pulled off electoral shenanigans that have kept the “far right” from getting a fair shot at the seats of power. (Cohen loves to emphasize, by the way, that several of these “far right” Western European parties have “fascist roots.” Yes, and the Democrats were the party of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and staggeringly corrupt political machines like Tammany Hall.)

Cohen is far from alone, of course, in raising the alarm about Western Europe’s “far right.” On the same day that his piece appeared in the Times, the Guardian ran an article in which Sam Jones reported on the warning by Spain’s environmental minister, Teresa Ribera of the Socialist Workers Party, that the EU risks “implosion” because of “far-right” politicians who are “stirring up social tensions for short-term political gain.” Yes, it’s always the populists who have the impure motives – and who “stir up social tensions” by challenging the cozy elite consensus. Ribera actually described the EU as “probably one of the most successful projects in history.” (Well, it certainly has been successful for Europe’s political class.) She also expressed the view that “the republican principle of a cordon sanitaire against things that aren’t tolerable is still the best answer.”

By “things that aren’t tolerable,” needless to say, Ribera means views that are popular among the rabble but that make EU leaders uneasy. Whereas Cohen’s emphasis was on immigration, Ribera’s was on climate politics: she’s disturbed by the refusal of farmers in Spain, France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere to roll over and accept the breathtaking attempt at a massive government power grab – known as the “Green Deal” – that the European Commission has been trying to force upon Europe in the name of drastically reducing greenhouse gases. In no European country has the electorate been invited to debate this “deal” or vote on it. Said Ribera: “I think the failure of the Green Deal wouldn’t just be a failure for Europe; it would be a failure for Europe’s citizens and for their opportunities.” Why not let those citizens decide the issue for themselves? Ludicrous question. The self-assigned role of the arrogant, unelected men and women who call the shots in Brussels isn’t to serve Europe’s citizens or increase their “opportunities”; it is to accumulate more and more power for themselves while permitting less and less freedom to the people over whom they rule with an increasingly iron hand.