Don't mention Alice Weidel. (Credit: Jens Schlueter/Getty)

We all know the old joke: when a European referendum delivers the “wrong” outcome, the country votes again until they get it “right”. The EU thought this would be the case after Brexit. But so far, no one’s laughing.
If anything, things have got worse. Take Romania, which recently cancelled its presidential election when CÄlin Georgescu, leader of a nationalist Right coalition, won the first round. Thierry Breton, former French European Commissioner, revealed the EUâs mindset during a damning recent TV interview. âWe did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary,â he said. In other words, if you canât beat the far-Right, ban them.
I disagree with almost everything Breton has ever said, but I am grateful to him for stating his case with such revealing clarity. During his time as industry commissioner in Brussels, from 2019 until last summer, when Emmanuel Macron replaced him with a more compliant figure, he was the driving force behind a series of laws designed to keep Europe in the digital dark ages. The most extreme of which is the Digital Services Act (DSA) which compels âvery large online platformsâ, such as X and Meta, to check facts and filter out fake news.
But, thanks to Breton, the truth is out there. Europeâs ultimate aim isnât to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information. The DSA isnât even the last word in the EUâs anti-digital jihad. One of Ursula von der Leyenâs big ideas last year during the European election was the so-called âdemocracy shieldâ â effectively launching even more legislation to prevent outside interference in EU affairs. This notion conjures up images of laser beams and light-sabre fights. And in some respects itâs not far from the truth: a frightened bloc needs a shield to protect itself from the encroaching enemy.
Mark Zuckerberg is certainly on the attack. Last week he announced that he is abandoning fact-checking on his platforms â effectively defying the DSA. And he is betting on Donald Trump to protect him from the legal consequences. Given that J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Muskâs X, surely the same will apply to Facebook. And the EU is far too dependent on the US to be able to mount an effective campaign against any of Americaâs social media platforms once Trump is president. The DSA, hastily drawn up during the pandemic, not only misjudges the nature of the social media, it misjudges political power. It exposes Europeâs essential weakness before America.
This isnât just a geopolitical battle, though. It is also a European one. The attempted clampdown reveals that there is something the bloc fears more than free speech: populism. MEPs found it hard enough to stomach Nigel Farageâs brutal outbursts when he was a member of the European Parliament. Now they have Musk breathing down their neck, endorsing candidates from the AfD, a party that sits on the far-Right in the European Parliamentâs benches and which supports German withdrawal from the EU.
The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the partyâs co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest. And an article in another newspaper hysterically described Muskâs intervention as unconstitutional. That journalists would advocate censorship seems shocking, until one understands the role of journalism in continental European society. It operates firmly inside a narrow centrist political consensus, which spans all the parties from the centre-left to the centre-right. Naturally, the AfD does not get much airtime in the German media.
But while marginalised by traditional media, the AfD thrives on TikTok, where it has large following. So what irks the German media, and politicians from other parties, is that the censorship cartel is no longer functioning as well as it once did. In the US and in the UK, the once mighty legacy media have already lost their power. Hillary Clinton expressed the frustration perhaps most clearly when she said that social media companies must fact check, or else âwe lose total controlâ. But Europe still lives in a twilight zone where the traditional media still basks in the dwindling sunset of power, trying to ignore social media rising on the other horizon. Like all the modern political battles in Europe, this is about protecting vested interests.
The Romanian case demonstrates how these restrictions on freedom of speech are the first salvos in a greater war of repression. The presidential elections there were cancelled on the grounds that a Russian-infested TikTok had misinformed voters. I am sure that the Russians were active. But it is shocking to think that an election was cancelled because someone lied on TikTok.
Letâs be clear, there was no suggestion of any vote rigging. Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square. But as with the laughable misperception in Brussels after the Brexit vote, the presumption behind the EUâs support for the nullification of the result, was that voters were too stupid to make up their own mind. The rerun is to take place on 4 May, followed by a run-off between the most successful candidate two weeks later. Georgescu is still the most likely candidate to win according to opinion polls, but the Romanian political establishment is still determined to find ways to disbar him, the most promising of which is the hope that he may have received undeclared funds.
There are similar patterns elsewhere. Marine Le Pen faces potential disqualification from the 2027 presidential elections following accusations of irregularities regarding her assistants in the European Parliament. More recently, Brussels was spooked by the victory in Austria of the Freedom Party, which managed to obtain 28.8% of the vote in the September general election. It surpassed a threshold at which point it became politically impossible for the other parties to form coalitions. Herbert Kickl, the FPĂâs leader, is now likely to become Austriaâs next chancellor. Meanwhile, in Germany, a group of 113 MPs has ganged up to ban the AfD. Their story is that the far-Right wants to destroy democracy. While the party is not yet polling high enough to frustrate yet another centrist coalition in Berlin after next monthâs elections, Germany may only be a few percentage points away from an Austrian-style impasse.
Surely, though, the sensible approach to the rise of the AfD, the FPĂ and other parties of the Right is not to censor them, but to address the underlying problem that has made them so strong: persistent economic uncertainty, loss of purchasing power, and dysfunctional policies on migration. Failing that, why not co-opt parties of the far-Right as junior coalition partners as they did in Sweden and Finland? If Weidel were suddenly thrust into the job of economics minister, we would see whether she could defend her record in government. But the centrist parties in Germany and France do neither. They have erected political firewalls against the far-Right. And they are doubling down with the same old policies.
It’s an approach that will inevitably backfire. A banned Le Pen would be far more dangerous for the centrist establishment, and possibly even more extreme when she eventually gets to power. Likewise the AfD would surely be radicalised after a ban.
Until then, the EUâs blunt weapons of choice â the legal bans, political firewalls, and censorship â will inflict more self-harm than good. In the pecking order of democratic rights, freedom of speech has a relatively low priority in Europe. Like the creatures in George Orwellâs Animal Farm, I am struggling to spot the difference between the extremists of the Right, and those who are trying to fight them.
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SubscribeThe lack of news coverage of the cancelled Romanian election is baffling and disconcerting. I spent the weekend searching for news, but found virtually nothing – a few regime media articles parroting the Putin puppet narrative. This is an unprecedented assault on European democracy and virtually no one is talking about it. I think it reveals a fundamental weakness in alternative media. Too much time is spent reacting to news generated by the regime media – I assume because itâs cheaper. Not enough time is spent generating news on the ground. Podcaster Shaun Ryan is in Romania right now. He intends to cover the story. This is great, but itâs not nearly enough.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the BBC all had solid articles over a month ago on the Romanian annulment of the first-round presidential election results. This annulment happened on December 6 so it is rather dated news, and it’s more complicated than this article paints it.
Romania has an odd form of government, where the prime minister is the head of government but the president nominates the prime minister. The presidential election had 13 candidates in the first round and the two top candidates combined for less than a majority of votes. Neither one is all that popular in Romania.
There seems to be credible evidence that Calin Georgescu’s campaign violated Romanian election law by posting campaign videos on social media that were not labelled as such. I can understand why some believe that pressure from the European Union was the reason for the annulment, but it seems to me that other factors are at work here too.
For one thing, Calin Georgescu is a bit of a kook in the mold of Bobby Kennedy, who has some good ideas that are outweighed by his crazy ideas. He has ties to Bobby Kennedy, too, as he wrote the foreword to the Romanian edition of Bobby Kennedy’s book.
The mainstream press did a good job of covering the annulment decision in Romania, giving both sides of the issue. I think it is this article, and some of the “alternative media”, who are reading more into it than they should.
Hmm. Iâve read some regime media reports as well. They mention vague references to an investigation and credible evidence of Russian disinformation and interference. I have yet to read anything that reports in detail exactly what this means. The kook stuff isnât persuasive either. Javier Milei was considered a genuine kook as well.
Maybe no media has reported in detail exactly what this means because no one really knows what it means. But to say that the media has not reported on it or has covered it up is contrary to fact. As one article (voxeurop.eu/en/calin-georgescu-romania-democracy/) put it,
Calin Georgescu believes that the moon landings were faked and that no man has been to the moon. He believes that the Covid-19 pandemic never happened. He believes that space aliens live among us and that he worked with some at the UN. He believes that 5G cell phone radiation causes disease. He believes that our food contains nanoparticles that are used to control us and that water is not just H2O but information, and it is distributed in plastic bottles so we can’t access that information.
Calin Georgescu is kooky in the Bobby Kennedy mold, anti-science to the point that he shouldn’t be making important decisions about anything. Javier Milei may be unconventional, but he’s not crazy like those two.
Do you support not allowing âkooksâ run for office? That would be very dangerous imo, surely every antiestablishment figure would be labelled as such and disqualified.
No, I think kooks should be allowed to run for office, and if they win, to take office, including Calin Georgescu. But I also think that this author and some commentators have misrepresented what happened in Romania, especially when they twist the quote of Thierry Breton to say that he claimed the EU was behind the election annulment in Romania. That’s not what he said.
The Romanian government has handled this badly but the media has reported on their actions in a fair and transparent manner. The idea that a Podcaster like Shawn Ryan needs to go to Bucharest to uncover the truth is silly.
Hah, I was in Constanta, Romania for the years when Radu Mazere was mayor and he was mad as a box of frogs – often parading in Emporers togas with a bevy of young ladies accompqnying him. Mic (burgers) and beer were handed out on election day if you voted for him. Evenyually done for the usual corruption / criminality
But do you think a kook like that should be in office? Especially if he violated election laws to win?
Wingnut or not the guy is right about the scamdemic – CFR less than the average seasonal flu and only about a 60th of the CFR from H5N1 which you really do not want to catch!! I think the depth and subtlety of the scam radicalised people as diverse as Neil Oliver and RFK. Its obvious that most lefties are as think as mince but some – CCP, Soros for example are as cunning as they are wicked.
Lots of people are kooks. And who decides who is a kook? Is JD Vance a kook? He doesnât appear so to me but the Democrats tried very hard to paint him as âweirdâ. Trump is definitely a kook, but he is going to be president for a second term. I find this a dangerous argument.
UnHerd blocked my reply to Jim Veenbaas where I explained why I think Calin Georgescu is a kook. I won’t repeat it here, but he believes a lot of things that normal people know is anti-science. These are not debatable things like politics or policy. They are facts.
I don’t think JD Vance, Donald Trump, or Javier Milei are kooks. I think Bobby Kennedy and Calin Georgescu are.
A lot of people believe that a virgin gave birth and that Allah dictated policy to Mohammed. Are they all kooks who should be disqualified from standing for office?
No, of course not. Religious beliefs are different from facts, particularly scientific facts. People like Frances Collins believe in religion while not flouting facts. I’m not religious myself, but I don’t call religious people kooks.
I mean, come on. This guy claims that space aliens live among us and he negotiated with one when he represented Romania at the UN and that he knew of several others. You don’t think that’s kooky? And that’s just part of it.
As I say, UnHerd blocked my comment responding to Jim Veenbass but I think that the idea that the “regime media” didn’t report on this story (he says they said virtually nothing) or that Calin Georgescu is not kooky are demonstrably incorrect.
Stop labeling people you disagree with “kook”s. That is the bully, control and censor pulpit. Richard Feynman, one of the 20th centuries greatest physicists, had many strange beliefs re aliens too. Bobby Kennedy has many excellent points, particularly those related to chronic disease and the US diet. Yet you want him de-platformed, silenced, cancelled. Same old authoritarian nonsense.
Let Science and the evidence and facts speak for themselves. Let free speech be free speech. For all it’s failings it is infinitely better than people such as you deciding what we should and should not hear.
Indeed, and if we give priorty to science let it include science that some do not like such as that chromosomes define who is a man and who is a woman, not a feeling that changes with mood or opportunity.
Not a good word IMO – to many meanings – might mean an eccentric person in USA but i don’t think that’s what David Bowie had in mind when he wrote Kooks.
Our son sits on a high-powered medical science committee of senior scientists. He told us that in a recent meeting a female scientist colleague stated she was not interested in the science, only in ensuring that DEI was embedded in everything they do. That is modern science for you!
Francis Collins might not be a kook but he is a crook. Along with Fauci and others he was responsible for funnelling money to the WIV in order to flout the Obama moratorium on GOF research and then participated in the efforts to pooh pooh the lab leak theory of SARSCov2 origins . Leaked emails that have emerged show that the scientists who participated in this actually believed that lab leak was the most likely explanation but decided the public should be kept in the dark.
I believe that Mary gave birth to Christ by the Holy spirit. Does that make me a kook? Some profound truths can be attacked as kooky according to what one believes.
I’m always suspicious when people describe the beliefs of others as ‘anti-science’ without telling us what those beliefs are. Scepticism about the safety of mRna drugs is not anti-science in the least.
Iâm inclined to be sceptical of anyone professing that their beliefs are founded on science. We have all learned in the last four years that science can be made to say anything you want it to say.
Ah, that would be pseudo -science then. True science can only ever say this is what the testable facts look like today – until they are deposed by new paradigms tomorrow. Science is a condition of mind that causes action and is well expressed by the Mertonian norms.Technology is a corporeal phenomena which requires knowledge to exist but that need not be scientific – eg a painting or atrocities using military tech.
As I noted, UnHerd blocked my post in which I listed some of Calin Georgescu’s antiscience beliefs. But it’s back now. Among other things he believes that space aliens live among us and that he worked with one at the UN decades ago and knew others. Is that not kooky enough for you?
I don’t agree with the annulment decision and it looks like it backfired anyway. But I see no evidence that the decision was based on Calin Georgescu’s right-wing politics or that the EU influenced the decision. It seems to be based in the fact that a fringe nutcase if a candidate who was polling at under 5% won the election with 20% even though he did no campaigning at all.
He never said that aliens live amongst us. That was taken out of context and you keep parroting it. In that interview where he allegedly said it, he was referring to Klaus Schwab, about whom he said he once met and felt that he wasn’t human. When asked by the interviewer to clarify, he said that no human could be so cold and heartless. It’s called a metaphor. The same goes with your entire list of things that make him crazy. If you listen to the entire passages, you’ll see that they were completely taken out of context.
I’m pretty sure that you are Romanian, as I am as well, but I’m still trying to make up my mind if you are here as a “fackchecka” or if you actually believe the things you’re saying.
The reality is that whether you like the guy or not, what they’ve done by cancelling the elections was absolutely illegal and what you are doing right now is justifying this totalitarian move, because of your own emotional bias.
Oh I see, you’re helping the EU decide who’s a kook and who’s not…
You only have to ask yourself: had these irregularities been perpetrated by a left-wing party would the EU establishment have taken any interest at all? Obviously not.
I’m not so sure — they detest BSW as well. They dislike anything outside their own “radical centrist” and Atlanticist program.
“I think it is this article, and some of the âalternative mediaâ, who are reading more into it than they should.”
If this article’s quote from Thierry Breton is accurate (âWe did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessaryâ) then “reading more into it” is a vast understatement.
If kookiness in a candidate is enough to nullify an election outcome how about dementia?
The reports I’d seen were that the videos were not posted by Georgescu’s campaign, but by the Liberals (from memory – please don’t quote me), who wanted to scare voters into voting for them. It backfired.
The investigation was conducted by the Romanian tax office and reported by a Romanian investigative journalism site.
So the effort under way now is to pin undisclosed campaign contributions on Georgescu.
Actually there was a very good article about this totally undemocratic decision by the EU in âDie Weltâ, but it was behind a paywall. I find it appalling that the EU could influence a Democratic Election, even if people like Carlos Danger think the man was a kook. If they want a kook, they should get one. Btw. when do we determine that somebody is crazy anyway? I could name a few European politicians, who are hopping mad.
Btw. I think MĂŒnchauâs article is great and to the point.
What evidence do you have that this was an EU decision? I’ve seen no evidence of that. The statement by Thierry Breton in this article says nothing about that.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/european-union/article/2024/12/17/eu-launches-probe-into-tiktok-over-interference-in-romania-s-presidential-election_6736183_156.html
Officially it was the court in Romania, but the EU might have put pressure on the court. It definitely provided a motiveâŠ
The EU opened the probe 2 weeks after the annulment decision was announced, based on the information the Romanian government released. That is no evidence that the EU influenced Romania’s constitutional court in making that decision.
I think you are a bit naive in thinking that the EU didnât get involved before the election, only because the official probe was opened after the annulment. I am usually not very interested in Romanian politics, but became very curious, why so many German politicians got involved long before the election and âwarnedâ the Romanian electorate not to vote for Georgescu. I wouldnât be surprised, if the big EU bureaucracy put the screws on the Romanian Establishment and threatened to stop the flow of EU subsidies in case Georgescu would win the election.
That’s interesting about German officials getting involved in the Romanian election before it was held. Do you have any source for that? I couldn’t find any.
Myself, I’m not sure what happened. There’s no way for me to know. I can only go by the evidence that I have seen reliably reported. I have seen evidence that Romanian officials asked EU officials to look into TikTok’s activities. I have seen no evidence of any pressure by the EU on Romanian officials.
If the EU put pressure on Romania I doubt it would be done privately. That’s not the way those people work.
Did you not read the article? Breton himself claimed they’d voided the Romanian result:
If you’re claiming he’s lying on the EU’s behalf and taking credit for something they didn’t actually do, then fair enough; politicians are famous for taking credit for “good” outcomes that have little to do with them.
But that’s not what you’re claining here, is it?
When Thierry Breton said that “we did it in Romania” the “it” he was referring to was the EU investigating TikTok under the Digital Services Act to see if TikTok had posted misinformation that affected the Romanian election. The “it” was not that the EU had voided the Romanian result.
Thierry Breton made this point himself to Elon Musk in an X post in response to Elon Musk calling him a European tyrant. The interview backs up Thierry Breton’s position. He was boasting about the Digital Services Act, which he had championed (as this article mentions), not talking about the EU getting involved in elections.
There is no evidence I have seen that the EU did anything to influence the Romanian constitutional court’s decision to annul the election.
Would you also find it appalling if Russian intelligence or Elon Musk could ‘influence a Democratic Election’? Or what is your list of power players that are allowed to do so?
How do we measure influence?
Elon Musk’s influence so far is open and above-board, and so is exactly what we want to see in a democracy. Same would be true if, say, J.K. Rowling were to comment on events in the U.S.
As to Russian influence, there has not been one shred of evidence that any such attempts have been influential.
Your examples are not helpful.
Appalling because the EU is supposed to defend free speech and democratic values not pervert them.
In what universe is the EU supposed to defend free speech and democratic values? Let me know when they start doing that as they have not so far in their decades of existence.
Money talks⊠I am pretty sure that the EU threatened the flow of subsidies. It is much more difficult for an Elon Musk to bribe Romanian Government agencies with millions of dollars.
That’s a good point that can easily be extrapolated. I suppose the only solution against undue influence is for electorates to become a lot more mature, aware and diligent when it comes to making their choices.
I was appalled at the flippancy and superficiality of the Brexit debates and only realised the strength of the ‘Leave’ arguments because people who had done their homework explained it to me.
The EU is a terrific idea, but putting an unelected body to run it was a terrible idea, as it has pursued a political course that has not been approved by the member states. It has led to almost dictatorial powers being unleashed against (an admittedly irresponsible) Greece, against the UK (for having the temerity to leave) and against regimes in Poland, Hungary and elsewhere of which the Brussels ‘dictators’ did not approve. I would be frankly surprised if they hadn’t interfered in Romania.
The European Comission is elected. It is not just directly elected by the people. Those who elect it, however are.
It is baffling but unfortunately it is not unprecedented. I believe it was in 1999 when diplomatic sanctions were imposed on Austria to prevent the FPĂ entering power.
You are absolutely correct. This was an egregious abuse of power to exclude a democratically elected European Government from involvement in EU decisions.
This is one of the reasons I think it was right to leave the EU.
The present exclusion of politicians from the right will not play well with the electorates. They will ultimately come to rue the day when they did not adjust their position and try to accommodate some of the concerns expressed.
Do you read Politico? Their ideological take is highly annoying, but if you concentrate on the facts they present rather than on rhetoric, you can be quite well informed. They also have quite a lot of moles everywhere and often leak information not intended for the general public.
You can subscribe free of charge to their everyday mails and news flash.
This is what I do and thatâs one of my main sources of information.
And, of course, Twitter where there are quite a few reliable news accounts. Plus, from the comments you can also derive additional information about what is happening on the ground.
Hope this was of help:-)
Politico is a tool of the left. It sometimes reports fairly and does the right thing, but not enough to warrant trusting it as a reliable unbiased source.
I said that their ideological take is highly annoying, meaning exactly the same as you.
Still, if you concentrate on the facts they report, disregarding their leftist commentary, you could receive quite a lot of information.
Besides, Politico is just one of my numerous sources and I have never recommended it, nor would recommend it as the only source of information.
Europe does not have a good record on democracy like Britain. They don’t understand it fully like Britain does. Look at the Hitlers, Francos and Mussolinis they have had whilst we had over 400 yrs of democracy. Starmer seems to want to throw this all away just to keep power.
400 years of democracy in Britain? Pull the other one. The Reform Bills would like a word and universal adult suffrage wasn’t achieved until 1928 …
This may be an unfortunate consequence of the perverse social media rewards system, which emphasizes clicks and likes and thus stimulates clickbait and controversial subjects.
The greatest strength of social media is that everybody with a phone and a camera is a potential on-the-spot reporter. This has proven its value in numerous accidents and disaster situations, as well as the mayoral election in Istanbul and the 2018 presidential election in Brazil.
The legacy media has always used its curatorship of the news to reinforce its authority as the only reliable source. But the last decade has increasingly revealed the degree of censorship, partiality and omission that has led to a spoon feeding of an ‘official’ narrative to a population that is no longer restricted to such sources and with a bit of effort and critical analysis can weed out the truth of situations where we have been clearly lied to. It is hardly surprising that they are now clamouring for censorship, or in their newspeak term, ‘fact checking’ of the kind long utilised by totalitarian governments.
There is a war going on for control of people’s thinking and we must resist this trend with all our might. Otherwise the chilling horrors of “1984” will come to pass. Orwell, influenced by what he saw in the USSR and nazi Germany, was issuing a warning, not making a prophecy and it will be to our eternal shame (and doom) if we allow it to happen!
In the United States the liberals with their lawfare acted to destroy democracy in order to save it. In the European Union the liberals and centrists are using censorship to do the same. How hypocritical.
It was a court that cancelled the Romanian election count so that is lawfare too.
It’s the sort of logic which gave us Vietnam era wisdom of this sort: “in order to save the village it was necessary that it be destroyed …”
Europe has never been able to cope with the semi-chaos which freedom entails, or the fact that democracy can bring a result undesirable to the rulers. Europe is inherently authoritarian and the EU merely amplifies these traits.
On the positive side the EU’s pretensions to being a world power, or even of consequence, are being shown as the delusions they really are. Within twenty years It will be a mere rump, as meaningless as the Holy Roman Empire became.
That’s a heck of a generalization, but I can understand why the EU Commission would lead you to think that way.
Trump was able to assert that the 2020 election “was stolen” thanks to lackadaisical fact checking, it is unprecedented for a presidential candidate to dispute a clear election result, this by itself ura thefuturw of democracy in doubt.
Denying he incited the 2020 insurrection and claims that climate change is ” a Chinese hoax” are even more dangerous.
Maybe censureship is the lesser of two evils. We had censorship in a similar situation during WW2.
By fact checking you mean censorship of Trump. Nothing came of his claim that the election was stolen or that a mob wandered round the Capitol briefly. In fact, of course, the facts relating to the manipulation of post in votes has never been properly investigated. I am not saying the election was stolen simply that a real rather than technical investigation never took place so Trump was entitled to his speculative rhetoric which went nowhere.
As for his rhetoric about climate change again you are in favour of censorship rather than free debate. There are plenty of legitimate scientists who donât accept the official narrative or the proposed official solution but their views get sidelined because it is not part of the official ideology. Free and balanced debate on this and covid would be far healthier and productive than the bogus âthe science is settledâ approach which is entirely unscientific.
“Europeâs ultimate aim isnât to save public discourse, it is to suffocate far-Right parties by depriving them of the oxygen of information.”
This has to be the dumbest thing I have read in a long, long time. The far right is being deprived of information, is he kidding? X and Meta are only good for spreading misinformation and propaganda. The only thing the far right is being deprived of is telling lies!
Somebody has drunk the Kool Aid, and it ain’t the rest of us.
It about whose Kool Aid you decide to drink. I stay away from social media because that Kool Aid is poison.
OK, let’s assume this is true. What’s your defintion of the “far right” ? Is there any official definition ? And, if so, who decides ? And does the same apply on the extreme left ?
It’s a slur — as are most political categories these days.
The German media had a collective breakdown when Musk tweeted an endorsement for the AfD, interviewed Alice Weidel, the partyâs co-leader, on X, and then endorsed her in an article for Die Welt. The op-ed editor of the German daily resigned in protest.
And where did the op-ed editor post the news of her resignation? X.
I don’t think these guys realise just how stupid they look.
Dunning-Kruger at the highest levels.
As incongruous as ‘LGBT+ for Hamas’
Excellent piece.
Europe, haunted by ghosts from near a century ago, based on a sample size of… one. Magnified and mythologised as the decades fly by and the original protagonists all disappear, one by one, to be replaced by generations who have experienced so much less.
What terrifies the European old order is that the number of citizens who are sick to the back teeth of its version of ‘Progress’….with its hyper-‘Woke’ gender-bending, race-guilt-tripping collective psychosis… has finally reached critical mass. This deep cultural blight has (as I wrote here: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias) been a decades-long Madness of Intelligentsias. Things like ‘multi-culturalism’ (ie white self-loathing-by-proxy), the fetishisation of sexual dysphoria and pseudo-therapeutic psychobabble began as fictions and fixations hatched in its ‘higher education’ humanities and social science petri-dishes. I have argued that our great folly was failing to foresee the long-term consequences of allowing our universities to become colonised by an intelligentsia intent on âcleverlyâ unpicking the threads that held Western civilisation together.The massive late 20th c. expansion of tertiary education put all this madness on steroids.
The âpopulistâ unravelling of this progressive intellectual hegemony will be the great political-philosophical story of our time.
Yes. Top of the agenda for whoever takes over in 2029 must be to close at least 50% of the universities and convert their facilities to a more socially useful function.
Fancy toilets?
Most of them were previously tech colleges so they could go back to that, turning out plumbers, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, electricians etc, etc like they used to. Far more productive for the UK than another 10,000 media or PPE graduates.
I’m no fan of McDonalds, but they did an excellent job of converting an old mansion on SĂŁo Paulo’s Av. Paulista (Brazil’s Wall Street) into an elegant store.
It might be the only historically significant mansion there to have survived till today. Brazil is worse than the USA in consigning its physical historical legacy to the wrecking ball. The National Museum was burned down recently in a tragedy equivalent to the Notre Dame fire.
Wetherspoons?
This is in line with what the SDP propose, although they haven’t put a specific figure on the reduction in Bachelors degrees
https://sdp.org.uk/policies/higher-education/
Damn right! Bring back the colonial system. Let’s show these liberals what a god fearing world looks like.
If you read the correspondence of its architects you can see quite clearly that the entire point of the EU has always been to undermine the ‘anglo-saxon democracy’ imposed by the US after WWII, and to do so by stealth. Jean Monnet was quite explicit about this.
Tony Benn was wrong about a lot of things but he understood that – as well as the danger posed by the hijacking of the Labour Party by people working in concert with Europe’s authoritarian elites.
This is the book that really opened my eyes about the EU
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Deception-European-Union-Survive/dp/147298465X/ref=zg-te-pba_d_sccl_2_3/262-6616574-8157568?pd_rd_w=tkSED&content-id=amzn1.sym.c072daa0-3920-4b4d-83e5-1f5f31c763e0&pf_rd_p=c072daa0-3920-4b4d-83e5-1f5f31c763e0&pf_rd_r=G5P0FKZ2R5DD96BAS1SX&pd_rd_wg=oNYuA&pd_rd_r=7327961c-2fb1-4b52-9ca9-a377a264fd2f&pd_rd_i=147298465X&psc=1
Just so you know, this URL works and is more readable:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Deception-European-Union-Survive/dp/147298465X/
And yet we have a government in the UK, with a significant minority support base, that would put the UK back into this failing political project tomorrow if it thought it could get away with it.
The stupidity is almost spectacular.
People were so keen to punish the Tories – and nobody can deny they deserved it – that they forgot to ask what Labour actually intended to do. And knowing it could cost them a shoo-in election, Labour kept very quiet about its plans, fobbing people off with empty blandishments.
I’m going to snitch ideas from this article about permission structures: https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
In the case of America, ever since Obama, people have been persuaded to hold unrationalised views by manipulation in the Main Stream Media and more recently ‘controlled’ social media. I believe the same process has been used in the EU.
This has worked up to now… but the lunacies of imposed social political ‘enlightenments’ cannot hold if people are still free to criticise. The masters of the EU still hope to re-establish control of the ‘political enlightenment’ of the population. They don’t have to face an election but their increasingly wild gesticulations make them look more and more like clowns.
The Emperor’s new clothes don’t exist. And that’s why the elites of Europe (and America) fear free speech.
Oh, this goes back long before Obama. The ‘malaise’ of Jimmy Carter (which started over his attempt to cancel some water projects), the ‘teflon presidency’ of Ronald Reagan (which showed a concerted effort to ‘get’ Reagan long before the Iran-Contra scandal), the 180 degree shift to protect Bill Clinton (one night the media was pro-impeachment over his perjury, the next day it gave him a pass because it was about ‘sex’).
Modern media is dominated by people who do not care about democracy.
Only their ability to steer it in the direction they want it to go.
And then there’s the authoritarians who want to shut down freedom (not just free speech) altogether.
Let’s be clear: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook was not “fact checking” in any sense that this term should be understood. They were selectively filtering content. Some stuff was being “fact checked”. Some was not checked at all and effectively “whitelisted” (Hillary Clinton’s output perhaps). No one wwas checking the checkers (just as it is today at BBC “Verify”).
On the Romanian election: having spent considerable time in the country, I’d be surprised if any of the presidential candidates hadn’t received some undeclared funds at some stage in their political careers. But yes, the whole subject should be reported more. Opionions in Romania can be hard to understand from the UK. On the one hand, they mainly hate the Russians (they were forced to export most of their food to Russia after WWII). On the other, they’ve grown up under Communism and its relentless fake, leaving a legacy of strange, almost conspiracy theory beliefs. It is a situation the Russians could manipulate to some degree (though far less than in Moldova).
The cancelled Romanian elections are surely the biggest news story of the year and yet Iâm seeing nothing about it here or in other âalternativeâ media. Whatâs going on? Have the autocrats really thrown out a democratic vote on the basis that the people were wrong? Surely thatâs nothing short of a coup?
No, they have blocked the FSB.
The annulment of the Romanian election was all over the news on December 6, 2024, when the story broke. There have been hundreds of stories about it since. Eyes are on Romania until the election is rerun in March.
The election will be rerun in May. That extended six-month delay between cancelled election and its rerun also tells us something. Democracy is not urgent … therefore it is not important.
It just goes to show you how important it is for the establishment to be able to control information to control the narratives. Essentially they could kill you and craft a narrative that they are helping you, and creative writers would help them do it.
However, not only are many people now “Red Pilled”, but the author is right about the Trump effect. That is the fact that a new establishment is being formed that is calling out the old establishment’s narratives.
So, who’s side would you want to be on? The old establishment’s side that will do just about anything to hold on to power, and hold on to false narratives, or the side where not only the populist anti-establishment in your own country and continent is winning elections, but add to that a new establishment in the most powerful nation in the world that you have been functioning as a vassal of?
These old establishment politicians, the bureaucrats, the old media, and legal walls they have established to keep the lies in and the truth out are going to face an accounting in 2025, and boy is it going to be entertaining! đ
I agree with you but advise that leftists writing talking about this topic do not discriminate between “narrative” and “description”, and we can complain about that also.
What a relief to read Carlos Danger’s thoughtful contributions to this discussion. I had begun to think that Unherd’s Comment section was reserved for the radical tear-it-all-down (dare I say it?) kooks he rightly skewers.
If peaceful reform is made impossible…
The drive to censor and dismiss the concerns of large numbers of native voters and readers and writers is so inherently self destructive that it is shocking to see how far the authorities seem prepared to go. Legacy media, legacy politicians and legacy institutions are already hamstrung by their loss of credibility. It is this loss of credibility as much as the advocacy of the populists that is eroding support. If the populists are censored further or even outright banned then the establishment credibility sinks to net zero, no one will believe their news outlets at all and the populists will surge, by word of mouth or samizdat if necessary. The only alternative after that will be Soviet style repression.
There is another alternative: lawfare, as used against Trump and many of his supporters from 2016 to current.
Lawfare is being used in the UK and Brazil also, to suppress differing opinions and even questioning of the ‘official’ narrative. The numbers of political prisoners in both countries is growing. And no doubt this is going on elsewhere.
Nice one Wolfgang
Thank you!
To answer the likes of the AFD in their own terms, the old guard, the current guard and the next guard must be cleared away.
What a great article!!!
Most European countries have very short democratic histories including such an historical entity as France .
Furthermore many Central & East European countries have only quite short histories as independent self governing States
This is all a bit ‘blah blah right wing is always best, centrists are feeble minded, not tough like us proper thinkers’. All very amusing, but I think Christopher Hitchens put it well, nearly forty years ago; ‘The values of solidarity, collectivism, and internationalism are not so much desirable as they are mandated by nature and reality itself’.
At a moment when lying in your teeth seems to have become politically honourable, and billionaire media controllers are telling us facts are whatever the mob says they are, then a little caution about actual lying in an actual election is fair enough, not a centrist ‘conspiracy’.
Actual lying? In an actual election? Outrageous. Indeed I have never heard of such a thing before. Certainly any election in which there has been, God forbid, lying should be shut down immediately.
Is that the same Christopher Hitchens who supported the Iraq War, and “liberal interventionism” which worked so well?
Or a different one with even less foresight?
While solidarity, collectivism, and internationalism are highly desirable traits, I think if they were so innate as CH would have us believe they would be seen far more frequently on the international stage. Unfortunately, there are very strong incentives working against those noble desires, so they are only able to break out in endearing flourishes, from time to time when circumstances are propitious.
That said, I feel the post-pandemic world climate is extremely propitious for such a widespread change :o)
âThe values of solidarity, collectivism, and internationalism are not so much desirable as they are mandated by nature and reality itselfâ.
I don’t think this quote is very impressive, at least not without clarification. For instance, ‘solidarity’ and ‘internationalism’ can be opposites, and why is internationalism ‘mandated by nature’? Human history (non-international social groupings, both competing and cooperating) demonstrates that it’s not.
Consider this: Being able to control what news people see, what gets suppressed, how things are slanted gives you immense power. And with the rise of social media that power gets ever more concentrated. Giving that power to Elon Musk and X, or China and Tiktok is not ‘freedom of speech’, any more than giving it to your own government or a centrist ‘consensus’. Would you sit back quietly while the French government or George Soros took control over a majority of US news coverage? Or would you fight back? Personally I would prefer to give it to my government. I just might be able to influence that. I have no way to influence Elon Musk.
If the media was doing its job regarding news and slants, Elon would have never had reason to buy twitter.
You donât have to influence Musk. He just says exactly what he thinks. Sadly âyour governmentâ doesnât. A particularly stupid comment.
If liberal democracy is the West’s superpower then Musk is its Lex Luthor, and X is his Kryptonite.
As far as I am aware, Elon Musk does little more than provide the platform. And that ‘little more’ seems merely to be participating in that same platform (not as ‘the owner’, but) as an ordinary contributor. In that sense, his ideas will be judged on their merit, just as those of any other contributor.
That is very different to the way our politicians and other leaders generally behave.
The EU institutions are not democratic, everybody knows that. The Founding Fathers of the EU concluded after WWII that the war had not been a victory for democracy, but was a consequence of democracy.
When democracy is weak, strong-men come to power with a promise to fix the pot-holes and make the railways run on time. And they do – but war inevitably follows sooner rather than later.
So, the EU institutions are set up as epistocracies, apart from the fig-leaf parliament, that is, to give a show of democratic involvement in case anyone should complain.
We should not be surprised, then, that referendums are treated with disdain. The people do not know about high government, which should be left to those trained in the art. Well, the people will have their way and they are picking their champions. The EU Founding Fathers tried to avoid future dictatorships in Europe by shunting democracy into a dead-end side road. But in doing so they are bringing about the very thing they feared.
There has been lack of coverage of this in most media. I was not aware of the anti-democratic crisis in Romania until I read this article, so I followed up on one of the commentator’s clues to previous coverage.
This is the URL for Politico’s first (3 Dec 2024) report on the Romanian government’s alarm over the conservative or populist revolt. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/12/03/romania-tiktok-and-the-future-of-democracy-00192427.
It ends with an editorial comment quoting Bertolt Brechtâs 1953 poem of protest against the Soviet Union: âWould it not in that case be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?â
This is the URL for Politico’s second (3 Dec 2025) report on the Romanian government’s anti-democratic response to its own election. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/12/03/romania-tiktok-and-the-future-of-democracy-00192427
This is Politico’s (6 Dec 2025) report on the Romanian high court’s canceling the first-round Presidential election. It does not say when the election will be held again. Presumably after the rightists have been crippled and denounced futher. https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-court-cancels-presidential-election-runoff-tiktok-russian-influence-calin-georgescu/
It is astonishing how many apparently middle class professionals think that a) their political opinions are virtuous, and that b) their opponents should be banned.
I would like to ask Mr. MĂŒnchau what extremists on the right is talking about, who are these persons and what kind of extreme positions do they take (citations please).
‘Far-right extremist‘ is a catch-all term for anybody slightly left of centre onwards (towards the right) employed by far-left extremists, to whom everybody else looks like a fascist dictator. And they use the term ‘democracy‘ to describe their perpetual control of the reins of power – hence any opposition must by definition be ‘anti-democratic’. Another favourite term is ‘fake news‘, by which they mean anything outside their ‘official’ narrative. So fighting ‘fake news’ is nothing more than banning other opinions.
They’re not leftists — they are radical centrist Atlanticists.
“Georgescu won the first round of the election fair and square.”
Are you still waiting for Father Christmas?
Kind of interesting how the people who talk the loudest about âour democracyâ are the ones most hostile to it.
Has no-one else picked up on this: “J.D. Vance, the Vice President-elect, has already threatened to end US support for Nato if Europe tries to censor Elon Muskâs X”. So Elon has bought his place at the top table and is influencing foreign policy to benefit his commercial activities. Wow, who’d have thought eh!
This has really nothing to do with Elon. It is all Trump. Trump is tired of the US financing NATO and rightfully so. Other nations must pay their way.
Cynicism has its place but it could also just be about trying to prevent the soft totalitarianism that has, pretty much, taken over the West.
That message is probably more geared to Brazil, where the corrupt Supreme Court has gone after Musk for pointing out many of the ways the institution has trashed the Constitution and the country’s laws for political purposes – even attacking Musk’s other businesses in Brazil in a highly personal assault.
That Trump is unhappy with Europe leaving the USA to bear the greatest burden of NATO is a related factor.
And how is that related/relevant to Musk’s commercial activities?
Of course there is another way to look at it: ‘Europe fears hate speech, unfettered lies and incitements to violence’. Why the hate for ‘journalists’? Journos publish in outlets which can be identified and sued for libel etc – for reasons that escape me, the likes of X and FB are not deemed publishers so cannot be held to account for libel and defamation. The likes of Trump, oligarchs and other very wealthy individuals weaponise libel actions in order to silence media criticisms – is that ‘free speech’?
Journos don’t publish on X? Really?
As for Trump silencing critics, he clearly isnt very good at it…
That’s a tricky subject. Would you want to hold communications services responsible for the content they carry? So mail services and email providers would be legally liable. That’s pretty much what you’re calling for.
There are existing laws on the books covering much of the distasteful internet content. So we don’t need ‘hate speech’ and ‘fake news’ legislation covering what are inevitably very subjective criteria.
Europe has two choices, they can have a democratic populist/nationalist Gov’t now, or they will have a non-democratic populist/nationalist Gov’t later.
The only thing that branding anti-migration/globalization parties as “far-right” and “fascist” does is to ensure that you will eventually get a real Fascist Gov’t later on.
If Europe has to choose between Islamicization or Fascism, they will choose Fascism. So would I.
In The Totalitarian Temptation, published back in the 1970s, Jean-Francois Revel persuasively demonstrated how the authoritarianisms of left and right meet, and are indistinguishable from the point of view of people oppressed by them. Why is the lesson, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” so difficult to learn?
To avoid potential confusion, can I suggest a comma after ‘indistinguishable’
But perhaps they have left it too late for that. And even if itâs not too late, who would believe them now?
Allow the pressure to build up in a society that feels it’s being ignored and you’re likely to get an explosion, unless responsible and adept leaders are able to channel the anger into contructive action..
As JFK rightly observed, “âThose who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable” …
The post ww2 regime in Europe is doing what all regimes have done in history – protect their power at all costs. In the end, thatâs all regimes care about. We are in revolutionary times, and the regime understands what is happening.
It’s as if Europe lost the war and has been trapped in a series of ‘copper wars,’ constantly reliving its trauma. It’s like an abused person whose past is brought up every time they enter a new relationshipâeveryone focuses on how victimized they were! Except the copper now is human control, data, and financial control!
There are so many external interferencesânations meddling in global affairsâand now Europe seems to be interfering with itself to what end though, another war to reset? If this is what it takes to maintain power, then I wouldnât call it true power. Itâs pure exploitation and absolutely only in name only for democracy. Thereâs no unity, no real progress; itâs just a race to the bottom, leading to inevitable demise.
At some point, Europe needs to regain its strength and identity. It is becoming a bit embarrassing for first world to constantly be against its own people to keep a power?
Nicely done!!
Heads the Far Right wins, tails, Liberal Democracy loses.
It’s not at all clear that economic growth and curtailing immigration would stop the advance of populist authoritarian parties. Trump won despite the Biden administrations success in boosting employment and controlling inflation. Here in the UK support for Reform is highest in those areas with the smallest number of immigrants.
In recent months neighbors have earnestly informed me of the danger’s of 15 minute cities and COVID vaccines, or hormone asylum seekers are housed in luxury hotels from which they terrorise neighbors, stories, this can only have come from social media other stories of teenagers encouraged into extreme dieting or worse are stomach turning.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to insist these sites do not publish untruths or stories intended to incite violence or spread hate against vulnerable groups.
Political campaigning is now increasingly online, and myths and lies can spread under the surface while conventional politicians remain completely oblivious until an unexpected election result occurs, with voters motivated by largely fallacious stories.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is as the cure, censorship and nullification of election results is just as dangerous as the misinformation it is intended to counter.
Where do you get the idea that Biden controlled inflation? People in the U.S. believe he created it.
We need free speech. If we want to stop the rise of far right parties then the solution is not to ban them but to look to the reasons why people are supporting them. In my view, by far the biggest issue is non-European immigration. Being forced to accept multiculturalism, which is intrinsically a bad thing for any culture, forces people to support the only parties who acknowledge the problem, the far right parties. Inevitably, as the situation worsens, the centre left and centre right parties will latch on. Once they do, that is the end of the far right parties. The problem is that immigration has been going on for so long and in such numbers it is difficult to find a solution. The only reasonable one appears to be remigration for those not accepting of European culture. It is difficult to know where to start. Banning faith schools, banning religioous head and face coverings, banning the sexism intrinsic to Islam, stop the building of mosques – they are a start but not enough.
As a fellow Fatherlander I agree entirely with the author’s assessment. At the same time I will say that the majority of people in Germany still have a soft spot for dogmas and absolute truths.