Conservatives Gain Ground in EU Elections as Public Rejects Open Borders
The recent elections for the European Union Parliament showed significant wins for conservative parties in several countries—as some of us had predicted. One thing those parties have in common is their opposition to mass illegal migration, and experts believe this is a sign that voters throughout Europe are beginning to reject the open-borders mindset—and many other failed parts of the globalist liberal agenda—that have pervaded the continent for decades.
Conservatives from Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, and Italy gained seats in the European Parliament.
In Belgium’s case, it caused the prime minister to resign.
For decades, “Germany’s socialist-green coalition has been one of the great promoters of the EU’s current governance model of environmentalism, globalism, and uncontrolled immigration,” the National Review wrote. In Sunday’s EU elections, the right-wing Alternative for Germany Party won even more seats in the European Parliament, ascending to second place for the number of seats held within the German delegation, beating the current German chancellor’s own Social Democratic Party, which is part of the socialist-green coalition governing Germany.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party got only half the vote of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally Party. In response, Macron called a snap election for the French Parliament in a few weeks. The National Rally Party has gained support over time under Le Pen, daughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, and boy-wonder Jordan Bardella by distancing itself from antisemitism and other historical baggage and by reaching out to young voters. Bardella, not yet 30, grew up in working-class Paris, has charisma, and uses social media with skill.
The Heritage Foundation’s Nile Gardiner saw Sunday’s results as “a firm rejection of socialist ruling elites.” Gardiner told The Daily Signal that immigration is “probably the most important issue for European voters.” He believes “European voters emphatically rejected … the open borders mindset that has been dominant in Europe for so many decades.” Voters were also concerned about crime and “the Islamification of Europe,” Gardiner added.
According to The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, EU voters have “had enough of the bipartisan progressive-green-secularist-globalist consensus under which they have been governed for years” and voted for parties that “oppose mass immigration, reject extreme climate measures, and resist the continuing dissolution of their civilization into a relativist, multicultural mush.”
Meanwhile, Americans may also be fed up with what Gardiner calls “the most left-wing presidency in American history,” one that encourages and facilitates mass illegal migration.
The Wall Street Journal’s Dominic Green describes that what the Swedish call a “Jimmie moment” may now be happening in the U.S. It’s named after the leader of a conservative party that did well in 2018 elections when voters punished a government that had forced mass migration on voters, wrongly assuming they’d just take it.
In 2015, Sweden took in “more than 160,000 asylum applicants, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan—more per capita than any other European country.” Now, with 20% of its population made up of recent immigrants, many from war-torn countries where women are subjugated, Sweden is plagued with urban crime and is the European capital of gangland murder.
According to professor Stefan Hedlund of Uppsala University, Sweden’s “open-door migration policy with no accompanying policy to help the newcomers integrate” has accomplished the feat of turning Sweden from socialist model to cautionary tale—in a single generation. Hedlund blamed “the media and the political establishment [who] have for so long been cocooned in naive views of criminal dangers, leading to extremely lax legislation and enforcement.”
Here in the U.S., our government keeps telling us that mass illegal migration is due to factors beyond its control; that the border is secure; that, OK, it’s not secure, but it’s congressional Republicans’ fault; that Biden can’t secure the border without new laws and powers; that Democrats have proposed the toughest border bill ever; and that illegal immigration doesn’t lead to more crime or cost money.
The public isn’t buying it.
Americans see young thugs roaming their cities after having been released by the Biden administration into the United States at the border on the pretense that they are seeking asylum. They read about the Venezuelan drug addict thief who bites police officers. They see members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang robbing New Yorkers at will. They also learn of terrorists being released without proper identification—much less a threat assessment—into our country by the hundreds.
Like Americans, voters in Europe not only want immigration laws enforced, they want legal immigrants, and asylees, to learn and conform to the norms of their hosts. In a word: “assimilation.” Without this powerful, cohesive force, there would be no United States.
The sight of thousands of protesters in U.S. and European cities openly expressing allegiance to other countries, advocating a Palestinian state at the cost of eliminating Israel, or supporting terrorist violence by Hamas, should be evidence that assimilation is desperately needed. It may also—to the consternation of the media class—have convinced 62% of Americans that the masses here illegally should be deported in accordance with the law, according to a recent CBS News poll.
This X thread from the United Kingdom chills the blood:
The leader of the demonstrators is, judging by his accent, either a British national or long-term resident. Still, when he speaks of “our people,” he means Palestinians. When he says, “We believe life begins at death … we love death,” he is not expressing European values—of the Left or the Right. Later in the thread, we see what reminds us of the “pogroms” in 19th century Eastern Europe of hate-fueled mob violence against Jews and their property.
In Canada, the U.S., and much of Europe, police seem unwilling to take on violent and threatening conduct, either because they are outnumbered, or because they or the politicians who command them fear being accused of “Islamophobia.” Yet they still have time to arrest people for praying in their own heads, scuffing “pride” symbols on streets and crosswalks, or committing supposed “non-crime hate incidents,” which include verbal or online abuse that is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.
The reaction of the European establishment to this week’s EU parliamentary elections mirrors the panic on the American Left about Republicans winning an election now and again. A group of House Democrats is reported to be ginning up a war room to oppose their latest bugaboo, The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. That effort—the joint work of over 100 conservative organizations—is open to all to read. It is a transparent, coherent collection of policies for the next conservative presidential administration that conservatives, insofar as they can agree on anything, mostly concur would be in the national interest.
One of these allegedly “harsh” proposals, according to Roll Call, is that “[i]llegal immigration should be ended, not mitigated; the border sealed.” In other words, the law should be enforced. Radical!
In democracies, people who win elections get to change policy—that’s why voters elected them. Making Project 2025 a bugbear for fearmongering is akin to what European leftists do to suppress right-wing challengers. They smear conservatives like Nigel Farage in the media, block them from having bank accounts, and even assault them as they campaign.
Farage, the engineer of Brexit, has come back to the political scene to challenge the unpopular ruling Conservative Party, which promised and failed to address the illegal immigration crisis. His brand-new Reform Party has already come ahead of the Conservatives in a recent poll, with national elections less than a month away.
Condescending political elites keep telling their people that mass immigration, legal or not, is good for them, and that they should ignore the downsides. As the EU parliamentary elections showed, this time, it’s not working.
