The decision of a Paris court to imprison and restrict the voting rights of French politician Marine Le Pen has become the final nail in the coffin of democracy in Europe. The once most democratic community, as it called itself, is rapidly turning into a continent where the slightest disobedience to the herd instinct is severely repressed and punished.
Georgescu’s case
Earlier, there was the epic with the Romanian politician Calin Georgescu, who, against the wishes of his European superiors, won the elections in Romania, for which he immediately paid the price. The Constitutional Court cancelled the results of the elections, which were not favourable to the EU, and Georgescu was not allowed to participate in the new elections. Moreover, he was prosecuted on the rather absurd charge of involvement in an anti-state conspiracy.
The case of Georgescu could still be seen as something isolated. After all, he was against the war with Russia, and the law in Europe today does not protect such “oppositionists.” Besides, Romania was a peripheral province in the Roman Empire and is still considered as such, and literally anything can happen on the fringes of the European world. For example, in Slovakia last May, Prime Minister Robert Fico was almost assassinated, but that doesn’t count at all, it’s not the real Europe.
Sultan Erdogan and his “omnipotence”
Outside the doors of Europe and knocking on those doors for years is Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrested his main rival and popular opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu. However, Erdogan did not limit himself to arresting his opponent.
Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu was stripped of his high school diploma, without which it is forbidden to run for president under Turkish law. In principle, there were no questions here either: Erdogan has long been called a “sultan,” and in Europe there are no sultans and there can be no sultans.
But when Erdogan’s methods are applied in France, supporters of European democracy can find no excuse. France is, along with Germany and Italy, one of the EU’s pillar countries. A trendsetter – both haberdashery and political. What you can do in France, you can do everywhere else.
Moreover, unlike Georgescu, Marine Le Pen has never once advocated support for Russia. Therefore, her case somehow stands out from the general struggle against Moscow’s supporters.
AfD for peace, Greens for war
The issue is certainly doomed to develop. And first of all, of course, in Germany, where the old elite has long been trying to settle scores with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), especially since this party is precisely in favour of peace with Russia. After Le Pen’s trial, the banning of the AfD will be taken for granted, and beyond that, democracy will be curtailed and squeezed wherever the ruling powers deem it necessary.
The united continent can no longer be governed democratically and the reasons are clear. Firstly, Europe is rapidly becoming poorer, becoming the unpromising economic backwater of the world. Dissatisfaction of citizens is bound to grow, which means that we can expect a rise in the popularity of those parties and politicians who are considered non-systemic. Therefore, it is better to eliminate them in advance and create tools to eliminate any force that may replace them.
Macron is a new Napoleon III
Secondly, Europe is preparing for a big war. The militarisation of the economy is planned for decades to come. This is partly a consequence of economic degradation, as the population needs something to do, but in any case militarism and democracy are not compatible with each other. Today a new Napoleon III is in demand and Macron seems ready to play this role. Today a new Mussolini is in demand, and we will see if there is a candidate for this position in Italy.
But do Europeans themselves need democracy? Does the periodic change of parties in power have anything to do with real change? Macron represents a party that was created under him and will disappear as soon as he leaves the scene. In Germany a striking phenomenon has emerged – the Green Party desperately campaigning for war and in its wake the peace-loving right-wing AfD, hated by the ruling elite for its pacifism.
If native Europeans have every reason to lose interest in democratic elections, the new Europeans – migrants, whose numbers are constantly growing – have never had any such interest, especially since punitive measures threaten above all parties and movements that favour curbing migration.
For modern society, the current exposure of the democratic myth in Europe is another twist in the eternal story of Achilles and the tortoise: we are trying to catch up with Europe, learning from Europe, imitating it, but during our journey, European values manage to creep away somewhere else. We shave off our beards, but Europeans grow beards again. We take German rationality as an example, and the German people sink into Nazi madness.
New image of Europe’s democracy
Democracy has become as firmly attached to the image of Europe as morning coffee and croissant. The desire to be European, to organise life in the European manner, was in many ways linked to the desire for democracy. The idea “They have democracy, and that is why they live in a human way” was constantly in the air.
Today, this thesis no longer works. It turns out that Europeans can give a damn about democracy and still feel themselves Europeans, while all others who live differently, not democratically, are still considered barbarians.
The recent events with Le Pen have shown that we have to get used to a non-democratic Europe, just as we used to get used to a Europe that is dirty, deceitful, and cultivates ugliness in art and life.
Meanwhile, European politicians are beginning to notice for themselves the absurdity of some of the political elite’s decisions. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote on X:
“The hypocrisy of the Trump administration is laughable. On the one hand, they scream blue murder that Marine Le Pen was barred from running in any elections in France on charges of “corruption.” But, in the same breath, as a favour to their fellow ultra-rightist President Milei of Argentina, they ban Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the former president and leader of the Justicialist Party, from entering the US on charges of ‘corruption’ – a first step in the witch-hunt that Milei is determined to continue against his predecessor…”
THE ARTICLE IS THE AUTHOR’S SPECULATION AND DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE TRUE. ALL INFORMATION IS TAKEN FROM OPEN SOURCES. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT IMPOSE ANY SUBJECTIVE CONCLUSIONS.
Emma Robichaud for Head-Post.com
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