The European Union elections have claimed yet another political scalp, after Belgium's liberal prime minister resigned following a massive electoral defeat tonight. 

The continent is currently seeing a wave of far-Right victories in the EU elections, taking place this weekend. 

Already, France, Germany and Austria have seen a rise in popularity for hardline anti-immigration parties. 

And now Belgium has followed suit, after nationalist parties swept up the votes in the bloc-wide election. 

Alexander De Croo, leader of the Flemish Liberals and Democrats, also known as Open VLD, announced tonight that he would step down as the leader of his nation tomorrow, following the shocking election results.  

Open VLD has taken in just six percent of the votes, 90% of which have been counted, at the European Union elections. 

Despite polls predicting that the far-right, anti-immigration Vlaams Belang party would become the main political force in the country with 11.5 million inhabitants, the right-wing nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) retained its first spot, with an expected 22% of the votes, according to provisional results provided by the Interior ministry.

The Vlaams Belang came in second position, with a share of 17.5%, ahead of the Socialist Voruit party, which garnered about 10.5% of the votes.

Despite this, he claimed that his Liberal party would return. 

DeCroo's defeat comes just hours after French president Emmanuel Macron called a snap election in the wake of a massive swing to the right during the country's European Union elections. 

Macron tonight suffered a major defeat after Marine le Pen's National Rally party took home a projected 31.5% of the vote following the country's European Union elections. 

His Renaissance party meanwhile suffered one of the worst ever defeats for a party in French government, taking just 15.2% of France's vote. 

Macron dissolved France's parliament and called the election in the wake of the major defeat, announcing the first round will take place on June 30, while the second will take place on July 7. 

He said, following his announcement: 'France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony. To be French, at heart, it is about choosing to write history, not be driven by it.'

Supporters of the far-right National Rally party were seen gleefully celebrating the dissolution of France's parliament, having been buoyed by their success at the EU elections.   

The EU election, which has been held across the continent over the last three days, is the first since Brexit, the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On top of these, many voters have been hit by the cost of living, have concerns about migration and the cost of the green transition and are disturbed by geopolitical tensions, including war in Ukraine, and hard and far-right parties have seized on this and offered the electorate an alternative.

It isn't only French citizens who have been wooed by the far-right tonight. 

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SDU) was projected to come third, taking just 14% of the votes, a historic low for the party according to German broadcasters who commissioned exit polls.

Far and hard-right parties in Germany, meanwhile, have been projected to take the lead.

A conservative alliance of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) took home 29.5% of the vote.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), took second, with 16.5% of the votes - a massive 5.5% increase compared to the 2019 EU election.

A similar result was seen in Austrian exit polls, with the far-right FPOe party leading the vote count.

If confirmed, it would be the first time the group has topped a nationwide ballot in the Alpine country.

The Freedom Party (FPOe) gained 27 percent of the votes, ahead of the ruling conservative People's Party (OeVP), according to the polls released by the country's main media outlets.

The EU Parliament, which will be made up of 720 seats after the election finishes, is made up of multi-party factions.

While centre-left and centre-right factions have largely dominated the bloc's parliament since its last election in 2019, these parties are broadly expected to lose seats as more and more Europeans turn to more extreme parties in the hopes that they may solve their problems with the EU. 

A projection by Europe Elects pollster on Sunday showed the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) could gain just five seats compared to the last parliament to win a total of 183. The Socialists, who include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party, are seen losing four seats to get 136.

In contrast, the poll said the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) was likely to get five more deputies for a total of 73 and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group could get eight more seats for a total of 67.

More deputies could join the right and far-right groups from among the so far non-affiliated deputies of whom there would be 79, the poll said.

Meanwhile, the European Greens, facing a backlash from hard-pressed households, farmers and industry over costly EU policies limiting CO2 emissions, look set to be among the big losers with the poll on Sunday giving them only 56 deputies, a loss of 15.

Forecasts for the liberal group Renew Europe are also grim, given the expectation that Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National will trounce French President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance in France.

The Sunday poll put the Renew group's losses at 13 seats, forecasting it will end up with 89.

The European Parliament will issue an EU-wide exit poll at around 7:30pm BST and then a first provisional result after 10pm when the final votes, in Italy, have been cast.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13511669/Belgian-Prime-Minister-Alexander-Croo-announces-resign-losing-right-wing-parties-European-elections.html

ONE OF OUR MAJOR PROBLEMS IS THAT THE "DEMOCRATS" IN EUROPE AND IN THE USA HAVE FOLLOWED NAZI/FASCIST TENDENCIES — UNDER INSTRUCTION FROM THE AMERICAN NEO-CONS. CONTRASTINGLY, MOST OF THE FAR RIGHT IN EUROPE WANT TO LET THE NAZIS IN UKRAINE FALL TO THE RUSSIANS AND MAKE PEACE. THIS SEEMS TO BE A REVERSAL OF IDEOLOGIES.

THE OPEN DOOR IMMIGRATION INTO THE US AND IN EUROPE WAS MOSTLY BASED ON GUILT... AND ALSO ON THE NEED TO  REPLACE THE VANISHED PRIMARY WORKERS IN ELITIST ECONOMIES THAT RELY MOSTLY ON CAPITAL FIDDLES TO SURVIVE... THE RIGNT-WING IN EUROPE HAS HAD ENOUGH OF THE GUILT — THE GUILT THAT HAS EVEN LED OLAF TO SUPPORT ISRAEL IN ISRAEL'S MONSTROUS BEHAVIOUR... 

ALL OF THIS IS SCARY, IN THE FACE OF MACRON, AND HIS EU MATES, WANTING TO SUPPORT THE NAZI CORRUPT KIEV REGIME AGAINST THE RUSSIANS WHO ARE HOLDING ONTO "THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY"... AND WON'T LET GO...

THE PARIS OLYMPICS ARE LIKELY TO BE A DISASTER AS WELL... THE FRENCH POLICE IS GOING TO HAVE A MEGA-DIFFICULT TIME... AND IF RUSSIA DECIDES TO PUNISH FRANCE FOR ALLOWING KIEV TO HIT INSIDE RUSSIA WITH FRENCH MISSILES HELPED BY FRENCH TROOPS IN YUCKRAINE (THE KIEV SIDE), WE'RE IN FOR MORE THAN FIREWORKS...

HOPEFULLY, THINGS WILL QUIETEN DOWN....

GUS LEONISKY

POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951

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It is not difficult to be astonished these days, given how many things going on around us warrant astonishment. To pull something out of a hat at random, the Democratic apparatus has openly, brazenly politicized the judicial system—weaponized it, if you prefer—in its determination to destroy Donald Trump and now has the temerity to warn in the gravest terms that a second Trump term would mean… the politicization of American justice.

Again at random, in The Washington Post’s June 7 editions George Will tells us President Biden “has provided the most progressive governance in U.S. history.” Yes, he wrote that. Give in to your astonishment.

It is interesting in this case to note that, during the reign of Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, our George thought big government was bad, bad, bad. Now it is a fine thing that Biden is “minimizing the market’s role by maximizing the government’s role in allocating society’s resources and opportunities.” Apart from turning his own argument hourglass upside-down, this assessment of our swiftly declining president is preposterously, right-before-your-eyes false.

You cannot tell the AC’s from the DC’s these days. But this is not the half of it in the way of astonishing events, things done, things said and such like.

Last week, as many readers will have noticed, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector and now a widely followed commentator, was about to board a plane bound for Turkey when armed police officers stopped him, confiscated his passport and escorted him out of Kennedy International Airport. Ritter was booked to transit through Istanbul for St. Petersburg, where he planned to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual gathering.

Here is Ritter recounting this incident in an interview with RT International:

I was boarding the flight. Three officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said, “Orders of the State Department.” They had no further information for me. They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.

No passport, no freedom to travel, no explanation. I have it on good authority that Ritter subsequently advised other Americans who were to attend the St. Petersburg events not to risk it.

I have had countless conversations over many years in which the question considered has been “Is this as bad as the 1950s?” The matter has been especially vital since the Russiagate fiasco began during the Clinton–Trump campaign season in 2016. It was in the ensuing years that the authoritarianism implicit in American liberalism from the first burst upon us like some weird grotesque out of a Dr. Seuss book.

I always urge caution when invoking comparisons between our corruptions and ideological extremes and those of the McCarthy era. Hyperbole and exaggeration never serve one’s understanding or one’s argument. But the confiscation of Scott Ritter’s passport on the instructions of Antony Blinken’s State Department seems to me a radical step too far. The liberal authoritarians now in command of the nation’s major institutions, the House of Representatives among the only exceptions, have just signaled they are quite prepared to act at least as undemocratically as the House Un–American Activities crowd, the FBI and the rest of the national-security state did during the 1950s to preserve their political hegemony.

When I think of confiscated passports I think of Paul Robeson, the gifted singer, the courageous political dissenter, the civil rights advocate—here he is singing his famous Water Boy—whose documents were seized in 1950 because he refused to indulge in the Cold War paranoia that was already prevalent. His performing career collapsed and he nearly went broke before a Supreme Court decision restored them in 1958. Or I think of all the screenwriters, novelists, poets, painters and activists whose papers were canceled while they were in Mexico—or in France or in Sweden or in England—to avoid HUAC and expatriation turned into exile.

And when I am finished thinking of these people, about whom there is a rich, inspiring literature, I think of how far America descended into a derangement we tend to look back upon in some combination of wonder, derision and contempt.

We can no longer look back in this fashion. The revocation of Scott Ritter’s passport, along with the destruction of the judicial system, the myth-spinning about our purported leaders and all the rest pushes this in our faces. Let us give this a moment’s thought to see if we can determine what is likely to be in store.

Why Scott Ritter, I have wondered these past few days. Of all the dissident commentators of too many stripes to count, why Scott? I reply to myself, “Because Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, a former U.N. arms monitor in Iraq and he enjoys big-time credibility as a patriotic American.” His voice, in short, is the sort that can carry weight in sectors of the voting public that may well prove key in determining the outcome in the Trump–Biden election this Nov. 5.

Viewed in this context, I take the full-frontal suppression of Ritter’s rights last week as very likely tied to the liberals’ political prospects, other than brilliant as they are at this point. Censorship, suppression of various kinds taking various forms, “canceling”—these are nothing new, of course. But I sense things may get a great deal worse from here on out.

This is a year of global elections, as has often been remarked. The Associated Press counted 25 major national elections in a piece published at the start of the year. Taiwan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia, India, Mexico: These are among the big ones that have already taken place. The European Union is holding parliamentary elections June 6–9, cited in liberal quarters as the most important in decades. When Americans vote Nov. 5, it will be in this context.

■

In many of these elections—not all but many—the core issues are variants on a theme. The liberal order, such as we have it, is cast as defending itself against the onslaughts of—take your pick—populists, authoritarians, here and there a dictator. This is certainly how liberal media encourage American voters to view the Biden–Trump contest. And it is for this reason I think we must all brace ourselves for what may turn out to be a very major disaster for what remains of American democracy—and by extension the West’s.

Cast your mind back to 1992, when the Soviet Union was no more, an incipient triumphalism was taking hold in the U.S. and Francis Fukuyama published his famous (or infamous) The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press). Fukuyama, then a middling bureaucrat at the State Department, made the case that liberal democracy had won out and would stand as the ultimate, unchallenged achievement of humankind. A sort of happy political monoculture was destined to prevail eternally across the planet.

However sophomoric you may find this thesis, and I find it almost juvenile in its silliness, it came to define the expectations of all righteous American liberals. There was the Bush II administration, a major setback for the liberal narrative, although at the horizon this was merely a variation on the liberal theme. Then came the Obama years. And the Obama years set up the Democrats for a kind of fateful consummation in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy that November was incontrovertibly the surest of outcomes because it was… what is my phrase?… a matter of historical destiny.

This is why Clinton’s defeat landed so hard among the mainstream Democrats. It was more, much more, than a loss at the polls. Trump’s victory contradicted what had become a prevalent consciousness among American liberals. Biden’s win in 2020 was a kind of salvage job: It put the liberal narrative back on track. But something had happened in the years after Clinton’s November 2016 loss. Liberals had assumed an uncompromising ideological righteousness such that we can now legitimately call them authoritarians—soft despots in de Tocqueville’s terminology, apple-pie authoritarians in mine. The cause is upside-down to the Cold War cause, but these people are at least as dangerous as the McCarthyites, and, as I have suggested, maybe more so.

We learned something important during those years. Deprived of what they considered their right as conferred by the force of history, liberals demonstrated that they would stop at nothing in the cause of retrieving it. Even those institutions that must stand above the political pit if a democracy is to have any chance of working, notably but not only the judiciary, were intruded upon in the liberal authoritarian project. Nothing was off limits.

Here we are again. We are headed into another confrontation of the kind that set liberals on the path of destruction they began to walk in 2016. We are already seeing a new wave of preposterous, utterly unsubstantiated charges of Russian or Chinese interference. Trump will turn America into a dictatorship. Trump will go on a rampage of retribution. Trump—we hear this already, as noted—will corrupt the courts, our courts, the courts we have kept pristine.

The Scott Ritter affair astonishes me yet more than any of the other astonishing developments of late. I read it as a warning of how extreme things may get, what irreparable damage to the American polity may be done, if liberal authoritarian cliques determine that a broad campaign to suppress dissent will be necessary if Biden is to have a chance of winning a second term and they are to fulfill their end-of-history destiny.

Let me put it this way. Liberal media now routinely bait Trump to say whether he will automatically accept the outcome this Nov. 5. One would have to be naïve in the extreme to make any such commitment as things now stand.

https://www.unz.com/article/scott-ritter-silenced-by-liberal-authoritarians/

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The radicalised right has been very active in Australia and internationally recently. With corporate money backing the movement at every turn, the networking is amplifying. If democratic projects can be made more illiberal, and international bodies crippled, the liberal tradition can be replaced with an authoritarian reimposition of “order” and corporations will have an easier route to profit.

The Centre for Independent Studies, an Atlas Network partner, is hosting a series of online events using experts’ reputations to dignify its unscholarly “CIS Energy Program,” an outgrowth dedicated to promoting the unworkable nuclear option which actually functions to delay transition.

The Atlas Network’s Australian partners joined with their Perth sibling, Mannkal, to host the American Atlas Society in “Australia: the Road Ahead” on the 17th of April. The day was designed to celebrate the Atlas Society, an Ayn Rand-devoted institution, presenting its lifetime achievement award to Gina Rinehart. Her acceptance speech celebrated the courage of convicted felon Donald Trump, concluding that Australia needs more politicians like him.

The rest of the day was dedicated to culture war talking points. The war on “woke,” bemoaning the supposed death of Western Civilisation, and antagonism to renewable energy. It supported “family values,” the rationale for opposing feminism and harming Queer people.

Janet Albrechtsen brought Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer, Steven Whybrow, on to share her speaking slot. She contradictedherself on “judicial activism,” praising “conservative intellectual gladiator” Justice Scalia’s impact on America’s Supreme Court, but decrying it when judgments do not comply with “conservative” goals. She also deplored media activism over MeToo, while failing to mention the lengthy record of her own surreptitious media activism as documented by Acting Justice Kaye in the Drumgold judgment.

Koch-funded Briton Brendan O’Neill disdained the gross distortions of “woke” views he manufactured, culminating in accusing the bourgeoisie of pushing its children into the arms of barbarians by its loathing of its own grand heritage. As usual in this sphere, rallying for peace is depicted as fighting for Hamas.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) held its inaugural event in London at Halloween. It promoted National Conservative (NatCon) values – largely religio-ethnonationalist, with ultra reactionary social positions. It was also a climate denial event.

In an Atlas-partner event in Brisbane, Campbell Newman promised passionately to bring ARC’s ethos to Australia. Somebody has done so. Marcus Foord has been named the convenor of the “Australian Chapter of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.” Reports assert that two fundraising events were held in Melbourne and Sydney in April. One of the founders, junktank alumni, Baroness Philippa Stroud is rumoured to have been in Australia to attend. Membership-recruiting emails have been circulating.

Foord previously worked for Senator Sarah Henderson who has been seen at events of the right wing insurgent movement within the Victorian Liberal Party.

Another founder of ARC is former Deputy PM, John Anderson. He is also Chair of the Page Research Centre, a “think” tank affiliated with the National Party, which has funnelled tax-deductible donations to it. Amongst its goals is fighting energy transition. The new CEO of Page is Gerard Holland who worked for Stroud’s old Brexiteer junktank, the Legatum Institute, and as a “researcher” for Stroud at ARC. Page emails promote energy talking points from the Mannkal event in Perth.

Tony Abbott’s April speaking tour with Danube Institute (DI) events in Sydney and Budapest was another feature. DI is part of Viktor Orbán’s operation, funnelling Putin’s fossil fuel messaging as well as their shared ultra reactionary social ideology. The Sydney event was co-hosted by Quadrant which staged an Orbán circle event in Australia as early as 2016. Orbán’s DI is also officially in partnership with the Atlas Network’s Heritage Foundation. Heritage is the organisation driving Project 2025, which aims to turn a Trump victory into a fossil fuel-driven theocracy.

Abbott then spoke at CPAC Hungary. The American CPAC coordinators, the Schlapps, and Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, travelled from the Budapest event to a gathering of far-right politicians at Europa Viva 24 in Madrid. Also present in Madrid was Roger Severino, vice-president of Heritage.

The core of the event was Latin politicians from the Madrid Forum, a neofrancoist movement across the global north and south. Also in attendance were France’s Marine Le Pen and Argentinian President Javier Milei, with video contributions from Orbán and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. They were all campaigning to make sure that European populism is fomented to strengthen their far right parties ahead of elections. The leader of Spain’s Vox Party, hosts of the event, called for a “global alliance” to defeat the shared threat of “globalism and its socialist soul.” The “Judeo-Bolshevik” conspiracy lives on.

Key enemies are denoted by the catch-all “woke,” but that “threat” was most manifest in the EU and the UN. Both were depicted as child-perverting and socialist threats to “sovereignty.” “Sovereignty,” like “woke,” is meat for the base.

The far-right parties, while sanctifying their borders, are eager to hand their country’s welfare to international corporations. Britain under the Tories is giving ever more of its infrastructure to the private sector, and the Tories are now campaigning to instigate freeports where corporations face virtually no constraints. This does not stop the Tories campaigning against the European Convention on Human Rights under the guise of “sovereignty”: they present this obligation as preventing them from treating asylum seekers with cruelty.

In fact the convention protects Britons too, but that is a fact the Tories’ corporate masters do not want the public understanding.

There is good reason that Atlas Network partners – as corporations’ architecture of influence – are intertwined with the far-right parties of Europe. The corporations also donate to these bodies directly. Authoritarian governments are delighted to streamline matters for corporations which make the leaders rich. They are also adept at suppressing democratic protest movements that might become an impediment to profit.

By contrast the EU and UN aim to impose some constraints. British five year olds are now shorter than European five year olds, because of relative malnutrition. Breaking the EU will allow so much more opportunity to replicate this human experiment.

A parliamentary inquiry has recommended that Australia crafts an Australian Human Rights Act. It will be instructive to see how hard the operatives of the right work to fight that proposal.

We must watch the networking and recruitment of the right. They do not believe in a marketplace of ideas where the stronger argument or majority position holds sway any longer. Now they will force us to comply with their values, even if it means destroying all the institutions their forerunners fought to create and conserve.

https://johnmenadue.com/corporations-far-right-machine-is-busy/

WE ARE ALSO AWAITING THE DAY WHEN THE "LEFT" STOPS HELPING THE NAZIS IN YUCKRAINE AND MAKE OTHER SUCH BAD SMELLS... INCLUDING AUKUS FOR DUMMIES TO "ATTACK CHINA"........

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