If you haven’t encountered the word laager before this, it’s a feature of certain European languages and languages derived from them (e.g., Afrikaans). It denotes a fortified camp, the sort that a besieged military unit, or a community under attack, will form in the hope of standing off its attackers. It’s a formation that’s never adopted happily. Those who form one usually expect either liberation or devastation.
Two stories from Europe suggest that the political Establishment of the Old World is “feeling the heat:”
- French President Macron closes down France’s only conservative TV channel.
- The “electoral firewall” is still in place in Germany.
Germany and France are the two largest and economically most significant members of the European Union. In both nations, parties the mainstream media routinely describe as “far right” have risen to unprecedented levels of popular support. In France, it’s the Le Pen-founded National Rally; in Germany, it’s the Alternative for Germany. Both have threatened to crack the Establishmentarian political bastions of their nations. As their popularity has swelled, the older parties have combined to block them.
This has resulted in some odd bedfellows. Germany’s mildly conservative Christian Democratic Union has agreed to form a coalition government with the left-wing Christian Social Democrats. They would appear to have absolutely no common values… but they do agree on one thing: keeping Germany’s borders open to large-scale immigration.
France faces a similar popular uprising against its political elite, largely in the form of the National Rally. If the Establishmentarian parties there hope to keep the LePennists out, they too must form coalitions that will put seemingly antagonistic views into a single government.
What seems to lurk behind the challenge to the European elites is the incredible surge in approval and support for President Trump and the MAGA movement. At this time, Trump has a +7 approval, according to the Harvard-Harris poll. Perhaps more significant still, overwhelming majorities of those polled favor the MAGA family of policies and Trump’s swift action in implementing them. In particular, they approve of the deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes (81%), eliminating fraud and waste in government expenditures (76%), and closing the border (76%).
Combine that with the American retreat from “world policeman” duties, the ambivalence toward NATO, and the prospect of import tariffs designed to bring a large amount of manufacturing back to the U.S. It’s easy to see how Europe’s elites, whose hold on the Old World’s governments has been as barnacle-like as the Deep State has here, would feel a chill wind.
The irony, of course, is that Europe’s potentates both dislike American influence on Old World politics and desperately need to retain America’s military presence and trade dollars. The U.S. could crash Europe’s aggregate economy rather easily, especially if America were to withdraw from NATO – a move that President Trump has been reported as considering.
Europe’s influence on American politics has occasionally been significant. For example, the Old World’s dependence on natural gas supplies from Russia, and the disaster its “renewable energy” policies have been for ordinary Europeans, have influenced American sentiments toward strong support for energy independence. European ambivalence toward Islamic militarism is made possible by American efforts to quell it. And who could forget the 2004 efforts by such as Richard Dawkins and David Cornwall (better known as thriller writer “John Le Carre”) to influence our presidential elections. But this is all of a piece.
Establishments are always “conservative” in one important sense: holding on to power. The power-wielders of the Old World feel threatened by the rise of populism and nationalism, both there and here. They’ve made their beds with economic globalism – as long as the flow of money is net-toward Europe – and transnationalism – which promises enduring support from one another’s supporters. Any wave that threatens to rock those boats is something they cannot abide.
But their chief dependency is on America: American dollars and American military might. Over those things, they can feel their grip slipping. And that makes the chill wind from the National Rally, the Alternative for Germany, and the surging popularity of mavericks such as Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump seem just a little chillier.
