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Patriots
Make History: Having had the
privilege to witness the rousing speeches and the incredible atmosphere
at the Patriots’ Madrid rally,
I came home convinced that we do live in a new world—as many of you who
have also been there would attest. The energy and momentum that Trump
gave Europe’s already booming national conservative movement is nothing
like we’ve seen before. If there was one core message in all the
speeches (from Abascal, Orbán, Le Pen, Salvini, Wilders, and others),
it was that the hegemony of Europe’s liberal elites is over. These
parties, leaders, and ideas can no longer be considered fringe or
ignored. They are not only the new mainstream, representing a
legitimate challenge to the West’s post-war liberal order, but are also
its inevitable successors. The Madrid summit put all this on such a
stunning display that not even Brussels can deny the reality any
longer.
Right-Wing Surges
in Polls: As if to underline this message, last week
also saw significant gains for conservative parties in several
countries. The German AfD, along with the CDU, are both up in the polls
following their cooperation on migration, which reinforces the fact
that Germans do not want any more of the establishment’s cordon sanitaire. The
Spanish VOX, the third-largest party in Parliament, reached a new
record in popularity since the 2023 election and is now the number one
choice of young voters aged 18 to 34. On the other side of
the Channel, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has even more reason to
celebrate: the latest YouGov poll confirmed that the party is the most popular
among Brits of all ages for the first time with 25%. And
that’s probably a low estimate, as another, likely more accurate study
from Find Out Now put them at 29%—four
points ahead of Labour and a staggering eleven percent ahead of the
Tories.
“Coup d’etat” in
Poland: We’ll get to the whole USAID saga in a minute,
but first let’s talk about the biggest bombshell this side of the
Atlantic, which is Polish prosecutors launching a criminal probe
against the entire liberal government and key political
allies of PM Donald Tusk based on the Constitutional Tribunal’s
“justified suspicion” of cabinet members acting as an “organized criminal
group” to bring down the state system. The court requested that the
prosecutors investigate whether the Tusk government’s relentless rule
of law abuses since coming to power in late 2023 amount to a “coup
d’etat,” which carries a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. Since
disregarding judicial bodies is part of the charge, it was not
surprising that Tusk didn’t take the news seriously either: his
response was a short clip of
him playing ping-pong in his office and laughing it off. Don’t expect
the EU to care about actual rule of law violations in Poland either, as
‘Queen Ursula’ arrived in the country the very next day and continued
praising Tusk—her old comrade within EPP—as if nothing happened. Back
in Brussels, civil liberties (LIBE) committee chair Javier Zarzalejos
(also EPP) demonstrated how democratic the EU Parliament can be by cutting the microphone
of a Polish MEP who tried to bring up the court’s accusations to
Justice Minister Adam Bodnar, who was incidentally talking about the
rule of law while being one of the main suspects of the case. All this
could contribute to the perfect storm by the time of the presidential
elections in May. Outgoing President Duda warned that Tusk
(and Brussels) may not accept the result if it doesn’t go their way and
might try to pull something similar to what was done in Romania, which
could lead to massive social unrest.
NGO Empire
Unmasked: President Trump’s “NGO apocalypse” that began
after he defunded the known CIA-front USAID—as our columnist Rod Dreher
described what’s happening in his must-read opinion piece—is
just about as big of an eye opener as it gets as far as progressive
foreign interference goes. But you probably already know everything
about USAID funding “sex changes” in Guatemala, a “DEI musical in
Ireland,” or a “transgender opera” in Colombia. The headline here is
not the Democrat-run U.S. government wasting taxpayer funds on
unnecessary woke pet projects, but that it’s seeding undemocratic color
revolutions all over the world, especially in countries run by
conservative or anti-globalist governments, such as Slovakia, Serbia,
or Hungary. The latter feels especially vindicated now, given that the
EU is doubling down on its
lawsuit over Hungary’s Defense of Sovereignty law,
implemented after blatant interference attempts came to light following
the 2022 election. Brussels is working on a similar law, but it seems
it’s only illegal if conservatives do it—lest they protect their
democratic processes and avoid being replaced from abroad.
All Eyes on
Politico: The fallout of the scandal also reached Politico, the
favorite outlet of the liberal elites in both Washington and Brussels,
as it has been paid over $34
million by the federal government for premium subscriptions
since late 2015. Selling paywalled content is not a crime, but the
sheer volume and the fact that payments doubled in election years and
then grew almost exponentially under the Biden administration speak for
themselves. No wonder Politico’s
agenda is so aligned with the Democrats’ and the EU establishment’s,
and why it suppressed the Hunter Biden story during the 2020 elections
and keeps attacking sovereigntist parties and governments in Europe.
But there’s no stopping, it seems. The outlet began its Brussels Playbook
the very next day denying the “falsehoods” spread by “online
voices”—thanks for the shout-out—and immediately arguing for the need
for the EU to fill the gap left behind by USAID. In other words, now
that U.S. taxpayer-funded foreign interference is drying up, let’s
replace it with more EU taxpayer-funded foreign interference, right?
Shielding Brussels
from Democracy: So, if not USAID, then what kind of
influence does Brussels consider a threat to our electoral integrity?
Right-wing voices on social media, of course, especially after Facebook
ditched their ‘fact-checking’ NGOs to join X in fostering free speech.
That’s why the Commission has sped up the creation of the
so-called Democracy Shield (EDS), a new instrument to
strengthen digital surveillance and censor content deemed to be
“disinformation,” “extremism,” or just “hate speech” by the same leftist NGOs
that previously partnered with Meta. To oversee its implementation, the
EU Parliament established a new special committee, the EUDS, which showcased
Brussels's disregard for democracy right from the start. Not only were
the Patriots blocked from getting a vice-chair again, despite being the
third largest group, but the committee’s new chair, Nathalie Loiseau
(Renew) announced her election a
day before the vote even took place.
Getting Ahead of
Scandals? At the same time, the Parliament’s EPP-led
budgetary control (CONT) committee was hit with backlash from the Left
for revealing that it did find
“irregularities” in the contracts awarded to environmental
NGOs who were lobbying the Green Deal on behalf of the Commission.
(Remember, the Commission says it paid for
raising “awareness” about climate change, not for illegal lobbying that
resulted in our current disastrous climate policies). The real anger
against CONT chair Niclas Herbst came after he requested an audit of
all similar contracts in five policy areas: environment,
climate, agriculture, justice, and home affairs. But don’t be fooled.
The EPP is unlikely to have switched sides all of a sudden. If it was
serious, they would not have blocked the conservative initiative to
pause the Green Deal to re-evaluate it in a more democratic setting.
No, the EPP is more likely just wanting to get ahead of future scandals
lurking in the books; more transparency is always welcome, but don’t
hold your breath.
Quasi-Qatargate
Arrest: Belgian authorities arrested Ugo Lemaire, the
son of former MEP Marie Arena (S&D), one of the key suspects of the
Qatargate scandal. Although Lemaire was nicked for international drug
trafficking and didn’t have much to do with the giant
influence-peddling operation, his case is still a good
reminder of how things work in the EU Parliament. Before the
scandal broke, he was running a legal cannabis company while his
mother, Arena, used her chairmanship of the human rights subcommittee
to lobby for wider legalization in the EU. By the way, the company’s
other co-founder was the son of the judge who initially led the
Qatargate investigation and it was this conflict of interest that
forced him to step down, allowing his successor to order the raids and
subsequent arrest of Arena.
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