Across western democracies, established conservatives are yielding to radical nationalism. There’s no sign that Britain will be the exception
I
n free societies, when you don’t like the government, you support the opposition. In dictatorships, or under military occupation, you join the resistance. The distinction isn’t precise but it matters.
All European democracies have radical anti-immigration parties, some on the fringes of opposition, some that have crossed into the mainstream. None qualify as heroic resistance movements, except in the minds of white supremacists who see liberal institutions as part of a conspiracy to ruin Europe by filling it with foreigners. That is also the view taken in the new White House national security strategy, published last week.
The authors identify “civilisational erasure” by mass migration as a threat to American interests. To counter it, they propose “cultivating resistance … within European nations”. That means meddling in other countries’ domestic politics to boost those extreme nationalists – paranoiacs posing as patriots – who want to sabotage continental cooperation.
