We don’t mean to scare you with this tweet below. But it’s interesting to note how the Donald Trump’s rise to the US presidency is bringing out the absolute worst in Europe.
While 2016 was a year that ushered in a new era of uncertainty thanks to Brexit and Trump, we must not despair and permit the flagrant opportunism of far-right politicians to dictate what Europe is.
The Guardian published a story Saturday where the region’s far-right leaders saw 2017 as the year when Europe “wakes up.”
One could fairly ask wake up to what? More discrimination? More attacks against our culturally and ethnically diverse roots as Europeans? More white privilege? More police surveillance and abuse?
From left to right some pretty scary far-right European politicians from left to right: Harald Vilimsky of the Austrian FPÖ, Matteo Salvini of the Italian Lega Nord, Gert Wilders of the PVV of Holland, Marine Le Pen of Front Nationale, and Germany’s Frauke Petry of AfD.
Folks, these politicians don’t have a clue about how to make Europe function as a region that respects and makes diversity work. They will fail and fall flat on their faces if they get power.
The answer is simple: Europe can never be modeled to resemble their extremist views that are based on racism, bigotry and blatant discrimination.
Their views are for some voters a nostalgic whiff of the Europe of the 1930s and those terrible years when Europe colonized and enslaved millions of people for its own economic interests.