1. Dismay. At a critical moment in contemporary history, Europe is sending out disturbing signals. And it's generating a certain unease, perhaps because we expect too much from it. We were accustomed to the Cold War world, in which roles were clearly divided and so were spheres of influence. And Western Europe was a privileged territory under the umbrella of the great American power. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, that is, with the collapse of Soviet-style systems, we entered another world with a new stage of capitalism in its expansionary phase. The simplistic nature of the postwar period was overflowing, and economic systems were transformed by the great technological cavalcade upon which the transition from industrial to financial and digital capitalism was built. While Russia was losing its belt of countries confined to its service and stabilizing as a one-man dictatorship, at the hands of the impenetrable Putin, a member of the repressive apparatus of the old regime, China entered a phase of economic and technological development that, from a calculated distance, has allowed it to climb to the status of second-largest world power, and we have thus returned to the bipolar model from which Russia had fallen.
Faced with this process of change, it is difficult to see what the point of stabilization might be. There are reasons to think that acceleration may become the new state of the world. We Europeans, probably suffering from self-esteem syndrome—which is generally a sign or anticipation of decline—have come to believe that we were the only ones who could save the values of freedom at a time when the world is shifting toward post-democratic authoritarianism.
Suddenly, confusion has set in. The emergence of Trump as an icon of the deliberate destruction of liberal democracy, which many have refused to believe until he actually got down to work, instead of provoking a European reaction to defend democratic principles, is exposing its dark side. And suddenly, the far right has begun to set the pace, shattering the myth of Europe as the repository of democratic reason. The latest news—no longer a surprise by now—is the (provisional) victory of the far right in Romania. History is cruel: a regime that expresses the most essentialist form of communism tiptoes around democracy, which it can't quite grasp, and ends up seduced by the other side of totalitarianism: identity fascism. At a time when the far right is growing throughout Europe. And when the United States is ceasing to be the beacon of liberal democracy, the idea that Trump is trying to collapse it without the slightest respect for individual freedoms and people's rights.
2. Taboo. If we had believed that old Europe would have the wisdom and restraint to avoid neo-fascist temptations, Romania confirms that we don't know the land we walk on well enough. And it's not clear that our institutions have the capacity to withstand the reactionary onslaught. For now, despite the obscene Trump spectacle—which should be a vaccine for the citizens—the shift of the electorate toward the far right is a fact. The bad news is multiplying. In Italy, the far right is already governing—and Meloni has already made the act of loyalty to Trump—in France, it leads all the polls, and in Spain, Vox is fully consolidating and with the strength of knowing that the PP can only govern if it legitimizes them, as it has already done in the autonomous communities. And so on. Let's not forget that in the 2024 European elections, the far right came first in France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Belgium. The Europe that was supposed to be the guarantor of freedoms is shifting toward the far right. And at the same time, the social democratic parties are becoming alarmingly blurred. In fact, in some cases, they are already merging with the liberal center-right. Pedro Sánchez, with one foot on each side—economic orthodoxy and a certain capacity to seize opportunities with rights, freedoms, and customs—represents, in a way, the limits of what is possible.
And in this context, we must focus on the German Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz, who, unlike most of the European right, has not turned to the far right to govern, but to social democracy, in an attempt to find a bloc of democratic hegemony that should serve as an example. And he has found, at the same time, that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has declared the AfD a force. "incompatible with the constitutional order", proving his bet right, despite Tuesday's scare We hope it comes to fruitionIt's an experience worth following, one that could set a precedent: the taboo of the far right. And it would be sad if the partisan misery of some parliamentarians were to cause it to fail.
