please oh please let this end in civil war

First topic message reminder :

Spain storm may end in a civil war, says EU official: Ally of Angela Merkel warns 'very worrying' situation risks spiralling into an armed conflict

Spain could soon erupt into civil war, a top EU official warned yesterday as the crisis in Catalonia deepened.

In a highly-charged intervention, Gunther Oettinger said the dispute over the region’s independence risked spiralling into Western Europe’s first armed conflict for decades.

Despite the EU’s reluctance to become involved, Mr Oettinger, an ally of Angela Merkel who serves as the bloc’s budget commissioner, said the situation is ‘very, very worrying’. ‘There is a civil war imaginable now in the middle of Europe,’ he said. ‘One can only hope that a thread of conversation will soon be recorded between Madrid and Barcelona.’

The use of the phrase ‘civil war’ is particularly antagonistic to Spain due to its bloody civil war from 1936 to 1939.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4953982/Spain-storm-end-civil-war-says-EU-official.html

nicko wrote:I don't ! for the reason i have given.    I have not "dissed" his Parents in any way.  I asked HIM to explain what they would think of him if they read HIS posts about old people.   nothing wrong with that !

AND I have answered before

Mum would agree being that she is intelligent and educated.
Dad is like you and a decayed brained geriatric.
Even his brother points out what a hypocrite he is now old and feeble.

@tommy

show where is said ALL old people or ALL Young people.


And people all over the world were shocked that brits were so Economical suicidal, that's why is caused stock markets falls etc. As I said at the time, I was one of the few over here that said I think they will vote brexit realizing how deeply ingrained the hill shepherd mentality is in older brits from interacting with the poster here. I had people argue with  me that there is NO WAY Brits would be that dumb, that I might know a few crazy idiots but the bulk of the British people are not so stupid. I said I think that Brits are actually that dumb and short sighted and then was proven right.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36619342

Almost three quarters (73%) of 18 to 24-year-olds said they had voted to stay in the EU, compared with 62% of 25 to 34s and 52% of 35 to 44s. Support for Brexit formed a majority among every other age category and grew with each, peaking at 60% among those aged 65 and over.

Similarly, comparing data from the 2011 Census with the referendum results indicate a pattern, says Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester.

It's "pretty evident" that "places with lots of older voters voted for Brexit while places with more younger voters voted Remain", he says.

it's insulting that old people that have ruined so much in their life times get to ruin the future too.

Face it, the biggest threat to British prosperity is Old Brits voting against it.

But for those "old people that have ruined so much..." my family and I would now be heiling a fuhrer  instead of singing God Save the Queen and you and yours would be bowing and scraping to every passing Japanese soldier or cop.

Grow up, you infantile clown.

Are you old enough to have fought Nazis?

Do NOT fucking disgrace the great WW2 generation by comparing them to the current old farts!

They Built nations for future generations, the current oldies have just raped the prosperty of generations.

veya_victaous wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

But for those "old people that have ruined so much..." my family and I would now be heiling a fuhrer  instead of singing God Save the Queen and you and yours would be bowing and scraping to every passing Japanese soldier or cop.

Grow up, you infantile clown.

Are you old enough to have fought Nazis?

Do NOT fucking disgrace the great WW2 generation by comparing them to the current old farts!

They Built nations for future generations, the current oldies have just raped the prosperty of generations.

Yeah veya they FOUGHT against European fascism, the WWII fighters would all vote Brexit If they were alive today.

Put a sock in it Veya, we all think your a prick, you don't have to keep confirming it !

veya_victaous wrote:

Fred Moletrousers wrote:

But for those "old people that have ruined so much..." my family and I would now be heiling a fuhrer  instead of singing God Save the Queen and you and yours would be bowing and scraping to every passing Japanese soldier or cop.

Grow up, you infantile clown.

Are you old enough to have fought Nazis?

Do NOT fucking disgrace the great WW2 generation by comparing them to the current old farts!

They Built nations for future generations, the current oldies have just raped the prosperty of generations.

No, I am not old enough to have fought Nazis, though I served alongside many who did so while I was in the RAF in the late fifties and early sixties.

Nor am I denying that "oldies" and "old farts", as you so eloquently describe us, have made tragic and stupid mistakes...as they have done throughout history.

But if you are seriously suggesting that your own generation will not make their own tragic and stupid mistakes you are living in a fool's paradise - a place that you, in particular, should find eminently appropriate.

Incidentally, wasn't Hitler about your age when he embarked on his murderous crusade against anyone who disagreed with his views? Judging by your childish manic and histrionic rants against the elderly we should, perhaps, be grateful that you can do no more harm to your own opponents than banning them for a couple of days.

veya_victaous wrote:@tommy

show where is said ALL old people or ALL Young people.


And people all over the world were shocked that brits were so Economical suicidal, that's why is caused stock markets falls etc. As I said at the time, I was one of the few over here that said I think they will vote brexit realizing how deeply ingrained the hill shepherd mentality is in older brits from interacting with the poster here. I had people argue with  me that there is NO WAY Brits would be that dumb, that I might know a few crazy idiots but the bulk of the British people are not so stupid. I said I think that Brits are actually that dumb and short sighted and then was proven right.

You started with the waffle about older/younger UK adults having totally opposing views... when the truth is that there were more older uk adults in total who voted remain, by far, than there was total of younger adults who voted remain...!


But I still can't fathom why any Brit would vote in favour of EU... when they would all agree with these following statements about UK democracy/laws/borders/control etc...


1. The UK should be a sovereign nation and have all laws/rules/regulations made here in UK parliament, and this controlled by democratic elections of these UK MPs by the UK people...?


2. The UK parliament should not be controlled by a foreign organisation...?


3. The UK should have complete control over our borders, who is allowed entry, and who is denied entry, and which foreign nationals should be removed from our shores for criminality and/or being here illegally...?


4. We should be able to trade with any other nation we choose, and under mutually beneficial terms of our choosing, or WTO rules will do, and should not be diverting multi billions of taxpayer cash into any of these trading arrangements...?




You cannot agree with these as well as support being in the EU...!!!


If you are... then you are a complete idiot!!!

+1

Tommy Monk wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:@tommy

show where is said ALL old people or ALL Young people.


And people all over the world were shocked that brits were so Economical suicidal, that's why is caused stock markets falls etc. As I said at the time, I was one of the few over here that said I think they will vote brexit realizing how deeply ingrained the hill shepherd mentality is in older brits from interacting with the poster here. I had people argue with  me that there is NO WAY Brits would be that dumb, that I might know a few crazy idiots but the bulk of the British people are not so stupid. I said I think that Brits are actually that dumb and short sighted and then was proven right.

You started with the waffle about older/younger UK adults having totally opposing views... when the truth is that there were more older uk adults in total who voted remain, by far, than there was total of younger adults who voted remain...!


But I still can't fathom why any Brit would vote in favour of EU... when they would all agree with these following statements about UK democracy/laws/borders/control etc...


1. The UK should be a sovereign nation and have all laws/rules/regulations made here in UK parliament, and this controlled by democratic elections of these UK MPs by the UK people...?


2. The UK parliament should not be controlled by a foreign organisation...?


3. The UK should have complete control over our borders, who is allowed entry, and who is denied entry, and which foreign nationals should be removed from our shores for criminality and/or being here illegally...?


4. We should be able to trade with any other nation we choose, and under mutually beneficial terms of our choosing, or WTO rules will do, and should not be diverting multi billions of taxpayer cash into any of these trading arrangements...?




You cannot agree with these as well as support being in the EU...!!!


If you are... then you are a complete idiot!!!

Do you understand what DEMOGRAPHICS means? by the Demographics there is opposite views, largely linked to having to live with the consequences. Yes there are some smarter older people that want the best for the future generations of brits and there are some unrealistic cowardly young people that can't accept the changes the world is thrusting upon them.

Why the EU? Cause in 20 years they would like jobs and working economies and to not be the new 3rd world nations exploited for cheap labor

1. No, Being a State parliament in the nation of Europe is sufficient. There is no great need for any European nation to be independent, just like there is no need for the States of the USA, Australia or Canada etc to be. This is merely evolution, all the aforementioned nations had independent parliaments for there states that still exist after Unification. the UK parliament should be like the Californian or Victorian etc. parliament

2. the Uk would be a state within a nation so it is not foreign, the Uk is just a part of the a new greater nation. Should Scotland Wales and Ireland be ruled by foreigners? by your logic they need independence from the UK as much as the Uk does from the EU.

3. the EU(or the United States of Europe) should have control over it's borders and there should be free movement within the EU, again like the United States of the USA, Australia or Canada etc. Should Scotland Wales and Ireland have control over their borders and prevent travel within the UK? according to you they should for whatever reason you think the Uk needs it within the EU

4. LOL, that shows how protected you have been in the past since no nation has that right. You need to compete, every nation is always trying to trade with terms to it's advantage. In the past the Uk was rich enough to command terms to it's advantage, it is not any more and will be even less capable of doing so in the future as emerging economies mature and grow in power.

The EU is the evolution of Europe that is required for Europe to even maintain it's current prosperity, with out it it's prosperity will decrease in the future as small separate nations are no match for a large unified one. the EU just puts Europe in a position to be able to compete with the USA and the rising China and Indian economies (about the same size and population etc)

well veya you're wrong because your side lost

brexit won and that makes us the victors, the writers of history and automatically on the right side of history

are you really that dumb Veya

the E.U was not, and NEVER was intended to be like the USA., nations within the the EU didnt have anything like the status of "states" within the USA, and THAT is only part of the problem.

Lord Foul wrote:are you really that dumb Veya

the E.U was not, and NEVER was intended to be like the USA., nations within the the EU didnt have anything like the status of "states" within the USA, and THAT is only part of the problem.

actually you are quite dumb if you believe that it wasn't the goal

OF course it was meant to be like the USA but they already knew the amount of hill shepherds in Europe meant they couldn't just come straight out with it they would need to say 'it's just a trade union' for a few decades and slowly transfer sovereignty into the new United States of Europe.

smelly-bandit wrote:well veya you're wrong because your side lost

brexit won and that makes us the victors, the writers of history and automatically on the right side of history

No, I don't have a side it makes Zero difference to me
If anything it is good as Future Australians will be even more wealthy in comparison to Brits than we are now.

It is Future Brits that lost

YOU HOPE !

veya_victaous wrote:

smelly-bandit wrote:well veya you're wrong because your side lost

brexit won and that makes us the victors, the writers of history and automatically on the right side of history

No, I don't have a side it makes Zero  difference to me
If anything it is good as Future Australians will be even more wealthy in comparison to Brits than we are now.

It is Future Brits that lost

Makes zero difference to you??

The why are you whining like that little bitch Clegg??

veya_victaous wrote:

Lord Foul wrote:are you really that dumb Veya

the E.U was not, and NEVER was intended to be like the USA., nations within the the EU didnt have anything like the status of "states" within the USA, and THAT is only part of the problem.

actually you are quite dumb if you believe that it wasn't the goal

OF course it was meant to be like the USA but they already knew the amount of hill shepherds in Europe meant they couldn't just come straight out with it they would need to say 'it's just a trade union' for a few decades and slowly transfer sovereignty into the new United States of Europe.

The ultimate goal of a United States of Europe has been in train for decades; that much has long been clear to those of us who have had to work closely with EU institutions, in my own case for more than 20 years.

And you're right "...they just couldn't come straight out with it...", theybeing the unelected and largely unaccountable executive bureaucracy that runs Europe in the form of the all powerful Commission comprising nominees of the member states.

This was nothing whatsoever to do with conning "hill shepherds"...it was based on the deliberate lie, promulgated at the time of the original UK referendum in the 1970s, that the organisation was a Common Market (that's what it was originally called) and was simply a mutually advantageous trading bloc based principally on three products: agriculture, coal and steel.

The relentless move towards a USE has evolved with the ever increasing power and size of the Commission which is, of course, not answerable to national elected governments who, incidentally have no say in the election of the powerful positions of Commission, Council and Parliament presidents.

The shorthand for the insidious advancement of the creation of a United States of Europe - if anyone has not yet twigged it - is "ever closer union" and the UK's democratic decision to quit is seen as a serious threat to the governing bureaucracy's cherished goal, particularly as the lid is not going to be kept on growing dissent in some other member states for very much longer.

That is why, in my opinion, whatever the UK offers; whatever concessions are made Barnier (another unelected bureaucrat, naturally) is under firm instructions to echo Charles de Gaulle in the early days of the union and to say "non."

Et pourquois? Simply pour encourager le autres.

The EU's imploding as nation after nation turns to the ugly far Right but Brussels and the Remainers just wont talk about it, writes ROBERT HARDMAN

The three young men waiting for a bus outside the Hungarian town of Perbal a few days ago so alarmed one local resident that he called the police.

Surely these were illegal migrants. However, they were anything but. They were students from Sri Lanka, working as volunteers at a home for the mentally disabled.

A minor misunderstanding, perhaps. Except that it is part of a familiar pattern.

A few weeks earlier, death threats were sent to a man and his car tyres slashed after villagers complained that he was offering a family of migrants a free break at his motel.

International condemnation of this incident in Ocseny in southern Hungary was swift but the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, assured the villagers that they had his sympathy.

But then, the Right-wing leader himself has been accused of xenophobia — and even anti-semitism — as a result of his government’s campaign against EU-imposed migrant quotas.

Such is the reality of life on the other side of the EU.

The EU leadership and the European Commission are far too preoccupied with political chaos in Germany and with Brexit to deal with a much greater threat to their grand European dream.

In Britain, bitter Remoaners are fighting a forlorn rearguard battle to try to stop Brexit and sneer at Leavers for their stupidity, seemingly oblivious to the convulsions in the east of the EU.

Instead of a serene and harmonious Europe of Tuscan villas, Provencal markets, German opera and Bavarian beer halls, we are witnessing rancorous divisions over migration, economic stagnation and incipient independence movements.

And the bitter truth is that in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, there is now a stridently anti-Brussels, anti-migrant and anti-Establishment movement with the increasingly angry peoples of these nations convinced they are being treated as second-class citizens.

This is a different Europe, too, which has never known multiculturalism and is in no mood to start embracing it now.

Hence this month’s Independence Day celebrations in Warsaw featured a torch-lit procession by tens of thousands celebrating their ancient Christian heritage. They chanted ‘We want God’ and waved banners with messages such as ‘White Europe’.

Commentators less attuned to Polish traditions and history were quick to accuse these protesters of ‘fascism’. Here in Central Europe, though, the response has been different. According to Poland’s robustly nationalist government, it was ‘a great celebration of Poles’.

The same mood was reflected in the recent elections in Austria and the Czech Republic. Both countries have elected Right-wing Eurosceptic governments — in the wake of the sudden rise of the hard-Right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.

Indeed, AfD emerged as the third-largest party in September’s elections — meaning Angela Merkel has been unable to form a government and is fighting for her political life.

Even in France, where this summer’s shock election victory by Emmanuel Macron’s centre-Left En Marche movement grabbed the headlines, the fact that the far-Right National Front gained ground while the grand old political party machines collapsed was all but ignored.

The ineluctable fact is that Europe is shifting to the Right. Which is why I am in Hungary, because it is the next EU nation to go to the polls and is emblematic of the new anti-Brussels mood in Central and Eastern Europe.

There is no chance of a lurch to the Right here, come April’s vote, because Hungary lurched that way long ago. Its leader is hated by liberal commentators — not least for the Trump-style border fence he has built to keep out migrants.

But Orban, like Trump, couldn’t care less. He has no problem with being called ‘populist’, though he prefers the term ‘plebeian’. Even his friends call him ‘The Viktator’.

And he is well on course for victory in next spring’s election which will carry profound implications for Brussels.

Few doubt that Orban will be returned to power with anything less than an overall majority. Indeed, he is fast becoming the de facto leader of the alternative EU.

Predictably, just as the Brussels establishment belittled Brexiteers ahead of last summer’s EU referendum, it is now dismissing the Hungarian leader as an authoritarian Right-wing fruitcake.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has called him a ‘dictator’ and gave him a half-joking slap on the cheek at an EU summit in 2015.

The thirsty arch-Eurocrat has never forgotten that it was Orban and David Cameron who were the only EU leaders who dared to oppose his appointment.

But you do not last as long as Orban (he’s already been PM for a total of 11 years) without shrewd political instincts. This former professional footballer — a God-fearing father of five who makes sausages by slaughtering his own pigs — had his first stint as prime minister as long ago as 1998.

He made his name as a young firebrand bravely demanding multi-party elections in Hungary while the Iron Curtain was still standing. Those who like to paint Central Europe’s dramatic turn to the Right as a dark reprise of Germany in the Thirties are missing the point.

No, what goes to the core of Orban’s political DNA — and the current shift across the whole East European region — is a hatred of communism. These are people who remember living under a totalitarian empire less than 30 years ago. Many now regard Brussels and its unelected Commission and unaccountable courts as the new Moscow.

John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and now president of the Budapest-based think tank the Danube Institute, says that outsiders fail to understand how deep the scars of communism go.

His biography of Orban recounts how, significantly, the politician was arrested in 1988 as he tried to create his movement. He says Orban’s experience of life under Communist rule has made him ‘much more critical of elites the higher he has risen.’

Indeed, Orban’s great modern heroes are those who brought about the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 — notably German chancellor Helmut Kohl, US president Ronald Reagan and Thatcher. It is a popular sentiment around here, as I discover in Budapest’s Liberty Square where Orban has erected a bronze statue of Reagan.

Looking closely, I see it is in need of repair. A crack has now turned into a hole in Reagan’s outstretched hand — because so many people come here to shake it.

If Orban and his Fidesz party win a fourth term, as everyone expects, the old European elite can no longer dismiss what is happening here as mere ‘populism’. A clear dividing line now runs from the Baltic to the Danube and the Black Sea.

On one side are the EU’s wealthier, liberal, multicultural nations such as France and Germany (where, in 2015, Merkel controversially — and to her bitter cost — invited more than a million refugees).

On the other are those whose democracies are, in most cases, virtually brand new — the so-called Borscht Belt, the Goulash Gang, call them what you will — whose social outlook on everything from gay rights to immigration is very different.

In last month’s Czech elections, an Islamophobic party which urged voters to walk pigs past a mosque to protect what it called the country’s ‘democratic way of life and the heritage of our ancestors from Islam’ won 10.7 per cent of the vote. (That is a great deal more than the 7.4 per cent achieved by the Lib Dems in Britain four months earlier.)

The default response in the Western half of Europe is to demand that these ghastly people become better Europeans. But the fact is that these ghastly people are no longer afraid of squaring up to Brussels.

Barely noticed, thanks to the general obsession with Brexit and Catalonia’s bid for independence, has been a recent summit of Central European leaders in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava.

It had been convened to tackle a festering cause of anger and injured pride. The specific indignity was the discovery that sub-standard foods had been exported to the former Eastern Bloc which had not been sold in Western Europe.

Orban’s government has described it as the ‘biggest scandal of the recent past’. Just imagine the protests and smashed windows in Scotland if Sainsbury’s was flogging sub-standard food north of the border but not in Surrey. The Bulgarian prime minister calls this ‘food apartheid’.

Although this controversy was about food, it symbolised to East Europeans how they were being abused by Brussels.

Stung in to action, Brussels has promised to introduce a new food testing regime from next year. Too late. The damage has been done.

It is just yet another example of why Brussels-bashing is so prevalent to the east of the Alps, particularly here in Hungary.

For when Orban started building his razor wire fence along Hungary’s southern border during the migration crisis of 2015, he was roundly attacked.

Hundreds of thousands who had crossed from Turkey into Greece were heading West via Serbia and Hungary. Some were fleeing the Syrian civil war. But many were economic migrants.

Mrs Merkel was hailed as the ‘angel of Europe’ for saying that Germany would welcome the lot. For his part, Orban was branded the villain for closing the door.

Today, the memory of the chaos of 2015 and subsequent terrorist incidents by Muslim extremists across Europe mean few here question Orban’s decision.

‘Migration is the big issue here, and the EU is now following Orban on migration,’ says Zsolt Jesenszky, a well-known Hungarian entrepreneur. ‘The Left were totally against the fence when it went up saying: “It won’t work”. And guess what? It works.’

Jesenszky, 45, says that the younger generations want leaders who stand up to Brussels, not people who go on bended knee.

‘Hungary likes a guy who stands up to the big bully,’ he says. ‘They’d never vote for a guy like Macron who spends a fortune on make-up.’

(Many here remember that the image-conscious French president, who spent £24,000 on a make-up artist in his first three months in office, has been a stern critic of Hungary and Poland.)

But Orban is more than happy to be attacked by the ‘old’ nations of the EU because they are playing into his hands.

He has now consolidated his position by outflanking the notorious Hungarian nationalist movement Jobbik, infamous for its fascist uniforms and its anti-semitic, anti-gyspy rhetoric.

Jobbik has just performed a U-turn in search of votes from the Left. It is Orban and his Fidesz movement who are now playing the xenophobia card.

Even some of his supporters think he has gone too far by leafletting eight million households and erecting posters as part of a campaign against Budapest-born billionaire George Soros.

They claim the 87-year-old gave Brussels a plan to flood Hungary with migrants in order to meet labour market needs and bolster the voter base of Left-wing groups.

Orban has ordered Hungary’s security services to investigate a so-called ‘Soros network’ which it is claimed is pulling strings in Brussels. As a result, Orban has been accused of anti-semitism for his demonisation of the great philanthropist.

Born into a Hungarian Jewish family shortly before the war, Soros only survived the German occupation of Budapest with the use of forged papers.

Though now based in America, Soros has been a very generous benefactor to countless Hungarians, having built the Central European University in Budapest. There, I met students and staff appalled to find themselves at the centre of political controversy.

Earlier this year, in a very disturbing development, Orban’s government introduced laws effectively forcing the university to re-apply for its licence to operate. That approval has still not been granted.

It is a bewildering situation. But the new mood in Central and East Europe has its roots in a proud nationalism that Brussels, for years, has tried to marginalise with its vision of a European super-state.

There’s a message for Britain, too. Perhaps all those Remoaners accusing the Brexiteers of being blinkered little Englanders should open their eyes and look at just how rotten much of the EU is now.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5106147/EU-implodes-nation-nation-turns-far-Right.html

smelly-bandit wrote:The EU's imploding as nation after nation turns to the ugly far Right but Brussels and the Remainers just wont talk about it, writes ROBERT HARDMAN

The three young men waiting for a bus outside the Hungarian town of Perbal a few days ago so alarmed one local resident that he called the police.

Surely these were illegal migrants. However, they were anything but. They were students from Sri Lanka, working as volunteers at a home for the mentally disabled.

A minor misunderstanding, perhaps. Except that it is part of a familiar pattern.

A few weeks earlier, death threats were sent to a man and his car tyres slashed after villagers complained that he was offering a family of migrants a free break at his motel.

International condemnation of this incident in Ocseny in southern Hungary was swift but the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, assured the villagers that they had his sympathy.

But then, the Right-wing leader himself has been accused of xenophobia — and even anti-semitism — as a result of his government’s campaign against EU-imposed migrant quotas.

Such is the reality of life on the other side of the EU.

The EU leadership and the European Commission are far too preoccupied with political chaos in Germany and with Brexit to deal with a much greater threat to their grand European dream.

In Britain, bitter Remoaners are fighting a forlorn rearguard battle to try to stop Brexit and sneer at Leavers for their stupidity, seemingly oblivious to the convulsions in the east of the EU.

Instead of a serene and harmonious Europe of Tuscan villas, Provencal markets, German opera and Bavarian beer halls, we are witnessing rancorous divisions over migration, economic stagnation and incipient independence movements.

And the bitter truth is that in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, there is now a stridently anti-Brussels, anti-migrant and anti-Establishment movement with the increasingly angry peoples of these nations convinced they are being treated as second-class citizens.

This is a different Europe, too, which has never known multiculturalism and is in no mood to start embracing it now.

Hence this month’s Independence Day celebrations in Warsaw featured a torch-lit procession by tens of thousands celebrating their ancient Christian heritage. They chanted ‘We want God’ and waved banners with messages such as ‘White Europe’.

Commentators less attuned to Polish traditions and history were quick to accuse these protesters of ‘fascism’. Here in Central Europe, though, the response has been different. According to Poland’s robustly nationalist government, it was ‘a great celebration of Poles’.

The same mood was reflected in the recent elections in Austria and the Czech Republic. Both countries have elected Right-wing Eurosceptic governments — in the wake of the sudden rise of the hard-Right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.

Indeed, AfD emerged as the third-largest party in September’s elections — meaning Angela Merkel has been unable to form a government and is fighting for her political life.

Even in France, where this summer’s shock election victory by Emmanuel Macron’s centre-Left En Marche movement grabbed the headlines, the fact that the far-Right National Front gained ground while the grand old political party machines collapsed was all but ignored.

The ineluctable fact is that Europe is shifting to the Right. Which is why I am in Hungary, because it is the next EU nation to go to the polls and is emblematic of the new anti-Brussels mood in Central and Eastern Europe.

There is no chance of a lurch to the Right here, come April’s vote, because Hungary lurched that way long ago. Its leader is hated by liberal commentators — not least for the Trump-style border fence he has built to keep out migrants.

But Orban, like Trump, couldn’t care less. He has no problem with being called ‘populist’, though he prefers the term ‘plebeian’. Even his friends call him ‘The Viktator’.

And he is well on course for victory in next spring’s election which will carry profound implications for Brussels.

Few doubt that Orban will be returned to power with anything less than an overall majority. Indeed, he is fast becoming the de facto leader of the alternative EU.

Predictably, just as the Brussels establishment belittled Brexiteers ahead of last summer’s EU referendum, it is now dismissing the Hungarian leader as an authoritarian Right-wing fruitcake.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has called him a ‘dictator’ and gave him a half-joking slap on the cheek at an EU summit in 2015.

The thirsty arch-Eurocrat has never forgotten that it was Orban and David Cameron who were the only EU leaders who dared to oppose his appointment.

But you do not last as long as Orban (he’s already been PM for a total of 11 years) without shrewd political instincts. This former professional footballer — a God-fearing father of five who makes sausages by slaughtering his own pigs — had his first stint as prime minister as long ago as 1998.

He made his name as a young firebrand bravely demanding multi-party elections in Hungary while the Iron Curtain was still standing. Those who like to paint Central Europe’s dramatic turn to the Right as a dark reprise of Germany in the Thirties are missing the point.

No, what goes to the core of Orban’s political DNA — and the current shift across the whole East European region — is a hatred of communism. These are people who remember living under a totalitarian empire less than 30 years ago. Many now regard Brussels and its unelected Commission and unaccountable courts as the new Moscow.

John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and now president of the Budapest-based think tank the Danube Institute, says that outsiders fail to understand how deep the scars of communism go.

His biography of Orban recounts how, significantly, the politician was arrested in 1988 as he tried to create his movement. He says Orban’s experience of life under Communist rule has made him ‘much more critical of elites the higher he has risen.’

Indeed, Orban’s great modern heroes are those who brought about the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 — notably German chancellor Helmut Kohl, US president Ronald Reagan and Thatcher. It is a popular sentiment around here, as I discover in Budapest’s Liberty Square where Orban has erected a bronze statue of Reagan.

Looking closely, I see it is in need of repair. A crack has now turned into a hole in Reagan’s outstretched hand — because so many people come here to shake it.

If Orban and his Fidesz party win a fourth term, as everyone expects, the old European elite can no longer dismiss what is happening here as mere ‘populism’. A clear dividing line now runs from the Baltic to the Danube and the Black Sea.

On one side are the EU’s wealthier, liberal, multicultural nations such as France and Germany (where, in 2015, Merkel controversially — and to her bitter cost — invited more than a million refugees).

On the other are those whose democracies are, in most cases, virtually brand new — the so-called Borscht Belt, the Goulash Gang, call them what you will — whose social outlook on everything from gay rights to immigration is very different.

In last month’s Czech elections, an Islamophobic party which urged voters to walk pigs past a mosque to protect what it called the country’s ‘democratic way of life and the heritage of our ancestors from Islam’ won 10.7 per cent of the vote. (That is a great deal more than the 7.4 per cent achieved by the Lib Dems in Britain four months earlier.)

The default response in the Western half of Europe is to demand that these ghastly people become better Europeans. But the fact is that these ghastly people are no longer afraid of squaring up to Brussels.

Barely noticed, thanks to the general obsession with Brexit and Catalonia’s bid for independence, has been a recent summit of Central European leaders in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava.

It had been convened to tackle a festering cause of anger and injured pride. The specific indignity was the discovery that sub-standard foods had been exported to the former Eastern Bloc which had not been sold in Western Europe.

Orban’s government has described it as the ‘biggest scandal of the recent past’. Just imagine the protests and smashed windows in Scotland if Sainsbury’s was flogging sub-standard food north of the border but not in Surrey. The Bulgarian prime minister calls this ‘food apartheid’.

Although this controversy was about food, it symbolised to East Europeans how they were being abused by Brussels.

Stung in to action, Brussels has promised to introduce a new food testing regime from next year. Too late. The damage has been done.

It is just yet another example of why Brussels-bashing is so prevalent to the east of the Alps, particularly here in Hungary.

For when Orban started building his razor wire fence along Hungary’s southern border during the migration crisis of 2015, he was roundly attacked.

Hundreds of thousands who had crossed from Turkey into Greece were heading West via Serbia and Hungary. Some were fleeing the Syrian civil war. But many were economic migrants.

Mrs Merkel was hailed as the ‘angel of Europe’ for saying that Germany would welcome the lot. For his part, Orban was branded the villain for closing the door.

Today, the memory of the chaos of 2015 and subsequent terrorist incidents by Muslim extremists across Europe mean few here question Orban’s decision.

‘Migration is the big issue here, and the EU is now following Orban on migration,’ says Zsolt Jesenszky, a well-known Hungarian entrepreneur. ‘The Left were totally against the fence when it went up saying: “It won’t work”. And guess what? It works.’

Jesenszky, 45, says that the younger generations want leaders who stand up to Brussels, not people who go on bended knee.

‘Hungary likes a guy who stands up to the big bully,’ he says. ‘They’d never vote for a guy like Macron who spends a fortune on make-up.’

(Many here remember that the image-conscious French president, who spent £24,000 on a make-up artist in his first three months in office, has been a stern critic of Hungary and Poland.)

But Orban is more than happy to be attacked by the ‘old’ nations of the EU because they are playing into his hands.

He has now consolidated his position by outflanking the notorious Hungarian nationalist movement Jobbik, infamous for its fascist uniforms and its anti-semitic, anti-gyspy rhetoric.

Jobbik has just performed a U-turn in search of votes from the Left. It is Orban and his Fidesz movement who are now playing the xenophobia card.

Even some of his supporters think he has gone too far by leafletting eight million households and erecting posters as part of a campaign against Budapest-born billionaire George Soros.

They claim the 87-year-old gave Brussels a plan to flood Hungary with migrants in order to meet labour market needs and bolster the voter base of Left-wing groups.

Orban has ordered Hungary’s security services to investigate a so-called ‘Soros network’ which it is claimed is pulling strings in Brussels. As a result, Orban has been accused of anti-semitism for his demonisation of the great philanthropist.

Born into a Hungarian Jewish family shortly before the war, Soros only survived the German occupation of Budapest with the use of forged papers.

Though now based in America, Soros has been a very generous benefactor to countless Hungarians, having built the Central European University in Budapest. There, I met students and staff appalled to find themselves at the centre of political controversy.

Earlier this year, in a very disturbing development, Orban’s government introduced laws effectively forcing the university to re-apply for its licence to operate. That approval has still not been granted.

It is a bewildering situation. But the new mood in Central and East Europe has its roots in a proud nationalism that Brussels, for years, has tried to marginalise with its vision of a European super-state.

There’s a message for Britain, too. Perhaps all those Remoaners accusing the Brexiteers of being blinkered little Englanders should open their eyes and look at just how rotten much of the EU is now.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5106147/EU-implodes-nation-nation-turns-far-Right.html

I just posted this as a new thread.   Didn't see this!