EUROCIDE: Kill the EU.

Nationalism is a persistent feature in the political landscape, but it usually lies dormant. Nationalist political movements come to life in the presence of an irritant or an achievable ambition. The European Union acts as a major irritant to nationalism in two ways.

Number one: A multinational governing project is bound to override the wishes of individual nations, especially less powerful ones. The post-financial-crisis governance of the European Union revealed that the government in Brussels had not dissolved realpolitik. If the choice was between the interests of German bondholders and Greek or Irish debtors, the dispute would always be resolved in favor of Germany. Elect a recalcitrant and rebellious government in Athens if you like; it doesn’t matter. The real bosses are in Brussels.

The European Union’s structure, in which most decisions are made by the European Commission, is undemocratic. The commission is not elected, and sometimes the leaders selected to it, like England’s Neil Kinnock, are politicians who have just lost an election. Similarly, Poland’s Donald Tusk ascended to be president of the European Council just before Poland tossed his Civic Platform party out of government at home.

I wasn’t kidding earlier today when I wrote that the “backlash to the backlash to the backlash is when things will turn truly ugly.”