ANDREW SULLIVAN: Good-bye, Theresa. Hello, Boris?
But there’s no sign yet that the center has been able to marshal arguments anywhere nearly as potent as the nationalist right’s. In fact, some of the Brussels plutocrats and Eurocrats seem intent on making things worse. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and hate-figure in Britain, declared to CNN this week: “These populist, nationalists, stupid nationalists, they are in love with their own countries. They don’t like those coming from far away, I like those coming from far away … we have to act in solidarity with those who are in a worse situation than we are in.” He somehow avoided calling them all deplorables.
But he’s right of course. People do tend to be in love with their own countries, just as they love the borders that allow their countries to exist. Those who turned the E.U. into a kind of megastate incapable of summoning real patriotism never quite grasped this, and still don’t.
If you want to know why neo-fascism is resurgent in Europe, this is why. The European project overreached, and has never recovered from the financial crisis a decade ago. Europeans have always been more attached to their own national identities than to some abstract edifice like the E.U.
Read the whole thing. To be fair though, this isn’t the first time that Andrew has seen neo-fascism resurgent somewhere in the world.