Nov 10

Today’s News 10th November 2016

  • Truth Is The Enemy Of The State

    Submitted by Bob Livingston via PersonalLiberty.com,

    There is a saw that comes from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” that “the truth will out.” But not if government has its way.

    That’s because truth is the enemy of the state. The state, meaning the apparatus of government, is “the system” that controls the American people.

    Most people believe they control the political system through elections. Little do they know that the government and the corporate state own and control the state and the people. In other words, the system is rigged, as Donald Trump says. The system must keep this information invisible and it does so through constant conditioning of the public mind.

    Now consider what has happened and is happening to Julian Assange. Consider Edward Snowden.

    Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006, exposing, among other things, malfeasance in the conduct of Bush the Lesser’s “War on Terror.” Progressive Democrats loved Assange then.

    But by 2010, with George W. Bush out of power and Barack Obama continuing old wars and starting new ones, the truths that were being outed by WikiLeaks were hitting too close to home. WikiLeaks got its hands on a treasure trove of State Department and Pentagon emails and documents being dispatched across the globe.

    I wrote at the time in “A war on the truth,” that what WikiLeaks was revealing was:

    …the result of a secretive, unaccountable and over-powerful government; a perfidious empire that seeks to rule the world by guile, cunning or force, if necessary. And the response by the United States government and by authorities in some of the U.S.’s puppet states — like Great Britain, which arrested Assange, and Sweden, which brought spurious charges of rape against him — demonstrate the length the ruling elites will go to suppress the truth.

     

    Truth is the enemy of a totalitarian regime. Fooling, lying, spying: That is the way of the totalitarian regime. Fooling, lying to and spying on friends and enemies, and even worse, its own citizens.

    Just before I wrote that, we now know, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was contemplating various ways to shut WikiLeaks down. During a November meeting, sources say, Clinton suddenly blurted out, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

    According to sources present at the meeting:

    The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assange’s previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said. At that time in 2010, Assange was relatively free and not living cloistered in in the embassy of Ecuador in London. Prior to 2010, Assange focused Wikileaks’ efforts on countries outside the United States but now under Clinton and Obama, Assange was hammering America with an unparalleled third sweeping Wikileaks document dump in five months. Clinton was fuming, sources said, as each State Department cable dispatched during the Obama administration was signed by her.

     

    Clinton and other top administration officials knew the compromising materials warehoused in the CableGate stash would provide critics and foreign enemies with a treasure trove of counterintelligence. Bureaucratic fears about the CableGate release ultimately proved to be well founded by Clinton, her inner circle and her boss in the White House.

    Efforts to shut down WikiLeaks included an American intelligence-initiated operation to entrap Assange in a phony rape charge. The U.S. government also pressured PayPal, VISA and MasterCard to shut down donations to WikiLeaks. The Swedish bank handling Assange’s legal defense fund was pressured by the U.S. government to freeze the account. The firm hosting WikiLeaks’ website was pressured to shut the site the down.

    Now WikiLeaks is revealing widespread corruption, vote rigging, media manipulation and other damning evidence against the Democrat Party, Hillary Clinton and her minions. WikiLeaks and Assange are prying the lid off the propaganda machine and exposing the corrupt system.

    In response, U.S. intelligence (an oxymoron) initiated another effort to entrap Assange in a sex-related scandal; this time by connecting him with a phony “dating site” and alleging he solicited sex with an 8-year-old girl.

    John Kerry’s State Department pressured Ecuador to cut off Assange’s internet connection. There is a new move afoot to figure a way to pry him out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and turn him over to U.S. authorities, where he will no doubt disappear into the bowels of indefinite detention.

    Only the power of propaganda keeps the people from overthrowing the U.S. government by force. So truth is the enemy of the state and the state will do everything it can to suppress it.

    That’s not surprising. What is surprising is the vast number of people on both “sides” of the political spectrum outside of government who see truth seekers and truth disseminators like Assange, Snowden and Bradley Manning as enemies rather than friends of liberty.

  • 5 Shot, 2 Life-Threatening Injuries During Anti-Trump Protest In Seattle

    Following an afternoon and evening of protests decrying the election of Donald Trump as America’s next president, The Seattle Times reports, police are responding to reports that at least four people were shot downtown Wednesday night.

    Officers were converging on the area of Third and Pike.  

    An anti-Trump rally, which started at Westlake Mall, turned into a march and was proceeding down nearby streets at the time of the shootings, according to witnesses.

    Video from Seattle…

     

    More details to follow…

    Seattle Fire Dept confirm 5 short, 2 life-threatening injuries…

  • Anarchists Storm US Consulate, Protest Obama's Visit To Greece

    Anarchists entered the US Consulate in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece and threw flyers opposing the upcoming visit of Barack Obama to Greece. As KeepTalkingGreece.com reports, a group of some 15 people reportedly entered the building where the Consulate is located on the 7th floor on Tuesday morning. They chanted slogans, threw flyers in the corridors and attempted to open banners.

     

    Police rushed to the area and detained six of the protesters.

    According to Athens News Agency, the “Anarchist Collective of Rubicon” and the “Libertarian Thessaloniki Initiative” uploaded a text in a website of the Greek anti-authoritarian movement. They stated that “the visit of the outgoing US President, Barack Obama in Greece on the eve of the anniversary of the [Students’] Polytechnic uprising (and thus under a left government) is anything but a courtesy visit. The content of the visit could be summed up as “business as usual” and it is known that such “jobs are dirty with the blood of the people.”

    The group Rubicon is known for raiding and entering even public buildings and public transport stations to protest the state mechanisms.

  • The Source Of Our Rage: The Ruling Elite Is Protected For The Consequences Of Its Dominance

    Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

    ELECTION NOTE: As I write this Tuesday evening, it appears Donald Trump may win the presidency. For those who cannot understand how anyone could possibly vote for Trump, please read the above essay again and ponder what people were voting against by voting for Trump.

     

    They may well have been voting against the corrupt, self-serving status quo rather than voting for the individual Donald Trump.

     

    There are very few opportunities for powerless non-elites to register their disapproval of the nation's Ruling Elite and the corrupt status quo. Voting for an outsider in a national election is one such rare opportunity.

     

    As I noted in October, The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed (October 20, 2016).

     

    If you still don't understand how Trump could win, please read the below essay as many times as is necessary for you to get it: the status quo of corrupt self-serving insiders generates injustice and inequality as its only possible output.

    There are many sources of rage: injustice, the destruction of truth, powerlessness. But if we had to identify the one key source of non-elite rage that cuts across all age, ethnicity, gender and regional boundaries, it is this: The Ruling Elite is protected from the destructive consequences of its predatory dominance.

    We see this reality across the entire political, social and economic landscape.

    If I had to pick one chart that illustrates the widening divide between the Ruling Elite and the non-elites, it is this chart of wages as a share of the nation's output (GDP): 46 years of relentless decline, interrupted by gushing fountains of credit and asset bubbles that enriched the few while leaving the economic landscape of the many in ruins.

    The Ruling Elite once had an obligation to uphold the social contract as a responsibility that came with their vast privilege, power and wealth (i.e. noblesse oblige).

    America's Ruling Elite has transmogrified into an incestuous self-serving few unapologetically plundering the many. In their hubris-soaked arrogance, their right to rule is unquestioningly based on their moral and intellectual superiority to "the little people" they loot with abandon.

    Rather than feel a responsibility to the nation, America's Elite views the status quo as a free pass to self-aggrandizement.

    Much has changed in America in the past 46 years. Not only have wages and salaries declined as a share of "economic growth," but the wealth that has been generated has flowed to the top of the wealth/power pyramid (see chart below).

    Social mobility has also declined drastically: Restoring America’s Economic Mobility, as has trust in government and key institutions.

    As Frank Buckley, the author of The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America observed:

    "In a corrupt country, trust is a rare commodity. That’s America today. Only 19 percent of Americans say they trust the government most of the time, down from 73 percent in 1958 according to the Pew Research Center."

    The top .01% has seen its share of the household wealth triple from 7% to 22% in the past four decades, while the share of the nation's wealth owned by the bottom 90% has plummeted from 36% to 23%.

    As I described in America's Ruling Elite Has Failed and Deserves to Be Fired and Now That the Presidential-Election Side Show Is Finally Ending…., the economy is rapidly undergoing structural changes that tend to reward the top 5% class of technocrats and managers and the top .1% with millions in mobile capital, while leaving the bottom 95% in the dust.

    Rather than address this rising inequality directly and honestly, the Ruling Elite has parroted propaganda and policies that protect their gains while obfuscating the reality that most American households have been losing ground for decades, a decline that has been masked by replacing real income with rising debt.

    The ceaseless parroting of the Ruling Elite and the Mainstream Media that prosperity has been rising for everyone is nothing less than the destruction of truth. This propaganda has one purpose: to mask the inequality and injustice built into the American status quo.

    The rapid concentration of wealth has also concentrated political power in the hands of a few who seamlessly combine public and private modes of power.

    This wealth and power protects the Ruling Elite from the perverse consequences of their dominance. Their precious offspring rarely serve at the point of the American military's spear, they never lose their jobs or income when corporations shift production (and R&D, etc.) overseas, and they are never replaced with illegal immigrants paid under the table.

    Rather, the Ruling Elite is pleased to pay immigrants a pittance to care for their children, clean their luxe homes, walk their dogs, etc.

    This is why we're enraged: we bear the consequences of the Ruling Elite's dominance. The system is rigged to benefit the few, who use their wealth and power to protect themselves from the destructive consequences of their self-serving dominance.

    This rage is as yet inchoate, sensed but not yet understood as the inevitable result of a broken system and a predatory Elite that exploits the system to maximize their private gain by any means available.

  • After Bashing "Son Of A Whore" Obama, Philippines' Duterte Congratulates, Wants To Work With Trump

    Trump has barely been president elect for one day, and he is already fixing the foreign policy mistake of his predecessor.

    What a difference a presidential election makes: after lashing out on an almost daily basis at outgoing American president Barack Obama, calling him “son of a whore” and telling him he can “go to hell”, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte joined Vladimir Putin in congratulating Donald Trump on his election success, and said on Wednesday he now wishes to stop quarrelling with the United States, recalling his anger at the Obama administration for criticising him.

    The maverick leader, incidentally known as “Trump of the East” for his unrestrained rants and lewd remarks, has repeatedly hit out at Washington in recent months, threatening to cut defense pacts and end military joint drills. “I would like to congratulate Mr. Donald Trump. Long live,” Duterte said in a speech to the Filipino community during a visit to Malaysia.

    “We are both making curses. Even with trivial matters we curse. I was supposed to stop because Trump is there. I don’t want to quarrel anymore, because Trump has won” he said cited by Reuters.

    Duterte, who as profiled previously won a May election by a huge margin and is often compared with Trump, having himself been the alternative candidate from outside of national politics, campaigned on a populist, anti-establishment platform and struck a chord among ordinary Filipinos with his promises to fix what he called a broken country.

    But the biggest fixture of Duterte’s presidency so far has been his hostility toward the Obama White House, expressed in near-daily eruptions of anger over its concerns about human rights abuses during his deadly war on drugs.

    He also threatened on numerous occasions to sever a military relationship that has been a key element of Washington’s “pivot” to Asia.

    Duterte on Wednesday told Filipinos how angry he had been at Washington, saying it had threatened to cut off aid and had treated the Philippines like a dog tied to a post. “They talk as if we are still the colonies,” he said. “You do not give us the aid, shit, to hell with you,” he said, recalling comments he had directed at Obama. In retrospect, we can partially commiserate with the outgoing administration: it is not exactly clear what the proper response to such daily verbal diarrhea is.

    Ironically, with the Obama administration having effectively lost the Philippines as a core strategic ally in the Pacific Rim, it was Trump who told Reuters that the Philippines was a very important strategic location and that Duterte’s comments about removing foreign troops showed “a lack of respect for our country.”

    Judging by Duterte’s sudden change of heart, it wasn’t lack of respect for the country, just the individual in charge of it.

    On the other hand, for some reason we get the feeling that once the US Trump and the “Trump of the East”, the outcome will be quite volatile, if extremely entertaining.

  • How Did The Media Pollsters Get The Election So Wrong?

    The day before the 2016 US Presidential Election, most pollsters and statistical models had pegged Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning at greater than 90%.

    However, as VisualCapitalst’s Jeff Desjardin noted yesterday, the consensus view is not to be trusted in a post-Brexit world.

    Here’s what went wrong:

     

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

     

    We looked at the predictions made by 12 major newspapers and pollsters the day before the election, to see where they went wrong.

    For Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire – not a single source gave an edge to Republicans.

    For Florida and North Carolina, the pollsters were slightly less reckless. The Associated Press correctly had the Sunshine State as “leaning red”, while the Huffington Post saw North Carolina ultimately voting Trump.

    After this and the Brexit polling disaster, the media is sure to be much more cautious with their models going into the next big political event.

  • Soros-Sponsored Social Justice Warriors Besiege Trump Tower – Live Feed

    Seemingly unwilling to accept the results of the democratic selection of the nation's leader for the next four years, hundreds of grieving Hillary Clinton supporters – egged on by George Soros' MoveOn.org – are laying siege to Trump Tower in New York City. Screaming "Fuck Donald Trump", yelling "Not My President", chanting "Pussy Grabs Back", and burning the American flag, it appears these young millennials are just the kind of deplorables this country should be proud of…

    As NBC's Katy Tur exclaimed "It's surreal in NYC. People are walking around like zombies with thousand yard stares."

    MoveOn.org released the following press release Wednesday afternoon:

    Americans to Come Together in Hundreds Peaceful Gatherings of Solidarity, Resistance, and Resolve Following Election Results

     

    Hundreds of Americans, dozens of organizations to gather peacefully outside the White House and in cities and towns nationwide to take a continued stand against misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.

     

    Tonight, thousands of Americans will come together at hundreds of peaceful gatherings in cities and towns across the nation, including outside the White House, following the results of Tuesday’s presidential election.

     

    The gatherings – organized by MoveOn.org and allies – will affirm a continued rejection of Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and misogyny and demonstrate our resolve to fight together for the America we still believe is possible.

     

    Within two hours of the call-to-action, MoveOn members had created more than 200 gatherings nationwide, with the number continuing to grow on Wednesday afternoon.

     

    WHAT: Hundreds of peaceful gatherings of solidarity, resistance, and resolve nationwide

     

    WHEN / WHERE: Find local gatherings here. Major gatherings include in New York City’s Columbus Circle and outside the White House in Washington, DC.

     

    RSVP: Please email press@moveon.org to confirm attendance.

     

    “This is a disaster. We fought our hearts out to avert this reality. But now it’s here,” MoveOn.org staff wrote to members on Wednesday. “The new president-elect and many of his most prominent supporters have targeted, demeaned, and threatened millions of us—and millions of our friends, family, and loved ones. Both chambers of Congress remain in Republican hands. We are entering an era of profound and unprecedented challenge, a time of danger for our communities and our country. In this moment, we have to take care of ourselves, our families, and our friends—especially those of us who are on the front lines facing hate, including Latinos, women, immigrants, refugees, Black people, Muslims, LGBT Americans, and so many others. And we need to make it clear that we will continue to stand together.”

    Live Feed from New York's Trump Tower…

     

    The 'basket' of protesters marched up through Times Square…

    Images of the deplorable behavior…

     

  • Meanwhile, From Canada…

    Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

    h/t Robmu1

    The flood of Trump-fearing American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week. The Republican presidential campaign is prompting an exodus among left-leaning Americans who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, pay taxes, and live according to the Constitution.

    Canadian border residents say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, liberal arts majors, global-warming activists, and “green” energy proponents crossing their fields at night.

    “I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said southern Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. “He was cold, exhausted and hungry, and begged me for a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

    In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields, but they just stuck their fingers in their ears and kept coming. Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals just south of the border, pack them into electric cars, and drive them across the border, where they are simply left to fend for themselves after the battery dies.

    “A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions,” an Alberta border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a single bottle of Perrier water, or any gemelli with shrimp and arugula. All they had was a nice little Napa Valley cabernet and some kale chips. When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often wailing that they fear persecution from Trump high-hairers.

    Rumors are circulating about plans being made to build re-education camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer, study the Constitution, and find jobs that actually contribute to the economy.

    In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans in blue-hair wig disguises, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were alive in the ’50s.

    “If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we become very suspicious about their age,” an official said.

    Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage, are buying up all the Barbara Streisand CD’s, and are overloading the internet while downloading jazzercise apps to their cell phones.

    “I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “After all, how many art-history majors does one country need?”

    *  *  *

    Fact or Fiction?

  • European Politicians Terrified By "Horror Scenario" After Brexit, Trump

    First it was Brexit, then there was Trump. Two “shocking” events that nobody in the media, markets or punditry could admit could possibly happen. They happened… and that’s just the beginning – as we showed last night, the political calendar over the next two years is only heating up, with countless potential “black swan” events – often involving nationalist tendencies or outright separatism, and further hits to the establishment status quo – on the horizon.

    Most of these events take place in Europe, a powderkeg of simmering anger and resentment built up over the centuries of artificially enforced borders cutting across religions, ethnicities and cultures, which has only been swept under the rug over the past several decades with the help of an artificial customs and monetary union which is increasingly unstable. As such, even the smallest domino can push the entire continent into a state of terminal socio-economic collapse.

    And both Europe, and the globalist establishment, know this.

    The “horror scenario”

    Which is why back in May, when Donald’s Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election seemed the remotest of possibilities, a senior European official took to Twitter before a G7 summit in Tokyo to warn of a “horror scenario“.

    Imagine, said the official quoted by Reuters, if instead of Barack Obama, Francois Hollande, David Cameron and Matteo Renzi, next year’s meeting of the club of rich nations included Trump, Marine Le Pen, Boris Johnson and Beppe Grillo: truly a horror for an exclusive group of aloof elitists who enjoy sneering on the same people whom they take advantage of every single day.

    A month after Martin Selmayr, the head of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s cabinet made the comment, Britain shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. Cameron stepped down as prime minister and Johnson – the former London mayor who helped swing Britons behind Brexit – became foreign minister. Now, five months later, with Trump’s triumph over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the populist tsunami that seemed outlandish a few months ago is becoming reality, and the consequences for Europe’s own political landscape are potentially huge.

    This is why Europe is suddenly terrified that what until June seemed impossible, is now all too likely: in 2017, voters in the Netherlands, France and Germany – and possibly in Italy and Britain too – will vote in elections that could be coloured by the triumphs of Trump and Brexit, and the toxic politics that drove those campaigns.

    And, as Reuters writes, the lessons will not be lost on continental Europe’s populist parties, who hailed Trump’s victory on Wednesday as a body blow for the political mainstream. “Politics will never be the same,” said Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Freedom Party. “What happened in America can happen in Europe and the Netherlands as well.”

    Just like after Brexit, French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen was similarly ebullient. “Today the United States, tomorrow France,” Le Pen, the father of the party’s leader Marine Le Pen, tweeted.

    Trump as a Model

    Daniela Schwarzer, director of research at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), said Trump’s bare-fisted tactics against his opponents and the media provided a model for populist European parties that have exercised comparative restraint on a continent that still remembers World War Two. “The broken taboos, the extent of political conflict, the aggression that we’ve seen from Trump, this can widen the scope of what becomes thinkable in our own political culture,” Schwarzer said.

    Perhaps it is not the “political conflict” or aggression from Trump that Daniela is worried about; perhaps it is the threat of a truly democratic vote in a world in which all the benefits of crony capitalism and suppressed representation have gone exclusively to the 1%, something which is now openly known and resented by the rest of the increasingly angry population. And, as both Brexit and Trump have shown, an angry, education population is the worst possible enemy of any elitist, globalist clique.

    Italy and Austria

    Europe will get the first taste of its own “Trump Moment” as early as next month, when on December 4 Austrians will vote in a presidential election that could see Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party become the first far-right head of state to be freely elected in western Europe since 1945. On the same day, a constitutional reform referendum on which Prime Minister Renzi has staked his future could upset the political order in Italy, pushing Grillo’s left-wing 5-Star movement closer to the reins of power.

    Channeling Donald Trump, local Euroskeptic politician and comedian, Beppe Grillo said that “an epoch has gone up in flames. The real demagogues are the press, intellectuals, who are anchored to a world that no longer exists.”

    Right-wing parties are already running governments in Poland and Hungary. In western Europe, the likelihood of a Trump figure taking power seems remote for now but that too is rapidly changing. In Europe’s parliamentary democracies, traditional parties from the right and left have set aside historical rivalries, banding together to keep out the populists.

    But the lesson from the Brexit vote is that parties do not have to be in government to shape the political debate, said Tina Fordham, chief global political analyst at Citi. She cited the anti-EU UK Independence Party which has just one seat in the Westminster parliament. “UKIP did poorly in the last election but had a huge amount influence over the political dynamic in Britain,” Fordham said. “The combination of the Brexit campaign and Trump have absolutely changed the way campaigns are run.”

    On Wednesday, UKIP leader Nigel Farage hailed Trump’s victory on Wednesday as a “supersized Brexit”.

    Europe’s Political Limbo

    As new political movements emerge, traditional parties will find it increasingly difficult to form coalitions and hold them together.  In Spain, incumbent Mariano Rajoy was returned to power last week but only after two inconclusive elections in which voters fled his conservatives and their traditional rival on the left, the Socialists, for two new parties, Podemos and Ciudadanos. After 10 months of political limbo, Rajoy finds himself atop a minority government that is expected to struggle to pass laws, implement reforms and plug holes in Spain’s public finances.

    The virus of political fragility could spread next year from Spain to the Netherlands, where Wilders’s Freedom Party is neck-and-neck in opinion polls with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberals. For Rutte to stay in power after the election in March, he may be forced to consider novel, less-stable coalition options with an array of smaller parties, including the Greens.

    The Le Pen Factor

    In France, which has a presidential system, the chances of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, emerging victorious are seen as slim. According to Reuters, the odds-on favourite to win the presidential election next spring is Alain Juppe, a 71-year-old centrist with extensive experience in government who has tapped into a yearning for responsible leadership after a decade of disappointment from Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.

    Then again if there is anything the Trump election has shown, is how woefully bad the polling industry has become and how incapable it is to deal with a splintering society that no longer conforms to historical norms. In a sign of Le Pen’s strength, polls show she will win more support than any other politician in the first round of the election. Even if she loses the second round run-off, as polls suggest, her performance is likely to be seen as a watershed moment for continental Europe’s far-right. It could give her a powerful platform from which to fight the reforms that Juppe and his conservative rivals for the presidency are promising.

    The Heart of Europe

    And then there is the country at the center of its all. In Germany, where voters go to the polls next autumn, far-right parties have struggled to gain a foothold in the post-war era because of the dark history of the Nazis, but that too is changing. Just three years old, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become a force at the national level, unsettling Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, who have been punished in a series of regional votes because of her welcoming policy towards refugees.

    Merkel could announce as early as next month that she plans to run for a fourth term, and if she does run, current polls suggest she would win. But she would do so as a diminished figure in a country that is perhaps more divided than at any time in the post-war era. Even Merkel’s conservative sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, has refused to endorse her.

    * * *

    One year ago, Europe would have ignored any potential risks from the vote of society’s “fringe.” Now, after the two biggest political shocks in recent “developed nation” history, it can no longer afford to leave any outcome to chance, which means that the contemplated “horror scenario” is an all too real threat for the European’s political oligarchy. The question we have, however, is whether similar to previous occasions in which the establishment status quo has found itself trapped, Europe’s political elite will do anything and everything to stay in power, even if that means engage in preemptive “horrors” of its own against its own people. Sadly, Europe’s history is all too full of precisely such examples and if there is anything the recent leaked glimpses into the decisionmaking process of the elite have confirmed, it is that one can no longer discount any theoretical outcome, no matter how ridiculous or “conspiratorial” it may appear at first glance.

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