With Germany’s AfD, Britain’s Farage and his followers, Italy’s Meloni and France’s Le Pen, hollow populist nationalism is growing stronger across Europe day by day. We saw one of the latest examples of this in Germany’s federal elections, when a state shaped by the Soviet legacy made the AfD its leading party.
First of all, the social conditions and current structure of this state make it quite clear why the AfD emerged as the leading party in these elections. At the same time, the policies of major German parties such as the CDU and CSU have had a direct influence on this outcome.
This state is poor, it lags behind the rest of Germany in education and opportunities, and a significant part of its capital is sympathetic to Russia. Since 1992, Germany’s general political direction and the remnants of old Soviet thinking have constantly been in conflict there. It is therefore hardly surprising that this conflict has benefited a party such as the AfD.
Through populist politics, the AfD has placed opposition to immigration at such a central point and convinced poorer people so strongly that opposing immigrants will bring them higher living standards that many go directly to the ballot box without ever reading the party programme or its actual political texts.
This is like a lottery in which only poor people participate. Everyone is told one thing: “You will become rich!”
But nobody tells them that perhaps only one person among them will win, or perhaps none of them will; that if they do win, a huge amount of tax will be taken from them; that there may be one winner but hundreds of thousands of losers.
And just as nobody tells them these things, none of the people taking part questions them either. They do not even ask whether the lottery is being conducted fairly. Because if someone questions the fairness of a lottery and then happens to win it, they become part of the very lottery they considered suspicious, and nobody wants to be questioned after becoming rich.
But things do not work that way.
When the money finally goes to one of them, the others look at that person with envy, while the winner struggles with taxes, relatives appearing out of nowhere, people asking for loans, inheritance hunters and even people threatening their life.
And whatever the reason may be, years later these lottery millionaires often end up back on the streets, hungry and miserable. Then those who never won anything say, “Good,” and console themselves with that.
If the AfD one day truly comes to power across Germany, something similar will happen to many immigrants. They will reach a point where they are grateful merely not to have been killed, grateful simply to have a piece of dry bread to eat.
And the rest of Europe will console itself as if it had never taken part in that same lottery, as if it had never tried to bring populists to power.
Europe’s greatest problem is its effort to appear as though it is solving problems through bureaucratic stupidity.
Europe always looks as though it is solving something. It conducts experiments, makes attempts, but in reality moves nowhere while constantly presenting itself as if it were making progress.
Then, somehow, when the United States or another power finds a solution somewhere, Europe immediately adopts it and treats it as though it were blood and life itself.
Europe is a structure that adopts the solutions of other powers rather than producing its own.
And this is exactly what is happening in Europe today.
There is a problem. Technology is creating changes far more destructive than before. The nations that Europeans once exploited, colonised and interfered with politically are now seeking refuge in Europe.
Meanwhile, their own white populations are prepared neither for this technological destruction nor for the arrival of people whose ancestors were exploited by their own ancestors and who now enter and place pressure on their social systems as refugees.
Their governments merely pretend to solve the problem.
The rise of the AfD today is one of the consequences of the German state trying to look as though it is solving something.
The same is true in Britain, where racist and fascist politicians of Pakistani origin, British citizens who do not even seem to have an IQ of five or understand what colour they themselves see in the mirror, now feed politically on the fact that this problem remains unresolved.
In Britain, there is a politician named David Lammy who pursues anti-immigration politics.
Why?
Is this man English in the ethnic sense? No.
If he had even a trace of common sense, would he not think about the following?
If every immigrant were removed from that country and he alone were left behind, he would be the first person they turned against. He would be the person whose presence made people hide their bags in the street. He would be the person nobody wanted sitting beside them on the bus.
If he had even a little intelligence, he would understand that the problem is not immigration but an IQ problem.
Yet because he lacks even that degree of reasoning, he too conducts anti-immigration politics as if he were a white, pure-blooded Englishman.
This is precisely an example of why a person’s intelligence, social abilities, the direction in which those abilities develop, or the degree to which they remain underdeveloped matter to other people as well.
The same situation exists in Germany.
Some Turkish communities consider themselves to be no different from Germans and therefore vote for parties such as the AfD while declaring that they do not want Syrians or Afghans in Germany.
And they do this in Germany.
People who once came down from the mountains and killed Kurds on Kurdish land, who spilled Kurdish blood over Kurdish mountains and stones, have now arrived in Germany and are attempting to teach lessons in persecution to a society whose Nazis murdered six million people during the Second World War.
They themselves never experienced what happened when the Nazis gained power and transformed into a killing machine.
They were spared because the rest of the world did not stand beside Germany as they once stood beside oppressive power, but instead fought against the German state.
That is why today, having never received their share of such destruction and having at times professionally carried out massacres against Kurds themselves, they are able to stand beside the AfD.
What they need to understand is that everything will remain fine only until the AfD actually comes to power.
What comes afterwards would be a scenario they would not even want to witness: one in which they would feel down to their bones what they themselves have made Kurds experience until today.
Leaving Europe’s absurd attitude aside, let me state what I see as the only solution:
As long as you do not do the exact opposite of what is already being done, you will not truly have done anything. You will merely have imitated what already exists.
And in a place where the intelligent imitate fools, social democrats imitate fascists, the poor imitate the rich, scholars imitate the ignorant, masters imitate amateurs, and humanists imitate racists, the imitations will continue to keep the originals alive and make them stronger.