Narciz Bălășoiu
In recent years, the populist and extremist movements have altered the European Union’s political landscape, cynically capitalizing on a speech based on hate, differences, or any other topic that promised to pay off - regardless of the consequences. Starting with Hungary and Slovakia and continuing with Italy’s Five Stars Movement, or Germany’s AfD, the trend is clear, while framing the issue is a mere step towards accepting that the fundamental European principles and values are at stake. The political forecast in the EU looks rather gloomy since most of the established parties have proved unable to tackle this insidious tide. On the other hand, one must not be surprised that the issues left unaddressed year after year have led to the current political unrest. The fact that demagogy and hatred have been fully operationalized during numerous electoral campaigns with such great success suggests that there is a widespread popular discontent that mainstream politics have failed to address. The number one issue is undeniably the so-called “refugees/migration crisis”. Populists and extremist electoral gains demonstrate something unimaginable a few years ago in the liberal and democratic societies: for the first time in the last couple of decades, people have spoken openly about immigration and how difficult it is to integrate minorities, especially ethno-religious minorities (predominantly Africans and Arabs). The so-called "silent majority" prefers not to participate in debates filled with formal speeches and to sanction this "politically-correct" approach by voting all sorts of anti-system entities. The vote given to populists does not necessarily mean that people identify themselves with their narrative, but that they want to condemn the inability of traditional parties to tackle these problems for such a long period of time. More
