For years, the rising far right in Europe has wrapped itself in the language of sovereignty. Decorating itself with the national flag, it has promised to put national interests and national identity first. Its entire political vocabulary has revolved around the claim that it alone puts its own country before everything and everyone else.
The genocide in Gaza and the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon have exposed just how hollow that rhetoric always was.
In the United States, the war has once again shattered the illusion that Donald Trump’s part of the right wing is somehow less imperial, less militarist, or more committed to peace than the liberal establishment it claims to oppose. Similarly, in Europe, it has revealed that when Washington or Tel Aviv call, self-proclaimed sovereigntists suddenly lose all interest in sovereignty.
This war has already produced a repugnant death toll in the thousands and is setting the entire Middle East ablaze, with devastating consequences for the region and beyond. This also has knock-on effects on Europeans. Because of the war, energy prices are skyrocketing, economic instability is deepening, and a continent already hit by the repercussions of the war in Ukraine now faces the prospect of a second major conflict close to home, with all that this entails. All recent polling suggests broad public opposition in Europe to the war.
If Europe’s far right really believed its own rhetoric about national interest and independence, this would be the moment to prove it. Instead, it has done the opposite, falling obediently into line.
In Italy, that subordination has taken on an almost tragicomic form. When the war broke out, Guido Crosetto — the defense minister from Giorgia Meloni’s pro-Trump Fratelli d’Italia party — was in Dubai, reportedly for family reasons. He was unaware that the war was about to begin because, he admitted, the United States had not informed him of the imminent attack. He was stranded in…
Auteur: Jacopo Custodi
