Post by Daniel on Oct 18, 2017 9:18:11 GMT -5
Why Europe's New Nationalists Love Israel
By David P. Goldman October 17, 2017
"If ponies rode men and grass ate cows," goes the text of "The World Turned Upside Down," the tune piped by the Continental Army band at Cornwallis' surrender of Yorktown. Europeans might consider adopting it as their anthem to replace the present European Community hymn, the overused Ode to Joy. The resurgent nationalists who made the Alternative fuer Deutschland into Germany's third-largest party and the Austrian Freedom Party into that country's second-largest (and a likely member of a new governing coalition) have an extreme-right reputation, but they are now the most pro-Israel parties in Europe. The world has indeed turned upside-down, and we might as well sing about it.
Most remarkable is the success of the Austrian Freedom Party (German initials FPŐ) in last Sunday's Austrian elections. It came in second with 26% of the vote, ahead of the governing Social Democrats. Its chairman, Heinz-Christian Strache, rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis during his early political career, and four years ago posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page, "showing a banker with a large hooked nose and Star of David cuff links profiting from Europe’s financial crisis," as the Times of Israel reported. Since then Strache has undergone a Damascus road conversion from Saul to Paul (or perhaps the other way round). He has visited Israel several times, defended Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria, and demanded that Austria move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Strache brings to mind the canonical definition of a philo-Semite, that is, an anti-Semite who likes Jews. It is widely alleged that he is looking for respectability after emerging from the extreme right swamp into the mainstream of Austrian politics, and hoping to burnish his credentials through gestures of reconciliation with the Jewish State. It is also widely believed that the FPŐ as well as the AfD support Israel as the enemy of their enemy, that is, the flood of Muslim migrants that provoked the surge in their support among voters.
I do not know Herr Strache and have no knowledge of his true motives. But I have had the opportunity to speak at length with a leader of the Alternative for Germany. Both motives--the desire to shed the stigma of neo-Nazi associations and common cause with Israel against radical Islam--are relevant, but something far more interesting is at work.
more
pjmedia.com/spengler/europes-new-nationalists-love-israel/
By David P. Goldman October 17, 2017
"If ponies rode men and grass ate cows," goes the text of "The World Turned Upside Down," the tune piped by the Continental Army band at Cornwallis' surrender of Yorktown. Europeans might consider adopting it as their anthem to replace the present European Community hymn, the overused Ode to Joy. The resurgent nationalists who made the Alternative fuer Deutschland into Germany's third-largest party and the Austrian Freedom Party into that country's second-largest (and a likely member of a new governing coalition) have an extreme-right reputation, but they are now the most pro-Israel parties in Europe. The world has indeed turned upside-down, and we might as well sing about it.
Most remarkable is the success of the Austrian Freedom Party (German initials FPŐ) in last Sunday's Austrian elections. It came in second with 26% of the vote, ahead of the governing Social Democrats. Its chairman, Heinz-Christian Strache, rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis during his early political career, and four years ago posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page, "showing a banker with a large hooked nose and Star of David cuff links profiting from Europe’s financial crisis," as the Times of Israel reported. Since then Strache has undergone a Damascus road conversion from Saul to Paul (or perhaps the other way round). He has visited Israel several times, defended Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria, and demanded that Austria move its embassy to Jerusalem.
Strache brings to mind the canonical definition of a philo-Semite, that is, an anti-Semite who likes Jews. It is widely alleged that he is looking for respectability after emerging from the extreme right swamp into the mainstream of Austrian politics, and hoping to burnish his credentials through gestures of reconciliation with the Jewish State. It is also widely believed that the FPŐ as well as the AfD support Israel as the enemy of their enemy, that is, the flood of Muslim migrants that provoked the surge in their support among voters.
I do not know Herr Strache and have no knowledge of his true motives. But I have had the opportunity to speak at length with a leader of the Alternative for Germany. Both motives--the desire to shed the stigma of neo-Nazi associations and common cause with Israel against radical Islam--are relevant, but something far more interesting is at work.
more
pjmedia.com/spengler/europes-new-nationalists-love-israel/
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