Making the Axis Great Again

The far-right wave is here and it is a pan-European force.

Short Europeans with boots

Taking a moment from the celebration for the outsourcing of repression and torture to Tunisian refugee camps that she helped promote at EU level, Giorgia Meloni was beamed from Rome to the screens of a Vox rally in Spain, where on Sunday the country will celebrate snap elections.

“It is crucial that a conservative, patriotic alternative be established,” Meloni said in Rome to the far-right voters gathered in Valencia. “Europe needs to become aware of its role and influence again to be a political giant instead of a bureaucratic one.” You know… Europe, Europe above all.

With the conservative People's Party (PP) projected to win the most votes but fall short of a governing majority, the far-right Vox party will likely become king-makers. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's endorsement of Vox further underscores the rise of far-right movements in Europe. This article explores the reasons behind Spain's snap elections, the potential alliance between the PP and Vox, and the economic effects and broader impact on the European political scene.

Like in Italy a year ago, a collapsed government and a neo-fascist alliance

Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, called for the snap elections after his liberal party suffered significant defeats in regional and local elections. The ruling Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) was crushed by the conservative People's Party, and in a surprising shift, the far-right Vox party also performed well, making gains in all the country's regional parliaments. Sánchez's coalition government, formed in 2020 with leftist parties and separatists, has been grappling with the usual political volatility that plagues coalition governments and particularly those on the left. Facing a lack of a working majority, Sánchez dissolved Parliament and called for a new election on July 23.

Vox Pee Pee

With polls projecting a qualified victory for the People's Party, they are likely to require support from other parties to form a government. Vox, led by Santiago Abascal, has been gaining momentum and influence in Spain's political landscape. If the PP and Vox form a coalition government, it would be Spain's first government with far-right members in 50 years. The alliance between the mainstream conservative PP and the more radical Vox raises concerns about the potential policy shifts towards nationalist and conservative agendas. Furthermore, it highlights the increasing fragmentation of the Spanish political scene, with far-right ideologies gaining traction.

Perhaps more importantly, it shows the fact that the most grotesque political fossils of Europe’s darkest hour are not only alive and well but are no longer beyond the pale of the politically and morally acceptable. In fact, it would seem that the Cordon sanitaire that mainstream parties have kept around neo-nazis, neo-fascists and franquists is barely holding.

Of course, Vox is successful but if Spain returns franquists to the Madrid is because the PP finds an alliance with the dark ghosts acceptable. As in Italy, where the Berlusconi machine bares full responsibility for the return of fascism to Rome, in Spain it will not be on the sole bases of the merits of the demented political nostalgia that Franquists will return to power but of the acquiescence of the Popular Party.

MAGA (Make the Axis Great Again)

The Italian Prime Minister has been a staunch supporter of Vox and has previously delivered speeches at their rallies. But as opposed to the specter of fascism emerging across the continent, Meloni's endorsement as the political map of Europe begins to take a wild swing to the far reaches of the political spectrum, signals the reconstruction of a broad European project which, although for now might be understood as a Rome-Mardid Axis could in the coming two years become a line that runs through Paris and potentially also through Berlin.

In fact, segments of the axis are already in place and include political roads that go through Warsaw, Budapest, Helsinki, Stockholm and to this we could soon have to add Paris and even Berlin, depending on how desperate Merz became as age threatens his hope of becoming chancellor of the Federal Republic.

This trend points to a much larger problem than the backslide of democratic values in individual countries. If there is something that the political cadres involved in this European MAGA project understood from the Brexit catastrophe is that the destruction of the EU is no more than the silly idea of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. A much more sensible approach to European domination would consist in capturing the European institutions and reforming its body of laws and regulations to suit European reactionary projects.

On a side note, this is again another moment which should help all those journalists who claimed that the Bannon project in Europe would fail to hang their heads in shame and reassess their professional choices. Bannon was in Europe a decade ago building the political infrastructure of the long game and we are now seeing its most spectacular success.

European Union's unity and cohesion, as far-right parties often advocate for nationalist policies, anti-immigration stances, and skepticism towards European integration. The rise of far-right ideologies across Europe could lead to internal divisions and hinder the bloc's ability to address pressing issues collectively.

It’s the ERC stupid

The nostalgia for the good old days in which one could walk around Rome happily whistling Faccetta Nera (very catchy tune, by the way) can finally be put to rest. IT should be entirely unsettling to imagine what the soundtrack of Europe could become come next year. Spain elections will certainly have a disproportionate impact on the health of the EU because even if on Monday morning very little will be visible in terms of the impact of a small group of Franquists orbiting La Moncloa, one more piece in the construction of the paneuropean neofascism will have been put in place. By the time the influence of the far-right movements is felt, Brussels will be painted in brown and black, off course, all with pinstripes.

One place where it will be potentially possible to measure the change in the environmental conditions will probably be in the rearrangement of parliamentary blocks. My expectation is to see progressive migrations from members of the EPP but also from the further reaches of the left into far-right outfits. Chief among them, in my view, should be Melon’s ERC.