Paris is burning > Disorder is the brutal, undeniable verdict on decades of liberal and progressive rule

 

Will Europe wake up and stop at the edge of a liberal abyss?

As Paris burns, the EU establishment’s failures invite a political revolt that could reshape the future of the West

Published 20 Oct, 2026 16:49 | Updated 20 Oct, 2026 17:50

By Ladislav Zemánek, non-resident research fellow at China-CEE Institute and expert of the Valdai Discussion Club

Protest in central Paris, France on October 17, 2026 in Paris, France ©  Firas Abdullah / Anadolu via Getty Images

Paris is burning again. Violent riots are tearing through French cities as protests over rising living costs descend into chaos. Looting. Arson. More than 2,400 arrests. Dozens of officers injured. Historic town halls torched. Streets devastated in Paris, Limoges, and beyond. While leftist protesters chant about the “cost of living,” flames rise from neighborhoods that once stood as beacons of French liberty and culture.

Paris riots: The verdict on progressive rule

This disorder is the brutal, undeniable verdict on decades of liberal and progressive rule: the project has failed completely. Mass migration is not simply a generous humanitarian act. It is a deliberate security threat. It is the engine of the left’s cherished dream of erasing European civilization from within – something many conservatives call the ‘Great Replacement’, and many liberals, a conspiracy theory.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the firebrand capitalizing on these riots, has long appeared to despise the “white and stale” France of tradition, faith, and national pride. He fights for a “New France” – young, urban, multicultural, queer, and woke. He embodies the argument that the Western European far left is no friend of Europe. It is its enemy.

In Spain, socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has moved to legalize over one million illegal immigrants in his country, granting them rights to roam the EU at will. The move has provoked fury, including within European political circles. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has recently warned that, if the tide continues, Central European nations may have to “defend our borders” and deploy an army on the German frontier.

The Ceuta crisis – in which some 80,000 migrants surged into the Spanish enclave only a couple of months ago – is another stark reminder of the pressures facing Europe’s borders.

Sánchez does not stand alone. He represents the broader Brussels euro-bureaucracy: billions in EU funds flow to media organizations and NGOs promoting mass migration, while the same bureaucracy tightens Digital Services Act rules and advances the European Democracy Shield, suppressing conservative voices and the integrity of democratic competition.

Read more

France imposes curfews as riots spiral

Rubio’s vision: Reclaiming the Western civilization

Marco Rubio, America’s Secretary of State, saw the challenge during his early October European tour, which included Iceland, Greece, and Portugal. Defense and energy security talks were vital, but his real message came in Athens, beneath the shadow of the Acropolis. Rubio called for a revival of the West. He demanded greatness, self-confidence, civilizational vitality, pride in Christianity, and nationalism, and an “unapologetic pursuit of national power.”

He criticized transnational bureaucracies, mass migration, the massive welfare state that he argued had bred decline, the “climate cult,” and open borders. In February, he had made the argument even more starkly at the Munich Security Conference: the “end of history” and the triumph of liberal democracy? No. A foolish idea. The West, he argued, must build a new Western century.

And the Trump administration is not just talking. It is acting. Funding is being redirected from globalist and woke agendas towards conservative voices, think tanks, and interests across Europe and beyond. If America is prepared to push back against the EU’s accelerating drift towards demographic replacement, political authoritarianism, and economic insanity, this is not simply interference; it is the strongest possible counterpressure – precisely what Europe’s patriots need right now.

Donald Trump was right. Europe needs regime change. Europe needs a conservative revolution.

Read more

US will ‘burn’ like France if Democrats win – Trump (VIDEO)

The cost of liberal failure

The riots, the terror, the spread of antisemitism across Western Europe, the destruction of great monuments, and centuries of culture – Ceuta and Paris stand as stark reminders. The liberal establishment is impotent. It cannot even manage its own cities. It has turned European streets into war zones and its capitals into symbols of surrender.

Let us be clear about the stakes. For centuries, Europe stood at the heart of Western civilization. Now, its pillars are rotting under the weight of progressive dogma. Open borders erode national cohesion. The welfare state invites dependency instead of self-reliance. The climate cult distracts from real dangers. Bureaucracies in Brussels regulate everything except the influx that is changing Europe’s demographics permanently.

Today’s Europe bears witness to the growth of parallel societies in cities from Paris to Stockholm. Crime statistics indicate that migrant cohorts are disproportionately involved in sexual assaults, terrorism, and gang violence. Integration failures breed resentment. Cultural clashes erupt into the very riots we see today. Antisemitism has surged: synagogues attacked, Jewish communities targeted. These are symptoms of a demographic transformation that left-wing elites frame as “humanism.”

Yet, amid this despair, hope flickers. Patriots are rising. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has gained ground with policies rooted in sovereignty, borders, and family values. In Germany, the AfD is growing stronger. Across the continent, millions of ordinary Europeans share the same unease: our ancestors built cathedrals, universities, and statehood. Will we allow globalists and progressives to consign that legacy to history?

Read more

Western Europe is sleepwalking toward civilizational suicide

The conservative revolution: Europe’s choice and the new Western century

Marco Rubio’s Athens address captured this challenge. He reminded the world that the West is at an inflection point. It can atrophy, serve hostile interests, or decline into irrelevance.

A return to Christian roots strengthens families and communities. Healthy nationalism fosters loyalty and shared sacrifice. Sovereignty restores democratic control over people’s destiny. These are not inherently divisive principles; they are the very pillars that once made the West great.

Europe’s achievements were not accidental. They flowed from the interplay of faith, reason, and ordered liberty. Replace those foundations with open borders and wokeness, and you risk producing the Paris we see today: burning buildings, paralyzed cities, and eroding trust. The liberal establishment has demonstrated that it cannot cope with the challenges confronting it.

Rubio’s message is clear: build a new Western century. That means stronger combat capabilities and fighting spirit, and policies that put nation-states and citizens first. Trump’s America is already acting. Europe’s best interests demand the same: counterpressure against globalist networks and liberal elites.

The riots have spoken. Ceuta showed the southern front. Paris showed the domestic front. Western Europe needs to wake up and realize that the liberal experiment is over. And so is the time for complacency. The battle for sovereignty, identity, and civilizational future has begun. The question is no longer whether Europe must change, but whether its leaders will find the courage to lead that change.

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Politics in Europe > The Biggest Threat to Britain's Special Forces

 

The Biggest Threat to Britain's Special Forces

June Slater

@juneslater17

Under oath, Dominic Cummings just said what everyone in defence knows but no one dares say. Asked what is the biggest threat to Britain's Special Forces - is it China? Is it Russia? Is it Iran? His answer: No. It's not China. It's not Russia. It's not Iran. The biggest threat to the SAS is BRITISH MOD lawyers, the Cabinet Office, and Whitehall. In his exact words to the House of Lords committee: "It's not Putin who's launching lawfare against the SAS; it's not Putin who's destroyed procurement inside the MoD" We are watching lawfare waged against our own operators by our own government. While our soldiers are learning drone warfare in Ukraine, civil servants are blocking those lessons coming home because it might hurt their budgets. Our enemies aren't beating us. We are beating ourselves. Cummings is usually spot on The country is in a tragic state. As Fred Dibnah said This country was built by men in overalls and ruined by men in suits.

Politics in Europe > AfD breaks through in eastern Germany; AfD not Nazis, nor Germany's biggest problem; Ukrainian MP defies Zelenski on NATO

 

Political ‘firewall’ breached in eastern Germany – AfD

The right-wing party has secured a historic state parliament presidency in Saxony-Anhalt and appears to have drawn support from rival parties

Published 8 Oct, 2026 04:07

Tobias Rausch (C) of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is elected president of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament in Magdeburg, Germany, October 6, 2026.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has secured the office of state parliament president in Saxony-Anhalt, with its successful candidate claiming he received backing from members of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in a historic first.

Despite emerging as Germany’s most popular party in recent polls, the AfD has for years been subjected to the so-called ‘firewall’ policy, under which mainstream parties refuse to cooperate with it.

The largest opposition faction in the Bundestag, the AfD campaigns on an anti-immigration platform and is highly critical of the German government’s support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.

The party won last month’s regional election in Saxony-Anhalt with 43.8% of the vote, narrowly falling short of an absolute majority in the regional legislature. Merz’s CDU finished a distant second with 17.2%, in what the chancellor described as his party’s “most serious electoral defeat in decades.”

READ MORE: AfD is Germany’s new ‘people’s party’ – co-leader

On Tuesday, the AfD’s Tobias Rausch was elected president of the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, becoming the first AfD politician to head a German state legislature.

Ahead of the secret ballot, representatives of the left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) announced that they would support Rausch. Together, the AfD and BSW hold 44 seats.

Rausch, however, received 48 votes, with 29 lawmakers voting against him and five abstaining. The result means he secured four more votes than the combined AfD-BSW total, although the secret ballot makes it impossible to establish who cast them.

The CDU parliamentary leadership had advised its lawmakers to abstain, while the SPD, the Greens, and The Left said they would vote against Rausch in keeping with the firewall policy.

Following his victory, Rausch said he believed CDU lawmakers had backed him. Asked directly whether he had received CDU votes, he replied: “Yes.”

“The era of political ‘firewalls’ should be a thing of the past,” Rausch proclaimed.

AfD co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla similarly declared that the “years of ostracism against our party have finally come to an end today,” and called on the CDU to cooperate with the AfD.

READ MORE: German state could face EU fund freeze after AfD win – media

In recent months, several establishment political figures, including Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, have backed a potential ban on the AfD over claims that it poses a threat to Germany’s constitutional order and democracy.

Following the party’s victory in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s regional election in September with 38.2% of the vote, the SPD renewed calls for a formal review that could pave the way for a ban.

The AfD has also faced scrutiny from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for alleged right-wing extremism, accusations the party rejects. Some regional branches, including in Saxony-Anhalt, have been subjected to particularly extensive monitoring.

Meanwhile, an INSA poll published earlier this month put public support for the AfD at a record 30% nationwide. Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance stood at 18%, the lowest level ever recorded by the pollster.

No, the AfD are not the Nazis – and neither are they Germany’s main problem right now

President Steinmeier invokes the Weimar Republic as a warning to his people – deliberately misremembering history to shut those people up

Published 6 Oct, 2026 13:54 | Updated 6 Oct, 2026 14:55

By Tarik Cyril Amar, 

AfD event marking German Unity Day in Fürstenwalde, Brandenburg, Germany, on 3 October 2026 ©  Frank Hammerschmidt / picture alliance via Getty Images

Unlike in countries such as Russia, the US, or France, the German presidency is not a powerful office. At least not in terms of what it can do directly or independently. Instead, Germany’s president is a largely representative figure, while real power to lead national policy belongs to the chancellor.

Yet the presidency is no mere decoration. According to a 2014 summary by Germany’s constitutional court, the authority of the office derives, above all, from the intellectual and moral influence it should exert, and whoever holds it “embodies the unity of the state.” In short, Germany’s president has two real jobs: to stand for national togetherness, especially when tensions increase and politics polarize, and to be a widely acknowledged moral authority.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the current president, has failed quite spectacularly on both counts, and his recent speech on the Day of German Unity has shown once again how and why. This is a scandal, but it is not a surprise. Even before his latest performance, Steinmeier had earned himself the nickname “Walter der Spalter,” which translates as Walter the Splitter.

And for good reasons: Although charged with integrating the nation, Steinmeier has a long record of explicitly calling for the marginalization and exclusion of large numbers of Germans, not only but in particularly those who dare represent or vote for the new-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Read more

Germany is preparing for war – with an enemy it expects to hold back

Usually implicitly but always clearly, the president has repeatedly smeared them as extremists beyond the pale of political participation. Last year, for instance, he used a major speech on November 9 – a date with several historical associations, including the massive pogrom of 1938 and thus the Holocaust – to, in effect, single out the AfD and its supporters as at least the successors of Nazism if not simply its new embodiment.

This year, in a revealingly snobbish sally, he has labelled them “vulgar democrats.” For Steinmeier, clearly, there is not merely a distinction between “democrats” and “non-democrats,” but also one between inferior (“vulgar”) and superior (presumably sophisticated) democrats. Steinmeier clearly sees himself as a distinguished example of the latter. On a personal level, the obvious smugness of his attitude is merely deeply embarrassing. What is worse is that taking popular sovereignty seriously – as prescribed by the German constitution – would look vastly different.

Now, in his German Unity Day speech, Steinmeier has taken aim at what he himself described as large numbers of Germany’s citizens. They, the president has correctly noticed, are displaying “distrust toward the political order.” That, for Steinmeier, is no reason to seriously examine what might be wrong with that order or to make a genuine effort to understand the reasons for that distrust. His scant and general remarks on Berlin’s own mistakes and the anxieties of ordinary Germans illustrated not humility but aloof and patronizing disinterest.

Generously conceding that maybe not all of those who have lost trust in the status quo are “against democracy as such,” Steinmeier explicitly kept all of them under precisely that suspicion. In essence, he conflated many Germans’ very plausible discontent with the devastating policies imposed by radical-Centrist establishment parties with rejecting the constitutional order or even democracy as such: If you are not for us, so the message, you’re not just against us but a virtually criminal misfit.

How convenient – if, that is, you are Frank-Walter Steinmeier and your whole political biography happens to represent precisely that establishment, its privileges, its obstinate refusal to learn, and its failure.

Read more

Germany facing potential ‘violent conflict’ with Russia – spy chief

Steinmeier also had harsh words for a whole catalog of horrors, of typical Centrist paranoia, blame-shifting, and scapegoating: the “unbearable demagoguery of extremist forces” and their “joy of destruction”; “outside powers that seek to divide and weaken us” (meaning Russia, obviously); the “predominance of the internet” (read social media that didn’t exist when he was young and escape mainstream control now that he is old); “conspiracy fantasies”; caricatures of Germany produced by “Kremlin trolls,” “German right-wing extremists,” and “left-authoritarian cranks”; “unscrupulous internet oligarchs”; and, finally of course, simply “populists” and “Wutwahler” (literally, “rage-voters”) – a contemptuous term for those who dare articulate their frustration with Steinmeier’s establishment friends by actually voting against them.

Against this dark backdrop, the complacent, crusading president invoked the specter of Weimar – that is the collapse of interwar German democracy that was followed by the catastrophe of Nazism. Steinmeier insisted that today’s Germany is “not Weimar,” but he also made clear that he believes it could end in a similar crash.

That was ironic, as Steinmeier also warned that historical ignorance is unforgivable. Indeed. But then he should know that Weimar was destroyed by many things, yet it could have survived all of them, if its people had not been hit by the mass immiseration of the Great Depression. Yes, Nazis – and conservatives foolishly promoting them – killed that first German democracy. But they could only do so because the country was sinking into ruin, misery, and mass despair, while its establishment elites pursued a hopelessly misguided economic policy and – even if that is often forgotten now – massively curtailed democracy well before the Nazis finished off what was left of it.

Say what you will about the AfD; it is not the equivalent of the Nazi party. That is where Steinmeier’s implied analogy makes no sense. Indeed – deliberately or not – he is misusing history as a cheap rhetorical, not to say demagogic device.

Read more

Support for Merz’s party hits record low as AfD surges – poll

The real parallel between today and the last years of Weimar is invisible to Steinmeier because he lacks the humility needed for self-reflection. Just as between spring 1930 and early 1933, Germany’s establishment is offering nothing but “stay-the-course” to voters desperate not simply for change but help.

It was precisely that spirit of irresponsible, privileged aloofness that the president, in his Unity Day speech, displayed when promising nothing but empty phrases and the same all over again: more so-called “reforms” at home which many Germans recognize as what they really are, namely deep cuts into their welfare and life chances.

And abroad, of course, more support for Ukraine, that is, the ultra-corrupt Zelensky regime that has committed the worst act of terrorism against Germany in its history. That as well, more and more Germans see for what it really is: a perverse national self-humiliation and an absurd waste of money to finance a highly corrupt regime as well as an avoidable, unwinnable, and disastrous – also for ordinary Ukrainians – proxy war against Russia; an indirect (if barely) German war against Russia that constantly escalates the risk of an even worse direct war between Berlin and Moscow, as German intelligence services acknowledge, if in a biased manner.

Steinmeier delivers his polarizing and divisive messages while performing a tired patina of wise statesmanship that betrays at least a clumsy effort to impress. One day after Steinmeier’s unfortunate speech, Chancellor Friedrich Merz chose the bluntest way possible to convey, in essence, the same message. Traveling to visit the Kiev establishment, where Merz – with his bottomless wallet fed by German taxpayers – may enjoy the popularity he absolutely lacks at home, the chancellor made it rudely, brutally clear once more: Germany’s current rulers care more for the Kiev regime, which they may or may not genuinely mistake for Ukraine as a whole, than for their own country and the citizens who have elected and pay them. And this is just one, if striking, outcome of the true core of Germany’s malaise: a widespread and very plausible sense that Germany’s establishment does not care about Germans. Even if you dislike the AfD or “populists” in general, they are a response to this sense of abandonment.

Ukrainian MP defies Zelensky on NATO

A proposed constitutional amendment would drop Kiev’s bid to join the US-led military bloc and restore neutrality

Published 7 Oct, 2026 11:06 | Updated 7 Oct, 2026 12:10

Ukrainian MP Anna Skhorokhod. ©  Facebook / Anna Skhorokhod

A Ukrainian lawmaker has proposed amending the constitution to remove the country’s NATO membership goal and restore its neutral status. One of Russia’s goals in ongoing hostilities with Ukraine is to ensure its return to neutrality.

The proposal submitted on Tuesday by MP Anna Skorokhod is largely symbolic, since the Verkhovna Rada cannot amend the constitution while martial law remains in force. Vladimir Zelensky ordered the emergency after the 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict and has since used it to retain presidential powers after his mandate expired in 2024.

Russian officials have described NATO’s growing involvement in Ukraine as one of the principal causes of the conflict.

Skorokhod’s proposal follows a political scandal involving fellow lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko, who was expelled this week from the opposition European Solidarity faction after calling for peace talks with Russia. Skorokhod herself was expelled from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party just months after being elected in 2019.

Read more

State of Corruption: Zelensky crosses tipping point in new poll

When Ukraine became independent in 1991, it declared an intention to remain outside military blocs. Kiev changed course following the Western-backed armed coup in 2014. In 2018, then-President Pyotr Poroshenko proposed enshrining Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and the EU in the constitution.

Poroshenko was defeated the following year by political outsider Zelensky. While the incumbent campaigned on Western integration and Ukrainian nationalism, Zelensky presented himself as a candidate who would reconcile Ukrainians of different ethnic backgrounds and improve relations with Moscow.

Goncharenko was a member of Poroshenko’s party before publicly arguing that Kiev needed to make policy concessions to avert what he described as an impending national disaster. European Solidarity subsequently disowned him, and he was added to the Mirotvorets database, a controversial list of people deemed enemies of Ukraine.

Read more

NATO state preparing to strike St. Petersburg – FT

Among the concessions advocated by Goncharenko was reversing restrictions affecting Russian culture in Ukraine. Moscow has cited Kiev’s policies toward ethnic Russians as evidence of what it describes as the “Nazi nature” of the Zelensky government.

Zelensky increasingly embraced Ukrainian nationalist policies after early efforts to fulfill his campaign promises faced mass protests and threats from right-wing militias, including groups that had been incorporated into official Ukrainian military and paramilitary structures.

His government continued and expanded many policies introduced under Poroshenko, including the push for NATO membership. Since 2022, Zelensky has repeatedly argued that Ukraine deserves admission to NATO for fighting Russia on behalf of the West.

However, members of the US-led bloc have repeatedly said Ukraine’s supposedly “irreversible” path to membership will take considerable time. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated on Tuesday that Ukrainian membership is not currently on the table.`