Their time has come, they are convinced of it. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban promised his Italian admirers on Sunday, October 6, on the Pontida stage, in front of the muddy meadow where the League festival is held each year. “We will make it. Hungary is the living example that it is possible.” has launched the godfather of radical rights on the continent to his several thousand followers who crowded the crowd and to his European allies who listened backstage.
After calling “patriots” To join in, the guest of the far-right vice president of the Italian council, League leader Matteo Salvini, lists a series of victories. He mentions the far-right dominated coalition in power in Italy from 2022, the advance of far-right leader Geert Wilders in the Netherlands in 2023, the victory of Czech populist Andrej Babis in the September Senate elections. And that was won the previous week by the Freedom Party (FPÖ) of Austria, founded by former Nazis in 1956.
The anti-liberal leader arouses public enthusiasm by predicting in his speech what seems to be the mother of all victories: the coming to power in the near future of the National Rally (RN), his ally within the new group of Patriots for Europe, third in number of deputies of the Strasbourg Parliament.
Islamist extremism, a tired but promising topic
The crowd, suitably heated, rejoices. All the speakers, from the Portuguese André Ventura, of the Chega party, to the Dutch Geert Wilders, who followed one another on stage, insisted: Europe would suffer an invasion of immigrants carrying the “The worst cancer of humanity”Islamist extremism according to the words chosen in his speech by Matteo Salvini.
The theme is worn out. However, judging by the results recorded across Europe by the Italian minister’s political friends, it still works. Salvini even postponed the traditional Pontida festival so that it corresponded one day to the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. In 1571, in front of this Greek port, the Christian fleets of Spain that then controlled southern Italy, those of Genoa, Venice and the Papacy united under the banner of the Holy League had crushed the Ottoman navy.
“Then we stopped the Islamic advance, we will do it again today!” “, the far-right leader assured his family. Salvini also wants the memory of October 7, 1571 and October 7, 2023 “to be remembered together”as the manifestations of a confrontation with a single enemy, from the Mediterranean in the times of Philip II to contemporary Palestine.
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