Germany: AfD leader Frauke Petry stuns Germany by quitting hours after being elected - by Emma Beswick

Just one day after her party’s success in the German federal elections yesterday (September 24), Frauke Petry, co-chair of far-right party Alternative for Germany, said she would not be part of the parliamentary group.

Read more: AfD leader Frauke Petry stuns Germany by quitting hours after being elected | Euronews

Are narcissists taking over politics ? - Trump in the White House, with Geert Wilders, Marie Le Pen and Frauke Petry waiting in the EU wings

Xenophobia is growing in Europe

Xenophobia is growing in Europe, with France, the United Kingdom, Austria, Greece, Denmark and Sweden all electing far-right nationalist candidates.

Like Trump did, they unite voters with a platform of blocking migrants from the Middle East and Africa. More blatant demonstrations of anti-Semitism flared up in Greece, with its Golden Dawn party donning Nazi-like uniforms and symbolism.

Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, commented on the parallels between European and American politics. “I see the phenomena as very similar. Trump is the functional equivalent of the far right in Europe; he performs the same functions in the political system, and attracts the same kind of support… white, nativist, lower-educated and those very unhappy with the establishment.”

Looking at Europe we see that also there a narcissists group of populist political personalities have benefited from the great disparity between the "have and have's not" and distrust by  the people of political parties who are not serving the people, but rather corporate interest.

Following focus is on three countries which will be  holding national elections this year where ultra-right narcissist  politicians have made major inroads. 

In the Netherlands: Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who founded the right-wing Freedom Party, also endorsed Trump, tweeting, “Make the Netherlands Great Again.”

Wilders, who also bears a weird physical resemblance to Donald Trump, applies similar nationalistic rhetoric with confusing undocumented statements, sprinkled with vague plans.

France: French Jews who also hold Israeli citizenship will have to give up one of their nationalities if Marine Le Pen, the far-Right French Presidential candidate, wins the presidential election this spring.

The leader of the anti-immigration Front National said she would bar the French from holding the citizenship of countries outside the European Union, except for Russia, which she described as part of “the Europe of nations.”

Germany: You can tell well in advance when Frauke Petry, the leader of Alternative für Deutschland, a burgeoning new right-wing party, is going to give a speech. AfD members put up posters all over a town’s main streets declaring, “Frauke Petry Is Coming.” As the appointed hour approaches, police assemble, and usually demonstrators, too, protesting against a woman known to her enemies as “Adolfina” and “die Führerin.”

More than a century ago, philosopher George Santayana reminded us that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

His words ring true today.  The growing rise of Nationalism on virtually every continent should give cause for great concern.

Following World War II, the global goal was to create political and economic structures and forge alliances like the UN, EU, IMF, WTO, NAFTA and the recently signed Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership to bring peace and prosperity to the world.

In many ways, these efforts succeeded. More people than ever now have the means to travel outside their native countries.  Global investments have given rise to vastly improved living conditions in poorer countries.  Political structures like the EU have led to the creation of powerful new markets for global commerce.  Modern communications now transcend borders in Nano-seconds, bringing the world ever closer together.

But, achievements like these have come with a price: The re-emergence of Nationalism throughout the world was also caused by the disruptions brought about by globalization.

Global Trade must become Fair Trade again, not one controlled by large corporations who get unfair tax breaks and special favors from the local governments where they operate.

Nationalism is a powerful force and can at times work positively. It can be the glue that holds people together especially in challenging times.  It celebrates a country’s culture, history and religion.  It instills national pride and a sense of strength, but also, unfortunately, at times, creating scapegoats, real or imagined. The latter is happening today

Don't be fooled by the "nationalistic talk" of Wilders, Le Pen, Petry, and many other so-called nationalists - they definitely are not true nationalists and will sink all of us in Europe into a deep hole if they ever are elected and allowed to rule by you the voter. Worse of all, if you do elect them, you might never again get the power to vote them out of office.  Just look at Turkey today and see what  has happened there. 

Or see how Donald Trump has performed the first weeks of his Presidency. Scary stuff.

For example, the common US belief today exposed by Donald Trump that China has claimed the bulk of jobs lost in America since 2000 is not true. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, roughly 700,000 of the six million US manufacturing jobs lost in the first decade of this century went to China. The rest disappeared because of decreased consumer demand after the 2008 global financial crisis and technological advances that made many jobs obsolete.

Job losses aside, perhaps the biggest impact of the 2008 global financial crisis is that it intensified a worldwide backlash against globalization and the ever increasing disparity between poor and rich that had been festering for decades, further bolstering the steady global tilt toward Nationalism.

But not all is lost - if you get involved. Staying at home and complaining will not work. Go to local government, city and town meetings, ask questions, protest if you don't like what you hear.

Don't vote for politicians and parties who have not delivered what they promised.

Support parties which focus on your needs: more jobs, better education, health care, a clean environment, alternative energy  and cutting military spending' 

For it to succeed, real European integration—of which much more will be needed if Europeans want to retain stability and current levels of economic well-being—needs to learn a crucial trick from the nation. In much the same way that the power of the nation made people look beyond the blood bonds of family and tribe and elevate solidarity to a higher level, so European integration needs to surpass citizens’ attachment to the nation and raise it by one level. 

The trick is not to dismiss the lower-level identity and try to make it superfluous. The way to go is to leave the nation undamaged by adding another layer that can become politically and emotionally meaningful.

This rising nationalism in Europe also demands that leaders on the left look beyond austerity to a more robust economic policy built on investments in infrastructure, jobs, and education.

EU-Digest

EU: Nationalism Raising Its Ugly Head in Europe at Populists TRUMP Disciples Meeting in Germany, praising Fuhrer Trump - by Simon Shuster

European Nationalist TRUMP Disciples  Wilders, Petry, and LePen

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.disciples

The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD's invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles.

“In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up,” said Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader currently favorite to become France's next President, referring to Trump’s victory and the British vote to leave the European Union in June. “In 2017, I am sure that it will be the year of the Continental peoples rising up,” she said to raucous applause.

The speech was the first Le Pen has ever delivered to an audience in Germany, whose right-wing leaders had previously avoided associating themselves with her more radical and xenophobic positions. But on Saturday she shared a stage with AfD leader Frauke Petry, signaling to the world they are now on the same team.

Taking the podium by turns, leading political upstarts from France, Germany, Italy, Austria and other European nations stuck to a strikingly similar message for their audience of roughly a thousand delegates. They raged against the globalist elites, the European Union, the media and, in particular, the millions of Arab and African immigrants whom they accuse of threatening European culture.

After a few weeks of reading online about Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency, Marco Kopping, a 36-year-old apprentice at a car-parts supplier near Frankfurt, decided to get involved in German politics. He had never sympathized with a political party before, let alone joined one. But in December he received his glossy membership card from Alternative for Germany (AfD), one of the far-right movements now riding the updraft from Trump’s ascent. What drove him, Kopping says, “was the feeling of a revolution.” He didn’t want to be left behind.

Across the European Union, politicians on the right-wing fringe have been invigorated by Trump’s victory, which has given them a chance to attract new supporters, build coalitions and argue that, despite the often glaring differences between them, they are all part of a movement with seemingly unstoppable momentum.

 The most striking proof yet of that movement came on Saturday in the cross-section of far-right populists who met for the first time, at the AfD's invitation, at a convention in the German city of Koblenz. A day after Trump’s inauguration, the stars of the European right drew a direct line between Trump’s success at the ballot box and their own looming electoral battles.“In 2016, the Anglo-Saxon world woke up,” said Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader currently favorite to become France's next President, referring to Trump’s victory and the British vote to leave the European Union in June. “In 2017, I am sure that it will be the year of the Continental peoples rising up,” she said to raucous applause.

The speech was the first Le Pen has ever delivered to an audience in Germany, whose right-wing leaders had previously avoided associating themselves with her more radical and xenophobic positions. But on Saturday she shared a stage with AfD leader Frauke Petry, signaling to the world they are now on the same team.

Taking the podium by turns, leading political upstarts from France, Germany, Italy, Austria and other European nations stuck to a strikingly similar message for their audience of roughly a thousand delegates. They raged against the globalist elites, the European Union, the media and, in particular, the millions of Arab and African immigrants whom they accuse of threatening European culture.

Just a few years ago, such rhetoric would have confined these voices to the margins of European politics, especially in Germany, whose history with fascism has long provided a level of resistance to the allure of nationalism and identity politics. But today, buoyed by Trumpism, their message has entered the mainstream.

Two of the party leaders at Saturday’s event — Le Pen of the National Front and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom — are leading in the polls ahead of elections scheduled for this spring. The Austrian Freedom Party, whose two top leaders skipped the event in Koblenz in order to attend Trump’s Inauguration, narrowly lost a presidential race last month, even though the party’s founders in the 1950s were former officers of the Nazi SS.

“We all stand for the same things,” the party’s representative at the event, Harald Vilimsky, said from the stage on Saturday. “And if Trump is the winner, we are also winners.”

The new U.S. President has gone out of his way to encourage his admirers in Europe. The first foreign politician he met with after winning the election in November was Nigel Farage, the populist leader of the U.K. Independence Party, which drove the British vote to leave the European Union. In an interview last week with two European newspapers, Trump echoed the attacks that European nationalists have leveled against their favorite bugbear, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calling her immigration policy "catastrophic." He also predicted that other E.U. members would follow Britain's lead in breaking away from the bloc.

“They’ve managed to create a public discourse that I thought was impossible here,” says Sylke Tempel, the editor of the Berlin Policy Journal, referring to the AfD. “You feel it in the little things, the use of language, the way people have started to talk.”One case in point took place about 10 minutes into the summit on Saturday, when the crowd turned on the attending journalists and began chanting "Lügenpresse!" — “lying press” — a term first popularized by the Nazis and, in the past couple of years, revived by European nationalists as a means of vilifying the media. Some of Trump’s supporters also adopted the term during his campaign rallies.

What matters to them now is maintaining a sense of unity behind the idea that their time has come, and Trump’s victory has made that a lot easier. “Yesterday you got a new America,” said Kopping, the AfD member, at Saturday’s event. "Now we want a new Europe."

Note EU-Digest: Given the track record of the new US President Donald Trump so far, European voters should at least be forewarned that Trump's European disciples of the far right Nationalist Camp are not the answer to a better, stable and economically strong Europe. 

Read more: Europe's Populists Meet at Koblenz, Germany, in Awe of Trump | Time.com