For John, BLUF: There is political unrest in Europe. Nothing to see here; just move along.
It is Brietbart, so there are all the questions about if it is real, but I think the pieces are there for an interesting discussion. GLOCALIZATION: EUROPEAN TEA PARTY MOVEMENTS ON THE MARCH. "Glocalization" is the word. No typo.
This article is about three parties, that of Mr Geert Wilders (Freedom Party in the Netherlands), Ms Marine Le Pen (France's Front National or FN) and Mr Nigel Farage (UKIP or the United Kingdom Independence Party). So, the question is, are they really part of a "Tea Party" movement or are they just Fascist? Of course part of the question is what does it mean to be Fascist? I would suggest that these parties are the buffer between the old-line mainstream parties and possible true Fascist movements—movements that will call for dictatorship and secret police.
Per the article, what these movements suggest is that there are voters in European nations who are concerned about over centralization, petty bureaucrats dictating broad rules for local communities and immigration.
One thing to keep in mind is that European nations tend to have laws that allow individuals to be tried in court if they make certain utterances which might, in the United States, be seen as offensive, but not criminal. Mr Geert Wilders has faced such legal action.
This blog post is not an endorsement of either the political parties listed or Brietbart, but it does call attention to the fact that there are voters out there who are unhappy with the mainstream parties in their own nations.
What would be a bad outcome is for Voters to lose hope and opt for Parties that promise to take away the burdens of citizenship as well as the right to vote, thus making "life easy again". Civics doesn't work that way.
Regards — Cliff
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