The streets may eventually fall silent, but the struggle over who governs, who pays and what survives is only beginning<\/p>\n
These days,\u00a0European headlines resemble reports from a war zone: from stormed city halls in Marseille and Lille, to looted boutiques along the French Riviera, burned tourist offices in Lyon, and clouds of tear gas enveloping the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace. The \u2018day of rage\u2019 in France drew over 800,000 protesters onto the streets \u2013 an event that was dismissed by Paris and the European mainstream as merely the \u201cspontaneous revolt of the outskirts\u201d or a \u201craid by migrants.\u201d\u00a0However, a closer look at the \u2018rebels\u2019 reveals respectable, bourgeois-looking students and well-off citizens engaging in destruction and violence.
\nNone of these people know what to expect from the future of mainstream European politics. In this shifting landscape, old institutions are losing their legitimacy, while right-wing political forces \u2013\u00a0 whose ideas are increasingly seen as rational amid the chaos \u2013 are emerging on the broader European stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Protests in Europe stem from \u2018own mistakes\u2019 \u2013 Putin<\/p>\n
Portrait of the protesters: what happened?
\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron arrogantly advised the people to express their political will in six months during the forthcoming presidential elections; however, the streets responded to Macron\u2019s proposal with\u00a0looting and arson targeting government buildings. This reaction serves as a precise diagnosis of the French political system. The country\u2019s civic framework can no longer hold society together and there is no confidence in a stable future.
\nMany believe that the current riots in France are a \u201cspontaneous revolt of the outskirts.\u201d\u00a0However, as Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director at the Valdai International Discussion Club writes,\u00a0we are witnessing an inverted version of May 1968. Nearly 60 years ago, the nationwide wave of protests led by students and leftist intellectuals shaped the liberal framework that has dominated global and European politics ever since.
\nToday, it has reached the point of aggressive absurdity. The old narratives of \u2018liberation\u2019 have been successfully adopted by the bourgeois youth, whose behavior is more violent that of an uncivilized tribe, as HSE professor Alexander Filippov notes. But then, one may remember that, centuries ago, the Bastille wasn\u2019t stormed by migrants either.\u00a0
\nHow did this happen? The liberal establishment in Paris and Brussels has become totally detached from ordinary citizens. Its agenda is completely irrelevant to society. Having imposed a rigid \u201cconfrontation with Russia\u201d at the expense of the prosperity and development of its own people, the EU offers its citizens no viable ideas for survival.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
What\u2019s on Russia\u2019s target list \u2013 and why?<\/p>\n
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen suggested at a Paris business forum in August that Europeans should tighten their belts and become a continent that \u201cproduces, invests, and protects\u201d by tapping into \u201cidle\u201d domestic savings. Her logic implies using household savings to fund the real economy through the Capital Markets Union. Clearly, the proposal to dip into citizens\u2019 savings while shifting the risks of factory bankruptcies onto them can only be met with outrage by the decent bourgeoisie brought up on \u2018European ideals\u2019.\u00a0
\nThe system has set a trap for itself: in order to retain its waning power, the left-liberal establishment is forced to close its eyes to the riots of anarchists and radical leftists. The authorities fear street protests far less\u00a0than the rise of their right-wing opponents. The liberal mainstream would rather burn cities than allow rational thinkers with worldviews grounded in national interests to come to power.
\nDespite their passion for destruction, the rioters have no idea how to reconstruct the future of united Europe. Moreover, as Irina Maltseva, head of the \u2018France and Francophone countries: Politics, economics, culture\u2019 project at the HSE Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies points out, the spontaneous street protests will inevitably die down as the presidential campaign approaches. Protests will wane, leaving us to wonder \u2013 what comes next?
\nThe fight between left-wing and right-wing forces in Europe<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Mass protests grip Western Europe (VIDEOS)<\/p>\n
The escalating competition between right and left-wing factions in Europe has transcended mere philosophical debate. It would be a mistake to view each new crisis as an isolated anomaly within the EU. Incidents like the riots in Paris, the brief unrest in Milan, the migration chaos in Ceuta, or the victory of the far-right in Germany\u2019s Saxony-Anhalt state are all interconnected threads in the same narrative, best described as the collapse of the prevailing model.
\nBeneath the ideological clash between the right and left lies a harsh economic reality \u2013 the struggle over who will bear the costs of the sanctions crisis orchestrated by the European Commission. The establishment has attempted to persuade the world that a post-industrial economy \u2013 characterized by AI integration, cryptocurrency transactions, a shift toward green energy, Capital Markets Union speculations, and \u201cnormative\u201d values \u2013 is more important than factories, raw materials, ports, and affordable energy. However, this is a path to economic self-destruction. The street protests in France and Italy vividly illustrate that Europe can no longer afford to uphold its previous social contract. Budget deficits are spiraling out of control and are becoming the EU\u2019s economic curse.
\nBudapest serves as a prime example of this systemic failure. The Hungarian Parliament is currently reviewing the national budget proposal. Prime Minister Peter Magyar acknowledged that the country is grappling with a record-breaking, suffocating budget deficit of 7.5% to 8.3% of GDP. The economic strategies of past years, reliant on uninterrupted cheap energy from Russia and long-term loans from China, have collapsed under the pressure of the REPowerEU plan.<\/p>\n
The Hungarian government\u2019s only remaining support mechanism is the so-called \u2018solidarity contribution\u2019 tax imposed on excessive profits in opposition-led cities, but local governments can no longer afford to pay it amid the current crisis. To prevent Hungary from experiencing large-scale social upheavals similar to those in France, Magyar is urgently implementing a progressive tax system, cutting government contracts, imposing a wealth tax on billionaires, and escalating tensions with EU leadership by demanding the immediate unfreezing of \u20ac16 billion in EU grants, while threatening Orban with lifetime imprisonment if he pushes the opposition onto the streets.
\nThe analysis of the internal dynamics of economic issues in the EU, however, should not boil down to a simplistic equation of \u2018budget deficit = street protests\u2019. For example, we may wonder why there are no protests in Poland and Romania, despite similar or even more severe budget deficits (7.3% and 7.9%, respectively), while Albania (a rather financially stable country and non-EU member) is engulfed in turmoil and the Flamingo Revolution.\u00a0
\nThe answer seems to lie in the differing nature of the deficit and the resilience of national institutions. In Poland and Romania, budget shortfalls are currently masked by rampant electoral populism and \u2018social bribes\u2019 \u2013 like Romania\u2019s subsidies for farmers or Poland\u2019s price caps at gas stations.<\/p>\n
The government manages to mitigate discontent with funds extracted from big business. However, in France, the government has completely exhausted this option. The budget deficit has led to direct cuts in essential social commitments \u2013 from school funding to suburban support \u2013 quickly eroding\u00a0its legitimacy.
\nFor many Europeans, the right-wing agenda and national self-interest have become the only rational option. Right-wing pragmatists propose a clear audit and financial protection, while Brussels\u2019 liberal framework advocates for insolvency for the sake of rather dubious dogmas.
\nThe tactics of growing competition, or how to succeed in the \u2018darkroom\u2019
\nContemporary global politics resembles a sort of \u2018darkroom\u2019 where old rules no longer apply, and new ones are still taking shape. The key revelation is that the \u2018new right\u2019 has learned to navigate this darkness by playing by Brussels\u2019 own rules. There\u2019s a growing understanding that to save the industrial base from stifling deficits, ideological romanticism must be abandoned.\u00a0
\nA good example is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Her approach has shown that it\u2019s possible to dutifully follow external Euro-Atlantic rituals while negotiating exceptions from Brussels on crucial issues vital to the national economy \u2013 such as energy or migration.<\/p>\n
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico follows a similar path, cleverly blending leftist social principles with hardline national populism. Bratislava is demanding official transitional periods and exemptions from the European Commission to continue receiving Russian gas, citing the need to protect the wallets of its voters.
\nA comparable maneuver is being executed by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis; while his policies can\u2019t be called pro-Russian, pragmatism dictates a simple truth: if Czech factories want to survive amid America\u2019s selfish diesel policy, they\u2019ll need to negotiate with Moscow. Even Hungary has adeptly shifted the discussion to a language of tough bargaining. Budapest has\u00a0formally\u00a0agreed to comply with REPowerEU requirements and phase out Russian energy supplies by October 2027, but insists that the EU must provide compensation, or else Hungarian companies will face bankruptcy.
\nPoland\u2019s stance is particularly notable. Rhetorically, Warsaw demands a complete sanctioning of Eurasian projects, presenting itself as Europe\u2019s \u201cprimary eastern shield.\u201d\u00a0Yet this is merely an attempt to maintain appearances during a losing game. Internal realities compel Warsaw to negotiate with Beijing to preserve transit through the Malaszewicze hub and to impose a 60% windfall tax on its state-owned company Orlen to temporarily quell public dissatisfaction at gas stations ahead of elections.
\nRemarkably, this \u2018trial by rage\u2019 is unfolding not only within the EU, and it doesn’t only affect Western capitalist giants. The trend is taking on a global scale.
\nIn Albania, the \u2018Flamingo Revolution\u2019 is brewing. The social upheaval was sparked by the allocation of resort zones for a mega project spearheaded by Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and undermined the decade-long stability of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama\u2019s left-liberal government. In a desperate attempt to cling to his dwindling legitimacy, Rama resorted to his usual tactics, accusing street protesters of links to the American Antifa political movement and \u201cMoscow\u2019s influence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pendulum has swung even further in India, where a massive youth uprising led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and Rahul Gandhi\u2019s opposition alliance has paralyzed major cities from New Delhi to Mumbai. Although the immediate trigger was the Special Intensive Revision of electoral polls, the underlying issue is similar to the problem in France: the pro-American digital outsourcing model and liberal dogmas can no longer sustain the younger generation amidst a global crisis.
\nThe issue isn\u2019t capitalism per se, but rather the collapse of its specific, degenerate form: liberal globalization. In its place arises a rigid, sovereign capitalism rooted in national self-interest. The new right-wing pragmatists are not \u2018Moscow\u2019s friends\u2019. They merely advocate for their own wallets in times of scarcity.
\nFor Russia, this is an important signal: the West\u2019s \u2018unified\u2019 sanctions policy has turned into an uncomfortable, but purely decorative facade; and behind it, we glimpse scenes of impressive but ultimately meaningless discontent. In this light, a critical question arises \u2013 will the political mainstream acknowledge its defeat and negotiate with its opponents, or will it continue to operate under the \u201capres nous, le deluge\u201d (after us, the flood) principle? A key indicator will be the formation of a coalition between the ruling government and right-wing forces in Saxony-Anhalt, and their ability to govern effectively and maintain power in the long term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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