by Kenneth Schmidt

Arktos Journal

Nov 28, 2023

Kenneth Schmidt discusses the current political shift toward national-conservative governments and the challenges they face in maintaining their agendas.

Back in the nineties, I was giving speeches and writing articles claiming that nationalism, in some form, would become a major political trend in the West.

It didn’t take a prophet or son of a prophet or any brilliance to predict that a major force would challenge the neoliberal world order. Of course, men like Francis Fukuyama were predicting the “end of history” and envisioning an entire world under the thrall of the wrestling tag team of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. Poor Dr. Fukuyama can be perhaps forgiven for his error; being the son of a Japanese immigrant, he perhaps did not fully understand the inscrutable and mysterious ways of the Occidental mind.

Well, here we are in 2023. Hungary has a conservative regime successfully fending off Third-World immigration. Finland and Sweden have government coalitions, where the leading parties are nationalistic, even if mildly so. In order to fend off the rise of populist-nationalist parties, the leftist government of Denmark has severely limited immigration. Slovakia’s Robert Fico is back in charge again, attempting to implement his unusual mixture of social democracy and nationalism. As I put pen to paper, Geert Wilders’ Party of Freedom, amazingly, led the pack and came out on top in the Dutch elections. Ms. Miloni’s Fratelli d’Italia is in charge in Italy. Yet, for all this good news, there are voices in our circles shouting “elite puppets” and most often “controlled opposition” as mildly nationalist and national-conservative governments take power or come close to the levers of power.

One is tempted to dismiss the naysayers out of hand, but I do not. For every Jesus, there is a Judas. Betrayal is obviously not something unknown in the world of politics. Our opponents, the neoliberal elites, have insane amounts of cash on hand to make sure that people who are bought, stay bought. It would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the power of our enemies. After all, Marine Le Pen is not her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Giorgia Meloni is not Roberto Fiore or even the late Giorgio Almirante. The Sweden Democrats were a lot more edgy in their views in their early days.

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