Traditional values come back to bite woke “diversity” sentiment in the West as conservative parties score gains

“Activist” groups and their mainstream media allies are branding recent political developments in Europe (and, to some extent, the rest of the world) as a shift to the “far right”. Earlier this year, analysts in Europe were already seeing “a significant chance the far right will, for the first time, be able to influence Europe’s policy agenda.” Eddie Wax wrote on Politico back then…

“We’re going to see a really significant shift to the right,” said Simon Hix, a professor of comparative politics at the European University Institute, referring to the June elections when 400 million people across the European Union are eligible to vote to send 720 representatives to Brussels.

Hix forecast the far-right Identity & Democracy (ID) grouping in the European Parliament, the sixth largest of seven, will gain 40 seats in June, meaning the group could have 98 lawmakers, vaulting into the third place currently occupied by the Liberals. It’s already home to the German extreme-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the French far-right National Rally (RN) party.

Then, if the current fifth largest grouping, the 67-member right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group — the home of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) and Italy’s ruling Brothers of Italy — also grows by some 18 seats, as Hix predicts, it could become the fourth largest group in Parliament, surpassing both the Greens and the liberals.

Indeed, the rise of conservative parties in the two biggest countries in Europe is propelled primarily by growing anti-immigrant public sentiment. This meets head-on the pro-immigrant slant of the European Union (EU) which had, until recently, been welcoming to refugees and foreigners in general. Contrast these to the prosperous economies in the Far East — including Australia — which traditionally applied stronger controls over immigration and has remained largely consistent sustaining these to this day. Loosely related to this is a seeming growing fear among Europeans that their culture and traditions are under threat from increasingly assertive Islamic communities much of the members of which come from impoverished authoritarian and theocratic societies.

It is no secret, of course, that the EU is pro-business which goes on to explain why it is in favour of “diversity” and “inclusiveness”. After all, native Europeans don’t seem to be up to the job of procreating at replaceable levels and assuring businesses big enough markets to meet their growth targets and their shareholders’ capital gain goals over their strategic planning horizons. As such, hope in sustained “economic growth” lies in tapping new sources of consumers — first it was women, then teenagers, then immigrants and, more recently, homosexuals.

Granted societies gained a lot from this and evidently was absolutely enriched by the new ideas, values, and cultures these formerly “disadvantaged” cohorts contributed by being allowed into spaces formerly occupied exclusively by traditionally privileged cohorts. Suffice to say, the economic value they added was beyond debate when one considers that money remains the most objective measure of added value. Women, immigrants, and homosexuals, in short, added mightily to the labour force and the capital creation and building capacity of economies. Businesses are laughing all the way to the bank as even the very partisan camps — the Woke Left — who seek to temper and even destroy “capitalist ideology” back the “rights” and entitlement of these only-recently-strong contributors to national economies.

In the scheme of things, the social unrest and upheavals caused by all this “inclusiveness” is a small price to pay for nations committed to sustaining “economic growth” over the foreseeable future. All that was needed to mitigate said unrest is to continuously invent new ideologies and doctrines — the very recent context surrounding the words “diversity” and “inclusiveness” among them, as a matter of fact — to serve as channels for assimilation of outsiders and the different. Thus, the fluidisation of many formerly discrete, black-and-white (read, binary), and hardened categorisations such as ethnicity, gender, roles within organisations and social institutions, and even age. The blurring of lines and the reduction of the importance of categories assures capitalists more resilient markets.

Seen under this light, it becomes evident that when one considers what motivates economic activity, the Left and the Right really all converge in their aspirations. Businesses benefit from wokedom’s inadvertent creation of new markets. Capitalists out to secure the Darwinian free market upon which their talent for accumulation bore them vast wealth embrace the Right. All the fruits ultimately end up in the same bank accounts.