by James P. Pinkerton
A century ago, in 1919, the left-wing American journalist John Reed published Ten Days That Shook the World. Reed’s topic was the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which overthrew the czars and established the Soviet state. (Reed was a big fan of the communists, as was Hollywood actor Warren Beatty when he portrayed Reed in the 1981 film, Reds.)
Of course, things move faster these days, and oftentimes in the opposite direction, and so now we can speak of Nine Days That Shook the World—those being the three sets of elections, on three continents, spread nine days apart: the Australian election results of May 18, the Indian election results, announced on May 23, and the European elections, announced on May 26.
By now, the outcomes are well known: The conservative nationalist parties won outright in Australia and India, and they ran strongly in the somewhat symbolic European parliamentary elections. In the United Kingdom’s balloting, for example, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party won the most seats.
So what to make of these elections, in which officials representing nearly two billion people were chosen? This author wrote about the Australian election results here, and the Indian results here. And so now, four more takeaways:
First, people still tend to identify themselves by their national or religious group, such as Australian, or Hindu, or British. That is, their historical and cultural identity is important to them; they don’t wish to see themselves as interchangeable cogs in some globalist supply chain, either of goods or of people. As Americans know, these sturdy sentiments have caused a significant backlash against the two great emblems of globalization, free trade and mass migration.
Here’s how one leading nationalist, Italy’s Matteo Salvini—still glowing from his party’s first-place finish in the election to fill the Italian seats in the European Parliament—explained the results:
This is the sign of a Europe that is changing. A Europe that is tired of being the slave of strong powers, of the elite, of the financial companies and corporations.
Salvini’s words show that he puts his nation first—that is, before both international organizations and multinational corporations. It’s worth re-emphasizing that Salvini is on the right, not the left, and yet he’s a conservative, as opposed to a libertarian. And as a conservative, he is fully supportive of tradition, property, and religion; he is a believer in what the American conservative Russell Kirk called “the permanent things.” Thus Salvini is mindful that economic power—especially when wielded by “woke” corporations—can undermine both culture and the family.
full story at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/06/05/pinkerton-nine-days-that-shook-the-world-and-what-comes-next/