propaganda
The mainstream media are trying to paint Europe as a continent of anti-Trump, anti-Putin globalists. The truth could not be more different.

Not content with falsely reporting on public opinion in America, the western mainstream media are now trying their luck in Europe. The narrative goes something like this: Europe feels abandoned by an insular, idiotic president-elect who has turned his back on America's anti-Russian mates in the old world.

This statement is written from the perspective of those in the deluded parallel universe of discredited mainstream media. In actual fact, a more accurate translation reads: Trump has taken the wind out of the sails of the globalist, anti-Russian movement in parts of Europe by stating that it isn't in America or the world's interests to antagonise a super-power who means no one harm, other than the Islamic terrorists who mean to harm the world.

The more distilled version of this narrative which is presented in more smug yet downmarket regions of the western mainstream media goes something like this: Europeans are more intelligent than Americans and therefore are shocked that such a terrible man could be elected president. This is too silly to even merit a translation.

Both statements are uniformly incorrect. The fact of the matter is that the movement which Donald Trump represents is not limited to America. Throughout the western world, including and especially in Europe, there is a pervasive trend amongst voters who feel that globalism isn't working, that anti-Russian sanctions are having unintended consequences on European exporters, that war on Syria is misguided and criminal, and that the governing classes are totally out of touch with those they seek to govern.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the two leading powers of the EU, France and Germany.

Francois Hollande is on his way out. The French Presidential election to take place in spring of next year will surely bring an end to a man who is a domestic laughingstock and an international disaster. His neo-imperial adventure in Syria makes one wonder if Hollande is aware of the fact that François Georges-Picot is long dead, and that the French mandate over Syria has expired. Hollande's arrogant foreign policy is a reminder of the savagery of the French wars in Indo-China and Algeria in the 1950s and 60s. It seems they have learnt little about the limitations of French power over parts of the world they once ruled.

In this context I would not be at all surprised if Marine Le Pen becomes the next President of the Fifth Republic.

In Germany, Angela Merkel will also likely depart sooner rather than later. She frankly won her last election only because none of the major opposition parties had a leader that had any recognition. Now though, after the demographic and crime disaster Merkel has caused by flinging open Germany's doors to whomever wanted to come, in violation of the Dublin convention no less, Merkel has made members of her own party as well as traditional voters on the left and right, look to punish her for her grave misdeeds. This will happen at the next Federal election. It has already happened in regional and local elections, resulting in crushing defeats for the CDU.
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© AFP
Just today Estonia's Prime Minister fell from power after his left-right coalition split. The more moderate Centre Party may well fill this power vacuum.

From Italy to Denmark, Holland to Austria; anti-globalist, anti-mass immigration, Eurosceptic parties are on the rise.

What's more, the 'Putin Did It' line doesn't sell any better in Europe than it did in Britain or America when both Brexit and Trump were painted as some inane Russian conspiracy. Most of the anti-globalist parties on the rise in Europe have little or no interest in antagonising Russia. Even in the Baltics and Poland where anti-Russian hysteria is often at an all time high, more and more people are concerned about local economic issues and political corruption than they are about entertaining the myth of 'Russian invasion'.

What's more, the western media are guilty of dehumanising Russian people by implying that they have no ability to think for themselves and have no general consensus on broad based issues, the way those in other countries are assumed to have. The idea is that everything Russians think or do is somehow a function of obeying orders from the government.

The fact that NFL football is more popular in America than soccer football is not because Obama forced people to like the NFL, it's just a cultural trend amongst American sports enthusiasts. Likewise no one would accuse Francois Hollande of forcing the French to produce and enjoy high quality wines, it's merely a function of centuries of French culture.

So why then are Russians not allowed to have the broad but by no means solid consensus that Trump is a better leader than Hillary Clinton? This came about not because every Russian man, woman and child has a direct line to President Putin; it came about because Trump seems not to want to go to war with Russia whilst Hillary did.

The mainstream media have no shame. They go from country to country trying to construct false narratives and each time they are increasingly disappointed that the voters don't listen or care. I say its time for a 'mediexit.'