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Auberon Waugh, son of the novelist Evelyn, died a quarter of a century ago this month. There was never a possibility of the old man serving a sentence, yet he distanced himself from journalism. He also had a respectable interest in fiction. And unlike his father, who was a straight-laced conservative, he at least had one interesting opinion.
He was a right-wing European supporter. Almost everywhere, attitudes towards Brussels harden as you move up the political spectrum. Waugh Jr. violated that rule by seeing Europe as a potential bulwark against American cultural influence and other modern barbarities. He liked the European project because it was reactionary, not in spite of it. The closest modern equivalent is Jeremy Clarkson, the most unlikely of those left.
Even more is expected in the future. Above all the hard right, the right should favor a United States of Europe. And over time, I think it will happen, if not in Britain, at least on the Continent. A unified Europe, an issue that has long preoccupied liberals, will begin to appeal to conservatives as the only hope against the brutal, technologically dominant superpowers in the West (US) and East (China). It will be framed as a matter of cultural survival.
Here is the genealogy. The essential unity of Europe was a conservative theme – think “Christendom” – before it became liberal. Even the founding of the European Union had a Catholic tinge. Robert Schumann, the “Father of Europe”, is on his way to beatification. About a decade ago, Europeans who valued their country’s distinctiveness could still tell themselves that Brussels was their main threat. Now, there are things scarier than regulatory standardization.
It would not be today’s hard right that embraces Europe. True, Marine Le Pen has softened her views on the EU to broaden her electoral appeal in France. Giorgia Meloni has been more cooperative with Brussels than expected. Britons have always overestimated the strength of Euroscepticism on the continent, so the Brexit failure has set off a domino effect.
But the Le Pen generation cannot make the psychological leap from tolerating European integration to praising it. The next generation maybe. An online subculture of pro-European propaganda has recently flourished: some of it inspiring, some disturbing in its belligerence. This is to be expected from those who grew up seeing their continent pushed aside because of tariffs, technology, and Greenland.
I don’t express happiness about this thing. “My” Europe is one of the court rulings against Mario Draghi’s speeches and anti-competitive practices. But my uneasiness is exactly this. It is no longer just a liberal case for a unified continent, it is also about strength in numbers against external predators. When Waugh said he wanted to be ruled by a “junta of Belgian ticket inspectors”, China was still a minor challenge and the US was overly friendly. Now imagine their enthusiasm for that junta.
A hard-right Euro-federalist: Such a thing, you would say, makes sense on paper but not in real life, like the Penrose triangle. Well, a decade ago, it was equally difficult to imagine a pro-Kremlin American Republican. Or even extreme protectionists. It is possible for a movement to not only change its mind, but to completely reverse it.
In fact, listen carefully to the language of the radical right, and you will see that they are already part of the United States’ move toward Europe. The current fashion to talk about “European civilization” or “Western civilization” implicitly degrades the nation state. (What self-respecting jingo would have screamed about “civilization” in the 1990s? The unit that mattered was the country.)
People have fallen into this way of talking without understanding its implications. If the culture under siege is on a continental scale, involving hundreds if not millions of people, then the government should also be tasked with protecting it. No European state is big enough in this world of hostile giants. When the hard right finally joins the Unionist party, some of us may not know what to ask, “What’s holding you back?” Or jump right in.
Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com
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