Austrian and Italian Elections

I don’t know about you, but I am feeling PUMPED about the elections this weekend in Austria and Italy. Everyone else here in Alabama will be following the SEC championship game:

“If there is anything that dominates the Viennese fast-food restaurant “End of the Line” more that the smell of greasy frying fat, it is a sense of resignation and anger. Christa Kantor, 67, hands a customer at the bar a beer as she turns over a sausage.

In just a few days, a repeat of the run-off election for federal president will take place in Austria. The election is gaining international attention for it may answer the question of whether the international success of rightwing populism will continue: Brexit – Trump – Hofer? No one is in doubt here at “End of the Line.” That’s why no one here talks about the election. “They’re all voting for Hofer anyway,” says Kantor, in a croaking voice. The man at the bar nods.

According to polls, nine in ten Austrians have already made up their minds about who they will vote for on December 4: Rightwing nationalist Norbert Hofer from the Austrian Freedom Party (above right) or Alexander van der Bellen of the Green Party (above left), who is officially running as an independent. …”

Occidental Dissent will have live threads of the elections in Italy (Sunday) and Austria (Sunday):

“TURIN, Italy — Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, only 41, once seemed to have solved the riddle of how to survive Europe’s populist, anti-establishment tempest. But with a critical national referendum on Sunday, the populist wave is now threatening to crush him and plunge Italy into a political crisis when the European Union is already reeling.

From Washington to Brussels to Berlin, fears are rising that Italy may be stumbling into its own “Brexit” moment. What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import. Financial analysts warn of a potential banking crisis, and pro-Europe supporters fear that a “no” vote in the referendum could accelerate the populist movement across the European bloc.

Italy is potentially the next domino to fall, partly because of the disillusionment of young voters. They have been swept up by many of the same forces that led peers in Spain and Greece to vote for upstart parties, the British to vote to leave the European Union, and Americans to elect Donald J. Trump. In France, President François Hollande announced on Thursday that he would not seek re-election — another establishment figure succumbing to the political moment.

Mr. Renzi’s supporters have taken to calling his opponents in the internet-born, populist Five Star Movement “Trumpisti.” They accuse their opponents’ numerous blogs and websites of flooding the Facebook accounts of young people with anti-Renzi, pro-Russian fake news. The referendum has essentially become a referendum on Mr. Renzi, who gave extra motivation to his political enemies by vowing to resign if voters reject the proposed political changes. …”

Remember, the possibility of the European Spring was one of the top three reasons I supported Trump:

“A Trump presidency gives European nationalists a free hand to act to secure their future. A Hillary presidency will have the exact opposite chilling effect. No Western European country has elected a national populist government since the Second World War.

As the so-called “Leader of the Free World,” America sets the tone for the rest of the West. Most Americans don’t realize how overwhelming American influence is overseas. During the Cold War, every Western nation from Australia to Canada to the UK to Germany to Sweden chose follow the US down the road to racial and cultural suicide at roughly around the same time. They all followed the US off the cliff like a bunch of lemmings. In places like Germany and Sweden, they debate civil rights, integration, and multiculturalism as if they were provinces of an American Empire.

If America radically changed course though (the seat of the globalist empire), it would shake the global liberal order – particularly in Western Europe – to its foundations. In the absence of American leadership, the liberal regimes in Europe would be destabilized and would succumb to nationalist rebellions. It’s probably why they haven’t done so already.

Trump is already on the campaign trail comparing Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel’s disastrous leadership in Germany. As president, Trump would not only destabilize the liberal order in Europe and give the European nationalists a free hand to act, but he would also encourage them to do so from Washington.

Don’t underestimate Washington’s power, reach, and influence. Obama and Hillary Clinton set the Middle East ablaze by fomenting the Arab Spring. Just by using the powers of the presidency, a Trump presidency could bring about a “European Spring” as early as 2017. Now that’s a delicious thought. Striking a blow against the US Empire here could set off a chain reaction not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. …”

Are we about to see it? Is this weekend the start of the European Spring on the Continent or will it be a setback? If we win in both Austria and Italy, I am going to be like …