Europeans Protest_marcovdz marcovdz/Flickr

Europe’s Nationalists on the March

Nationalism is not Europe’s principle of construction; on the contrary, it has been, and remains, Europe’s principle of deconstruction. That is the main lesson to be drawn from the dramatic gains made by anti-European populist parties in last weekend’s European Parliament election.

BERLIN – Europe is made up of its nations, and has been for hundreds of years. That is what makes the continent’s unification such a difficult political task, even today. But nationalism is not Europe’s principle of construction; on the contrary, it has been, and remains, Europe’s principle of deconstruction. That is the main lesson to be drawn from the dramatic gains made by anti-European populist parties in last weekend’s European Parliament election.

It is a lesson that all Europeans should have learned by now. Europe’s twentieth-century wars, after all, were fought under the banner of nationalism – and almost completely destroyed the continent. In his farewell address to the European Parliament, François Mitterrand distilled a lifetime of political experience into a single sentence: “Nationalism means war.”

This summer, Europe will commemorate the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, which plunged Europe into the abyss of modern nationalist violence. Europe will also mark the 70th anniversary of the Allied landing in Normandy, which would decide World War II in favor of democracy in Western Europe (and later, after the end of the Cold War, in all of Europe).

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