The alliance of German populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) with Le Pen’s National Rally, which ended before it was even formalized, is not a new phenomenon. In the summer of 2016, the then head of the AfD Frauke Petri and her husband and MEP of the same party Markus Pretzel had agreed in Strasbourg with Marine Le Pen under extreme secrecy, exploring scenarios for a wider, pan-European cooperation of the far-right everywhere.

A few months later, Le Pen, Petri, Matteo Salvini from the Italian League and Geert Wilders from the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) met publicly for the first time in Koblenz, Germany. Apparently exonerated and encouraged by the fresh triumph of Donald Trump in the USA, they indulged in fanfare about “awakening the peoples of Europe” and “the birth of a new world”, in which they themselves will be the protagonists, in loving harmony.

Controversies without end

What has happened since then?Fraucke Petri left the AfD in an unforgettable press conference in front of the television cameras, leaving a trail for her former colleagues. Marcus Pretzel preferred to practice law. Matteo Salvini temporarily allied himself with Giorgia Meloni, with whom he is now “at odds”. Le Pen clashed with her granddaughter, Marion, because in the 2022 presidential election she supported the other far-right candidate Eric Zemur. Only Wilders has found a clever way not to clash with other members of his party: quite simply he is the only member of his party, officially at least. The rest are considered “supporters” of the PVV without the right to co-decision.

If anything has so far protected Europe from the advance of the far-right and the populists, it is mainly their own inability to articulate a political discourse, to cooperate with each other, to demonstrate a rudimentary capacity for consensus. Ephemeral lovers of power and publicity turn out to be the protagonists of the “space”. Even those who start from a starting point of plausible or alleged patriotism, quickly turn ugly.

Like the abysmal lieutenant colonel Makavettas in the novel of the same name by Apostolos Doxiadis, which takes place during the years of the dictatorship and satirizes the constant conflicts of the self-proclaimed “nation saviors”. Who don’t trust their own shadow and haven’t learned to cooperate with anyone, because that’s their mentality.

From the aquarium to the fish soup…

However, all this does not mean that “lone wolves” cannot become dangerous when given power. There is certainly no reason for complacency. That is why, in this Sunday’s European elections, let us choose wisely and with insight our representatives for the next five years in the European Parliament. Let’s not strengthen the saltimpagos of politics, the jackals by profession, the narcissists of TikTok, the demagogues who want to go to Brussels to “slap their hand on the table” and “call them a bunch of shit”.

Let us not open the bag of Aeolus that can endanger the great achievements of European integration. Because, as the famous saying goes (attributed to Lech Walesa, although not with absolute certainty): It’s very easy to make fish soup out of an aquarium. The opposite is very, very difficult…