Far-right leaders took turns on Sunday to hammer home their message about the ‘invasion of migrants’ and ‘Islamist extremism’ lurking in Europe.
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Their time has come, they’re sure of it. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban promised his Italian admirers on Sunday, October 6, on the Pontida stage, in front of the muddy Italian meadow near Milan where the League’s annual party was held. “We’re going to succeed. Hungary is the living example that it is possible,” the godfather of the continent’s radical right said to the several thousand supporters crowding to the front of the stage, and to his European allies listening from backstage.
After calling on “patriots” to join hands, the guest of the far-right vice president of the Italian council of ministers and leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, Orban listed a series of victories. He pointed to the far-right-dominated coalition that has been in power in Italy since 2022, the breakthrough of far-right leader Geert Wilders in the Netherlands in 2023, the victory of Czech populist Andrej Babis in the senatorial elections in September as well as the victory, the week before, for the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, founded by former Nazis in 1956.
Orban roused the audience’s enthusiasm by predicting what he described in his speech as the mother of all victories: the imminent triumph of France’s Rassemblement National (RN), his ally in the new Patriotes for Europe group, third in number of MEPs in the Strasbourg Parliament.
The enduring theme of Islamist extremism
Suitably warmed up, the crowd rejoiced. Taking to the stage, all the speakers – from Portugal’s André Ventura of the Chega party to Holland’s Wilders – hammered the message home: Europe would suffer an invasion of migrants carrying “humanity’s worst cancer,” Islamist extremism in the words chosen by Salvini in his speech.
The subject is well-worn. Yet, judging by the results recorded across Europe by the Italian minister’s political friends, it still hits home. Salvini even postponed the traditional Pontida festival to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. In 1571, off the coast of this Greek port, the Christian fleets of Spain, which then controlled southern Italy, Genoa, Venice and the Papacy, united under the banner of the Holy League to crush the Ottoman navy.
“We stopped the Islamic advance then, we’ll do it again today!” the far-right leader assured his followers. Salvini was also keen that the memory of October 7, 1571, and that of October 7, 2023 “should be remembered together,” as manifestations of a confrontation with a single enemy, from the Mediterranean at the time of Philip II to contemporary Palestine.
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