Merkel: We Must ‘Stand up’ to ‘Excessive Populism and Nationalism’

German Chancellor Angela Merkel receives the American Fulbright Prize for International Un
WOLFGANG KUMM/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

Globalist chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel has used an award acceptance speech to call on the international community to “stand up” to “excessive populism and nationalism.”

Dr Merkel said that as those who lived through World War II are dwindling in numbers, the lessons learnt from the conflict are being lost, resulting in a rise of “populism and nationalism,” affirming that “we have to resolutely stand up against this type of thinking.”

The Chancellor made the comments after being awarded the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding in Berlin on Monday, the first time the American award was presented outside of the United States. While Dr Merkel made her thinly-veiled criticism of President Trump, his hand-picked ambassador to Germany Rick Grenell looked on.

Merkel, the longest-serving leader in the European Union, was selected for the award for her “remarkable, compassionate leadership and her strong commitment to mutual understanding, international cooperation, and peace.”

Previous recipients include former American presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, and the organisation Doctors Without Borders, which had been active recently in the Mediterranean transporting boat migrants from North Africa to Europe.

Praising supranational bodies as the arbiters of order and peace in a post-WWII world, Dr Merkel continued, “We need to remind ourselves why the United Nations was established in the first place, why NATO, why the World Trade Organization and other international institutions… It was because of the lessons that were drawn out of the horrors of the Second World War and excessive nationalism,” according to the Associated Press.

While expressing gratitude to Germany’s “American friends” who helped rebuild the country, and war-torn Europe, post-1945, her comments veiled a criticism of President Donald Trump’s patriotic-nationalist domestic policies, saying that with “all the differences that one has,” nations “need to talk with one another, we need meetings, encounters, lines of communications” to solve global problems.

Attempting to redefine patriotism as a means of working for “the vested interests of others,” Merkel added, “And this is why I will never tire of making a case for the strength of a multilateral, rules-based and values-based global order.”

This is just Merkel’s latest attack on nationalism and patriotism, when in November she stated that objection to the global-wide United Nations regulation on mass migration was “nationalism” — in the pejorative — “in its purest form” and declared that European countries should be ready to surrender their sovereignty to the EU.

Merkel’s comments echoed those of her partner in Brussels expansionism, French President Emmanuel Macron who condemned nationalism as “treason” and the “exact opposite” of patriotism.

Late last year, Mr Macron positioned himself and Dr Merkel — heralded by the establishment media as the “leader of the free world,” an honorary title usually reserved for the United States — as the saviours of liberal values, telling the German parliament during a speech to commemorate the end of World War One that the “Franco-German couple” will stop the world “descending into chaos.”

“The Franco-German partnership has an obligation not to let the world fall into chaos and to lead Europe to peace.”

“It’s for this reason that Europe must be stronger,” Mr Macron said as he outlined a “more sovereign” European superstate with one army, one immigration law, and one budgetary policy.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.