Europe’s most prominent rightwing politicians came together in a rare show of unity in the German city of Koblenz, predicting that the same forces unleashed by US President Donald Trump would sweep them to power throughout western Europe in an insurrectionary “patriotic spring”.
Speaking just hours after Mr Trump was inaugurated in Washington, party leaders said Europe was about to undergo the same kind of political earthquake that had rocked the US at last November’s election and the UK when voters chose Brexit.
“We are experiencing the end of one world and the birth of a new one, full of hope,” National Front leader Marine Le Pen told ecstatic crowds gathered in Koblenz’s main conference centre. “2016 was a year when the Anglo-Saxon world awoke, and 2017 I’m sure is the year when the European continent will also awake.”