The Strange and the Scary

Well, most of the European Parliamentary Election results are in. Outside of some outstanding votes in the UK (specifically Scotland and Northern Ireland), we know who's going to Strasbourg/Brussels. What emerges is a whole host of new MEP's who are far less mainstream than their predecessors. In the Netherlands, a party whose leader whose views are seen as so incediary as to have been banned from visiting the UK has won four seats in Parliament. In Sweden, as I discussed earlier, there will be an MEP from the Pirate Party (which opposes intellectual property and copyright rules). In Hungary, a party which maintains a paramilitary wing has elected three MEP's. In the United Kingdom, people have been shocked by the election of two members of the British Nationalist Party. The BNP has a rule which bans people of African descent from joining their party or even attending their meetings. Racist is an understatement. There are those who often look to Europe as a place of progress that we in Canada need to emulate, it is important to look at the whole picture.