Why the European far right’s bid to weaponise Notre Dame won’t work | Natalie Nougayrède
In reality, ‘Christian Europe’ is more immune to populism than the nationalists like to believe
Ten days before Notre Dame was engulfed by flames, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán was busy launching his Fidesz party’s EU election campaign with an excited speech stating that what was at stake in next month’s Europe-wide vote was nothing less than “our Christian civilisation”.
This week, as I watched the images of the cathedral blaze, I wondered how long it would take for Orbán, the self-proclaimed defender of “Christian Europe”, or other national populists, to try to capitalise on this tragedy in their effort to redraw the European Union along the lines of their white, ethnocentric religious vision.