Already in early 2016 Ted Malloch, the American, scholar-diplomat-strategist and Trump favorite was meeting privately with then Italian Lega Nord Party head, Matteo Salvini, thinking about the future of Europe, globalization, and the transatlantic relationship.
A friendship of sorts ensued.
With Trump’s ascending candidacy in the United States and the evident failure of globalism, the two minds discussed how to bring national-populist-sovereignist parties to the forefront in Italy — and all the other parts of Europe: east and west
Malloch saw Salvini a few times in London at a private club as pictured above, and on numerous visits to Italy over the next few years.
In Rome, they met and dined with groups of business leaders; in Milan, in a large staged conference heralded the rise of populism; and, in the Piedmont on small and medium-sized businesses in a national economy supported by local production and supply chains and greater access to ‘working capital.’
Malloch talked regularly with Lega’s (Malloch suggested they drop the ‘Northern’ part of their name and run as a national party to gain support in all the corners of Italy), foreign policy experts and spoke in their Parliament on US-Italy relations. He conferred regularly with Armando Siri, an economist and Italian Lega government leader with a radical but practical plan for a new flat tax similar to that formulated in the US over a decade ago. He worked with Salvini’s social media team to get the messaging for the May 2019 EU elections — right.
Malloch has also, behind the scenes, been fostering with Salvini, a new European alliance of nationalist-populist-right of center parties and political leaders as a single bloc in the May 2019 European elections.
In this Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House lieutenant, has provided keen advice and support.
Malloch has spoken repeatedly in Poland, Hungary, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, the UK, and elsewhere, on the topic.
Called All Towards a Common Sense Europe the movement has as its tagline, Peoples Rise Up. That is plural.
The thematic comes, in part, from Malloch’s best selling book, Common Sense Business, which outlines an accessible, actionable guide to better leadership, market-based prosperity, and a sustainable economic model based on prudent practice and principles, such as subsidiarity.
The forging of this new Pan-European alliance of nationalists has a single goal, namely: to create a bloc or coalition in the 751-member EU Parliament in May.
That would change everything; and in effect, would provide nothing less than a takeover of Brussels and the whole EU agenda.
Already a Polish-Italian axis has been agreed to replace the old Berlin-Paris accord as the core of Europe.
With Merkel losing power and retiring and Macron failing miserably, power is swinging strongly in Salvini’s favor and that of his nationalist-populist cohorts all over the continent.
Many are now calling it “The European Spring.”
This is nothing short of a renaissance and a renewal of traditional Christian-classical political philosophy and policies across all of Europe.
Many of the European countries, and critically their foremost national political leaders, are now firmly behind Salvini, who himself has been dubbed, “The Trump of Europe.”
Notably, this internationalizing of the nationalist Right is both a European as well as a worldwide phenomenon.
It has a definitive political focus, starting with the dignity of the human person, rooted in the authority of the family, subsidiarity as the locus of control, valuing provincial over cosmopolitan values, and all centred on the nation state, as sovereign.
This new network of patriotic, like-minded parties under a single umbrella are most significant as a challenge to the dominant world order — globalism.
United by ideology and “frames” of alignment and reference, the new Common Sense thinking is against increased EU integration and its supranationalism but equally important for—control of national borders and immigration; economic security for all; and cultural security and heritage.
Adamantly opposed to modern multiculturalism and relativism, the new movement is reclaiming both values and institutions that the Socialist Left and Marxists have long abandoned or critiqued.
This Trumpian Movement is gaining incredible strength and will challenge the status quo reshaping both America and Europe in a process of reclamation over the coming decade.
Malloch has himself called it, “the swing of the pendulum away from globalism.”
According to Salvini, the Trump of Europe, “Our objective is to be the force of government and change in Europe.”
Dr. Malloch and Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister of Italy, on July 26, 2018 at Viminale Palace, Rome.
