Counter-Currents
The EKRE’s Martin Helme
1,822 words
On March 5, 2023, Estonia held parliamentary elections which saw a victory for the ruling Estonian Reform Party led by incumbent Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, as well as an increase in its number of parliamentary seats in the Riigikogu, the country’s unicameral legislative body, and share of the popular vote. I wouldn’t ordinarily comment on Estonian electoral politics, both because of my distance from Estonia and my general jadedness with electoral politics, but this election was interesting for two important reasons.
Firstly, the runner-up party, the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) led by Martin Helme, won the second-highest number of parliamentary seats, and is now probably the largest parliamentary party anywhere in the world that can reasonably be called white identitarian. Second, despite coming in second, the EKRE saw a decrease in both its share of the popular vote and parliamentary seats, for reasons which I consider completely avoidable, but also part of a larger and unfortunate trend in white identitarian and Right-wing politics in Europe.
But let’s get our facts straight. The Estonian Reform Party, which is best described as liberal, managed to increase its plurality by three seats, while the EKRE, which had been the third-largest party in Estonia since 2019, managed to lose two seats, ending up with 17. While the EKRE has lodged complaints about election irregularities, especially related to the new electronic voting process, and while this is certainly possible, some Estonian nationalist voices have pointed out that the EKRE was mostly the architect of its own defeat, considering Kaja Kallas’ weak initial position and the rising tide of nationalism in Estonia in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian War’s escalation. As my friend, Estonian nationalist and Counter-Currents contributor James A., put it:
. . . the election in Estonia is basically over, the final votes are still being counted but the results are basically in. EKRE essentially got crushed by Reform. In the 2019 elections EKRE ran on opposing mass immigration, EU skepticism, Nationalism, identity, and pro-family values. They gained 12 seats and rose to become, almost overnight, Estonia’s 3rd largest political party.
Since February 24, 2022, the retarded nerds known as the Helme family have been counter-signalling Estonia’s support for Ukraine far more than their opponents. While all of Eastern Europe, from the Nationalist community to even the liberals (By Eastern European standards) have been united with Ukraine against the Antifa Kremlin and their imperialism, the Helmes have been infected by the Western/Anglo “I oppose the current thing” mindset.
As a result, they got crushed in this election, and have lost several seats as of me writing this. Remember, the polls predicted EKRE GAINS and potentially becoming the 2nd largest party in Estonia. Instead, they have lost seats and have only 1 more seat than the 4th largest party. For a party that was polled to make gains that’s a major failure.
There has been speculation as to why Martin Helme decided it would be a good idea to start opposing aid to Ukraine from a position of Estonian nationalism. While it is true that countries should always look to their own defense first, it isn’t difficult to see how arming Ukraine and otherwise enabling it to dismantle the Russian war machine and possibly even inflict enough damage on Russia to the point where its disintegration might become possible would strengthen Estonia’s security. The best explanation I’ve seen is that the EKRE leadership hoped to attract the votes of Estonia’s Russian minority who, obviously, do not want to see Ukraine armed and supported.
Unless evidence emerges of election shenanigans, like James I assume that Helme’s comments alienated the EKRE’s support base. If it is true, it will not be the first time that a European nationalist party has lost its core constituency because it changed its rhetoric in order to win votes from a segment of the population it mistakenly believes it can win over. When the results from the Estonian election came in, I was reminded of the tragic rise and fall of Hungary’s Jobbik, a once far-Right parliamentary party that at one point was the second-largest party in the county. Its shift to the political center, however, ended up turning it into a liberal party — and in last year’s election, it fell from being the main opposition party to fourth place. While there are many reasons for Jobbik’s transformation (read about it here), the central one is the party’s attempt to attract centrist and Leftist voters in the hope that this would give it the numbers needed to challenge Hungary’s ruling party, Viktor Orbán’s center-Right Fidesz.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Toward a New Nationalism here
Since Jobbik began its leftward shift, however, we’ve seen the rise of László Toroczkai’s Mi Hazánk party, which since its founding in 2018 has become the voice of the radical Right for Hungarians, and is currently the most popular party among the youth. Mi Hazánk formed as an alternative for Jobbik’s original core Right-wing and nationalist supporters and has drawn their votes away from the latter. In effect, Jobbik traded the enthusiastic “yes” of nationalists who were already supporting it as a Right-wing alternative to Fidesz for a perfidious “maybe” from liberals who see them merely as temporarily useful to break Fidesz’s hegemony over Hungarian politics.
Unless Estonia’s EKRE corrects its course, we may see a similar progression. Indeed, the 2023 Estonian general election may eventually be seen as the beginning of the end for the EKRE.
Why do Right-wing, nationalist, and national populist parties do this? Over the course of its existence, a nationalist party may pick up momentum and grow rapidly. This brings media attention, political clout, resources, and the support of new members and sympathizers. At this stage, energy and hope are both very high and everyone assumes that the party will keep on growing until it attains a majority and takes power. Eventually, however, it will hit a plateau — for nationalist parties, this is usually somewhere between 20 and 30% of the voting public. I suspect that this is the limit of the percentage of the population that can be persuaded to think and act, if only slightly, outside the parameters prescribed by the Nuremberg moral paradigm; i.e., this is the approximate percentage of voters who can be persuaded to try identity politics on for size in a cultural climate that is dominated by the opposition and therefore hostile to nationalism.
If any other type of political party could attain this level of support, it would probably become the ruling party, or at least a kingmaker. But in the case of nationalist parties, since other parties refuse to work with them and since they themselves often refuse to work with those parties which they (correctly) perceive to be problematic and untrustworthy, they find it difficult to form coalitions in order to participate in coalition governments. Even if a nationalist party becomes the single largest one in a particular country’s parliament, in many cases all the other parties exclude it, making it impossible for the nationalists to rule as part of a coalition. They may sometimes attain local power and gain valuable executive positions at the local level, but this is rare. Discontent tends to be widely dispersed across a society and better suited for broad, nationwide elections rather than local ones. This means that the party must of necessity attain a minimum of 50% plus one additional legislator for it to even begin implementing its program in any way. Otherwise, all such a party can really do is bark very loudly in parliament and try to disrupt the other parties — something that can backfire spectacularly, such as when Jobbik attempted to torpedo Fidesz’s immigration reforms as mentioned in the article linked above. For this and other reasons, the leadership of such a party are in danger of attaining a half plus one or bust mentality, where they see no price as being too great to attain executive power.
This mad rush ends up causing the party to start looking for votes in all the wrong places. Having picked up the low-hanging fruit — disaffected conservatives, inchoate nationalists, the losers of globalization (for lack of a better term), the Euroskeptics, and libertarians intelligent enough not to support immigration, the party then turns to the harder-to-reach voters, such as liberals who are racist even as they spout anti-nationalist rhetoric, “based” ethnic minorities, sensible centrist folk who just want society to run smoothly, and groups whose interests may in some vague way overlap with nationalism (such as the industrial working class). In doing so, the party shifts its rhetoric and may also change its aesthetic, as for example by dropping its militant appearance or toning down its nationalism. While this may indeed net them some new voters, it usually costs them far more of their previous supporters, and perhaps even key party personnel. This may be because the party mistakenly assumes that someone who votes for them once will do so in perpetuity. In fact, however, the supporters of nationalist parties tend in particular to not be as slavish and bovine as the supporters of liberal parties.
While it may indeed be the case that a nationalist party has limited options unless it can win power, it is also true that getting the message out and deconstructing the enemy’s moral and political framework can also lead to growth. The process of persuading people to take your position rather than shifting your position to accommodate them is slow, but is permanent. Besides which a nationalist party cannot win elections alone; it needs friendly media and supportive academic and social organizations, ranging from intellectual journals and policy institutes to nationalist gyms and martial arts clubs –and perhaps even knitting circles, homemaking advisories, and the rudiments of a mutual aid society for families. Such an approach is less glamorous and may take many years to bring about tangible results. Moreover, the types of people who tend to lead political parties often do so because they see themselves as the saviors of their nation and prefer a rapid and triumphal rise to power. Thus, they may be impatient and want to win while they’re still young and energetic — or because they believe that unless victory is achieved quickly, the nation will be doomed.
I want to be charitable to the EKRE and assume they can still be pulled back from the precipice. They’ve only just begun to bleed support and are not likely to splinter unless the leadership goes all in on its newly-found love affair with Estonia’s Russian minority. Any victory for nationalists is inspiring and brings us a step closer to our ultimate goal of securing the existence of our people and a future for white children everywhere. If EKRE members are reading this, I implore them to take what I’ve written under consideration and steer their party clear of the path toward rapid electoral success at all costs. Sometimes it is better to take the slower path to growth. It is safer and less glamorous, but it is nearly impossible for our enemy to stop.
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10 comments
I’ve been waiting for an article like this for years. ‘Democracy’ is so complicated in how it actually manifests itself within so-called elections (assuming it’s all fair). Despite ‘free speech’ and blind-voting, people are still indirect with how they vote and how they express themselves. It’s almost like the Bradley-effect turned on its head.
There is still significant ‘revealed preferences.’ Think of it how white leftists speak so chivalrously of the poor and minorities, but so sternly against the authorities, yet pay for extra policing to harangue the homeless, and economically redline diversity outside of their cities.
For the record I have zero faith in elections or democracy as anything other than a racial headcount. It’s ironic that the Weimar Republic might end up being the closest thing to a free democracy, given its wild swings in elections and culture depending on who won. Everywhere else features nothing ever changing because of an entrenched bureaucracy, bipartisan consensus and globalist treaties.
So you end up with indirect representation, and an even more indirect message that eventually becomes lost in the minutiae of coded language over the years, thanks to the likes of Lee Atwater.
Atwater: “But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I’ll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.”
But later in the interview, Atwater was questioned about the implicitly racist aspects of the “New Southern Strategy” carried out by the Reagan campaign:
Atwater: “As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don’t have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.”
Questioner: “But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps”
Atwater: Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘n*****’ – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘, nigger.’ So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.”
So DR3 had its origins in these tactics. We can already see the next incarnation (‘Dems R the Real transphobes’). It never stops because people are trying to ‘work’ democracy. Then they end up trying to appeal to minorities (people who will never vote for them) by purposely alienating their own base, none of which is demonstrably workable anyway because we have blind balloting) just to win over a few percentage points of the monolithic bloc (in a one man, one vote system), which matters not in American politics since the popular vote is ceremonial outside of local or state elections. One would think those who want to win would appeal to the majority, but they have proven they would rather ‘lose the right way than win the wrong way.’
Even in parliament (which is more representative than American Congress) where the parties are allowed to be explicit, because they receive sometimes guaranteed representation, you end up with almost ‘off-label’ politics where you vote for a ‘platform,’ which does not demonstrate what voters actually believe because it is just a big tent, but seems to be more pragmatic than a paltry ‘third party.’ It works with leftists too. Neoliberals in Scandinavia vote for the Labour and Socialist parties even though none of these people are proletarians and are very hostile to the working class because these platforms purposely import nonwhite immigrants and outsource manufacturing. It’s just the lagginess of the old system has not caught up to the Current Year. These people pretend to love Che, yet would consider him a terrorist today. Yet they still wear his face on their shirt.
I’m old enough to remember the Counter-Currents podcast where the author self-congratulated himself on his success in the North-Macedonian parliamentary elections. No, he didn’t win a seat — but he managed to prevent the victory of Orbán’s strategic allies (because “They’re cucks!”) and helped a Soros-Albanian coalition into power.
Now he’s kicking an ally on a bad day (They’re CRUSHED!!!), and offers unsolicited advice to people who fight for the cause in a foreign country, the language of which he doesn’t speak.
OK.
But let’s hope there are fellow political animals who read this, so maybe it’s possible to salvage this post by constructive commentary. (1) Let’s go to Wikipedia and look at the numbers in the right pane.
Voter turnout was basically the same as last time.
There are little green and red arrows which indicate wins and losses.
The Kallas woman gained a few more seats. EKRE lost a few. No big deal.
The real story is the actual crushing of “Centre”, whatever it is, whose base might have gone over to the new liberal party “E200”, whatever it is.
These are the numbers, assuming they’re correct. I have no way to verify.
If they are true, that means the Estonian political landscape is unchanged.
As for EKRE’s strategy, I don’t know a thing about Estonian politics. All I can say is that in Hungary early 2022 the left and Fidesz were neck-and-neck in the polls, and Orbán turned this into another two-thirds majority by taking a moderate stance on Ukraine.
In Slovenia the most unattractive left party won by running on a peace platform.
EKRE might have sensed a similar trend in Estonian society. Only they themselves can tell.
Slovakia and Poland will have elections this year. Slovak opposition leader Robert Fico (of all people) is copycatting Orbán. But PiS in Poland seems to be set on the war path. We’ll see where this ends.
Generally speaking, more respect for those who stick their neck out and engage in politics. Those who get up at 4 a.m. and hit the campaign trail and go door to door and gain votes one by one.
People who sit in cafés and make podcasts about movies and such don’t have much to contribute.
Since you insist on using the n-word to refer to my country, I will disregard all of your opinions as garbage.
However, for the record and for my esteemed audience, I want to state that I’m proud to have torpedoed the DPMNE campaign and prevented them from winning on a platform of normalizing anti-Macedonian policy. Indeed, we should all make it our mission in life to break apart center-right parties, especially if, like DPMNE or Fidesz, they are part of the Finkelstein political network which has been used by Israeli intelligence to instal loyal shabbos goys across the governments of Europe. It’s high time that nationalists realized that the center-right is not only an enemy, but the enemy, here including the much-vaunted Orbán Viktor and other advocates of legal demographic displacement.
‘Why do Right-wing, nationalist, and national populist parties do this?’
Liberalism’s political immune system is part of the problem, but also the ‘genetic code’ of the political program is also an important factor.
Maybe the key is start out as a populist party first and season in enough nationalist tendencies to provide some bones on the sometimes squishy politics of populism.
Maybe Estonia is not a very good candidate for ‘nationalist’ politics if a general victory cannot be turned into significant power in smaller political/administrative areas. But, that’s what a party should aim for and do so by emphasizing the populist side of their nationalist/populist agenda in local elections.
Perhaps the way to victory starts with figuring out the exact steps needed to eventually dominate national politics and then adding nationalist/populist themes into the party platform to achieve those steps.
Instead of A-B testing different policies under the same organizational name, spawn lots of smaller organizations with one different policy to see how they fly. A kind of ‘polling by deed’. These ‘pilot parties’ can help determine which policies are more likely to gain traction and with whom and in what areas.
When the time comes, the pilot parties are rolled into the national party giving them the due respect for their innovative ideas.
–Since you insist on using the n-word to refer to my country, I will disregard all of your opinions as garbage.–
Jeeves, are you really this peeved? Just because he said “north” in reference to the name your former Yugoslav entity agreed to by treaty?
Listen, Vardarian, the cold war is over. You’re the one Finking everyone with this pro-Nuland stuff.
The treaty was rammed through parliament after it failed to pass muster at a nationwide referendum. It is egregiously anti-Macedonian and designed to erase my nation. I will never accept it and consider all who support it enemies.
Jeelvy, you know millions of Hellenes call themselves Macedonians.
If wish my kinsmen had held out longer and prevented your “accession” to NATO, breaker of the national idea.
Millions of blacks call themselves British, it doesn’t make them so.
Standing by Ukraine and joining Nato ended Estonian nationalism. They are now a small backwater of the Anglo-zionist homosexual empire. With the population of Nassau County onLlong Island, the empire will easily mongrelize them with refugees and permanently erase the unique DNA of the Estonian people. If the West triumphs in Ukraine, the degenerate Anglo-zionist ideology will destroy what’s left of the Caucasian race.
At this point in time, mouthing these low-IQ Kremlin talking points is not just loathsome, it is pathetic and ridiculous. Of the two superpowers, Russia and the United States, which one has targeted the Estonian people with race replacement carried out by massive deportations and genocide, followed by colonization by foreigners? That would be Russia. Russian propaganda is almost unique in its brazen projection and ridiculous lies, which bespeak a deep contempt for the human intellect.
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