Welcome back to the museum. That is what Europe is, after all—a sprawling, ivy-covered gallery of past glories where the curators are currently having a nervous breakdown over who gets to hold the keys to the gift shop. The latest panic-inducing specter haunting the continent is the 'Hard Right,' a collection of populist grifters and performative nationalists who were supposed to bring the fire and brimstone of radical change but have instead opted for the lukewarm porridge of 'moderated' economic stagnation. We were promised a revolution; we are being delivered a spreadsheet written in crayon. The reality of the hard right’s economic platform is not a terrifying leap into the unknown, but a pathetic shuffle toward a very familiar cliff.

Take Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s supposed firebrand who has spent her tenure proving that even the most vocal critic of the European Union eventually learns to wag their tail when the European Central Bank holds the leash. The 'radical' economic plan of the modern European nationalist is a masterpiece of intellectual cowardice. It is the realization that you cannot actually burn down the house if you are still living in the basement and using the landlord's Wi-Fi. The hard right has pivoted from 'Let’s leave the Euro' to 'Please don't look at our debt-to-GDP ratio while we pretend to protect the borders.' This isn't governance; it's a hostage situation where the hostages have developed Stockholm Syndrome for the bond markets.

Then we have the French contingent, led by Marine Le Pen, whose economic 'vision' is essentially a list of things that sound nice to a retired baker in Nancy but would collapse the global supply chain by Tuesday. Her party’s retreat from radicalism isn't born of wisdom, but of the realization that the French electorate loves a good protest but hates a falling 401(k). The hard right’s economic policy across the board has become a bland slurry of protectionism and subsidies—essentially the same 'dirigisme' that has been strangling European innovation for decades, just wrapped in a more aggressive flag. They talk about 'European preference' and 'buying local' as if they’ve discovered a secret economic cheat code, ignoring the fact that you can’t build a high-tech future on the backs of artisanal cheese makers and protected agricultural subsidies.

But let us not give the 'centrists' or the 'Left' a pass in this festival of futility. The reason the hard right is gaining any traction at all is that the existing establishment has spent thirty years managing a slow-motion decline and calling it 'stability.' The Left reacts to the hard right with a performative shriek of 'Fascism!', while offering nothing in return but more bureaucracy and a slightly more diverse set of people to manage the same inevitable bankruptcy. The Right screams about 'Sovereignty!', which is a lovely word used by people who want the freedom to be poor as long as they don't have to see a mosque. Neither side has a plan for growth because growth requires things Europe has long since abandoned: risk, labor flexibility, and an admission that the post-war social contract is currently a check written on an empty account.

The most delicious irony of the hard right’s economic platform is their stance on demography. These are parties built on the existential dread of the 'other,' yet they are presiding over a continent of aging voters who require an ever-expanding workforce to pay for their state-funded naps. They want to shut the gates but can't explain who is going to change the diapers in the nursing homes of Dresden and Milan. Their economic 'solutions'—tax breaks for large families and protectionist tariffs—are the equivalent of trying to fix a sinking ocean liner with a packet of chewing gum and a stirring rendition of the national anthem. They are selling the fantasy of a 1950s industrial utopia to a 2024 digital world that has already moved on.

In the end, the hard right’s economic 'moderation' is just a sophisticated way of saying they have no idea what they are doing. They have traded their pitchforks for polo shirts because they realized that the 'globalist' system they despise is the only thing keeping their social security systems from evaporating into the ether. They are not the 'disruptors' they claim to be; they are the new middle-managers of the decline. Europe isn't being conquered by a new ideology; it is being suffocated by a bipartisan commitment to avoiding reality. Whether the hand on the tiller belongs to a Brussels bureaucrat or a nationalist populist, the ship is still heading for the rocks. The only difference is the language the captain uses to lie to the passengers before impact. The hard right isn't a new beginning; it’s just the closing credits of a very long, very boring movie about a continent that forgot how to build anything other than a monument to its own past.