So What Happened In Europe Yesterday? Voters Fired A Warning Shot Over The Heads Of Their Political Elites

Alexis Tsipras, the Bernie Sanders of Europe?

The natives are restless… in Europe. There were elections in 21 countries for the European Parliament's 751 seats yesterday, the culmination of a 4-day process including all 28 member countries. Early reports indicated inordinately large numbers of voters didn't bother going to the polls. These are the countries in the U.E. and how many members they have:

• Germany- 96 (50 on the left/46 on the right)
• France-74 (31 on the left/43 on the right)
• Italy- 73 (34 on the left/39 on the right)
• U.K.- 73 (27 on the left/46 on the right)
• Spain- 54 (25 on the left/29 on the right)
• Poland- 51 (5 on the left 46 on the right)
• Romania- 32 (22 on the left/10 on the right)
• Netherlands- 26 (14 on the left/12 on the right)
• Belgium- 21 (15 on the left/6 on the right)
• Czech Republic- 21 (7 on the left/14 on the right)
• Greece- 21 (10 on the left/11 on the right)
• Hungary- 21 (3 on the left/18 on the right)
• Portugal- 21 (10 on the left/11 on the right)
• Sweden- 20 (13 on the left/7 on the right)
• Austria- 18 (9 on the left/9 on the right)
• Bulgaria- 17 (8 on the left/9 on the right)
• Denmark- 13 (8 on the left/5 on the right)
• Slovakia- 13 (5 on the left/8 on the right)
• Finland- 13 (8 on the left/5 on the right)
• Ireland- 11 [still counting]
• Croatia- 11 (5 on the left/6 on the right)
• Lithuania- 11 (5 on the left/6 on the right)
• Latvia- 8 (1 on the left/7 on the right)
• Slovenia- 8 (2 on the left/6 on the right)
• Estonia- 6 (5 on the left/1 on the right)
• Cyprus- 6 (4 on the left/2 on the right)
• Luxembourg- 6 (3 on the left/3 on the right)
• Malta- 6 (3 on the left/3 on the right)

As expected, opposition parties-- whether on the left or the right-- fared well, as voters took an opportunity to slap their governments around a little. France's fascist party, the overtly racist National Front, came in first with a stunning quarter of the vote, President François Hollande's Socialists in third place with 14%. The abstention rate was around 60%. In Greece, Syriza, the anti-fascist, solidly working people's party came out ahead. Greece's fascist party, New Dawn, barely took a third of the votes Syriza did. Of course, the fat, content Germans-- where the fake-left party and the mainstream conservatives have a coalition anyway-- were the big exceptions. In Holland, Geert Wilders' fascist party also ate sand, coming in 4th behind mainstream, anti-fascist parties. And in the U.K, where only 33.8% of voters even bothered, the racist and fascist-oriented UKIP took the most seats, beating both the Conservatives and Labor and all but annihilating the Lib-Dems (which is now left with just one seat). In fact, the Greens beat the Lib-Dems as well!

Austria's fascist party, the FPÖ, saw big results-- around 20%, up from their 7.3% haul in 2009. Hungary was worst of all. 53% went to the fascist Orban party and 15% went for that country's outright Nazi/teabaggers, the Jobbik.

Bottom line is that the European equivalents of the Democrats (center left) and Republicans (center right) are losing the confidence of their populations, both having completely sold out to the banksters, kicking their own core supporters to the curb, just like the Democrats and Republicans here in the U.S. The Guardian hit it on the head when explaining the results in Spain.

The People's party of Spain narrowly beat out the Socialists in the European elections, but with smaller insurgent parties winning two out of every five votes the Spanish media dubbed the result a "punishment" for Spain's two dominant political parties.

The two parties together lost more than five million votes compared to the 2009 election. The governing People's party won 16 seats, eight less than 2009, while the Socialists came out with 14 seats, nine less.

The big story of the night were the many smaller parties. Newcomers Podemos (We Can), a political movement that emerged from Spain's indignados, earned 7.9% of the vote, enough for 5 seats. "We can't talk about the end, but we can talk about the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. We have to throw them out because they're the one who have ruined the country," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told journalists on hearing the results. The leftwing coalition United Left increased their seats from 2 to 6 while the Union, Progress and Democracy went from 1 to 4 seats.

Although the European Parliament has more powers than ever before, voters still don't take it nearly as seriously as they do when voting for their own governments. It's looked at primarily as an opportunity to "send a message," without having to worry about consequences. The racists UKIP won in the U.K., for example, but it isn't an indication that they will be able to win any actual seats in the British Parliament-- despite racist sociopath Nigel Farage's fondest hopes. And And LePen's crackpot teabagger daughter isn't about to be elected President of France. I'm a lot more hopeful that workers, pushed to the wall in Greece and Spain, didn't turn right, but turned hard-- not corporate-- left. I'd worry about Hungary though. That's an actual nascent fascist state on a level of Texas or Mississippi. Very dangerous situation.