YOU CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

Europe keeps reminding us that geopolitical interests often trump ideology. European politics is the prime example of how states and political parties are willing to ditch their ideological foundations to hold on to power, even if briefly.

The unmistakable political shift of attitude by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Fratelli d'Italia party is the latest evidence that European politicians use ideology merely as a tool to get to the top. Once in power, though, they are governed by the same neoliberal policies that control the rest of Europe.

This assertion applies equally to the Right and the Left. For example, in 2015, Greece's Radical Left-Progressive Alliance shocked the world by winning nearly half of the seats in parliament. It was a success story that invigorated the Left everywhere.

For years, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the once small radical left party Syriza raged against the neoliberal policies of Europe, blaming it for much of the financial crisis in 2008. Once in power, however, Tsipras's leftist ideology began shifting, whether by choice or under pressure. At the end of his term, in 2019, the new icon of the European Left contributed to the very undoing of any leftist resurgence in Europe, as the Greek economy fell hostage to powerful European governments and multinational corporations.

That "pragmatism" which tamed Syriza, turning it into yet another mainstream European political party, is at work in Italy today.

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