Deceptichum

Not all threats come from outside Europe’s borders.

One of the most insidious is the fragmentation of the political landscape. Traditional parties are losing ground. Political reference points are shifting — often to the benefit of extreme positions. Disruptive forces are rushing in to fill the vacuum.

Today’s politics is, above all, anti. Anti-European. Anti-immigration. Anti-elite. Anti-woke. Anti-system.

Democratic debate is increasingly drowned out by so-called “culture wars”.

There are always easy targets. In the UK, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has highlighted the weaponisation of the European Convention on Human Rights, accusing it of weakening national identity and border security.

In the US, Vice-President JD Vance, doubling down on his Munich speech, has framed limits on free speech as a direct threat to Western civilisation.

The risk is using the tools of democracy itself — its laws, institutions, and freedoms — to restrict rights, suppress dissent, and create the illusion that security must come first.

As a crowd waved Lithuanian, German and Ukrainian flags, Friedrich Merz and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, attended a ceremony launching the official formation of an armoured brigade aimed at protecting Nato’s eastern flank.

“A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement,” Yair Golan, a left-wing opposition voice and the former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, said in a charged interview with local radio station Reshet Bet.

Comparing Israel's actions to those of South Africa during the decades of apartheid, Golan, the leader of the small Democrats party and a longtime critic of Netanyahu, added, “The Jewish people, who have endured persecution, pogroms, and genocides throughout our history ... are the ones now taking actions that are utterly unconscionable.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to China later this year to meet President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang, marking his second official visit to China in two years.

The ABC understands the prime minister will attend the Annual Leaders' Meeting, part of a resumed high-level dialogue last held in Canberra in June 2024 during Mr Li's visit to Australia.

The trip follows a warm personal letter from Mr Xi congratulating Mr Albanese on his re-election.

In the message, Mr Xi highlighted China's interest in "promoting a more mature, stable and productive" relationship with Australia, a deliberate nod to Beijing's desire to build sustained engagement with the Labor government.

The second visit places Mr Albanese among a small group of Australian prime ministers to be invited to Beijing so frequently.

He made stabilising ties with China a core foreign policy priority during his first term, resuming ministerial dialogue and steering the relationship out of a prolonged diplomatic freeze.

Australia answered the solicitation eight months later, with the planned package incorporating 49 of the armed forces’ M1A1s.

The donation will not affect the Oceanian country’s national defense capabilities, as the tanks bound for Ukraine were already planned to be replaced by the newer M1A2 Abrams.

Pope Leo XIV affirmed Friday that the family is founded on the “stable union between a man and a woman,” and that the unborn and elderly enjoy dignity as God’s creatures, articulating clear Catholic teaching on marriage and abortion at the start of his pontificate.

That decline has been exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war. More than 300,000 Russian troops had died or been injured by the end of 2023, US intelligence officials estimated, and about a million Russians fled the country after Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.