An “extreme” brand of “woke” ideology” contributed to US President Donald Trump‘s election victory last November, according to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“Various explanations have been given regarding Donald Trump’s resounding return to the presidency. The extreme positions of the woke movement in the US have caused the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction,” Mitsotakis told a Tuesday event in Athens organized by the Hellenic-American Chamber of Commerce.
Mitsotakis also said that extreme wokeism, which is prevalent on US university campuses, has not appeared in Europe, adding: “I don’t think we have that problem in Europe to justify a reaction against this agenda. This has been primarily a US phenomenon.”
Acknowledging the rise of the far-right in the US and Europe, he dismissed such a prospect in Greece.
“As far as Greece is concerned, I think we have demonstrated that you can have a strong center-right alliance that pushes the fringe parties into what should be their natural space, which is them being small parties that do not profoundly affect the public debate,” Mitsotakis said.
**He added,”This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a significant percentage of people who vote for parties that are to the right of (the ruling central-right party) Nea Demokratia. But these parties, in my mind, are still fringe or marginal parties. They’re certainly not part, and they will not be part of any future coalition, possible coalition-building exercise.”