Thomas Fazi

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western public has been sold the story of a Ukrainian front united in its unwavering commitment to a total military victory over Russia. Over the past few weeks, however, this narrative has started to crumble. Despite the failure of Ukraine’s Nato-backed counteroffensive, which is now universally accepted, Zelensky continues to stick to the maximalist victory-at-all-costs narrative — that Ukraine must go on fighting until it retakes every inch of lost territory, including Crimea, and that Putin should not be negotiated with. This is understandable: he has staked everything on achieving that objective — anything less would probably mean the end of his political career. But Zelensky’s position is looking increasingly isolated. Continue reading here.

When we talk of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we tend to focus on the latter’s political, social and humanitarian dimensions. But often this comes at the expense of considering an important economic dimension — one which recent events in Gaza have brought into stark relief. Continue reading here.

The Supreme Court’s ruling against the Government’s Rwanda plan may have been a foregone conclusion, but the broader political fall-out was not. Even though the Supreme Court struck down the migrant bill without relying on the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) or the Human Rights Act, the decision is nonetheless bound to reignite the discussion about the ECHR — which is what kickstarted the British courts’ judicial review of the bill in the first place.

For years, critics of the ECHR have argued that the Convention and its handmaiden, the European Court of Human Rights, represent an unacceptable infringement on national sovereignty. Supporters of the ECHR, on the other hand, claim that it has been an important driver of social progress, helping to redress blind spots within the UK’s legal system. In a way, both sides are correct. Continue reading here,

Since Hamas’s attack, the reduced coverage of the Ukraine war has been a mixed blessing for Zelensky and his international backers. Perhaps most obviously, it has caused Ukraine to plummet among the West’s priorities, at a time when political support for continued military aid was already waning. But it has also concealed an uncomfortable truth from the public: Ukraine — and the West — are losing the war. Continue reading here,

As Israel continues to mourn and Gaza continues to be turned into rubble, many in the Middle East are coming to a grim realisation: that things could soon become much, much worse. Huge tectonic shifts now threaten to rupture the status quo — and even spark a global war. Continue reading here.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, a landmark moment in the pursuit of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And yet peace in the region has never been more elusive, as events in Gaza makes dramatically clear. Why have all attempts to bring an end to one of the world’s bloodiest and longest-running wars failed? Continue reading here.

I’ve written about Donald Tusk’s victory in the recent Polish elections and its momentous consequences — for Poland, the EU and NATO. Long story short: it’s clearly a big win for pro-EU forces, but attempts to use the result to justify a new integrationist power grab will backfire. 

I’ve got a few new articles out in the usual mags. Over at UnHerd I’ve written about Donald Tusk’s victory in Sunday’s Polish elections and its momentous consequences — for Poland, the EU and NATO. Long story short: it’s clearly a big win for pro-EU forces, but attempts to use the result to justify a new integrationist power grab will backfire. Interestingly, the Polish right-populist ruling party, Law and Justice, would appear to be the latest victim of the “Zelensky curse”: the Polish government has been one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine — but growing anger over Ukrainian refugees, economic turmoil and support for Kyiv ultimately led to its downfall.

I’ve also written about a recent report revealing that Italy is the country with the fewest young people in proportion to its population of any country in the European Union, due to free-falling birth rates. I argue that the reason “pro-family” conservative politicians like Giorgia Meloni are unable to reverse this trend is that they rely on empty anti-woke platitudes rather than addressing the root cause of the problem: the dominant economic orthodoxy, which, in the EU’s case, is hardwired into the “economic constitution” of the bloc, and of the single currency in particular. Ultimately, there’s only one “pro-family” policy capable of truly reversing the trend: a radical overhaul of the failed neoliberal policies of the past twenty years. But banging on about “family values” is admittedly cheaper.

Last but not least, I’ve written for Compact about the Nazi-fascist origins of the European Union. The Canadian parliament’s “Nazi salute” was more than an embarrassing gaffe; it was a a Freudian slip — an unintentional mistake which reveals one’s true nature. More specifically, it revealed that contemporary liberal-progressive ideology overlaps with Nazi-fascist ideology in more ways than many would like to admit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the in the latter’s birthplace — Europe. Taken at face value, the European Union — officially founded on values such as freedom, human dignity, equality, inclusivity and peace — could not be further apart from the chauvinistic, racist and militaristic ideology of Nazi-fascism. Indeed, it is commonly believed that modern Europeanist and federalist thought has its origins in the thinking of Resistance circles, as an antidote to the ultra-nationalism which had given rise to the horrors of Nazi-fascism. The reality is somewhat less edifying.

I’ve written for UnHerd about Africa’s revolt against Western-dictated Net Zero policies, and how these threaten to lock the world’s poorest countries into perpetual underdevelopment.

I’ve got a new piece out for UnHerd where I look at the next phase of the West’s strategy in Ukraine: the transformation of the conflict into an Afghanistan-style war of attrition. “A long war”, as NATO’s chief put it.