Europe's far right leaders gather in Milan rally against immigration

They gather, these men who call themselves leaders, and speak of threats from across borders. But I wonder: who drew those borders? Who decided that this line on a map must be defended with such passion? The crowd cheers, but I do not understand why they cheer for the very lines that divide them from their neighbors.

A man stands and says we must fear the stranger. Yet the stranger has no power except what we give him by our fear. The true puzzle is not the stranger’s arrival, but why we believe we must build walls against him. Walls require builders. Guards require salaries. Fear requires consent.

They speak of security, but security from what? From the idea that the world might change? From the thought that customs are not laws of nature? The remarkable thing is not that these leaders gather, but that so many come to listen - not out of love, but out of habit.

If a friend told you to hate a man you had never met, would you obey? Then why obey when a stranger on a stage says the same? I do not understand the arithmetic of this obedience. One man speaks, and ten thousand nod. Why?

Another gathering. Another fortress of certainty being built against the tide they fear. They stand shoulder to shoulder, these leaders, naming the enemy: the immigrant, the regulation, the outsider. They believe that by building a wall of words and laws high enough, they can stop the river.

But the river does not stop. It only rises. The more you dam it, the greater the pressure becomes, until the dam itself is swept away. They think strength is in the stone wall. They do not see that the river’s strength is in its yielding, in its relentless, patient flow. It wears down the hardest stone without a single blow.

Their strategy is all naming. “Immigration.” “Security.” Each name is a brick in their wall. But to name a thing is to believe you can control it, and in that belief lies the failure. The river has no name; it simply flows. The more they define the problem, the more they are trapped by their own definitions. They are trying to grasp water in a clenched fist; the tighter they squeeze, the less they hold.

I see their rally and I see a great noise that creates its own silence. They shout to be heard, but true influence is like the mist: it arrives quietly, without announcement, and nourishes everything it touches. They seek to govern by force, by exclusion. But the valley gains its power from its lowliness; it is empty, and thus all things flow into it. To be full of oneself, as these leaders are, is to be already empty of the world.

The solution they cannot see is to cease building the dam. To become the valley, not the mountain. But they are deaf to the usefulness of emptiness. They will learn, as the river teaches, but the lesson will be hard.

The gathering in Milan today, a confluence of voices against the flow of peoples, presents a curious study in mechanics. I observe a significant force, a pressure, building in one part of the system, seeking to dam a current that has always moved. They speak of immigration, of security, and of regulations from Brussels, as if these are separate humours, yet they coalesce into a single, directed thrust.

Consider the river: its waters, though guided by banks, will always seek the lowest path, the path of least resistance. To attempt to halt such a flow entirely, without understanding the source or the gradient, is to invite a build-up of pressure that will inevitably find a new, perhaps more destructive, outlet. These leaders, they build a wall of words, a conceptual barrier. But what is the nature of the force they oppose? Is it a trickle, easily diverted, or a torrent, whose momentum will simply carve new channels around their obstruction?

They speak of “EU regulations” as a weight, a burden. Yet, a structure without internal bracing, without agreed-upon stresses and counter-stresses, is prone to collapse. Is their resistance to regulation a desire for greater freedom of movement, or merely a wish to redirect the existing pressures to their own advantage?

I have not yet determined whether this collective voice, this massing of bodies, represents a true shift in the underlying geological strata, or merely a temporary eddy, a surface disturbance that will dissipate once the main current reasserts itself. The true test of a dam is not its height, but the volume of water it can withstand before its foundations are compromised. And what of the foundations of this gathering? Are they built on solid rock, or on shifting sand? The question remains.