Should Europeans overthrow their 'ruling class'?

Overthrowing an elected government by force is not a legitimate option in democracies that have elections, courts and a press, however unsatisfactory these may be. What the discussion does point to is a grievance with substance: rearmament decisions and war preparations being made without anyone voting on them.

There are questions that for decades were asked in a whisper and that are now being written in capital letters. One of them is whether Europeans should overthrow what an analysis by **JB Shurk** published in **American Thinker** calls their 'ruling class'. Put that way, it sounds like a barricade slogan. Beneath it lies something that can be examined without shouting: a continent that has been talking about war since February 2022, governments raising military spending and citizens being asked to prepare for a conflict nobody voted for.

The thesis of that text is that European elites whip up the Russian bogeyman when it suits them electorally and that, if it came to it, they would be willing to sacrifice their populations in a war they consider avoidable. That is an opinion, and as an opinion it should be labelled as such. The data surrounding it can be checked one by one, and some of it is rather uncomfortable.

## European rearmament is no longer a hypothesis

On **18 March 2025**, the Bundestag approved a constitutional reform that exempts all defence spending above 1% of GDP from the debt brake. In other words: Germany can borrow to arm itself without the constraints it imposed on itself for decades. Three months later, at the Hague summit in June 2025, **NATO** allies agreed to raise the military spending target to **5% of GDP** by 2035, with 3.5% in pure military spending and 1.5% for infrastructure. This is not seasonal rhetoric: these are budget commitments with dates attached.

The analysis claims that the German Defence Minister, **Boris Pistorius**, told the Bundestag that war is imminent, and that Chancellor **Friedrich Merz** admitted that Germany is 'already in conflict with Russia' after circumventing the legal limits on defence spending. It also attributes to **Emmanuel Macron** the claim that he has told political leaders that the war with Russia has already begun. These are third-party claims: they are reported as what they are, claims, not as facts proven in court.

What is documented is the general movement. Finland joined NATO in April 2023 and Sweden in March 2024. Denmark expanded conscription and extended it to women from 2026. Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are expanding their armed forces and recruitment plans. In the United Kingdom, according to that same text, war manuals are being revised, civil defence drills are being organised and there is talk of mobilising retired military personnel up to **65 years of age**. And in a single week, the ten highest-circulation British newspapers published more than **250 articles** on the likelihood of a conflict with Russia.

## The electoral calendar sets the tone of the discourse

On **6 December 2024**, Romania's Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the presidential election held on 24 November. The decision was based on declassified documents about foreign interference. The analysis calls those accusations unfounded; that is a contested judgement, not an established fact, and should be read as such.

Something similar peine with the drone found on **4 August** at **Leipzig/Halle** airport. It carried an explosive device, caused no damage and went undetected for hours. Five days before an election in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin attributed the device to Russia. The President of the European Commission, **Ursula von der Leyen**, and several national leaders closed ranks with Germany and spoke of 'hybrid warfare' on EU territory. The text claims that no public evidence of that authorship was presented and that the announcement was aimed at holding back Alternative für Deutschland before the vote.

The pattern described by that analysis —accusations of Russian interference, sabotage or imminent attack placed in the week before a vote— is repeated, according to the author, in Poland, Hungary and Moldova, with opposition parties portrayed as accomplices of Moscow. A government using national security as an electoral weapon is a serious accusation and requires proof. That electoral calendars and announcements about Russia dance to the same tune, however, is something anyone can verify by looking at dates.

## 72-hour supplies and recruitment plans

In March 2025, the European Commission presented its Union Preparedness Strategy. The document asks member states and households to keep basic reserves of water, food and medicine for at least **72 hours**. The recommendation is aimed at the Union's **450 million** citizens, and the commissioner responsible, **Hadja Lahbib**, has repeated it in public more than once. A civil agency telling you to stockpile water at home is not a declaration of war, but neither is it a reassuring message for someone reading it on a Sunday afternoon.

In parallel, the former British minister **Jacob Rees-Mogg** declared that in the coming years there could be a war and that people would have to be willing to die to save their country, as in the First and Second World Wars. The former head of MI6, **Richard Dearlove**, warned that the official obsession with green energy has left the country ill-prepared against its enemies. And the same analysis claims that, over the past five years, the British state has arrested nearly **65,000** people for speech-related offences while cutting resources elsewhere.

There lies the knot of the discontent. A citizen is asked to prepare to die for their country, and at the same time asked to pay bills they cannot afford, in a state they often do not feel part of. You do not have to share the text's conclusion to recognise that this mix breeds a disaffection that no institutional leaflet can fix.

## The underlying question: vote or overthrow

In a democracy with regular elections, courts that rule and a press that publishes, violent overthrow is not a political option: it is a crime and, moreover, it usually ends in something worse than what it sought to replace. Twentieth-century European history is full of such attempts and the record offers no grounds for optimism.

The substance of the grievance is another matter. When decisions that affect the life and death of millions of people —how much is spent on weapons, who goes to the front, how long a conflict is sustained— are adopted without serious public debate and without any party having put that package in its programme, distrust is not a whim. It is a reasonable response to a representation deficit.

The question 'should they overthrow their ruling class?' therefore has a bad answer and a good one. The bad one is the literal one: replacing the vote with force. The good one is the demanding one: overthrowing specific policies with the tools that already exist —ballot boxes, courts, the press, organised pressure— and demanding that those who govern in Brussels, Berlin or London account for every euro and every soldier they say they need. And it is worth remembering that any action in this area, including disobedience, has legal consequences: anyone considering going beyond the ballot box should consult a lawyer first.