Why 70 Seconds from a Greek MEP Undid an Hour of von der Leyen

When asked whether he would ever consider permitting cameras into the US Supreme Court, current Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr said that he would not, for a simple reason: putting cameras in the court, he said, would change how lawyers and perhaps even justices behaved. Rather than performing their duties for each other, he fretted that they may begin to showboat for the cameras: to make speeches and arguments designed to go viral on social media, rather than to persuade.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a member of the judicial branch, he cited the example of politicians in Congress and other legislatures who, he implied, were often speaking to an audience far outside the parliament rather than trying to influence their colleagues.

And, as one Greek MEP proved yesterday: sometimes that really works.

70 Seconds That Created a Rising Star

Afroditi Latinopoulou is the leader of Greece’s Voice of Reason party, and increasingly a rising star in the European Parliament. Domestically, her audience remains relatively small, with Voice of Reason polling in the low single digits. Yet her response this week to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address to the EU parliament had all the ingredients for a major viral hit:

https://twitter.com/latinopoulou/status/2100200083790725379

The Five Ingredients of a Viral Hit

First, there is that essential component for the modern, hyper-polarized world: Latinopoulou is entirely uncompromising. She does not leaven her criticism of von der Leyen with a word of praise or concession: this is a prosecutor’s speech from the dock; an indictment of von der Leyen both as a politician and as a person, replete with the comparison to Angela Merkel at the end and reference to personal political scandals.

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Second, there is the fact that there is no shortage of truth in the content, mixed in with some of the usual hyperbole: Latinopoulou delivers, in 70 seconds, the full populist indictment of the modern EU: soft on immigration, political Islam and the woke lobby; hard on its own citizens, who often get treated as the problem.

Third, and what perhaps makes this particular viral hit go harder than usual, is the fact that von der Leyen is forced, by democratic convention, to sit there and listen to it rather impassively. The president’s reactions to the speech are as important in making it a viral hit as what is said. Rather than shaking her head or appearing disgusted, von der Leyen’s lack of any reaction allows the viewer to take from it whatever one’s biases require. Either the president is a true democrat, listening attentively to her opponents; or she is aloof, remote and uncaring, barely mustering a facial twitch as her political crimes are itemized.

Fourth, a universal law: it probably does not hurt that Latinopoulou is young, female and well-presented.

And finally, fifth: the hyperbole of the charge. Latinopoulou claims that von der Leyen is “racist against Europeans” – a charge that is hard to objectively sustain but will sound like manna from heaven for many Europeans who feel that they themselves are regularly and unjustly accused of racism against others.

50 Million Impressions – But Weaknesses Too

The video, at the time of writing, has amassed some 50 million impressions on Elon Musk’s X alone, and probably at least that many combined on the other social media platforms. A 70-second interaction has made a previously relatively unknown Greek MEP into an internet sensation.

Yet Latinopoulou’s approach has weaknesses, setting aside its obvious strengths. For one thing, the charge sheet she brings against von der Leyen is so long that none of the various points she makes can be truly said to have been established or proven beyond reasonable doubt. It is an appeal to emotion – which has its strengths – rather than to reason. While the popularity of her remarks and the super-viral nature of the video indicate very clearly that she has struck a nerve, it is unclear that her message will have much of an impact beyond the significant number of Europeans who already agree with her.

And von der Leyen has not yet been threatened significantly by alienating that particular constituency.

Virality Creates Relentless Pressure

But if politics is, at its core, a contest about energy and passion as much as it is about ideas, then Latinopoulou is onto something. She has articulated, in 70 seconds, a critique of the present Brussels regime that clearly has wide resonance in Europe and with which a great many people identify. She has also provided many people outside Greece with something that the European right often lacks: a figurehead outside their own country who they can identify with.

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The issues that Latinopoulou raises are also brought into stark relief by the power and popularity of her intervention. While her opponents can command audiences in the tens of millions simply by denouncing her on these issues, von der Leyen is politically unable to pivot away from them. If Europe has become more restrictive on migration, or if the Commission is more cautious about advancing illiberal ideas on free speech, or if wokeness recedes in policy, then speeches like the one made by Latinopoulou are a substantial reason why.

In the End, 70 Seconds Beats an Hour

And this perhaps identifies a weakness in Roberts’ logical, but perhaps elitist, opposition to the filming of democratic and legal proceedings: while we live in a democracy, being able to see and hear what our politicians say to each other in public is essential. If that makes them, in turn, perform more for the benefit of their voters, then that is a good thing rather than a bad one.

And whatever else: after von der Leyen held the floor of the European Parliament for an hour, expanding on her views of Europe, it is telling that a 70-second intervention denouncing that vision of the continent resonated with far more people than anything the president herself said managed to do.

That, perhaps, says more about the health of President von der Leyen’s union than anything else.