By Sumantra Maitra
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
“The one system that absolutely does not work and never
will is ersatz democracy,” Tucker Carlson writes in his book, “Ship of Fools,”
adding that, “If you tell people they’re in charge, but then act as if they’re
not, you’ll infuriate them. It’s too dishonest. They’ll go crazy. Oligarchies
posing as democracies will always be overthrown in the end. You can vote all
you want, but voting is a charade. Your leaders don’t care what you think. Shut
up and obey.”
For a while, analysts on both sides of the Atlantic after
2016 would have given anyone the idea that everything that had happened was a
dream, and a rotten one at that: an aberration, a short deviation from the
inevitable progressive arc of history. Brexit was treated as simpleton Brits
making a mistake. Donald Trump as president was considered even worse. And most
Americans had no idea what was brewing in Europe, after German Chancellor
Angela Merkel disastrously carried on her country’s tradition of deciding
finance, military, and demographic issues for Europe and inviting a backlash.
Well, what a backlash it has been. The latest round of
European elections was a total meltdown for the managerial and technocratic
center-left and center-right parties. It is hard to put in words how broken the
European landscape is, but to put it simply, the center no longer exists.
In Poland, the battleground of the future direction of
Europe, the national conservatives won the majority, and the hardcore
nationalists also get representation in the European Parliament for the first
time. The center-right liberal conservative coalition barely managed to
survive, and the social liberal and the left parties are wiped off the
electoral map.
In Italy, another battleground nation, Matteo Salvini’s
La Lega netted an overwhelming majority. Italy had been the worst-affected by
German financial strangling and mass migration from Africa. Salvini tweeted
that he led the number one party in Italy, and behind him was a recognizable
and highly symbolic red cap with Make America Great Again and a statue of
Jesus.
In Hungary, Victor Orban won an absolute majority while
vowing to stop mass migration. And in France, Emmanuel Macron’s centrist
liberals got an absolute belting, in an electoral map that looked eerily like
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 journey, with the cities and urban areas voting for his
En Marche Party and the rest of the country going to Euro-sceptic Marine Le
Pen.
Meanwhile, in the original Brexit Land, the new Brexit
Party walloped the craven Conservatives and Labour both, becoming the single
largest U.K. party to be represented to the European Parliament. A country in
which commentators regularly remind us that everything will change if there’s
another referendum showed it remains stubbornly Eurosceptic and willing to
leave the EU. Almost all of England other than London and Wales voted for Leave
parties, and only Scotland voted for Remain, by a thin majority.
Boris Johnson, the front-runner for the next Conservative
leadership, said his party is on notice after the disastrous premiership of
Theresa May for the last three years, arguably the worst in the history of the
post-war United Kingdom. And in parts of Scandinavia and Germany, the hard left
coalesced behind the Green parties, thereby finally shattering the carefully
crafted illusion that the Greens are any different than the Cold War-era
Euro-Marxists, who instead of promoting violent revolution believed in
undermining society from within. This is except the Danish left, which stayed
to the Social Democrats, but only after the Social Democrats moved right on
stopping migration.
Interestingly, the analysis has been predictable from the
liberal commentators. Wherever liberals and Greens won, they gained a victory
for “the people and true democracy,” and wherever there is any shade of right,
they proclaim a win for the “fascists.”
In reality, however, the only simple answer is that
Europe is permanently broken. Since anyone to the right of Antonio Gramsci is
considered “far-right” by the mainstream commentators, it is difficult for them
to explain, without the help of any racism or xenophobia narrative, what just
happened in Europe. In reality, however, patterns emerged.
For example, the right parties that won in the United
Kingdom, France, Netherlands, etc. are not xenophobic, as portrayed in the
media. They are not even socially conservative, much less “borderline fascist.”
In the United Kingdom, both the Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage and the
Conservatives want to get out of the EU not because they want to isolate into a
little Britain, but because they want to trade freely with the rest of the
Anglosphere without EU control and to side more freely with the United States
on defense issues, instead of being forced to be a part of the EU Army.
Likewise, in both France and the Netherlands, the
right-wing parties are not socially conservative at all. In fact, they want to
restrict mass migration from Africa and the Middle East because they want to
safeguard the liberal society, LGBT rights, and the separation of church and
state from groups of people considered extremely socially unorthodox.
Contrast that with the right parties in Hungary, Italy,
and Poland, all of which want to transform the EU from within and, in their own
words, preserve the “Christian civilization” and Judeo-Christian values of
Europe. The stringent issues in these countries included the increasingly
hard-left LGBT and transgender movement.
The Polish, Hungarian, and Italian right are also
distinctly socially conservative and in some cases anti-free market, instead
focusing on heavy subsidies for the elderly and promoting pro-natalist policies
for new mothers. In the common liberal siege mentality, all these people are
considered “far right” when in reality the only common theme tying these
parties is their opposition to a European empire under German hegemony, and
their support for national sovereignty.
As
I wrote earlier, the biggest folly was to ever believe that Europe can be
united without force, and the European Union, while turning into an empire,
faces an existential challenge from sovereigntist and conservative forces from
within. The latest election proves that national-conservatism is here to stay,
and that the conservative parties that refuse to acknowledge this simple
reality will be obliterated.
In fact, the desire for Westphalian nation-state
sovereignty never left us. How to channel that new energy to a more
constructive force across the continent, instead of pockets of sporadic
resistance, remains to be seen.
However, this is the moment for the American government
to channel these forces and shape Europe towards a more pro-American direction.
The conservative forces within the continent are desperate for leadership
against Berlin and Brussels. Washington DC should urgently take note.
No comments:
Post a Comment