Isaias was 16 when he escaped from Sa’wa, the military training camp for final-year high school students in Eritrea. His parents came to know of his whereabouts only a few weeks after. From Sudan he tried to cross the Sinai to reach Israel. But he was kidnapped by bandits. His family paid a high ransom to save him.

An Eritrean migrant leaves a detention facility near Nitzana in the Negev Desert in Israel, near border with Egypt. EPA-EFE/Jim Hollander

Isaias returned to Addis Ababa, the capital of neighbouring Ethiopia, where I met him when he was 17. His family was supporting him financially and wanted him to remain there. But Isaias had different plans. A few months later he disappeared. As I was later to learn, he had successfully crossed from Libya into Europe.

This young man is part of a worrying statistic. Since around 2010, the flow of unaccompanied minors from Eritrea has significantly increased and has become the subject of international concern. In 2015, over 5000 unaccompanied minors from Eritrea sought asylum in Europe according to the Mixed Migration Centre. In 2018, the number was 3500.

Minors are only part of a wider exodus that involves mostly Eritreans in their twenties and thirties. The UN refugee agency calculates that at the end of 2018 there were over 500 000 Eritrean refugees worldwide – a high number for a country of around 5 million people.

Initially driven by a simmering border conflict with Ethiopia, this mass migration continues to be fuelled by a lack of political, religious and social freedom. In addition, there are little economic prospects in the country.

And generations of young people have been trapped in a indefinite mandatory national service. They serve in the army or in schools, hospitals and public offices, irrespective of their aspirations, with little remuneration. Even though Ethiopia and Eritrea have struck a deal to end their border conflict, there is no debate over the indefinite nature of the national service.

Brought up in a context where migration represents the main route out of generational and socio-economic immobility, most young Eritreans I met decided to leave. While unaccompanied minors are usually depicted as passively accepting their families’ decisions, my research illustrates their active role in choosing whether and when to migrate.

I explored the negotiations that take place between young migrants and their families as they consider departing and undertaking arduous journeys. But the crucial role of agency shouldn’t be equated to a lack of vulnerability. Vulnerability, in fact, defines their condition as young people in Eritrea and is likely to grow due to the hardships of the journey.

Context of protracted crisis

Young Eritreans often migrate without their family’s approval.

Families are aware that the country can’t offer their children a future. Nevertheless, parents are reticent about encouraging their children to take a risky path, a decision that can lead to death at sea or at the hand of bandits.

Young Eritreans keep their plans secret due to respect, or emotional care, towards their families. One 23-year-old woman who had crossed to Ethiopia a year before told me:
 

It is better not to make them worry for nothing: if you make it, then they can be happy for you; if you don’t make it, they will have time to be sad afterwards.

Adonay, another 26-year-old man, said:
 

If you tell them they might tell you not to do it, and then it would be harder to disobey. If they endorse your decision then they might feel responsible if something bad happens to you. It should be only your choice.

But that is not all. As a young woman told me,
 

The less they know the better it is in case the police come to the house asking questions about the flight.

Migration from Eritrea is mostly illegal and tightly controlled by the government, any connivance could be punished with fees or incarceration.

The journey

Eritrean border crossings are based on complicated power dynamics involving smugglers, smuggled refugees and their paying relatives, generally residing in Europe, US or the Middle East.

In this mix, smuggled refugees are far from being choice-less or the weak party.

Relatives are often scared of the dangers of border crossing through Libya to Europe. Moreover, some may not be able to mobilise the necessary funds. But young refugees have their ways to persuade them.

As payment to smugglers is typically made at the end in Libya and then after migrants have reached Italy, refugees embark on these journeys without telling their potential financial supporters in the diaspora. Once in Libya, they provide the smugglers with the telephone number of those who are expected to pay. This is an extremely risky gamble as migrants are betting on their relatives’ resources and willingness to help them.

Those who do not have close enough relatives abroad cannot gamble at all. Sometimes relatives struggle to raise the necessary amount and have to collect money from friends and larger community networks. Migrants then have to spend more time – and at times experience more violence and deprivation – in the warehouses where smugglers keep them in Libya. Migrants are held to hide them from authorities and ensure their fees are paid.

Even in these conditions, migrants don’t necessarily give up their agency. It has been argued that they,
 

temporarily surrender control at points during the journey, accepting momentary disempowerment to achieve larger strategic goals.

Moving beyond the common framing

Analysing the interactions between Eritrean families and their migrant children at different stages of their journeys can contribute to moving beyond the common framing of the “unaccompanied minor” characterised by an ambivalent depiction as either the victim or the bogus migrant.

These opposing and binary views of unaccompanied minors implicitly link deserving protection with ultimate victimhood devoid of choice. Instead, the stories of Eritreans show that vulnerability, at the outset and during the journey, does not exclude agency.

Courtesy: The Conversation

The post I asked young Eritreans why they risk migration. This is what they told me appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence. Public domain.

“A country is not only what it does but what it tolerates”.
― Kurt Tucholsky

I first came across the Holocaust when I was fourteen years old. I misidentified Maus for a common graphic novel, and I bought it during one of my weekend trips to the bookshop downtown. It was a difficult read, oblivious as I was to what motivated the war and the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. It took me some time to realise what the author was getting at by depicting the Nazis as cats, the Jews as mice and the Polish as pigs. The whole root of the trouble was that they looked like animals, but they were people. The victims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders were complex and unpredictable, capable of the best and the worst, of sacrifice and betrayal.

The whole concept of the Holocaust didn’t sink in until I read Anne´s Frank diary. Whereas Maus challenged how I understood the world, her diary changed how I perceived my place in it. If a little girl could be sent to die in a terrible place, away from her family and friends, I wasn’t sure fascism couldn’t arrive at my country and claim my life.

At an unspecified moment, the issue was lost in one of the many regions in my mind. But it was never forgotten. My last high school paper was about the Holocaust. And before finishing college, I was determined to know more. I suppose my curiosity as a novice political writer, tempered by my still insipid sense of political responsibility, made it impossible for me to postpone the visit any longer. Reading Primo Levi’s If This is a Man confirmed my commitment, and I made up my mind to visit Auschwitz the following year.

The memory of the Holocaust is fading, and our conscience is becoming dormant once more.

It was a chilly winter day. I exited the bus without a word. There was nothing I could say. There was nothing my friends wanted to hear. More than 1,1 million people were starved, tortured, and murdered in that dark, windy region of southern Poland, near Oświęcim. We left behind the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign and made our way into the camp. The silence was unbearable. And as we approached the end of the block’s yard, where thousands of prisoners were shot dead, we were reminded of what intolerance can lead to.

The visit lasted several hours. It included the main campsite, blocks two and three, the barracks at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, the crematorium, and the gas chambers. The camp forces visitors to acknowledge that this happened, and this is how. Every building has thousands of stories to tell. Every inch speaks of indescribable loss and terrible sacrifice. There´s no forgetting that human madness and indifference made it possible. From the barbed wire to the barracks. From the main gate to the yard. From the gas chambers to the crematorium. You know why you are there.

The camp forces visitors to acknowledge that this happened, and this is how. 

The photographs represent real people, with real names and real families. Rudolf Brumlík, Rosette Wolczak, Lea Deutsch, Benjamin, and Lina Fondane. Men, women, and children separated from each other. People who died for no reason. People who cannot be forgotten. 

An inevitable defeat?
Seventy years after one of the worst atrocities this world has ever witnessed, we want to believe that what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka can´t happen again. We are told that the world is becoming ever more peaceful, and that reason will prevent us from targeting people because of their ideas, believes and birthplace.

Most people might prefer this narrative. However, the rise of populism and the collapse of the centre-left are a stern warning that the world is not getting safer for everyone. Inequality is rising, our societies are becoming more polarised, and we behold the global revival of nationalism. Our politicians might have other priorities but as the support for far-right parties and the hostility towards immigrants rises, to look the other way is an insult to the memory of those who perished seven decades ago.  

The rise of populism and the collapse of the centre-left are a stern warning that the world is not getting safer for everyone.

In Italy, the government has pledged to deport five hundred thousand illegal immigrants, manipulating grievances and using human beings as bargaining chips. In Germany, the far-right has grown from a fringe party to an important actor in national and federal politics. In Austria, the Freedom Party has entered a coalition with the government, despite a wave of anti-Semitic scandals, while the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats won eighteen per cent of the vote in the last general election, despite links to neo-Nazi movements. Things don’t look any better in France, where Marine Le Pen compared the sight of Muslims praying in the street to the Nazi occupation during World War Two. In Hungary, the president has said that he does not want his country to be multi-coloured and promised to protect it from Muslim migrants. And in Spain, a far-right party won twelve parliament seats in a regional election for the first time in decades, being congratulated for doing so by a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Many believe that disaster is still far away from Europe´s doors. However, according to a CNN poll published in November, the memory of the Holocaust is fading, and our conscience is becoming dormant once more. A third of Europeans say they knew little about what happened in Auschwitz. In France, one out of five people between eighteen and thirty-four years old claim to have never heard of the Holocaust. And according to the same poll, ten per cent of Europeans admitted having unfavourable views of Jews. Thirty-seven per cent said the same about Muslims. Thirty-six per cent admitted having unfavourable views of immigrants.

As Camus predicted, the end of the war was not a definitive victory against madness, tribalism, and fascism. The struggle will have to be waged over and over again.

German children reading “The Poisonous Mushroom”, a book intended as anti-Semitic propaganda. Photo Tractatus/Flickr. Some rights reserved.

An endless lesson?
It should be obvious that no one hides in the heart of occupied city unless they have an alternative, just as no one decides to cross the Mediterranean with their children unless they are desperate. Anne Frank died because her family was unable to get visas to leave for America; she died because the west was indifferent to her suffering.

In Europe, indifference to suffering become a sensitive subject after the war. Politicians and scholars realised that young people had to know what happened in concentration camps, who was persecuted and the dangers of exclusionary policies. Symbolic places and memorials were built to honour the dead. And to remind the living that we are never far away enough from the next disaster.

Visiting the camp should be a mandatory stop for every European citizen, reminding us that moral courage requires empathy, conviction, and bravery.

Schools have a responsibility to further their students’ knowledge and help them develop a moral compass that allows them to navigate the contaminated waters of public discourse. Colleges shouldn’t be only four-year intelligence tests; education is also about personal growth and social responsibility. Visiting concentration camps and symbolic places may help students acknowledge the risks and consequences of the lack of tolerance, the value of pluralism and the dangers of remaining indifferent in a democracy.

Because democratic institutions depend on values, and values can only endure if they are defended, cultivated, and taught. If we expect our children to lend a hand to people in need, instead of turning away, we can´t forget our history. Nor can we allow others to rewrite it.
Colleges shouldn’t be only four-year intelligence tests. Education is also about personal growth and social responsibility.

The Holocaust and the targeting of millions of people during the war was not an accident in history. It was not an isolated episode of human madness and cruelty. It started with words and hate. It was fuelled by division and intolerance. It was allowed by fear and indifference. And it will happen again if we don’t prepare our children to resist the rhetoric of charlatans that place their interests over human lives.  

It was by reading about the life and times of Vladek Spiegelman in Maus, a life-changing book, that I first realised that human beings are capable of anything. It was thanks to the silent despair of Primo Levi, who slept in a bed too narrow for him to be afraid, that I made up my mind to learn more about the Holocaust. And it is because of people like Chiune Sugihara and Irena Sendler, who refused to ignore the suffering of others, that I keep believing that this is not an inevitable defeat, but an endless lesson.

Democratic institutions depend on values, and values can only endure if they are defended and cultivated.

There are no words to describe what is like to enter the camp. To visit the barracks and the gas chambers. Nothing prepares you to see tons of human hair, decaying in a vitrine and turning to dust. To learn that between 150.000 and 200.000 children died in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945. But visiting the camp tells us more about ourselves than we could ever suspect. And should be a mandatory stop for every European citizen, reminding us that moral courage requires empathy, conviction, and bravery.

It was in the middle of empty canisters of Zyklon B poison and hundreds of hairbrushes and toothbrushes that I finally understood what Anne Frank meant when she wrote that a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.

Hopefully, we will never allow that candle to be put out.  

Manuel Serrano is a Portuguese journalist and political analyst. He currently works as a freelance Foreign Correspondent for DemocraciaAbierta. Previously, he worked as a Robert Schuman Journalist at the European Parliament and as a Junior Editor at DemocraciaAbierta (2015-2017). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from ESADE Law School and a Master´s degree in International Relations (IBEI).

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/

The post The right not to tolerate the intolerant appeared first on SabrangIndia.

An Occupy Wall Street protest march in New York in 2011. Image: Blaine O’Neill (CC BY-NC 2.0)

In order to understand the legacy of 1968, we have to first consider its differing meanings for the west and east of Europe. For the west, May 1968 remains a symbol of liberation and rebellion against entrenched power structures and a landmark cultural moment. But in eastern Europe it is associated with the Prague Spring and Soviet military invasion of Czechoslovakia. On the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, this split continues to define political and cultural divides across the continent. Today, Europe is being confronted by many challenges: the refugee crisis, Brexit, terror attacks, the rise of far-right populism, and conflicts in the east and the Middle East. All of which confront us with the most burning questions: How can we sustain freedom and human rights when the state and international cooperation fall short? What could a new and just solidarity look like?

Nation states are behaving like gated communities.

Europe is not just facing problems, it is also part of the problem. But if we are to counter right-wing populism, first we need a European political coalition brave enough to be critical of the European Union. As one of the leaders of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) youth organisation said at its party congress in June: “The European Union must die so that Europe can live.” By not addressing the EU’s failings, the left has allowed the right and far right to fill the vacuum. We are still defending the present political status quo when this status quo itself has to be questioned.

The dominant type of EU governance today is externalising problems beyond Europe’s borders, pushing conflicts to the outside to keep the interior safe. As a result of this strategy of bordering conflicts and punishing the peripheries for the Union’s own crisis, we are observing the return of the repressed – the EU is actually surrounded by a belt of wars in its south and east, unavoidably accompanied with an influx of migrants fleeing conflict. The logic of borders is being multiplied inside what was supposed to be a borderless zone; a new European tribalism is on the rise defining the political agenda. Nation states are behaving like gated communities and migrants are being used as scapegoats for problems that predate their arrival.

It’s time we acknowledged the sacred cow of the present state of affairs: liberal democracy. 

It’s time we acknowledged the sacred cow of the present state of affairs: liberal democracy. Isn’t it symptomatic that a common negative signifier of all the political trends that we usually dislike or are frightened with is called “illiberalism” today? The only ideological name liberalism is able to find for its political opponents or enemies is simply “non-liberal” – as if the political spectrum solely contains something that is liberal, and “the rest”, which is not. What a reduced perception and lowered horizon of politics dominate nowadays! Democracy itself has entered a populist modus operandi which conceals political alternatives. 

Whenever we face ideological polarisation, discontent, fear or anger, our typical strategy today is to go back to the “norm”, to the political center that can save us from the extremes. That was, in particular, a recipe of Macron’s success, billed as the “great savior” of Europe, an anti-populist populist proposing “an alternative” from the heart of the establishment. But the root of the problem does not actually lie in the extremes, it is in the center. A populist extreme is a result of the political center’s inability to deal with inequality. The reason why the AfD could unprecedentedly enter the German Bundestag is not because of the country’s strategy of accepting migrants has backfired, as many commentators have come to assume. But because of the political center’s post-ideological “gut und gerne leben” (“live well and happy”) agenda, to quote from Merkel’s famous electoral slogan in 2017. If there is no alternative, one will get Alternative (for Germany).

The left has abandoned utopia – and now the far-right have become the visionaries proposing a dystopian future.

Politics is foremost about dissensus, and the center is currently able to propose only a “non-ideological” “neutral” consensus, with all dissensus and critique taken up by right-wingers. After 1968, we have observed a striking crash of the left. First, it abandoned the working class, then the proletarised middle class. Ultimately, the left has abandoned the people, populus as such – and now it is the far-right who claim to speak “in the name of the people”. The left has abandoned utopia – and now the far-right have become the visionaries proposing a dystopian future. The extreme right has learned lessons from the left, and is even trying now to create a kind of nationalist International. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon is attempting to unite Europe’s far-right populists by the European Parliament elections in 2019 on the basis of an organisation in Brussels called The Movement (sic!).

The basic political lesson to be drawn from the 20th century for the left today is that it’s over. There is no recipe from the past to follow, we have to formulate new responses to the challenges of today. But what unites the revolt of 1968 and the recent “square movements” throughout the globe is that the political action in both cases took the form of occupying the public space. The problem, then as now, is the lack of a longer term vision for taking power. 

Any progressive movement would do well to remember the famous motto of the Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organisation: “Be prepared! – Always prepared!” The problem today is that the far-right is getting ready and the left is not. Realpolitik is conducted not on the squares, but by organised structures and institutions after the revolution. The very notion of revolution has been fetishised, which overlooks that hard-won victories can be reversed without a proper political structure to implement its agenda and incorporate it into society.

At a time when authoritarian and fascizoid pathologies are cynically pretending to be the new norm, what we need is not a pseudo-liberal “balanced objectivity” – which is not just simplistic but also harmful – but a new political subjectivity. The great value of the notion of subjectivity – both in philosophical and political terms – is that by employing it we also are immediately reinstating and emphasising the existence of truth. We live today not in the post-truth world but in the pre-truth world – in a world where truth has not arrived yet. And truth is not only concrete, as Hegel put it, but also always partisan and subjective. There is no other genuine politics than the politics of truth.

The only realistic political strategy is indeed to demand the impossible.

If there is any basic political principle necessary to follow today, it is the most famous slogan of May 1968 – “Be realistic – demand the impossible!” The most dominant ideology at present is a fusion of neoliberalism, austerity and nationalistic hatred. Militarism, xenophobia, social and economic discrimination, isolationism, impoverishment are not just possible, they are welcomed. While welfare, affordable housing, living wages, free healthcare are deemed “unrealistic”.

The boundaries of the possible have radically shifted, and what was hard to predict even a decade ago – wars in Ukraine and Syria, ISIS, extreme right-wing populism on such a scale, Brexit, Trump – became not just possible, but normalised. In such difficult political times, it’s not enough to defend what little we have, hoping for moderate reforms. On the contrary, reforming the existing system is becoming harder and harder to the point where a complete transformation may be more feasible.

That’s why the only realistic political strategy is indeed to demand the impossible. In other words, the impossible is a disruption, in which politics becomes possible. If we don’t demand the impossible, we will lose what seems to be still possible today.

Vasyl Cherepanyn is head of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv and curator of The Kyiv International – ’68 NOW project

The post “Demand the impossible”: what the left should learn from 1968 appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Markus Soeder, State Premier Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, Federal Minister of the Interior, Manfred Weber, Chairman of the EPP group, take their seats to draw up CSU list for the European elections. Matthias Balk/ Press Association. All rights reserved.

I will never forget the day that I sent off the final manuscript of the English edition of On Extremism and Democracy in Europe. It was Friday November 13, 2015. Elated at having finally finished a task I thought would take much less time, I came home to celebrate with my wife. Barely inside the house, she asked me, “did you hear about Paris?” I had not, having been totally immersed in finishing the manuscript: but I knew it was not good news.

The last time Paris was big news was at the beginning of that year, when two brothers attacked the headquarters of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing twelve people, including most members of the editorial staff, including the famous cartoonists Jean Cabut (Cabu) and Stéphane Charbonnier (Charb). This time it was even worse. A small group of homegrown Jihadi terrorists had conducted a series of coordinated attacks at three diverse but highly public sites in Paris, killing 130 civilians and injuring 413. It was one of the darkest days in Europe this century.
 

Dark days

Although terrorist attacks have abated somewhat in recent years, at least in Europe, the continent is facing even bigger threats to liberal democracy today than on that day. Illiberal democracy has come to full fruition in Hungary, at the heart of the biggest liberal democratic project in history, the European Union. Not only did the EU fail to stop it, it actively enabled it, through lavish subsidies to the country and opportunistic political protection of the Orbán regime by the European People’s Party (EPP), the main political group in the European Parliament.

The Hungarian example has become an inspiration for authoritarian politicians across Europe, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, where leading politicians in aspiring (e.g. Macedonia) and current (e.g. Poland) member states have followed Orbán’s lead.

At the same time, Europe is part of a less and less predictable and more and more authoritarian world. Four of the five largest countries have seen an authoritarian turn in recent years, from China to India and from Brazil to the United States. Even in Indonesia authoritarian forces are prominent, albeit polling “only” in second place. And the EU is still limping from “crisis” to “crisis,” eagerly awaiting the final details of the Brexit deal, while bracing itself for another “populist backlash” in the 2019 European elections. Whatever the future holds, the key issues discussed in this book – the far right, populism, Euroscepticism and liberal democracy – will be at the forefront of the political struggles.
 

The normalization of the radical right

This book is a collection of op-eds I wrote, and interviews I gave, in the past decade or so. It is impossible to capture the political transformation that Europe has undergone in that period; in part, because it is still ongoing and the outcome, while looking increasingly grim, is far from certain. The political developments have also affected my own thinking, which can be seen from the various readings, which are published in chronological order, and have not been edited or updated, to provide a better insight into my own intellectual development as well as the mood of the time.

I started studying the far right as an undergraduate student at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, in the early 1990s. It was still a marginal force within my own country, and, except for some specific countries (notably Austria and France), in Europe. Scholarship on the far right was in its infancy and strongly normative, with most people studying it from an explicitly “anti-fascist” perspective. Even “neutral” scholarship was frowned upon. Today, the far right has established itself at the center of European politics, while scholarship is predominantly “neutral”, although most scholars remain hostile to the far right itself (but increasingly sympathetic to its voters). Today, the far right has established itself at the center of European politics, while scholarship is predominantly “neutral”, although most scholars remain hostile to the far right itself (but increasingly sympathetic to its voters).

The public debate over the far right has fundamentally changed in the past decades. In the late twentieth century far right voices were either excluded or marginalized in the public debate. While the far right received disproportionate attention in the media, it was almost always within a strongly negative framework. Moreover, the media reported about the far right, but rarely gave the far right a direct voice.

In countries like Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, for example, op-eds by far right politicians were consistently rejected by mainstream media, to the extent that few would even bother to submit them. Compare that to today, when far right leaders like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen can write op-eds for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and even AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland has published an op-ed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The normalization of the radical right is largely a consequence of the Rechtsruck of European politics, in part a calculated, and often opportunistic, response by center-right, and to some extent center-left, parties to the increased electoral success of radical right parties. The twenty-first century is so far the century of socio-cultural issues, with most elections dominated by non-economic issues centered around “identity” – with the notable exception of those countries most affected by the Great Recession, like Greece and Spain. In some ways, the radical right is setting the political agenda in Europe, by determining what we talk about and how we talk about it. But it can only do that with the tacit support of mainstream media and politics.

One of the most important consequences of the normalization of the far right is that far right politics is no longer limited to far right parties. Authoritarianism, nativism and populism are expressed, in more or less strident ways, by a broad variety of mainstream political parties. In fact, some parties have moved so far to the right, that it is no longer clear whether they are mainstream or radical right. This is certainly the case for Hungary’s Fidesz or Poland’s Law and Justice party, but similar concerns can be raised with regard to the Belgian New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the British Conservative Party, the French The Republicans, the German Christian Social Union (CSU), and increasingly the Spanish Popular Party (PP). Similar concerns can be raised with regard to the Belgian New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the British Conservative Party, the French The Republicans, the German Christian Social Union (CSU), and increasingly the Spanish Popular Party (PP).

While this Rechtsruck has given radical right parties more political influence, and made some of them Koalitionsfähig (again), it has also created an electoral challenge for them. In some countries, it has pushed the radical right further right, to remain distinctive from the mainstream right and regain the “radical” position on European integration and immigration (see the shift to Frexit and Nexit of Le Pen and Wilders, respectively). But in other countries the mainstream right went so far right, that the radical right saw no other possibility than to shift to the mainstream. This is the case, most notably, in Hungary, where Fidesz and Jobbik have shifted positions, and Jobbik is now campaigning against the “undemocratic” and “anti-European” Fidesz government.
 

Open extremists and career politicians

Another new phenomenon, long considered impossible within the academic literature, is the success of openly extreme right parties. With Golden Dawn (XA) in Greece and Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia in Slovakia, two neo-fascist parties are currently represented in a national parliament of an EU member state.

At the same time, members of the extreme right National Movement (RN) were elected to the Polish parliament on the list of the radical right Kukiz’15 movement and the longstanding German National Democratic Party (NPD) has a Member of the European Parliament. Outside of electoral politics, openly neo-fascist organizations like Casa Pound in Italy, or the slightly more guarded Identitarian Movement, are rearing their heads, building infrastructures and grabbing media attention with carefully crafted stunts.

What has become termed “the rise of populism”, meanwhile, is increasingly limited to the populist radical right. Since ignoring its own electoral promises, as well as its own referendum, and accepting the austerity policies associated with yet another bailout, SYRIZA has become an embarrassment rather than an inspiration for the European populist left. Podemos has lost electoral momentum, as it struggles with corruption scandals, the issue of Catalan independence, and an ideological and strategic disagreement over its left populist course. The last remaining hope comes from two movements led by true career politicians, i.e. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s established Unbowed France (FI) and Oscar Lafontaine and Sarah Wagenknecht’s new Get Up movement.

For all the talk about populism, without a doubt the political buzzword of the twenty-first century so far, it has little policy implications. Political systems are not fundamentally revised, either at the national or at the European level, and referendums are more criticized than before the recent rise of populist parties. Political systems are not fundamentally revised, either at the national or at the European level, and referendums are more criticized than before the recent rise of populist parties.

While some mainstream right-wing politicians, like Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, claim that only “good” populism can defeat “bad” populism, they mostly refer to, and implement, nativist policies. And on the other side of the political spectrum, left-wing populism has gotten a new boost through the work of Belgian philosopher Chantal Mouffe, the widow of Ernesto Laclau, but their program is only “populist” according to their own definition.
 

Legitimate adversaries

This is not to say that populism is irrelevant, or no longer relevant. Populist attitudes are widespread across European populations, and are being fed and strengthened by an almost daily diet of sensationalist media coverage. They constitute a growing threat to liberal democracy in Europe, and around the globe, as they undermine consensus politics, while strengthening similarly intolerant anti-populist positions.

Moreover, although populism itself is not anti-democratic, it is logical that someone who is dissatisfied with the way democracy works for many years, will start wondering whether democracy as such is worthwhile. While I’m not a big fan of the “end of democracy” narrative, which is creating a growing, lucrative cottage industry in academia and punditry, it would be hard to argue that liberal democracy is alive and well.

Among the most important threats to liberal democracy in Europe are the rise of populist parties, the increasingly authoritarian responses to terrorism, and the opportunistic reaction to illiberal democracy within the European establishment. As several scholars have documented for the 1930s, including Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, European democracies died at the hands of fascist outsiders, but with the crucial help of conservative insiders. A similar development is under way in contemporary Europe, in which the EPP played a major role in facilitating the creation of Orbán’s illiberal state. And while other political groups criticize Orbán and the EPP, they remain largely silent, or are much less outspoken, on authoritarian tendencies within their own member parties (such as SD-Smer or GERB). European democracies died at the hands of fascist outsiders, but with the crucial help of conservative insiders.

Grandstanding in the European Parliament might make for many likes on social media, but when not followed by actions, will strengthen the illiberal democrats directly and indirectly. It allows them to build their illiberal democratic regime, while at the same time pointing out the ineffectiveness, and hypocrisy, of liberal democracy. Moreover, fighting populism with anti-populism weakens rather than strengthens liberal democracy. It delegitimizes the political adversary, polarizes and simplifies differences and groups within society, and furthers a zero-sum type politics, which undermines the essence of the system: compromise between legitimate political adversaries.
 

The failure of the populist promise in Greece

It is here that Greece yet again features prominently, and not in a good way. After three years of populist coalition government, the populist promise has failed, and both ANEL and SYRIZA have plummeted in the polls. New Democracy has seen a modest uptake, but they are nowhere near pre-crisis levels, while other parties have remained stagnant in past years, despite ongoing political upheaval. The fact that few disappointed SYRIZA voters have found their way back to liberal democratic parties is not that surprising, given that parties like ND and PASOK mainly excel in anti-populism, opposing government policies almost irrespective of their merits.

This is not to say that SYRIZA has become a liberal democratic party. There have been too many attempts to circumvent or undermine the independent judiciary and media, for example, which mainly failed because of the incompetency of the populist forces and the dysfunctionality of the Greek state. But while anti-populism might make for effective opposition, it is no basis for government. So, when ND will return to power, possibly in coalition with the post-PASOK Movement for Change, it will do so with little positive agenda or support.
But let me try to end this introduction on a positive note. While the world has not become a better place since the English edition of this book was published, Greece has. Not only is the economic situation better, albeit far from good, the political situation is less precarious. SYRIZA has moderated and Golden Dawn has not become the main opposition party, as former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tirelessly predicted. Similarly, the EU has survived Brexit with more ease than was expected and is experiencing a serious Brexit bump in popularity. And, slowly but steadily, the EPP is finally starting to address the membership of Fidesz, while the EU is pressuring both Hungary and Poland, although to different extents.
 

Serious challenge to the loud and the silent

History does not repeat itself, but it also does not progress in a linear fashion. Liberal democracy is facing its most serious challenge in (Western) Europe since the end of the Second World War. As much as Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” was unsubstantiated and wrong, so are the growing claims of the “End of Liberalism” (and liberal democracy) premature and sensationalist at best.

European politics is transforming, which is not a bad thing. Whether it leads to the end or revitalization of liberal democracy is up to all of us, the loud minority of populists as well as the silent majority of liberal democrats.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) at the University of Georgia (USA) and a Professor II at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo (Norway). Born in the Netherlands, where he got his M.A. and Ph.D. at Leiden University, his research addresses the question: how can liberal democracies defend themselves against political challenges without undermining their core values? His recent publications include The Far Right in America (Routledge, 2018), The Populist Radical Right: A Reader (Routledge, 2017), SYRIZA: The Failure of the Populist Promise (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), (with Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser) Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and On Extremism and Democracy in Europe (Routledge, 2016). He is currently finishing The Far Right Today (Polity, 2019), is a columnist for the GuardianUS and Hope not Hate, and tweets at @casmudde.

The post On extremism and democracy in Europe: three years later appeared first on SabrangIndia.

World Forum for Democracy delegates. Image: Nandini Archer.

Gender equality in Europe is “advancing at a snail’s pace”, Thérèse Murphy of the European Institute for Gender Equality told delegates at the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, France.

Murphy and other speakers reviewed different measures of gender equality in a fact-based introduction to the Council of Europe’s annual event, which is this year focused on the theme: “Gender equality: whose battle?”

Over the last decade, there has been very little progress made on gender equality in Europe overall, she said, warning: “There can be no democracy without mainstreaming gender into every aspect of public life and public discourse”.

“The decisions that are being made about our future and our environment are not being made in a gender equal way”, Murphy added, of the stark underrepresentation of women in environment ministries amid climate change concerns.

Up to 2,000 people from more than 60 countries are expected to attend the three-day forum, which began on Monday and is dedicated to the Malta journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was murdered last year.

More than 100 speakers are presenting their work and perspectives, including in plenaries on women’s public, political and economic participation and addressing sexism, discrimination and violence against women.

Other sessions will explore topics including faith and feminism, safe spaces in cyberspace, and masculinity and showcase initiatives to tackle gender inequalities and violence against women from around the world.

Spain’s Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado, Polish activist Marta Lempart, and Canadian educator and sexual violence support worker Farrah Khan were among those who spoke during the events on Monday.

World Forum for Democracy speakers. Image: Nandini Archer.

Links between democracy and gender equality, political polarisation and feminism, the impact of sexism on the planet, and the role of the #MeToo movement in forcing conversations on sexual harassment were among the topics discussed.

Annika Silva-Leander at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance surveyed figures on women’s political participation in different regions and cited several ‘concerning’ trends.

For the first time in more than 40 years, she said, more countries are declining rather than advancing in their democratic performance, while civic space is diminishing.

“We are deeply concerned about this because we know it has severe consequences for gender equality”, she said, though increased women’s participation is not enough to achieve more democratic societies.

Laura Silver, of the Pew Research Center based in Washington DC, spoke about the state of public opinion towards gender equality in countries around the world.

While women are more likely than men to say that gender equality is “very important”, she said, in some places there seems to be an even more important “partisan gap” in people’s responses to such questions.

In the United States, Democratic party supporters are more than twice as likely to identify as feminists than Republicans, according to the center’s research.  

From the audience, one delegate said that it was urgent to address the backlash in several countries against gender studies and feminism within education systems.

Another participant suggested that, amid concern over climate change, if women could “exercise more power that could prevent the destruction of humanity”.

On Twitter, another commented: “Reminder: the 50/50 conversation about gender equality erases non-binary folks and dismisses issues faced by trans communities”.

The Council of Europe is the region’s largest institution focused on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The World Forum for Democracy was first held in 2012.

Previous editions of the event have focused on youth and politics, connecting citizens and institutions in the digital age, and the rise of populism.

* 50.50 is reporting on this week’s events in Strasbourg as part of openDemocracy’s partnership with the 2018 World Forum for Democracy.
 

The post Gender equality in Europe ‘advancing at snail’s pace’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Shutterstock

Some of these maps came out of refugee projects, while others are produced by global organisations, NGOs and agencies such as Frontex, the European Border and Coastguard Agency, and the International Organisation for Migration’s project, Missing Migrants. The Balkan route, for example, shows the trail along which hundred of thousands of Syrian refugees trekked after their towns and cities were reduced to rubble in the civil war.

However, migration maps tend to produce an image of Europe being “invaded” and overwhelmed by desperate women, men and children in search of asylum. At the same time, migrants’ journeys are represented as fundamentally linear, going from a point A to a point B. But what about the places where migrants have remained stranded for a long time, due to the closure of national borders and the suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which establishes people’s free internal movement in Europe? What memories and impressions remain in the memory of the European citizens of migrants’ passage and presence in their cities? And how is this most recent history of migration in Europe being recorded?

Cherishde.uk/Mapbox, CC BY-SA

Time and memory

Our collective project, a map archive of Europe’s migrant spaces, engages with with these questions by representing border zones in Europe – places that have functioned as frontiers for fleeing migrants. Some of these border zones, such as Calais, have a long history, while other places have become effective borders for migrants in transit more recently, such as Como in Italy and Menton in France. The result of a collaborative work by researchers in the UK, Greece, Germany, Italy and the US, the project records memories of places in Europe where migrants remained in limbo for a long time, were confronted with violence, or found humanitarian aid, as well as marking sites of organised migrant protest.

All the cities and places represented in this map archive have over time become frontiers and hostile environments for migrants in transit. Take for instance the Italian city of Ventimiglia on the French-Italian border. This became a frontier for migrants heading to France in 2011, when the French government suspended Schengen to deter the passage of migrants who had landed in Lampedusa in Italy in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution in 2011.

Four years later in 2015, after border controls were loosened, Ventimiglia again became a difficult border to cross, when France suspended Schengen for the second time. But far from being just a place where migrants were stranded and forced to go back, our map archive shows that Ventimiglia also became an important place of collective migrant protest.

Ventigmilia on the French-Italian border became a place of migrant protest. Shutterstock

Images of migrants on the cliffs holding banners saying “We are not going back” circulated widely in 2015 and became a powerful slogan for other migrant groups across Europe. The most innovative aspect of our map-archive consists in bringing the context of time, showing the transformations of spaces over time into a map about migration that explains the history of border zones over the last decade and how they proliferated across Europe. Every place represented – Paris, Calais, Rome, Lesbos, Kos, and Athens, for example – has been transformed over the years by migrants’ presence.
 

Which Europe?

This archive project visualises these European sites in a way that differs from the conventional geopolitical map: instead of highlighting national frontiers and cities, it foregrounds places that have been actual borders for migrants in transit and which became sites of protest and struggle. In this way the map archive produces another image of Europe, as a space that has been shaped by the presence migrants – the border violence, confinement and their struggle to advance.

The geopolitical map of Europe is transformed into Europe’s migrant spaces – that is, Europe as it is experienced by migrants and shaped by their presence. So another picture of Europe emerges: a space where migrants’ struggle to stay has contributed to the political history of the continent. In this Europe migrants are subjected to legal restrictions and human rights violations, but at the same time they open up spaces for living, creating community and as a backdrop for their collective struggles.

A local volunteer says goodbye as refugees are evicted from ‘the Jungle’ camp in Calais. Shutterstock

It is also where they find solidarity with European citizens who have sympathy with their plight. These border zones highlighted by our map have been characterised by alliances between citizens and migrants in transit, where voluntary groups have set up to provide food, shelter and services such as medical and legal support.

So how does this map engage with debate on the “migrant crisis” and the “refugee crisis” in Europe? By imposing a time structure and retracing the history of these ephemeral border zone spaces of struggle, it upends the image of migrants’ presence as something exceptional, as a crisis. The map gives an account of how European cities and border zones have been transformed over time by migrants’ presence.

By providing the history of border zones and recording memories of citizens’ solidarity with migrants in these places, this map dissipates the hardline view of migrants as invaders, intruders and parasites – in other words, as a threat. This way, migrants appear as part of Europe’s unfolding history. Their struggle to stay is now becoming part of Europe’s history.

But the increasing criminalisation of migrant solidarity in Europe is telling of how such collaboration disturbs state policies on containing migrants. This map-archive helps to erode the image of migrants as faceless masses and unruly mobs, bringing to the fore the spaces they create to live and commune in, embraced by ordinary European citizens who defy the politics of control and the violent borders enacted by their states.

Martina Tazzioli, Lecturer in Geography, Swansea University
 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Migration: new map of Europe reveals real frontiers for refugees appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A people’s assembly in Sarajevo. Demotix/Aurore Belot. All rights reserved.

In a recent article for the Washington Post Sheri Berman worries whether democratic socialists, who are now advancing on the left, believe in democracy. Looking back into twentieth century history, she reminds us that the difference between democratic socialists and social democrats lay in the fact that the former were unwilling to compromise over entering governmental coalitions with bourgeois parties – in that way inadvertently helping along the advent of fascist regimes.

However interesting in terms of a lesson in history, the problem we are facing today is completely different. It is the mainstream left, the Social Democrats, who have for decades now been sacrificing democracy at the altar of the unassailable forces of the global market. In contrast to this, from the democratic socialist perspective today, democratization is the political project of the left. Rebuilding the left and reversing the democratic erosion which we are currently witnessing across Europe and the US are one and the same project.
 

Left and Right

Another fallacy upheld by many contemporary analyses of democratic erosion is that concern over democracy, and the commitment to protecting it, are shared by mainstream political elites of the Left and Right (see for instance Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018, Zielonka 2018). However, in her analysis of two waves of democratic collapse in interwar Europe and in 1970s Latin America, Nancy Bermeo has shown that at the pivotal moment party elites of mainstream Left and Right did not stand together against extremists and populists. In most cases, the breakdown of democracy followed a sequence in which Centre-Right and Right elected governments were replaced by Right-wing dictatorships. In contrast to democratic breakdown, democratic advances have historically been linked with the growth of workers’ movements and socialist parties. At the pivotal moment party elites of mainstream Left and Right did not stand together against extremists and populists.

If this is true, then the decline of the Left and the current democratic malaise are two sides of the same coin. Party competition is re-aligning on the transnational cleavage fuelled by the popular reaction to economic integration – a cleavage which the mainstream left has failed miserably to address. The mainstream left is stuck, the supposed irreversibility of economic globalisation posing the imperative it cannot overcome. In the meantime, new right-wing parties with distinct positions on Europe and immigration are addressing people’s concerns and articulating them into portfolios of nationalism, xenophobia and so forth.
 

“Democracy’s fickle friends”?

Another common weakness of contemporary analysis is that in explaining the rise of new right parties, it focuses on describing the ‘enemy within’ and adjudicating between economic distress and cultural prejudice as key drivers of the authoritarian-populist vote. Analysing the populist explosion, the resurgence of illiberalism and the death of democracy, analysts evoke the image of the ordinary citizen walking over to the ‘Dark side’: voting for populists, mobilizing around bigoted referendum votes, reading and distributing vitriolic content online. Though the literature offers some variance as to why this happens – ranging from the old-school dislike of the mob to benevolent interpretations that aim to show the rationality of this political behaviour – ordinary people, as Nancy Bermeo has argued, invariably turn out as ‘democracy’s fickle friends’. Populism signals the breakdown in the mutual learning between the mainstream left and ‘ordinary people’.

But if it is true that the future of democracy and the rebuilding the left are one and the same project, then this position is untenable. Instead, we need to assert that populism signals the breakdown in the mutual learning between the mainstream left and ‘ordinary people’. The mainstream left has become distrustful of mass popular engagement with politics. How did this happen to the political force that historically emerged from popular struggles against injustice and relations of domination?

In Kriesi’s et al landmark study of post-1968 social movements, the crucial pivot around which social movements manoeuvred was the configuration of power on the left and the presence or absence of the left in government. In a complete reversal of fortunes, with the left in Europe structurally weak and ideationally disoriented, ours is a time when progressive social movements and civic initiatives represent the anchor for rebuilding left political parties.

The main question therefore becomes – how can organizational experiences and discursive struggles of movements such as the People Against Evictions in Spain, the Rosia Montana movement in Romania or the Right to the City movement in Croatia be harnessed to re-build left political forces?
 

European peripheries offer crucial lessons

Crucial lessons about both the future of the Left, and of democracy, are to be learned by analysing European peripheries as spaces in which the contradictions of ‘democratic capitalism’ are particularly pronounced.

Contrary to the convergence thesis that was embedded in the project of European integration, peripheral economies never caught up with the core, and the economic crisis of 2008 made this disparity wider. Economic divisions into creditor and debtor nations acquired their political equivalent between rule makers and rule takers. Since 2008 we have witnessed the emergence of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, as well as mass pro-democracy mobilizations across Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria all the way to Slovenia.

Though economic integration has created winners and losers everywhere in Europe, in Europe’s southern and eastern peripheries economic austerity and the ‘hollowing out’ of politics created stronger pressures on democracy. And yet, despite such circumstances, since 2008 we have witnessed the emergence of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, as well as mass pro-democracy mobilizations across Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria all the way to Slovenia. Submitting these experiences to systematic comparative scrutiny should yield valuable lessons both for democracy and for rebuilding the left.

Perhaps it would be useful to conceptualize mass mobilizations and progressive social movements as episodes of democratic learning which lay the foundations of an organizational and ideational renewal of the left.

Civic roles for the future

Much democratic theory understands democratic learning as the slow process through which populations acquire democratic value orientations that support and stabilize democratic institutions (remember Dahrendorf’s quip about constitutional reform taking 6 months, economic reform 6 years, and cultural change 60 years).

In contrast, I understand democratic learning as happening when people are mobilized into forms of democratic political participation; when they mobilize to oppose environmentally destructive projects or city re-developments which enclose public spaces. Such spatial-environmental struggles set in motion dynamics of incorporation and contestation that Robert Dahl described as fundamental for democratic development. Democratic socialists should place tools for mobilizing populations into civic roles, from the municipal level upwards, at the centre of their strategy.
Drawing on such episodes, democratic socialists should place tools for mobilizing populations into civic roles, from the municipal level upwards, at the centre of their strategy. This is a way to unleash pluridimensional democratic learning, ranging from transformative biographic effects on people engaging in politics, across rebuilding capacity for political mobilization, to a programmatic renewal that should help left forces weave a convincing narrative focused on the future, rather than on lamenting the past.

Madrid, Spain, March 3, 2018. Hundreds take to the street of Madrid to demand fair and accessible housing for all, an end to speculation on banking and real estate, and for the inalienable right of every citizen. Mario Roldan/Press Association. All rights reserved.

Danijela Dolenec is a social science scholar and political activist in the municipalist platform Zagreb is Ours. She is currently leading a research project entitled Disobedient Democacy: A Comparative Analysis of Contentious Politics in the European Semi-periphery.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/

The post Disobedient democracies on Europe’s periphery: why are these crucial for rebuilding the left? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Anti-Trump protesters float a giant “baby Trump” in London. (Shutterstock)

Donald Trump didn’t fly to Europe to meet with NATO, European leaders, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He got there by stepping through the looking glass.

Once on the other side, Trump made a series of extraordinary statements that have effectively turned U.S. foreign policy upside down. He accused Germany of being “totally controlled by Russia.” He declared that the European Union is a “foe” of the United States. He told British Prime Minister Theresa May that she should forget about negotiating with the EU and sue the institution instead.

And, just days after the U.S. intelligence community and special counsel Robert Mueller confirmed once again that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 elections, Trump said that he believed in Putin’s claims of Russian innocence.

Why on earth would Trump embark on this surrealistic misadventure in foreign policy? True, his first instinct seems to be to disrupt. His statements also reveal his preference for “strong” leaders over “weak.” Perhaps, as some intelligence community insiders claim, the Russian president even has some dirt with which to blackmail Trump.

In fact, Trump’s statements and actions on this European trip aren’t just his own idiosyncratic style. Trump’s erratic behavior reflects a very specific worldview. Trump is attacking Europe and siding with Russia for political — and not just personal — reasons.

A segment of the U.S. right wing, which has now coalesced around Trump, has always been skeptical about Europe. It has long decried the social democratic ideals baked into the European system, at both a national and a European Union level. Indeed, any U.S. politician that leans in that direction inevitably gets branded a European socialist, as John McCain accused Barack Obama of being in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Then there are the more pacifist inclinations of Europe. Donald Rumsfeld famously divided the continent between “old Europe” and “new Europe,” with the former refusing to back the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Support for the U.S. misadventure largely came from East-Central Europe, while EU stalwarts France and Germany expressed the greatest skepticism.

These trends converge in the Euroskepticism expressed by the American Enterprise Institute and media outlets like Fox News and The Weekly Standard, a sentiment that gathered strength in the 1990s and heavily influenced the George W. Bush administration. The European Union represented, in their criticisms, a kind of super-socialism that was spreading eastward and threatening U.S. global dominance.

The other major contribution to Trump’s worldview comes from Europe itself. Right-wing nationalist movements and governments throughout the continent have tried to unravel the European Union. The movement scored its first victory with the Brexit referendum in 2016. But Euroskeptic governments have also taken over in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Italy.

These Euroskeptics view Brussels as an outside force trying to impose foreign customs on nations — unacceptable economic policies, unacceptable numbers of immigrants, unacceptable political requirements. The Polish and Hungarian governments are establishing illiberal regimes that challenge freedom of the press, judicial independence, and the free functioning of civil society. The two countries are risking all-out conflict with the EU.

But there’s another strong Euroskeptic voice: Vladimir Putin.

Under Putin, Russia has supplied rhetorical and financial support for far-right wing parties throughout Europe — the National Front in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy. There is considerable issue overlap. Putin and the Euroskeptics are anti-immigrant and anti-liberal and favor nationalist and law-and-order policies.

But Putin also sees opportunity in Euroskepticism. A weaker EU won’t be able to attract new, post-Soviet members like Ukraine or Moldova. A weaker EU will be more dependent on Russian energy exports. A weaker EU would have less power to criticize Russia’s political and foreign policy conduct.

Which brings us back to Donald Trump. The president has declared Europe an enemy because of its trade policies. But that’s just a red herring. He actually has a more systemic critique of the EU that coincides with the worldview of Vladimir Putin, Europe’s right-wing nationalists, and Euroskeptics among America’s conservatives.

This is very bad news. If the crisis in transatlantic relations were just about trade, it could be handled by some hardnosed negotiating. If the disputes with the EU and NATO were simply about Trump’s disruptive style, then everything could be resolved by a regime change at the polls in 2020.

But Trump has launched a much larger, ideological assault on European institutions and values. What’s worse: It’s part of the same attack on liberal values here in the United States.

Forget about NATO: Maybe we need a transatlantic alliance against Trump.

John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus and the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands.

Courtesy: https://fpif.org
 

The post What’s Behind Trump’s Assault on Europe appeared first on SabrangIndia.

True, several European leaders, including Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, went home to speak triumphantly of a ‘great victory’, achieved through a supposedly united European position.

Italy’s Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, used more derogatory terms in explaining his country’s new policy on refugees and migrants.  “They will only see Italy on a postcard”, he said, referring to refugees who have been arriving in Italy with the help of humanitarian rescue boats.

The first of these boats, carrying over 600 refugees and economic migrants, the Aquarius, was sent back on June 11, followed by another, carrying over 200 refugees. When Italy carried out what then seemed like excessive action, the decision erupted into a massive political controversy between Italy, France, Spain, Malta and others.

However, the pandemonium has subsided since then, as Italy’s Conte declared that, following the Brussels summit, his country ‘is no longer alone.’

What Conte, who presides over a populist, right-wing government, meant is that his country’s unwelcoming attitude towards refugees is now gathering greater European consensus.

The debate over refugees and migrants has reached the point that it has become a source of political instability in countries like Germany. The latter is not considered a ‘frontline state’, as in countries that are likely to be the first destination for refugees escaping war or poverty at home.

Austria and other countries are also caught up in the crisis, each with its own angry constituency to appease.

On paper, representatives of European countries did, in fact, reach an agreement. The real problem ensued as soon as delegations returned to their respective countries.

Despite opposition from Poland and Hungary, and Italian threats to ‘veto’ any text that is not consistent with Italian priorities, the Council agreed on four main points:

First, the establishment of disembarkation centers outside European territories, to be stationed mostly in North Africa. At that early stage, economic migrants would be separated from political asylum seekers.

This first stipulation is made hollow simply because, as the Guardian reports, “no North African country has agreed to host migrant centers to process refugee claims,” in the first place.

Second, Europeans agreed to strengthen borders control through the Frontex system.

Aside from the questionable tactics of this pan-European border police, this system has been in use for years and it is difficult to imagine how ‘strengthening’ it will translate into a more efficient or humane border control system.

Third, the Council called for the creation of ‘controlled’ refugee and migrant processing centers within Europe itself, like the North African non-existing centers, to quickly separate between refugees fleeing strife and economic migrants.

This clause was offered as a ‘voluntary’ step to be exercised by any state as it sees fit, which, again, will hardly contribute to a united European policy on the issue. Yet, despite the voluntary nature of this provision, it still stirred a political controversy in Germany.

Soon after the Council issued its final statement, Horst Lorenz Seehofer, Germany’s Interior Minister, threatened to quit Angela Merkel’s coalition government.

The German Chancellor is now under dual pressure, from within her fractious coalition, but also from without, a massive political campaign championed by the far-right party, the ‘Alternative for Germany’. In fact, the latter group’s popularity is largely attributed to its anti-immigrant sentiment.

A compromise was reached, calling for the establishment of migrant ‘transit centers’ at the German-Austrian border. However, instead of resolving a problem, the decision created another one, propelling a new controversy in Austria itself.

Austria, which also has its own populist, anti-immigrant constituency to placate, fears that the proximity of the German ‘transit centers’ would force it to receive Germany’s unwanted refugees.

“If Berlin introduced national measures, which would have a chain reaction, it could mean that Austria would have to react,” Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz commented in a press conference. The magnitude of this ‘reaction’ is, of course, to be determined later, depending on the nature of counter-pressure emanating from Austria itself.

Austria has, in fact, already threatened to shut down the Brenner Pass, connecting Italy and Austria.

The fourth, and last, decision by the European Council called for the boosting of North African economies and offering training for Libya’s coastguard.

As altruistic as the last stipulation may sound, it is, indeed, the most ridiculous, especially since it was placed on the agenda with French enthusiasm. Even if one is to ignore France’s colonial history in Africa – grounded in the notion of usurping African resources under military threat – one can hardly ignore the current role that Emmanuel Macron is playing in the current Libyan conflict.

Various media reports suggest that Macron’s government is carrying on with the legacy of intervention, initiated by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, most notably in the military intervention of March 2011.

Libya, a failed state par excellence, is now fighting proxy wars in which France and Italy are the main players.

Bearing that in mind, it would be absurd to suggest that Macron is keen on respecting the sovereignty and supporting the economies of Libya and other North African nations.

Considering Europe’s past failures and foot dragging on the issue of refugees, it is hard to imagine that one of Europe’s greatest challenges is to be resolved as a result of the Brussels summit and its lackluster ‘agreement’.

Europe continues to view the refugee crisis in terms of security, populist pressures and national identity, as opposed to it being a global humanitarian crisis invited by wars, political strife and economic inequality. of which Europe is hardly innocent.

As long as Europe continues to operate with a skewed definition of the crisis, the crisis will continue to grow, leading to far dire consequences for all of those involved.

(Romana Rubeo, an Italian writer contributed to this article)

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net. 

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/

The post Europe’s Iron Curtain: The Refugee Crisis is about to Worsen appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa speaks during a bi-monthly debate at the Portuguese parliament,Lisbon in March, 2018. NurPhoto/ Press Association. All rights reserved.

Across the European continent, support for the populist radical right has increased over the last three decades. Even in countries that had seemed immune to such tendencies for decades, including Finland, Sweden and, above all, Germany, right-wing populist parties have made their way into the political arena. On the other side of the political spectrum, support for centre-left parties appears to be in free fall. Following the substantial losses suffered by social democratic parties in the Netherlands, France and Germany, the Italian centre-left Democratic Party (PD) was recently outflanked by populists by losing nearly 7 percentage points (down to 19 percent overall) in the 2018 general elections. In the light of these developments, the future looks bleak for the mainstream left.

The decline of Europe’s social democrats on the one hand, and the surge of the far right, on the other, tend to be presented as two correlated trends. However, electoral politics is not a zero-sum-game where gains made by one party can simply be explained by the losses of another. While social democratic parties have suffered major blows in numerous countries, they are not in decline everywhere. Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour Party has crowned itself a ‘government-in-waiting’ after booking a net gain of 30 seats by winning 40 percent of the vote in the 2017 general elections – their strongest result since 2001. On the continent, the Walloon Parti Socialiste remains the largest party in francophone Belgium, despite losing support earlier this year over a series of corruption scandals. Meanwhile, the mainstream left is flourishing in Portugal. It is clearly too early to bid farewell to social democracy. 

Party systems across Europe have become more fragmented, thereby making electoral politics increasingly volatile and hence less predictable. Moreover, the decline of the mainstream left cannot simply be attributed to the rise of the radical right. Social democratic parties have lost votes to parties across the political spectrum. In sum, political fragmentation affects all parties, and the vote-swing from social democrats to the populist radical right should not be exaggerated. 
 

What is Left?

The causes for the electoral losses suffered by social democratic parties in recent decades are manifold, including partisan dealignment and an overall decline in their core electorate. This incentivised social democratic parties to broaden their voter base by moving to the political centre in order to appeal to the growing middle class. This, in turn, paved the way for a period of centrist politics that became widely known as the ‘Third Way’. 

Towards the end of the twentieth century, the ideological convergence between centre-left and centre-right gave rise to a number of centrist coalition governments. While these ‘grand coalitions’ (and the policies they promulgated) worked well initially, they ultimately paved the way for populist challengers. Political convergence generally forces parties to compromise their ideals by agreeing on a lowest common denominator. This is likely to frustrate voters who feel that they are being robbed of a real choice.

In the light of these developments, what does the future hold for Europe’s social democratic parties? Is the Left doomed? There are no easy answers to these questions; given the splintering of the left’s electorate, there certainly is no such thing as a silver bullet to win back voters. However, in the face of rising inequality, the faltering support for social democratic parties cannot be attributed to a lack of demand. Instead, the problem seems to be a shortage of supply – notably the absence of a credible left-wing alternative. The centrifugal forces of the past have opened up space for such an alternative. To use the words of the American critical theorist Nancy Fraser, we are facing ‘an interregnum, an open and unstable situation in which hearts and minds are up for grabs. In this situation, there is not only danger but also opportunity: the chance to build a new new left.’

What might this reincarnated Left look like? In many European countries, mainstream parties (including those of the centre-left) have sought to counter the rise of right-wing populist parties by cosying up to them – either by entering into coalitions with them, or by copying some of their policy items. For instance, in the run-up to the 2018 general elections, the ruling Social Democrats in Sweden recently announced that they want to impose stricter regulations on immigration. Following a logic of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, mainstream parties may seek to decrease the political space towards the populist radical right, in the hope that this might help them win (back) voters that may otherwise choose the far right.

While these accommodative strategies may benefit centre-right parties, they are particularly risky for the left. Firstly, voters are likely to prefer the original over the copy. Secondly, by cosying up to the populist radical right, left-wing parties will likely end up alienating some of their most loyal voters. Besides, cosying up to right-wing populist parties may even result in legitimising them. 

Another option for the left might be a rejuvenated form of centrism, such as the one proposed by Emmanuel Macron with his En Marche movement. Not unlike the leaders of the ‘Third Way’, the French President has managed to appeal to voters from both sides of the political spectrum by insisting that he is both right and left (“et droite, et gauche”), and by seeking to reconcile a socially progressive vision with a neoliberal economic agenda. His vision may become clearer in the months and years to come, as Macron seeks to transpose his ideas to the European level in the runup to the 2019 European elections. However, thus far, Macron’s movement is not meaningfully divergent from what the centre-left has been trying for the past decades. His ‘middle of the road’ strategy, trying to be everything to everyone, is unlikely to succeed in the long run, as political convergence risks satisfying nobody and may end up alienating voters on both sides of the political spectrum. 

A third and perhaps more hopeful solution for the Left is to move away from the centre and (re)turn to the traditional tenets of left-wing politics. There are different possibilities for such a leftwards turn. The Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, for instance, has argued that left-wing populism is the only viable solution to revitalise the Left and counter the right-wing populist tide. According to Mouffe, centre-left parties cannot offer a solution to rescue progressivism because they were complicit in the creation of a neoliberal order. To put it bluntly, the centre-left is part of the problem; after all, ‘Third Way’ policies resulting from decades of consensual politics failed to give a voice to voters on the left. To Mouffe, democratic politics is a struggle between adversarial groups – that is, the people and the elites – over full control of the political terrain. Populism, she argues, is the only way to give a voice back to ‘the people’. 

However, a populist solution to salvage the future of progressive politics is risky at best because it involves polarisation by deepening the rift between ‘us’ and ‘them’. After all, populism hinges on a belief in societal division, as it pits the pure and virtuous people against a morally corrupt and evil elite. To be sure, in small doses, populism can act as a political corrective. Indeed, it can flag up public discontent and issues that may otherwise go unaddressed. However, populism tends to leave very little room for nuance and pluralism.
 

The future of progressive politics

Any viable, long-term solution for the challenges that left-wing parties are facing will require overcoming societal divisions by combining expertise with a deep, genuine concern for what voters actually want. It will involve finding ways to re-establish trust in politicians by bridging the gap that has emerged between representatives and voters. To do so, the left ought to start by rethinking what it actually stands for. This is likely to require a difficult combination of being able to detect problems locally whilst offering transnational answers. This, in turn, will involve addressing thorny questions, including whether to operate at a national or pan-European level. 

Above all, the left must find creative ways to promote people’s interest in democratic decision-making. It will involve overcoming factionalism and restoring coalitions between their splintered electorate, for instance by fostering alliances between working class voters, trade unions and urban, middle-class intellectuals. Lessons from Portugal and Wallonia indicate that this could bear some promise. These two polities have yet to witness the rise of a successful right-wing populist challenger party. The failure of the far right in these regions can partly be explained by the fact that social democratic parties have not moved too far to the centre, thus maintaining close ties to their core voters. This suggests that social democratic parties could act as ‘buffers’or ‘protective shields’ to the far right – but only if they manage to provide voters with a clear alternative.

Léonie de Jonge is a PhD Researcher at the Department of Politics & International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. You can follow her on Twitter under @L_deJonge
 

The post The biggest loser? State of the left in the age of right-wing populism appeared first on SabrangIndia.