The far right surges, says the BBC and CNN, but the center holds.<\/p>\n
The far right wreaks havoc, but thankfully the center holds, echoes the New York Times.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026it looks like the constructive, pro-European centre has held,\u201d European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said.<\/p>\n
\u201cConstructive\u201d is one way of putting it, and that\u2019s probably true if the goal is some combination of neoliberalism, slavish Atlanticism, censorship, corruption, extreme incompetence, and more bunkers:<\/p>\n
Finland has over 50,000 air raid shelters.<\/p>\n
Their preparedness aims to strengthen their resilience and to deter aggression.<\/p>\n
We have so much to learn from the Finns.<\/p>\n
This is the change of mindset I want to help bring during my second mandate. pic.twitter.com\/xo64LKX1qD<\/p>\n
\u2014 Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen_epp) June 4, 2024<\/p>\n
What exactly does the center holding mean when this is an EU backing Nazis in Ukraine and genocide in Gaza?<\/p>\n
It would appear to signify that there will be no change in these policies. While the \u201cright\u201d did indeed make some gains, it was mostly nibbling around the edges:<\/p>\n
The extent to which far right surge narratives persisted despite a much more mixed picture is a bit bizarre.<\/p>\n
I guess baronial EPP hegemony doesn\u2019t get the clicks. <\/p>\n
\u2014 Alexander Clarkson\u00a0 (@APHClarkson) June 10, 2024<\/p>\n
Even if there was a complete sea change in the makeup of the European Parliament, the fact remains the governance structure of the bloc is designed to be undemocratic and the parliament has a limited ability to do much other than provide a facade of democracy. The parliament is supposed to act as a check on commission power. It has to approve legislation proposed by the European Commission, it can censure the Commission, and the European Council has to \u2018take into account\u2019 the result of the parliament elections to nominate the Commission president \u2013 although the latter process turned into a backroom disaster in 2019 when Ursula von der Leyen failed upwards into the job.<\/p>\n
And it looks increasingly likely that von der Leyen will be back to continue her reign that has been a disaster for most Europeans:<\/p>\n
Chairman @ManfredWeber: \u201cThose who are speaking a lot about saving democracy in Europe are now invited also to respect democracy in Europe.<\/p>\n
And that means to respect the outcome of the elections \u2013 that @vonderleyen becomes the next @EU_Commission President.\u201d#EUelections2024 pic.twitter.com\/okuCTcOB7h<\/p>\n
\u2014 EPP Group (@EPPGroup) June 9, 2024<\/p>\n
And so we have this to look forward to, from Gilbert Doctorow:\u00a0<\/p>\n
This means that barring some accident, Ursula von der Leyen will be reelected and the awful, self-destructive, even suicidal policies of the EU with respect to Russia will continue for the coming 5 years, if there is no Continent-wide war as a result that wipes Europe off the face of the earth.<\/p>\n
There is some thought that the dramatic results in Germany and France, where President Macron has already scheduled new elections, will produce some shifts in EU policy:<\/p>\n
Seen from high altitude you can conclude that the European elections did not change much and far-right wave was contained. But that does not go for either Germany or France and the agenda of the Commission will shift accordingly. UvdL2 =\/= UvdL1 <\/p>\n
\u2014 Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) June 10, 2024<\/p>\n
No doubt. But what will that look like? And is it a course the commission feels forced to take or one it embraces?<\/p>\n
What exactly is the \u201cfar right\u201d in Europe today?<\/p>\n
The use of the left-right political spectrum really needs to be retired, especially in Europe. As mentioned above, the \u201ccenter\u201d is for the following: war with Russia, genocide in Gaza, all types of neoliberal economic policies, and censorship of any voices that dissent from these policies. What little remains of the authentic left is anti-war and opposed to neoliberalism.<\/p>\n
What then of the right? The term as it is used today refers to two distinct groups, broadly outlined here:<\/p>\n
Those who take a hard line on immigration and have no problem with the EU market-friendly economic policies, but advocate for more national sovereignty. Oftentimes that is expressed through Eurosceptic or anti-EU positions with a similar view towards NATO, as well as opposition to the war with Russia since it is harming the national economic interests.
\nThose who take a hard line on immigration and have no problem with the EU market-friendly economic policies but who have abandoned their EU and NATO-skeptic views and support the war against Russia. Both 1 and \u00a02 typically skeptical if not outright opposed to environmental and climate change policies.<\/p>\n
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is supposedly a leader of the right, but she is clearly in bucket number two. Upon her 2022 election she picked up seamlessly from her predecessor, the unelected Goldman Sachs man Mario Draghi, Meloni works well with Von der Leyen, and is a big proponent of the war against Russia despite all the damage it\u2019s doing to Italy.<\/p>\n
On the defining issue of the day in Europe (war with Russia), there is little to no daylight between the \u201cproductive center\u201d and the Melonis on the right. It\u2019s worth recalling all the hysteria over Meloni\u2019s election back in 2022. A year and a half later, the New York Times was able to declare that Meloni solidified her credentials and \u201c has put the European establishment at ease. She has proved to be rock-ribbed on the question of Ukraine\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The European Peoples Party (center), which is projected to remain the largest bloc in the parliament, is a major backer of Project Ukraine. The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is too. ECR is led by Meloni\u2019s Brothers of Italy, Law and Justice in Poland, VOX in Spain, and the Sweden Democrats.<\/p>\n
Whatever opposition to Project Ukraine can be found on the right, is in the Identity and Democracy (ID) party, although it might be softening \u2013 at least in the case of Marine Le Pen\u2019s Rassamblent National. Le Pen has begun to take a more pro-NATO line in recent months (although she has also criticized Macron over his eagerness to send French troops to Ukraine), likely in an attempt to show her \u201creadiness to govern\u201d much like Meloni did. It will be very interesting to see what line she takes in the French presidential campaign and how she will govern should she win.<\/p>\n
In the case of the Meloni-style right it looks like what\u2019s happening is the absorption of nationalist eurosceptic, anti-NATO right into a pro-NATO, nationalist right. That might seem contradictory, but\u00a0 Jonas Elvander, the editor of foreign affairs at the Swedish socialist magazine Flamman and a PhD researcher in history at the European University Institute in Florence, makes a compelling argument in a piece in Brave New Europe that was featured in Links yesterday and really deserves a\u00a0 full read, although I\u2019ll quote liberally from it here:<\/p>\n
Since the euro crisis of the 2010s, the EU has gone from projecting its soft-power outward to becoming more defensive and inward-looking, according to Kundnani. The union\u2019s leadership today sees it as being encircled by threats, which since the migration crisis have increasingly become synonymous with non-white migrants and political instability in the neighboring regions. This point was illustrated two years ago by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borell, when he described the EU as a \u201dgarden\u201d surrounded by a \u201djungle\u201d.<\/p>\n
This new rhetoric is indicative of what Kundnani calls the EU\u2019s \u201dcivilizational turn\u201d; the civic and cosmopolitan elements of European identity are increasingly being replaced by an emphasis on Europe\u2019s common cultural and civilizational heritage, that is, a more exclusionary understanding of what it means to be European.<\/p>\n
When Ursula von der Leyen was picked as new President of the European Commission in 2019, she decided to show that she had heard the voice of the European peoples, which had just given the far right a large increase in seats in the European Parliament. This was translated into a focus on issues like migration and security, as well as the creation of the new Commission portfolio \u201dPromoting our European Way of Life\u201d, a phrase first used in the early 2000s by the French socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to describe the West European welfare states. What this new position entailed was not very clear; policy areas included migration, security, education, religious dialogue, and the fight against antisemitism (but not islamophobia). Symbolically, however, the move was significant.<\/p>\n
In March 2020 a crisis erupted on the border between Turkey and Greece, with migrants trying to enter the EU before being violently pushed back by Greek border security. Even though the violence broke against the rules of conduct of the European border agency Frontex, Von der Leyen hailed the Greek police as Europe\u2019s aspida \u2013 Greek for \u201dshield\u201d.<\/p>\n
Such incidents illustrate the ongoing shift in values that the Commission emphasizes, from openness and tolerance to security and cohesiveness. This turn has made it possible for the far right to rediscover the civilizational aspects of the EU and embrace it in the name of the defense of a common European heritage.<\/p>\n
So what we have are the likes of Meloni and maybe Le Pen soon morphing their nationalism into a pan-European nationalism and redirecting frustration with Brussels and its neoliberal policies to the outside, against immigrants and Russia.<\/p>\n
When the politicians in Brussels and the media talk about the center holding, they\u2019re talking about keeping those opposed to war with Russia at bay, not the likes of Meloni. In fact, nationalists like Meloni are likely the prototype moving forward as her and her Brothers of Italy performed well in this election and continue to maintain high levels of support.<\/p>\n
And they are mostly welcomed by \u201cthe center.\u201d If these \u201cnationalists\u201d can bring their supporters along with them as they embrace the idea of Europe and servitude to the US, they are actually quite useful. They can help form the foundation for a cohesive European ideology (protecting the \u201cgarden\u201d?) beyond just neoliberalism and Atlanticism.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the real national sovereignists \u2013 whether on the left or right \u2013 are excluded by any means necessary. They face resistance from the media, spooks, and Brussels. If they\u2019re fortunate enough to get past that, they must deal with lawfare and engineered economic crises. And even if they survive an assassination attempt, like Slovak PM Robert Fico recently did, politicians and media will hint they deserved it.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s the choice for those on the right: meet resistance (or worse) at every turn or embrace a European-style nationalism and be granted the keys to power a la Meloni. Le Pen might be following her.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s still one more nationalist big fish to reel in to bring the European Project and Project Ukraine full circle and that is, of course, in Germany.<\/p>\n
Germany Divided \u2013 Barely<\/p>\n
The division between the center-right and sovereignist right is clearly delineated in Germany between the CDU and AfD.<\/p>\n
Who said that Germany reunified? This is yesterday\u2019s electoral map. W. Germany black \u2013 the colour of the christian democrats. E. Germany blue \u2013 the colour of the quasi-fascist AfD. The result of 20 years of social democratic-green austerity and Die Linke\u2019s taming. pic.twitter.com\/I06l16dMFZ<\/p>\n
\u2014 Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) June 10, 2024<\/p>\n
But in reality there isn\u2019t a ton of difference between their policies. All it would take is a Meloni-style shift from the AfD and they would essentially be the CDU.<\/p>\n
The Christian Democratic Union head is a neoliberal former Blackrock man and Atlanticist to the bone: Friedrich Merz. The AfD has a neo-Nazi base of supporters, some of its members can help but make excuses and admire the SS, but it is also an ethno-nationalist party that opposes the EU, NATO and Project Ukraine because it hurts German interests.<\/p>\n
I have a hard time believing that if the AfD softened its positions against the EU and NATO and got behind Project Ukraine that there would be any opposition by the centrists to it assuming power despite all its fascist baggage. Just consider:<\/p>\n
Nazis in Ukraine who fight Russia = good.
\nNazi supporters of AfD who want to leave the euro, kick US troops out of Germany, and make nice with Russia = bad.<\/p>\n
Until the AfD understands what kind of Nazis they need to be they will continue to face all the tools of the EU, media, and spooks to keep them out of power. If they become Brussels\u2019 kind of Nazis, well, things should get interesting.<\/p>\n
It was a somewhat disappointing showing for a real antiwar and working class party in Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht\u2019s new BSW party, which came in fifth with more than six percent of the vote. It\u2019s tough to knock them too much as the party just formed early this year and is trying to rebuild a left working class politics that had completely vanished from Germany.<\/p>\n
BSW and the AfD were largely believed to be in competition for big chunks of the dissatisfied working class vote, and Wagenknecht\u2019s side tried focusing on three arguments in recent weeks:<\/p>\n
That BSW is the true representative of the working class while AfD opposes globalists in favor of a more national oligarchy. (The AfD, after all, did receive its seed money from a Nazi billionaire family.) BSW liked to point out AfD\u2019s hypocrisy in supporting the recent farmers protests in Germany while the party\u2019s program simultaneously calls for removing farmer subsidies. \u201cThis is not an anti-system party. It is the system, but undemocratic and mean,\u201d says BSW General Secretary Christian Leye.
\nThat the AfD is an ethno-nationalist party with racial positions that harken back to some dark chapters in German history while BSW wants reduced immigration that would benefit the German working class.
\nBSW also describes itself as the only consistent peace party in the Bundestag. The AfD, on the other hand, is not at all opposed to militarization. In fact, the party calls for the full restoration of operational readiness of the German armed forces, independence from NATO and using the military only for German national interests.<\/p>\n
In the end Wagenknecht\u2019s party primarily took votes from Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s Social Democratic Party (SPD) and her former party Die Linke.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
That makes sense, as the whole reason Wagenknecht broke off to form her own party was because of how the center continues to swallow up the left. The SPD, founded in 1863, dropped its commitment to Marxism in 1959. Die Linke, Wagenknecht\u2019s former party, Die Linke, which has completely collapsed after abandoning nearly all of its former working class platform in favor of identity politics in an attempt to appear \u201cready to govern.\u201d Much like the Greens, The Left increasingly stands for neoliberal, pro-war and anti-Russia policies.<\/p>\n
BSW will next get to measure its appeal in state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg in the Fall. One problem for Wagenknecht is that the media and political environment In Germany that continuously hypes the threat of Russia rolling across Europe is proving effective \u2013 potentially reducing the number of antiwar votes to be had. A recent survey showed that 68 percent back more defense spending at home.<\/p>\n
Turnout in Germany was at a record high, which likely demonstrates the historic level\u00a0 of dissatisfaction with the \u201ctraffic light coalition\u201d of the SPD, Greens, and Free Democratic Party, which has been a disaster on every front and was punished at the polls.<\/p>\n
Yet, it\u2019s tough to see how things don\u2019t get even worse. Germany\u2019s economic model of cheap Russian energy, wage suppression, and exports is busted. It\u2019s now reliant on expensive US LNG for energy, the Greens even managed to close the country\u2019s last remaining nuclear power plants, the country is simultaneously deindustrializing while becoming more financialized, the economic war with Russia is hurting Germany much more than Russia, and it now has a government that has lost all legitimacy but has ruled out early elections (the next national election isn\u2019t until Fall 2025). A CDU-led government could feasibly be worse, the AfD will be kept out of power unless it changes its tune on Project Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the German von der Leyen at the top of the EU mess appears to have plenty of energy to double down on all the disastrous policies of the past five years:<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I\u2019m running. pic.twitter.com\/izNy9VS5WG<\/p>\n
\u2014 Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen_epp) June 4, 2024<\/p>\n
Europeans might be running for the exits soon as the bloc keeps inching towards open conflict with Russia and the likelihood that the garden goes up in flames.<\/p>\n
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