Liberal multiculturalism masks an old barbarism with a human face

[pampango]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/03/immigration-policy-roma-rightwing-europe

The recent expulsion of Roma, or Gypsies, from France drew protests from all around Europe – from the liberal media but also from top politicians, and not only from those on the left. But the expulsions went ahead, and they are just the tip of a much larger iceberg of European politics.

Incidents like these have to be seen against the background of a long-term rearrangement of the political space in western and eastern Europe. Until recently, most European countries were dominated by two main parties that addressed the majority of the electorate: a right-of-centre party (Christian Democrat, liberal-conservative, people's) and a left-of-centre party (socialist, social-democratic), with smaller parties (ecologists, communists) addressing a narrower electorate.

Recent electoral results in the west as well as in the east signal the gradual emergence of a different polarity. There is now one predominant centrist party that stands for global capitalism, usually with a liberal cultural agenda (for example, tolerance towards abortion, gay rights, religious and ethnic minorities). Opposing this party is an increasingly strong anti-immigrant populist party which, on its fringes, is accompanied by overtly racist neofascist groups. The best example of this is Poland where, after the disappearance of the ex-communists, the main parties are the "anti-ideological" centrist liberal party of the prime minister Donald Tusk and the conservative Christian Law and Justice party of the Kaczynski brothers. Similar tendencies are discernible in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Hungary. How did we get here?

After the disintegration of the communist regimes in 1990, we entered a new era in which the predominant form of the exercise of state power became a depoliticised expert administration and the co-ordination of interests. The only way to introduce passion into this kind of politics, the only way to actively mobilise people, is through fear: the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime, the fear of godless sexual depravity, the fear of the excessive state (with its burden of high taxation and control), the fear of ecological catastrophe, as well as the fear of harassment (political correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear).

[leftstreet]

1. Very interesting comments secton there

The multitude are right to be paranoid.

The bourgeoisie in it's permanent present is, unlike the multitude (presumably an euphemism for the working class,) ignorant of (where not actively opposed to) the fact that the past 70-odd years of democratic freedom, political influence and relative comfort is a staggering exception to millennia of serfdom, premature death and subsistence.

When the combined forces of capital, the academy, the political class and the media are in favour of something it's a reasonable assumption for those that are aware of their history and/or how their grandparents lived that its collective target is the poor. Unity is always the correct response to their machinations.

!!

K&R
Thanks for posting this

[xchrom]

2. Oh Hell yeah. Recommend. Nt

[Romulox]

3. Précis: Anyone who opposes globalism is a RACIST!

The lines have been drawn: either you're a DLC style corporatist/"centrist", or a knuckle-dragging fascist. Just the way it is. :shrug:

"a depoliticised expert administration and the co-ordination of interests."

This is like the punch line to a very, very unfunny joke. Global corporatism is "depoliticized"? Moronic.

[leftstreet]

4. What kind of globalism? Global Ruling Class, or Global Labor?

There's a difference in interests

[Romulox]

5. The first kind. nt

[leftstreet]

6. Duh I'm slow today

:-)

[pampango]

8. The author made no such claim, but that the European right wing uses fear to mobilize voters.

It's hardly a novel concept that the right might use "fear" to win elections when it can't win on the issues. The American right does it all the time.

The author wrote that the fear the right wing in Europe sought to create and exploit was: "the fear of immigrants, the fear of crime, the fear of godless sexual depravity, the fear of the excessive state (with its burden of high taxation and control)", etc. Nothing in there about racism unless you assume that everyone who opposes immigration is a racist.

In fact, those "fears" that the author listed are much the same as those that the American right wing uses to scare voters (illegal immigrants, law-and-order, gays, big government, etc. Makes you think there is a little back-and-forth going on between the right wing in the US and Europe since they have many of the same tactics.

[Octafish]

7. K&R and the counter clanged 2.

The War Party is the name of the elite clique's most important org. Fear's been their dominant weapon since Berlin, 1935.

Great post and thread. Thanks, Pampango!