Populism: imminent danger to democracy and capitalism or not?

Many academics and commentators are sounding the alarm about the threat that rising populism poses to the stability of liberal democracies. Others respond that populism is, on the contrary, a sign of democratic resilience, providing a necessary corrective that will help address popular grievances, curtail the excessive power of elites and make political systems more democratic.

Read more at:

https://institute.global/policy/populist-harm-democracy-empirical-assessment

Democracy:How democracy can win again – by Gergely Karácsony

My political awakening coincided with the systemic changes that unfolded following the collapse of communism in Hungary in 1989. I was both fascinated and overjoyed by my country’s rapid democratisation. As a teenager, I persuaded my family to drive me to the Austrian border to see history in the making: the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, which allowed east-German refugees to head for the west. Reading many new publications and attending rallies for newly established democratic political parties, I was swept up by the atmosphere of unbounded hope for our future.

Today, such sentiments seem like childish naivety, or at least the product of an idyllic state of mind. Both democracy and the future of human civilisation are now in grave danger, beset by multifaceted and overlapping crises.

Read more at: How democracy can win again – Gergely Karácsony

EU - Poland Nationalism: The rise of right-wing nationalism: from Poland to Polanyi – by Karin Pettersson

The introductory chapter in Anne Applebaum’s book Twilight of Democracy describes a new year’s party Applebaum and her husband organised in 1999. It took place in their house in the Polish countryside and gathered many of the country’s leading liberals and conservatives. The spirits were high, the future was bright—a highway towards freedom and open markets.

Two decades later, that dream has shrivelled like a dried apple. Poland is ruled by the right-wing nationalists of the Law and Justice Party and liberals of the Applebaum brand are their anathema. Half of the friends at the 1999 party no longer talk to her or her husband. The book is a melancholic ode to a lost world and an attempt to understand what happened to it.

Read more at: The rise of right-wing nationalism: from Poland to Polanyi – Karin Pettersson

US election: Here's how it can impact Europeans' lives - by Lillo Montalto & Marta Rodriguez

Donald Trump defined the 2020 Presidential vote as "the most important election in US history" but its impact will also be felt on this side of the pond too — and not just at the highest of political levels.

Trump’s politics over the past four years have affected both the pockets and the most intimate sphere of millions of Europeans.

On one hand, many EU workers have incurred substantial losses in their incomes as a result of the EU-US trade war.

On the other hand, unknown but influential lobbying groups with ties to the US administration are bringing on a fight to erode basic human rights for women and LGBT communities.

Read more at: US election: Here's how it can impact Europeans' lives | Euronews

EU : Social Exclusion, Polarised Societies, and Technocracy Leads to Populism, New Study Argues

After the 2008 financial crisis, citizens supported more populist forces in Hungary, Greece, Poland, Italy, and several other EU countries. Populist attitudes are stronger in countries without jobs and education for citizens between 15 and 34 years old. Technocratic governance and polarised societies favour populism.

More than causing an economic shock, the 2008 financial crisis left behind a stronger support for populist parties across most of the EU’s Member States. Support has been stronger in Hungary, Greece, Poland, and Italy. These are the main findings of a working paper, released by DEMOS today, which investigates what public policies have triggered the latest rise of populism in Europe.

By analysing international datasets between 2008 and 2016 and four national case studies, the research found that country context matters. Policies that leave behind a vulnerable landscape of greater poverty, social exclusion, and high unemployment trigger citizens’ support for populism, particularly the left-wing type.

 The lack of policies favouring job creation and educational training for citizens between 15 and 34 years old was also found to predict populist attitudes. “This may be a first step in the rise of populism”, says Attila Bartha, from the Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest, who led the research. “When a skilful political entrepreneur embraces populism and there is a supply of populist parties, public support for populist forces will increase.” 

Read more at: 
Social Exclusion, Polarised Societies, and Technocracy Leads to Populism, New Study Argues | News | CORDIS | European Commission

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems - by George Monbiot

NEOLIBERALISM

Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

If you do have the capability to distinguish between "Right and Wrong",  and  are not too preoccupied with other "things" to do, it might be worth your while to read this rather lengthy, but most informative article, to help you understand why the world is in the total mess it is.  Have fun, and don't get too depressed. Tomorrow might bring better tidings - R.M - EU-Digest

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me?  in which he describes his main concern how social change has led to this psychic crisis and altered the way we think about ourselves.re :epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. Unfortunately we are all neoliberals now.

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal international”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

s it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way – among American apostles such as Milton Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.
Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes’s economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, “when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up”. With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter’s administration in the US and Jim Callaghan’s government in Britain.After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied – “my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism”. The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as “an opportunity to radically reform the educational system” in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

Those who own and run the UK’s privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world’s richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. “Like rent,” he argues, “interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort”. As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Chris Hedges remarks that “fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the ‘losers’ who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment”. When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to “cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them”.

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that “in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised.

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. “The market” sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What “the market wants” tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. “Investment”, as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities “camouflages the sources of wealth”, leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining – with some justice – that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman’s classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

Neoliberalism’s triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it’s not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

 EU-Digest - Neoliberalism : "The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by its private citizens" - Ale

Populism:EU Right-wing terrorism: European Perspectives - by Joana Petrescu and team

The attacks in Halle (2019) and Hanau (2020) in Germany are part of a series of horrific acts of far-right terrorism that seems to know no end. It also knows no geographical boundaries: numerous European countries have been victims. Young people from Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Romania report. Terrorism generally refers to all forms of politically motivated violence used systematically by non-state actors with the aim of exerting psychological influence on the population - this is the definition of Armin Pfahl-Traughber, a German political scientist.

Right-wing terrorism is thus a form of terrorism based on extreme right-wing ideas. This is characterised by the fact that it considers one’s own race, nation or society as superior and focuses on national community. While right-wing extremism can generally be seen as the antithesis of democracy and is closely linked to anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia, its spread and form varies widely across Europe. Moreover, there is no unified record of right-wing extremist or terrorist incidents in Europe.

Read more at:
Right-wing terrorism: European Perspectives - The New Federalist

USA: Greed Destroyed US Social Immune System. It’s Time to Rebuild It - by Monika Sauerlein

This crisis is about a lot more than a virus in America.
 
Read more at:
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/03/greed-destroyed-our-social-immune-system-its-time-to-rebuild-it/

EU in turmoil: Is Europe Falling Apart?

Populism, nationalism, and internal griping are deeply, perhaps irreparably, damaging EU and NATO alliances.

Read more at:
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/europe-falling-apart

Populism in Europe: Rise in populism threatens European democracy, warns Tony Blair think tank - by Gavin Gordon

Europe has seen a surge in support for “populist” political parties which threatens to destabilise democracy across the continent, a report by Tony Blair’s think tank has warned.

The survey by the former Prime Minister’s Institute for Global Change found the share of the vote taken by populist parties from both right and left has almost trebled since 2000 – rising from 8.5 to 24.1 per cent.

Over the same period, it said the number of European countries with populist parties participating in government has doubled from seven to 14 – creating an unprecedented “populist belt” from the Baltic to the Aegean.

Read more at: Rise in populism threatens European democracy, warns Tony Blair think tank | The Independent

Populism on the rise: Beyond Boris: Donald Trump(ism) Wins in British Election

What are the hard lessons for Europe and wider geopolitics from Boris Johnson’s victory in the 2019 British general election?

Read more at:
https://www.theglobalist.com/uk-election-2019-boris-johnson-conservatives-brexit-populism/

Democracy: The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - by Rick Shenkman

Everything was unfolding as it usually does. The academics who gathered in Lisbon this summer for the International Society of Political Psychologists’ annual meeting had been politely listening for four days, nodding along as their peers took to the podium and delivered papers on everything from the explosion in conspiracy theories to the rise of authoritarianism.

Then, the mood changed. As one of the lions of the profession, 68-year-old Shawn Rosenberg, began delivering his paper, people in the crowd of about a hundred started shifting in their seats. They loudly whispered objections to their friends. Three women seated next to me near the back row grew so loud and heated I had difficulty hearing for a moment what Rosenberg was saying.

What caused the stir? Rosenberg, a professor at UC Irvine, was challenging a core assumption about America and the West. His theory? Democracy is devouring itself—his phrase — and it won’t last.
As much as President Donald Trump’s liberal critics might want to lay America’s ills at his door, Rosenberg says the president is not the cause of democracy’s fall—even if Trump’s successful anti-immigrant populist campaign may have been a symptom of democracy’s decline.

We’re to blame, said Rosenberg. As in “we the people.”
Democracy is hard work. And as society’s “elites”—experts and public figures who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists.

His prediction? “In well-established democracies like the United States, democratic governance will continue its inexorable decline and will eventually fail.”

Read more: The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - POLITICO Magazine

EU: Tusk pledges 'fight' for EU values as new EPP president - by Elena Sánchez Nicolás

The EU's largest political party's congress gathered in Zagreb on Wednesday (20 November) to nominate outgoing EU Council president Donald Tusk as their new president - as Poland's former prime minister was the only candidate for the position.

With new leadership, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) said it was ready to work on a concrete political strategy to tackle the challenges of the EU's enlargement process and climate change - the two main concerns of the political group at their congress, amid their unfinished battle against Hungary's ruling party Fidesz.

"I am ready to fight" for Christian-Democratic European values and against populism, said Tusk.

"I deeply believe that only those who want and are able to give people a feeling of safety and security, preserving at the same time their freedoms and rights, have a mandate to run for power," he added.

Read more atL Tusk pledges 'fight' for EU values as new EPP president

EU's needs to cleanup and reorganize: "Cleaning up both the EU and Western Balkans" - by Valery Perry and Toby Vogel

A recent New York Times investigation into EU-funded corruption related to agricultural subsidies , The Money Farmers: How Oligarchs and Populists Milk the EU for Millions shines a spotlight on one of the most troubling cases of a member state gaming the system.

The case of Hungary is notable for several reasons. Prime minister Viktor Orban openly opposes the EU's policies and values while benefitting handsomely from its money.
Under his leadership, Hungary has moved in a fundamentally illiberal direction as he has captured large swathes of the economy.

Moreover, the rightward turn in Hungary is part of a global struggle over core political values – between independent rule of law and authoritarian rule; between rights-based systems and exclusionary nationalism; and between accountable, citizen-driven governance and strongman rule.

The timing of the Times' investigation provides a chance to highlight another recent development on the continent that underscores the importance of dealing with the EU's present seeming inability to safeguard liberal values – the EU's decision, forced by French president Emanuel Macron, to delay the opening of membership talks with Albania and North Macedonia, even though they both had met the EU's own requirements for doing so.

There are a number of reasons behind this decision, most notably Macron's stated interest in improving the EU's own internal governance before welcoming new members.

On the one hand, this sounds sensible, and if implemented could ensure a stronger Union to which western Balkans countries could aspire.

However, there is no reason the EU's own self-improvement cannot happen in tandem with simultaneous efforts in the western Balkans. In fact this would lend credence to the EU's favoured notion, "partnership," by demonstrating to EU hopefuls that they must do as they do, not as they say.

Read more at: Cleaning up both the EU and Western Balkans

European Union: Antidote to poisonous populism is a new Pact for a fair, resilient and a sustainable Europe – by Luca Jahier

In a little less than a month, more than 400 million Europeans, the second largest electorate in the world, will go to the polls to elect 751 members of parliament in an election that is probably the most decisive for the future of Europe since 1979, the first time we voted for a transnational parliament.

For the past two years, EU and national leaders as well as civil society representatives have been working relentlessly to define a joint vision for Europe. Several scenarios were outlined by the European Commission. Discussions and consultations were organised, plans sketched, solutions formulated. Never before there has been such a vivid, open and frank debate on the Europe we want and the one we want to leave to the next generations.

Yet, much of this discourse on the future of Europe has been hijacked by eurosceptics and marred by growing destructive populism.  Under the mantle of patriotism, populists promised to defend the interests of the majority against immigrant minorities and “out-of-touch elites”.

 Our values were questioned, the right to do good as the core reason behind of our political action was abandoned and ignored by many.  Nationalism is an ideological poison, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said. This poison risks posing a serious health risk to our democracy, as populism attacks not merely real and imagined elites and the establishment but also the very fundamental idea of political pluralism.

This is why European leaders meeting in Sibiu on the 9 May—Europe day—must quickly inject the antidote, ahead of the European elections on 23-26 May. Many politicians have been at a loss when it comes to countering populism. Increasingly, they have adopted a stance that some call destruction through imitation, meaning outflanking far-right competitors with tough talk on refugees and immigration in order to regain consensus. That narrative has done serious damage to European democracy in recent months, pushing people to vote for even more extremist movements. Instead, democrats should present value choices that can tackle inequality.

Read more at: Antidote to poisonous populism is a new Pact for a fair, resilient and a sustainable Europe – EURACTIV.com

White Nationalism: Born in America is now a global terror threat

Read more at:  

http://theconversation.com/white-nationalism-born-in-the-usa-is-now-a-global-terror-threat-113825

POPULISM: Beware of the simplistic nonsense Populist Rightwing Nationalistic politicians are telling you

Read more at:  

https://www.socialeurope.eu/populism-and-complexity

The US and Britain: The party is over

Read more at;
https://www.theglobalist.com/us-uk-trump-brexit-nationalism-isolationism/

Radicalism and Terrorism - Time to call a spade a spade:Radical right-wing white supremacists who kill people are terrorists just like radical Muslims who kill people - by RM

Populism is dangerous and destructive and the wrong way to go

What a horrible and despicable act of  terrorism it was, committed by this white supremacist on innocent Muslim worshipers in New Zealand

This has to stop.  
 
The fact is that right-wing, white supremacists radicalism, based on Islamophobia, race, culture and adversary-immigration policies, is just as radical as Muslim radicalism, but unfortunately not defined as such, or confronted and fought openly by governments and the press, in the same way as Muslim radical  extremism is. 

Both extremists groups, once they get involved in violent acts, whereby innocent people get killed, are terrorists.  There is no difference between the two.

In Europe and the US, radical right-wing, white supremacists movements are usually still labeled as either nationalist, or populist movements by the media and  politicians, including Donald Trump in the US, Marianne Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders and Thiery Baudet in the Netherlands, Victor Orban in Hungary, Jörg Meuthen and Alexander Gauland, in Germany, Matteo Salvin in Italy, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson in United Kingdom, Michał Marusik in Poland, and Ulrich Schlüer and Pascal Junod in Zwitserland. 

In this context let us also not forget that all of the European politicians mentioned in the paragraph above are being cheered on by their "big brother",  Donald Trump on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, and sad to say, the "love" is mutual.

Unfortunately, this political right-wing alliance has resulted in some extremely negative effects on the well-being of many people around the planet, causing racial and religious tensions, a lack of direction in the area of the environment (the Paris Agreement), nuclear proliferation (the Iran Nuclear Deal framework), a British political debacle (Brexit),  and tariff wars..    

Democracy, as we knew it, is just about non-existent anymore. The Populist radical charade needs to be exposed for what it really is, before many more people lose their lives, as a result of terrorist acts committed by these white supremacists.

It is high time for Governments, politicians, and the press to take their heads out of the sand and call a spade a spade.A terrorist is a terrorist, if he is white, black, brown, or yellow, Christian, or Muslim, or whatever religion he or she professes.

EU-Digest

EU needs to take positives from populism not just fight it

‘Europe needs take the positives from populism, not just fight it’

Read more at: 

https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/07/europe-needs-take-the-positives-from-populism-not-just-fight-it