The most notable developments in the 2019 European elections have been:
- The continued collapse of the center-left (Social Democrats) and center-right (Christian Democrats), the traditional lynchpins of postwar European politics. The Left is also in stagnation, with Corbyn’s Labour, Greece’s Syriza, Spain’s Podemos, and France’s Melenchon all having done poorly.
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The continued rise of nationalists and the Greens, even as the overall left/right balance remains steady. The nationalists win over support both from the center-right (as they turn into just another variety of milquetoast social liberalism) as well as blue-collars disillusioned by the center-left’s turn away from working class concerns to open borders and religious progressivism. The Greens attract more highly educated, cosmopolitan, and younger voters (spiritual figurehead: Greta Thunberg), siphoning even more voters away from the center-left.
Back in 2011, I had only been blogging for three years. However, I think this particular prediction has stood the test of time remarkably well (even if I do say so myself):
Furthermore, I do not think it is an impossible endeavor. While forecasting specifics such as Stalinist central planning or the mystical millenarianism of Nazism would have been impossible for an observer in 1911, entertaining the possibility of the emergence of such regimes was entirely possible by drawing on the main strands of contemporary intellectual thought on new types of politics and society, which at the time resolved around Marxism, utopian socialism, Social Darwinism, and futurism.
What trends would a similar exercise reveal for today? I would argue that the equivalent themes, largely marginalized now but with the potential for explosive growth under the right conditions of socio-political stress, include: the Green movement (ranging the gamut from local sustainability activists to authoritarian ecosocialists); the technoutopians (include the open-source movement, Pirates, technological singularitarians, Wikileaks activists); and a revival of fascist, far-right thought in the guise of ethnic chauvinism and various Third Position ideologies.
The “technoutopians” remain in the electoral gutter, and I suppose will likely remain there (though who knows?).
But the Greens and Far Right are now doubtless the most exciting political movements, with tremendous institutional and memetic energies behind them, respectively.
Like Communism and fascism in the interwar period, they are the “waves of the future.”
There is also a broad geographic pattern.
The Greens are disproportionately powerful in most of “core Europe” – the Greens are the party of German youth – while the Far Right is powerful, especially in Eastern Europe (it is outright dominant in Hungary, where Fidesz + Jobbik got 60%).
I don’t foresee any major change coming from these elections for reasons that Guillaume Durocher expounds upon (“EPP/S&D/ALDE/Green mainstream still enjoy a majority of some 67%, so a continued globalist “grand coalition” appears quite viable”). However, they are certainly revealing as a bellweather of trends.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
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Perhaps we’d be wise to consider “parallel societies” rather than the unlikely event of victory through electoral politics.
The youth organization of the AfD in Berlin has called on the AfD to drop climate change denialism and develop an ecological profile of its own:
https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2019/junge-alternative-afd-soll-auf-umweltschutz-setzen/
“Das Thema Umweltschutz ergänzt sich auch mit dem Schutz der Heimat und der Kultur.”
“Protection of the environment fits well with protection of Heimat and culture.”
imo they’re right, even if it won’t be easy for the right to develop a credible ecological programme. But neglecting the issue and deriding anybody concerned about environmental issues is a huge own goal.
Will the public actually start to feel pain from abandoning nuclear power?
If not, its hard to see an angle on energy policy.
German energy supply is becoming increasingly insecure, there are already situations when energy-intensive industries have their electricity shut off due to shortages.
The situation will become even more critical in three years or so when coal power plants will be taken offline; will lead to the ridiculous situation of Germany becoming dependent on its neighbours for energy, since renewables with their fluctuations aren’t sufficient.
Will also increase the risk of a massive blackout which would lead to hundreds or thousands of deaths.
The whole policy is grotesquely irresponsible, one would need to come up with a credible alternative, without totally rejecting all environmental concerns.
Don’t forget that the current energy policy is also abandoning coal power and promoting electric cars.
http://www.biggreenjoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_1255.jpg
Natural gas is the obvious solution if atomic energy is off the table.
Available in large quantities from Russia and Central Asia at an affordable price. Germany is already the world’s largest importer of dry natural gas, but there is no shortage of supply so more can be imported.
https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=00000000000000000000000000000fvu&c=00000000000g&ct=0&tl_id=2-A&vs=INTL.2-12-DEU-BKWH.A&cy=2016&vo=0&v=H&end=2017
Seems that in 2016 non-hydroelectric renewables were 29% of electricity generation. Fossil fuels were 55%. Unfortunately the EIA doesn’t break down the different types of fossil fuels.
If European youths were really so green, they would drop the cosmopolitanism, opting for a farmer’s life. They won’t give up their city amenities, even if an economy of scarcity is the future. A taste for urban trendiness is not a sign of a majorly educated mind. It shows in most of the European countries’ Ag exports. Only France and Romania are up there in the big leagues, with Germany showing up only a little despite all of their “green” trendies.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2019/
The Brazil of South America and the USA, the Brazil of North America, do pretty well in this economic scenario, though probably not in the way that Thomas Jefferson would have approved of with the small independent farms. The Millennials, USA also cannot be bothered to grow their own food.
Mr. Karlin will be glad to hear that The Hill has placed Andrew Yang 10th on a list of the top 10 Democratic candidates:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/445504-the-top-10-democrats-in-the-2020-race
i think victory through electoral politics is likely in eastern and southern Europe but less so in the hajnal zone – at least not until “normality” has been re-normalized by success elsewhere.
Greens = bourgeois bolsheviks
they might not make much of a direct dent electorally but if they come up with an uncensorable internet they will indirectly decide the future imo.
If I can think back to before the Ukraine war, Russia had considerably more “soft power” in the East than it does today. Libya was a fiasco for the West, and under a left-wing US president.
In the local US context, the dissident Right movements gained considerable softpower in ’16 via meme magic, and then lost it when their leader was publicly sucker punched. The recent UK milkshake attacks are an echo.
Some of the peripheral European countries should consider inviting Chinese investment as a counterbalance to the US and the Blue Banana.
Greens = bourgeois bolsheviks
Watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.
If European youths were really so green, they would drop the cosmopolitanism, opting for a farmer’s life
Dirt farming is not green, on the contrary. Urbanites have a smaller environmental footprint than rural people. It’s like people who believe it’s green for every household to have a powerplant, instead of just having one big plant and an electrical grid.
Green is intensive, industrial, GMO-boosted agriculture for minimum use of acreage. Green is hydrocarbons rather than biofuels grown on cleared rainforest land. Green is nuclear power rather than burning forests.
i agree with this btw – especially in the hajnal countries where electoral politics is less likely to work imo and as a backup plan anyway.
in particular an alt economy that can support the doxxed.
I think their voters are mostly just stupid, naive women
yeah but fanatic ones (cos underneath it’s a puritanical religious cult)
(although that’s the activists not the voters so much)
2016:
Lignite: 23,0%
Bituminous coal: 17,2%
Natural gas: 12,5%
Oil products: 0,9%
https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/index.php?article_id=29&fileName=20181214_brd_stromerzeugung1990-2018.pdf
Yes, in order to get around PayPal et al., what we need is … hawala.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala
I thought this post was OT, unless it’s your version of the green-black wave. That thing must be brand new, there’s no grease on it anywhere. What’s the protein, I can’t quite tell from the distance?
That’s true, and it reminds me of the old German Wandervögel of the early 20th century. You might be on to something there.
Alternatively, AfD could emphasize that real, sustainable solutions to ecological problems will come about not through globalization and lowering western standards of living, but rather through localization (of farming, etc.) and inventing/perfecting new technologies (like hydrogen cars and cold fusion) that depend less on fossil fuels.
The problem with the Global Warming hypothesis is that it is, as they say, a ‘global problem which demands a global solution’. So it’s the fast friend of the globalists and completely incompatible with nationalism.
Will not matter, the Greens are about more than just global warming, they are the woke capitalist types. This means they are anti white, pro mass immigration and pro mass censorship.
International treaties to deal with environmental problems date back over a century with the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911.
There are also plenty of non-environmental problems which require international solutions like arms control, trade, international payments, navigation, etc.
Makes for a great insult!
Of course, the ‘EU Parliament’ is a mere rubber-stamping operation, unable to initiate legislation or policy. A sham Potemkin village parody of democracy intended to fool the gullible – that’s why voters use these elections in order to shock and protest.
The REAL power in the EU vests with the commission which is unelected, unaccountable and unanswerable. Purely and simply the EU is a dictatorship, an incompetent over wheening over hearing will-to-power dictatorship.
if people who believe in the carbon thing want a right-wing alternative (or even if they don’t but think they need one for the youth) then
simple fact is the West has been reducing their carbon footprint by shipping factories to countries with less environmental protection so effectively they’ve been increasing their carbon footprint so
1) bring back the factories
2) impose extreme environmental regulations on them
this would make the goods produced more expensive and impossible to compete with goods produced without those regulations so
3) compensate for competitive disadvantage by putting high tariffs on imports that don’t comply with those extreme environmental regulations.
Interesting that you did not mention that european greens are quite russophobic.
So, from what I gather here, the Greens are:
– anti white
– pro mass immigration
– by extension pro materialism
– anti nuclear
– anti Russia
– anti coal (anti working class)
So yeah, these are the “Centrists” rebranded as Green so all the emotional, childish and sheltered young women have an outlet to vote for the (((good guys))). Green people are generally fucking imbeciles, to put it politely. I have no problem with people who choose to live off the grid. But don’t tell me I’m a bad person for driving to work, when you buy the latest iPhone, jet around Europe and drink away your parents’ money. Just no reasoning with them. If you care about the planet become Amish.
White guilt doesn’t work anymore wrt to race, so now it’s back to “Consumerist Guilt” or whatever it is. Face it. The vast majority of white people are idiots and probably deserve to be wiped out, based on how wimpy they are.
If eastern Europe can resist the rising tide of Poz. Which is very unlikely.
I posted that because it’s green and black, not to go OT.
I do not own a Big Green Egg.