A surprisingly lucid article for such a dubious publication. Although this article gives more credit to the so-called “populist” right than it deserves, the main point it makes is more or less what i’ve been saying as well, namely that due to the profoundly undemocratic nature of the EU and the iron institutional and ideological grip of the liberal Atlanticist establishment on all EU institutions and most European governments, not much will change in the broader picture as a result of these most recent elections.
We may see some minor changes on the local level, in some places for the worse, in others hopefully for the better, but the overall trajectory of Europe remains the same. It seems no political force at the moment, either on the right or the left, has found any way out of the predicament we are in. The EU is a prison of nations, it is unreformable and there is no way forward as long as we are stuck in it. So the outlook is bleak: deindustrialization, austerity, permanent US vassalage, global irrelevancy, war.
Or if i may use another metaphor: we are locked in a vehicle heading for a cliff, the steering wheel is stuck, and the driver refuses to take their foot off the gas.
I think the whole thing is more of a domestic referendum. I agree that from EU perspective nothing much will change, but I do think it’s indicating a shift away from Atlanticist politics.
I don’t think that foreign policy was even a factor in these elections for most people i know. Unlike our political elite, most of the regular people in Europe are very inward focused, we’re only really thinking about our own immediate, everyday concerns. Most people i know here in Germany hardly ever think about the fact that there is a world outside of their own city or Bundesland, let alone outside of Europe. Their main reasons for voting are local grievances.
Admittedly this is because i mostly interact with a certain milieu. I may have a totally different impression if i was embedded in the socio-economic strata who have the money to go on expensive vacations multiple times a year and who go on fancy international business trips and hobnob with the corporate elite on both sides of the Atlantic. But those people are certainly not going to want us to move away from the US, they are the sort of people who want to double down on the Atlanticist project.
So i’m not so sure about there being any shift away from the current policies in this regard.
From what I’m reading a lot of people are starting to connect the war with the drop in living standards. Local grievances are directly linked to the foreign policy that the Atlanticist bloc is pushing. And the EU parliamentary elections show that parties that are against the war are the ones gaining ground, both from the right and the left.
I’m just speaking anecdotally. You may be completely right and i just don’t have a big enough sample size of people.
I haven’t looked too closely at the results in other countries but for sure in Germany the two main political forces that are skeptical of the war, AfD and BSW, have done quite well.
My worry is that this might not have so much to do with people actually connecting the deterioration in their everyday situation with what is happening in foreign policy, but rather that they are merely responding positively to some of the right wing populist grievances that both of these parties are taking advantage of and which the liberal establishment has been ignoring for so long.
I think we’ll have more clarity after the next national elections. Then we will really see which way the wind is blowing and whether people really are starting to wake up.
You’re right, It’s honestly hard to say what the real mood is, and I could be easily projecting what I want to see into the results here. The national election will definitely be a a much better indicator.
