2017 minus 1936 = 81, an untidy number, not even a prime number. 1936 marked the start of the Spanish Civil War, which resulted in a long hiatus for the Spanish left, as well as the failure of Weimar Germany’s left to prevent Hitler from preparing for war. 2017 sees the entry of the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany Party into the Bundestag for the first time since the end of Hitler’s war — and the near simultaneous refusal of Spain to recognize the overwhelming vote for independence organized by Catalonia’s left-leaning government, provoking a rarely seen massive general strike.
The main issue in Germany’s election was Merkel’s welcoming of almost a million Muslim immigrants in 2015, whom many Germans do not want to see in their midst, while for the Catalonians, just as for their cousins the Venetians who dream of leaving Italy, and the Corsicans who for decades have campaigned — at times violently — to leave France — it is about their culture, their language and history. Although all of these are left-wing movements, economics is the icing on the cake. Catalonia’s Republican Left Party, founded in 1931, was outlawed by Francisco Franco after he won the Civil War in 1939, re-emerging only after his death in 1975. Coincidentally, that was the year in which West Germany became a founding member of the G6 Economic Forum, thanks to its new economic might.
History may not repeat itself, but its left/right cycles come pretty close to doing so. In 2017, once again the left in Spain’s leading region is defeated, as it was in 1939, at the dawn of World War II, while in Germany, Neo-Nazis enter the Bundestag for the first time since that war ended.
Were it not for the Neo-Nazi controlled government in Ukraine, Germany’s AfD Party would be of no more concern than France’s National Front, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, ran unsuccessfully for President. But the EU leadership, in thrall to neo-liberalism, however much voters rebel against its austerity, continues in its assigned role in America’s campaign to bring down Russia’s popular president, Vladimir Putin, by manipulating Ukraine. (Rachel Maddow claims that Russia wants the world to ‘fall apart’, but as usual, she is wrong. Russia is not interested in acquiring more territory, much less, as some claim a propos Ukraine, has it the revanchist objective of putting former Soviet Republics back under Russian rule.)
When American journalists avoid consuming any direct information emanating from the Russian President — including, of course, his speeches — their intellectual tools are likely to be limited to 1940’s cliches. Vladimir Putin has repeated over and over his conviction that the 21st century world would be a more peaceful and prosperous place if it were administered by the half dozen strongest regional players acting in concert — referring to this as a ‘multipolar world — rather than by a unique hegemon that provokes hostilities around the globe in the name of profit. He also knows that such a condominium can only be effective if coupled with ‘local democracy’, which is what regional independence movements are seeking. (In contrast to this democratic matrix, globalism is a honey-pot for the few. Anti-globalists are not against international trade, but they believe that it should not determine the color and density of the many’s lives.)
Even though Washington claims that Russia is interfering in its elections, after supposedly tipping the US scales away from Hillary, for its own good, the EU needs to counter America’s anti-Russian campaign as well as its globalist agenda. In order to arrest the disaffection of its citizens, the EU needs to encourage local autonomy within the condominium context espoused by the Russian president.
The US pursues hegemony at all costs — surely, we would be able to ‘afford’ universal healthcare if we stopped using taxpayer money to generate private profits from war! — while Russia and China are experimenting with various forms of social-democracy, that combines capitalist incentives with government protections, and encourages local government.
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