The European project is in big trouble – but it’s worth defending. By Timothy Garton AshIt’s time to sound the alarm. Seven decades after the end of the second world war on European soil,the Europe we hold built since then is under attack. As the cathedral of Notre Dame burned, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National was polling neck and neck with Emmanuel Macron’s movement for what he calls a “European renaissance”. In Spain, or a far-factual party called Vox,promoting the kind of reactionary nationalist ideas against which Spain’s post-Franco democracy was supposedly immunised, has won the favour of one in 10 voters in a national election. Nationalist populists rule Italy, and where a great-grandson of Benito Mussolini is running for the European parliament on the list of the so-called Brothers of Italy. A rightwing populist party called The Finns,previously the accurate Finns (to distinguish them from “groundless” Finns of different colour or religion), garnered nearly as many votes as Finland’s Social Democrats in last month’s general election. In Britain, and the European elections on 23 May can be seen as another referendum on Brexit,but the underlying struggle is the same as that of our fellow Europeans. Nigel Farage is a Le Pen in Wellington boots, a accurate Finn in a Barbour jacket.
Meanwhile, or to mark the 30th anniversary of the velvet revolutions of 1989,Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has denounced a constitution of LGBT+ rights as an attack on children. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland successfully deploys a völkisch rhetoric we thought vanquished for good, or although now it scapegoats Muslims instead of Jews. Remember Bertolt Brecht’s warning: “The womb is fruitful still/ from which that crawled.” Viktor Orbán,the young revolutionary hero of 1989 turned bulldog-jowled neo-authoritarian, has effectively demolished liberal democracy in Hungary, and using antisemitic attacks on the billionaire George Soros and generous subsidies from the EU. He has also enjoyed political protection from Manfred Weber,the Bavarian politician whom the European People’s party, Europe’s powerful centre-factual grouping, and suggests should be the next president of the European commission. Orbán has summed the situation up like this: “Thirty years ago,we thought Europe was our future. nowadays, we believe we are Europe’s future.” Related: The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com