Giorgia Meloni: The hard work is just starting

 

Giorgia Meloni, October 21, 2022

 

In the space of four years, Giorgia Meloni has gone from being the leader of a minor party to being the leader of Italy, with an absolute majority in both houses of parliament. But she will not find it easy to put her electoral platform into practice.

 

 

Four years ago, when I last wrote about Italy’s political situation, Giorgia Meloni was leading a party that had won only 2% of the popular vote. Her party was, in fact, the smallest member of a coalition dominated by Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord. All of that changed with this year’s election. Her party took 26% of the vote, and the coalition 43%. She is now Prime Minister.

 

Meloni rose to power because she lacked the weaknesses of her two coalition rivals. She wasn’t an establishment conservative like Berlusconi, and she wasn’t a northern regionalist like Salvini. She was thus seen as the one who could best represent the entire country and deal with its problems, especially the existential crisis of rising immigration and falling fertility. Will Italians continue to have a homeland for themselves and their descendants? Or will they go the way of other nations that are now footnotes in history?

 

That may sound like hyperbole. With a population of sixty million, Italians will surely enjoy a supermajority in their country for years to come. Keep in mind, however, that their mean age is 47; therefore, more than half are past the age of reproduction. With a fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, the smaller "procreative fraction" of the population will fall by almost 50% with each generation. Meanwhile, the foreign citizen population has risen from 1.3 million in 2002 to 5.2 million in 2021. The total number of immigrants is actually larger:

 

In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population. These figures do not include naturalized foreign-born residents (about 1,620,000 foreigners acquired Italian citizenship from 1999 to 2020, of whom 130,000 did so in 2020) as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000. (Wikipedia 2022)

 

The demographic crisis is key to understanding Meloni’s electoral platform:

 

·         taxation that takes the size of the nuclear family into account

·         a lower sales tax of 4% on goods for young children

·         public funding of housing for Italian families who do not own a home. Eligible families must have at least one gainfully employed member

·         no birthright citizenship and no decriminalization of illegal immigration

·         a naval blockade to halt illegal immigration across the Mediterranean

 

Although her coalition enjoys an absolute majority in both houses of parliament, she will not find it easy to put her platform into practice:

 

She will very soon have to deal with the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the United States, if she does not respect the treaties on the management of immigration, Islam, free and undistorted competition and the European Union's defence policy.

 

If she is really very brave, she will carry on regardless and continue her policy. That is when the European Central Bank will deal with her. Indeed, Italy has become, thanks to Berlusconi, a beggar. It owes its survival only to the accommodative policy of the ECB, which massively buys its abysmal debt, and protects it from hedge funds. Remember that the ECB holds 780 billion [euros] of Italian public debt (30% of total debt), and that this is only growing. Italy's 10-year borrowing rates have already exceeded 4%, which is completely unbearable for the country's budget. Then it would be enough for the ECB to stop its purchases, or even to sell part of its stock on the market at a low price, to immediately raise this rate to stratospheric levels, and make Italy look like Zimbabwe. And the same people who were yesterday in the street with signs of support will throw stones at her while insulting her. (Falento 2022)

 

Looking to the future

 

To date, nationalist victories have been on the periphery of Western Europe, and not in its core. The periphery is home to people who have not fully assimilated into the Western world-system, largely because they are less proficient in English—the main conduit of neo-Western culture. So it is difficult to make them understand ideas and social norms that emanate from the core, let alone comply with them. As a general rule, the periphery is where a world-system has the most trouble imposing its will, not only politically and economically but also culturally and ideologically.

 

The next decade will see rising tensions between the core and the periphery, and it’s difficult to say which will prevail. The periphery is being taken over by nationalists, like Giorgia Meloni, while the core remains dominated by elites who are pushing the globalist project: on the one hand, they want to export high-wage jobs to countries where labor is cheaper; on the other, they want to import low-wage labor for jobs that cannot be exported, i.e., jobs in construction, agriculture, and services.

 

That is why median wages in the West have scarcely risen over the past half-century. High-wage “breadwinner” jobs in manufacturing are largely gone, and the jobs that remain are increasingly low-paying ones in services. During the 2020s, wage stagnation will give way to a leveling downward of wages throughout the West. Elsewhere, the leveling upward will be modest and uneven. The inner periphery will get the worst of both worlds: they’re not poor enough to attract low-wage industries, but not rich enough to attract the financial industry jobs that are concentrated in London, New York, and other world centres.

 

It is doubtful whether globalization will be a net benefit for the average person in the world.  Wealth is created most efficiently in high-trust societies, and those societies are the ones most affected by “replacement migration.” We may simply end up with a world where most workers are equally poor and equally mistrustful of each other.

 

 

References

 

Falento, A. (2022). Giorgia Meloni ne pourra rien faire si elle ne sort pas de l’Union européene. Riposte laïque. September 26. https://ripostelaique.com/giorgia-meloni-ne-pourra-rien-faire-si-elle-ne-sort-pas-de-lunion-europeene.html  

 

Frost, P. (2017). Terra Nostra, for how long? Evo and Proud, November 23. https://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2017/11/terra-nostra-for-how-long.html  

 

Wikipedia (2022). Immigration to Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Italy

Thoughts on the Italian election

Matteo Salvini - leader of Lega and the center-right coalition (Wikicommons)

What do I think of the Italian election results? How well do they bear out the predictions I made last November? In some ways, the nationalists did better than I expected, and in some ways worse. First the good news.

Western Europe's first nationalist government

Lega Nord (now simply Lega) went into the election as a junior partner in a center-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi. It is now the senior partner. Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, did poorly, getting only 14% of the popular vote in comparison to Lega's 17%. Given that 4% of all votes went to the other nationalist party in the coalition, Fratelli d'Italia, we see that Italian support for the center-right is much more nationalist than conservative.

With a plurality of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, Matteo Salvini will likely form the next government. He will bring a new perspective to the job of Italian prime minister:

Matteo Salvini embraces a very critical view of the European Union (EU), especially of the euro, which he once described a "crime against humanity". Salvini is also opposed to illegal immigration and the EU's management of asylum seekers.

On economic issues, he supports flat tax, tax cuts, fiscal federalism, protectionism and, to some extent, agrarianism. On social issues, Salvini opposes same-sex marriage, while he supports family values and the legalisation of brothels. In foreign policy he opposed the international embargo against Russia of 2014 and supported an economic opening to Eastern Europe and to countries of the Far East such as North Korea. (Wikipedia 2018)

Lega's success is in contrast to the situation in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, where nationalist parties have done well but have never been part of a ruling coalition. We thus have the strange sight of Angela Merkel looking for coalition partners on the left and even the far left, while studiously ignoring Alternative für Deutschland, a party that won 13% of the popular vote in her country's last general election.

Now the bad news:

A hung parliament and false friends

Without a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the center-right coalition will need support from the Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement), which came second with 33% of the popular vote. Unfortunately, that party will be far from supportive. It is not at all nationalist—contrary to what you may have read or heard.

Yes, the co-founder of the Five Star Movement, "Beppe" Grillo, has called for deportation of "terrorists" and people with no right to asylum:

"The migratory situation is out of control," Grillo wrote on his blog. "Our country is becoming a place where terrorists come and go and we are not able to recognise and report them and they can wander all over Europe undisturbed thanks to Schengen." "Those who have the right to asylum should stay in Italy, all the others should be repatriated at once, starting from today." "Schengen must be revised," he said, adding it should be suspended "immediately and border controls reinstated" when there is an attack until the suspects have been captured. (ANSA 2016)

Also, the current leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio, has called for "an immediate stop to the sea-taxi service", i.e., the ferrying of African migrants to Italy by NGOs (Reuters 2017).

Tough words. Keep in mind, however, that similar words have been spoken by conservative politicians elsewhere—Deport terrorists! No fake refugees! The problem, here, isn't that such promises have often been broken. The problem is that the issue of population replacement isn't even being addressed. The deconstruction of Europe thus continues, and at an ever higher rate.

Furthermore, if we look at actual party policy, and not personal opinions, we get a different picture of the Five Star Movement. In 2014 its members voted to decriminalize illegal immigration:

The Five Star Movement activists say no to the crime of illegal immigration. The majority of votes, which were cast online on Beppe Grillo's blog, were in favor of repealing the crime of illegal immigration. Yes for the repeal: 15,839. No: 9,093. There were 24,932 voters. (Corriere del Sera 2014)

Admittedly, that was four years ago, but only this year Luigi Di Maio reacted angrily when “extremist” remarks were made about immigration by the center-right candidate for Lombardy, Attilio Fontana.

"Berlusconi says that we are worse than the post-communists, that they are moderate and we extremists, but after Fontana's phrase about the white race are we sure that they are the moderates? If they are moderate then I am Gandhi. [...] We want to know if Fontana remains their presidential candidate [for Lombardy]." (ANSA 2018b)

Were Fontana's remarks extremist? Judge for yourself:

This is not an issue of being xenophobic or racist, but a question of being logical or rational. We cannot [accept all asylum seekers] because we won’t all fit in, so we have to make choices. We must decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society, should continue to exist or if it should be wiped out. A serious State should plan and program a situation of this type. It should say how many we consider it right to receive and how many migrants we don't want to allow in, how we want to assist them, what jobs to give them, what homes and schools to give them. At that point, when a government prepares a project of this type, it submits it to its citizens.

It is absolutely unacceptable to say that we have to accept them all. It is a scheme that we must react against, that it is necessary to rebel against. We cannot accept them all because, if we did, we would no longer be ourselves as a social reality, as an ethnic reality. Because there are many more of them than us, and they are much more determined to occupy this territory. (ANSA 2018a; ANSA 2018b)

On March 4, the people passed judgment on Fontana: he was elected governor of Lombardy.

In all this, the Five Star Movement comes across as being too worried about its image and not sufficiently concerned about offering a coherent policy. This is a common failing of populist movements.

Conclusion

With this election, the bloc of nationalist states has welcomed a new member—a country near the core of the Western world-system. There is now a continuous stretch of territory from the Baltic to the Mediterranean where post-nationalism is no longer a “consensus.”

This new reality has not gone unnoticed, and there will likely be efforts to turn back the clock. The Italian parliament will become mired in one stalemate after another, and Salvini may have to go directly to the people, using his bully pulpit to rally support for his measures. Don't expect to see the Five Star Movement play a constructive role.

Salvini will also face determined opposition from the courts, the civil service, and the media—what we call the deep state. The situation, however, isn't the same as in the United States, where the elites don’t feel much in common with the American people and see no reason why they should. If Salvini can present his arguments boldly and energetically, he will mobilize support even among his country’s elites.

References

ANSA (2018a). White race at risk - Fontana on migrants (2). Centre-right Lombardy candidate says not question of racism, ANSAen Politics, January 15

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2018/01/15/white-race-at-risk-fontana-on-migrants-2_f044a79f-dc1e-43fa-aa42-d69c42f2e5cb.html

ANSA (2018b). Attilio Fontana si scusa per la 'razza bianca' ANSAit. Lombardia, January 17

http://www.ansa.it/lombardia/notizie/2018/01/15/fontana-razza-bianca-a-rischio-per-i-migranti_bcda489a-d3fe-49d7-84f8-e20ac2c338ef.html

ANSA (2106). Grillo calls for mass deportations (2).ANSAen Politics, December 23

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/politics/2016/12/23/grillo-calls-for-mass-deportations-2_c2583737-0f97-4157-a2f3-d2a9137728b6.html  

Corriere della Sera. (2014). Grillo, gli iscritti del M5S dicono no al reato di immigrazione clandestine, January 13

http://www.corriere.it/politica/14_gennaio_13/grillo-lancia-consultazioni-reato-clandestinita-dissidenti-politica-non-sia-videogame-b474ad60-7c49-11e3-bc95-3898e25f75f1.shtml?refresh_ce-cp

Reuters (2017). Italian prosecutors widen investigation to include MSF over migrant rescues: source, World News, August 5

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-migrants-medecins-sans-frontier/italian-prosecutors-widen-investigation-to-include-msf-over-migrant-rescues-source-idUSKBN1AL0HZ?il=0

Wikipedia (2018). Matteo Salvini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matteo_Salvini

The unlikely domino

Ahmed Ouyahia, "The Eradicator" - Prime Minister of Algeria. (Wikicommons: Magharebia). "We are the kings of our home!"

When political change comes to a world-system, does it begin near the center and then spread outward? That seems to be the common view. Karl Marx predicted that communism would first triumph in the U.K., France, and Germany, yet he was proven wrong. In 17th century England the "Levellers" called for giving all men the right to vote, an aim first achieved in the United States and only much later in England. Similarly, the late 19th century saw women gain voting rights in Scandinavia, some Australian colonies, and some western U.S. states. Not until 1928 were the same rights recognized in the U.K. 

The center is an interesting place for new ideas, but it's terrible for getting them implemented. It’s the place where power is concentrated, where resistance to change is strongest, where the elite has been established the longest, and where the elite has diverged the most from ordinary people in terms of self-interest and social distance. So the center is where new ideas have the most trouble spreading through all social strata and gaining acceptance. 

The situation is different farther out on the periphery of a world-system. Social distances are generally shorter and the elites less entrenched. This is partly because peripheral societies tend to be more recent—often beginning as colonies of central societies—and partly because weaker control by the center and greater contact with other world-systems may make them the scene of war, rebellion, and social upheaval, which in turn means replacement of local elites. New ideas can thus percolate more easily throughout the whole of a peripheral society

These are tendencies to be sure and, as such, may not always hold true. The periphery may be a quiet backwater where elites stay put and become more distant from the people. Furthermore, a new idea may face hostility not only from the elite but also from ordinary people. Communism, for instance, was admired in the Muslim world for its opposition to Western imperialism, but its atheism made support impossible among the working people it targeted.

In writing this series I'm simply arguing that public sympathy isn't the only factor in the spread and acceptance of new ideas. There is also elite hostility, and that factor tends to be more formidable at the center than at the periphery.

The next two to three years

A nationalist bloc of European nations has formed on the periphery of the Western world—Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary. This has happened not only because public sympathy for nationalism is stronger there but also because elite hostility is weaker. The elites are less differentiated from the rest of society; consequently, there is more social cohesion and commonality of purpose. Finally, the language of the Western world being above all English, the centre has trouble maintaining ideological conformity in those countries where English is poorly understood and where ideology, like culture in general, tends to be locally produced.

In my previous posts I’ve argued that the nationalist bloc will spread outward into culturally similar countries, as well as into countries where post-national elites are unpopular and weakly entrenched. By the year 2021 this bloc will cover a much larger area: almost all of central and eastern Europe, plus Italy. 

It will also include a seemingly unlikely area that isn't European at all, an area that is, in fact, African and Muslim.  

Background to the migrant crisis

Population pressure has been mounting in sub-Saharan Africa for some time. While fertility rates have fallen throughout most of the world, often dramatically, the picture is different in this world region. Fertility declines have at best been modest, and in some countries, like Somalia, fertility has actually risen. The current pace of population growth will continue even if fertility rates fall dramatically:

Rapid population growth in Africa is anticipated even assuming that there will be a substantial reduction of fertility levels in the near future. The medium-variant projection assumes that fertility in Africa will fall from around 4.7 births per woman in 2010-2015 to 3.1 in 2045-2050, reaching a level slightly above 2.1 in 2095-2100. After 2050, it is expected that Africa will be the only region still experiencing substantial population growth. As a result, Africa's share of global population, which is projected to grow from roughly 17 per cent in 2017 to around 26 per cent in 2050, could reach 40 per cent by 2100.

[...] It should be noted that the population of Africa will continue to increase in future decades even if the number of births per woman falls instantly to the level required for stabilization of population size in the long run, known also as "replacement-level fertility". Growth continues in that scenario thanks to the age structure of the population, which is currently quite youthful. The large numbers of children and youth in Africa today will reach adulthood in future decades. Because of their large numbers, their childbearing will contribute to a further increase of population even assuming that they will bear fewer children on average than their parents' generation. In all plausible scenarios of future trends, Africa will play a central role in shaping the size and distribution of the world's population over the next few decades. (United Nations, 2017, p. xxii)

Meanwhile, the inevitable has begun. When the slave trade ended in the early 19th century there began a long period when relatively few people left sub-Saharan Africa. Some did, but their numbers were relatively small—Senegalese riflemen, Somali seamen and, later, university students. This hiatus came to an end in the early 1970s. To fill insecure, low-paying jobs, French employers extended their zone of recruitment to sub-Saharan Africa, and this example was followed by employers elsewhere. Even Greece began to recruit African labor for jobs in construction, agriculture, and shipping (Pteroudis 1996).

The stream of migrants continued despite the economic slowdown that set in with the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the 1982-1983 recession. They came for the most part on temporary visas and then overstayed. Large-scale illegal entry did not begin until the early 2000s, via a route across the Sahara to Libya and then across the Mediterranean to Italy by boat (De Haas 2008). In 2008, Silvio Berlusconi, signed a treaty with Muammar Gaddafi to block this route, but enforcement collapsed with Gaddafi's overthrow and murder in 2011. The result was a surge in African migration.

Yet this surge is only the tip of the iceberg:

[...] it is a misconception that all or most migrants crossing the Sahara are "in transit" to Europe. There are possibly more sub-Saharan Africans living in the Maghreb than in Europe. An estimated 65,000 and 120,000 sub-Saharan Africans enter the Maghreb yearly overland, of which only 20 to 38 per cent are estimated to enter Europe. While Libya is an important destination country in its own right, many migrants failing or not venturing to enter Europe prefer to stay in North Africa as a second-best option (De Haas 2008).

African migrants currently take three routes to Europe: a western route via Morocco and Spain; a central one via Libya and Italy, and an eastern one via Egypt and Greece. Given the chaos in Libya, the central route is shifting to Algeria, and that country is increasingly becoming their final destination. "Our studies revealed that more than half of the migrants in Algeria actually live there," explains MDM. [Médecins du Monde]" Even if this was not their plan at the beginning, they end up finding a job and settling in one place." (Matarese 2016)

A changing response

Until recently, the official Algerian response has been similar to that of Western countries. Last July, the government announced plans to grant at least some of them residency rights and job permits. These measures were announced in a sympathetic tone:

"The presence of our African brothers in our country will be regulated and the Ministry of the Interior is using the police and the gendarmerie to take a census of all the displaced people," said Tebboune, who was replying to the concerns of deputies of the National Popular Assembly during debate over the government's action plan.

[...] "There are parties who wish to tarnish Algeria's image and label it as a racist country,' said Tebboune, who added: "We are not racists. We are African, Maghrebin, and Mediterranean."

"Africa and the Arab world are the natural extension of Algeria and the space in which it has evolved and developed," said Tebboune, underscoring "the moral and human duty that requires us to provide assistance to our brothers who are forced to flee their lands because of poverty and the torment of war." (Huffpost 2017)

Other members of the government, however, were less sympathetic. Also last July, the Minister of State, Ahmed Ouyahia, condemned the growing numbers of African migrants:

The African community that illegally resides in Algeria brings drugs, delinquency, and other scourges. One cannot say to the authorities: "Throw them into the sea" but one must live in Algeria legally.  [...] People will say to me "human rights!" but we are the kings of our home! (RT 2017)

Public opinion has also turned sour. In June of this year, an anti-migrant campaign was launched on the Algerian social media via the hashtag No to Africans in Algeria! This slogan may sound strange in a country that is, in fact, in Africa, but the reality is that the average Algerian feels more in common with Europe or the Middle East.

Anti-migrant discourse is summed up by this comment:

[...] these Africans from all over the Sahel think they're in conquered territory, being arrogant and threatening. They forcefully demand money and not food. They're everywhere and present a sorry picture of what a human being should be. Begging, nothing but begging from these hefty guys who are more athletic than Cristiano Ronaldo and who refuse to roll up their shirtsleeves and work. Now they're no longer content to be in southern Algeria; that's no longer their fine seigneury. They're moving into the coastal cities. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and more come every day. (RT 2017)

Threatening behavior might work in Europe, where the average citizen feels that only the police are entitled to respond to threats with violence. In Algeria, however, the police are a relatively recent institution, as is State authority in general, and every adult male feels entitled to use violence if threatened or even insulted. An exchange of insults can quickly escalate into fighting by both parties:

Kader, an Ivorian who has been in Algeria for six years, said there was a growing number of Guineans in Algiers. "They don't know the country, and they react very badly the minute an Algerian is rude to them or insults them. It ends up in a fight, and people get hurt." (Chenaoui 2017)

A single incident may become a riot. In March 2016 more than a hundred residents of a small town south of Algiers showed up at an abandoned shopping center where migrants were living and assaulted dozens of them in retaliation for an alleged rape (The Observers 2016). At about the same time in another town, some 300 local inhabitants surrounded and attacked a refugee reception center after a migrant from Niger murdered a local resident during a break-in (Huffpost 2016)

Last August, Ahmed Ouyahia was appointed Prime Minister, and migrant policy has grown increasingly hardline. Since August 25, more than 3,000 migrants have been summarily deported to Niger, including many from other African countries (HRW 2017). There is a striking similarity here to Israel’s response when African migrants began pouring into that country. It, too, initially responded like Western states but did an about-face partly because of the magnitude of the problem and partly because of pressure from public opinion. Whatever one thinks of either country, they are both fundamentally democratic, more so in fact than most Western countries. The elites cannot defy public opinion because they’re too close to the public and because they lack the firm ideological control that makes defiance possible.

Algeria, like Israel, will have to adopt harsher measures against the migrant influx. Unlike Israel, the migrant population is much larger and will continue to grow through natural increase alone. Meanwhile, public opinion is radicalizing. The situation may become like what we see in Greece, but without the external coercion that comes with being an EU member.

The migrant issue will loom large in Algeria's 2019 presidential election. Ahmed Ouyahia may run as a Trump-like populist candidate. He may even, à la Trump, call for construction of a fence along the southern border. And like Trump he has already been condemned by human rights groups, notably for his role in the "eradicator" faction that pushed for all-out war against the Islamist insurgency in the 1990s.

References

Chenaoui, Z. (2017). Adrift in Algiers: African migrants marooned in a new transit bottleneck, The Guardian, October 31

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/31/algeria-african-migrants-libya-civil-war-europe

De Haas, H. (2008). Irregular Migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union: An Overview of Recent Trends, International Organization for Migration, Geneva

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/14f2/ff491b6e9e0f66ad69ab58444bf3f3330708.pdf

HRW (2017). Algeria: Surge in Deportations of Migrants. Apparent Racial Profiling, Summary Expulsion of Sub-Saharan Africans, Human Rights Watch, October 30

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/10/30/algeria-surge-deportations-migrants

Huffpost (2016). Après les affrontements de Ouargla, 700 migrants subsahariens transférés à Tamanrasset (Wali), March 3

http://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/2016/03/03/affrontements-ouargla-migrants_n_9371888.html

Huffpost (2017). Abdelmadjid Tebboune : La présence des migrants subsahariens sur le territoire algérien sera réglementée, June 24

http://www.huffpostmaghreb.com/2017/06/24/tebboune-migrants-subsaha_n_17281390.html

Matarese, M. (2016). Migrants in Algeria struggle for acceptance, Middle East Eye, January 6

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/taboo-migrants-algeria-707071868

Pteroudis, E. (1996). Emigrations et immigrations en Grèce, évolutions récentes et questions politiques, Revue européenne de migrations internationales, 12, 159-189 (Espagne, Portugal, Grèce, pays d'immigration).

RT (2017). L'Algérie raciste ? Une directive anti-migrants, finalement retirée, fait polémique dans le pays. RT en français, October 3

https://francais.rt.com/france/44118-algerie-raciste-politique-anti-migrants

The Observers (2016). Police watch as locals attack migrants in Algeria, March 29

http://observers.france24.com/en/20160329-video-algeria-migrants-attack-african

United Nations (2017). World Population Prospects. The 2017 Revision, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Volume 1, Comprehensive Tables

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf

The next two to three years

Election posters for the radical nationalist SRS (Srpska radikalna stranka), (Wikicommons: Micki)

A nationalist bloc of nations has come into being in eastern and central Europe—Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary. This is a new development, and most commentators in North America and Western Europe are still digesting what has happened. So they are easy prey for three misconceptions:

This is right-wing nationalism, even far right. Actually, in denouncing the erosion of the welfare state and in rejecting military intervention abroad, it has more in common with Bernie Sanders than with Margaret Thatcher. It is, in fact, a sharp break with the thinking that has dominated the right since the days of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s.

This is a return to the belligerent nationalism of the early 20th century. Europe no longer has enough young men to sacrifice in needless wars—ironically, that's what postnational Western elites have been pushing. In the early 21st century, nationalism is about rejecting military adventurism abroad and defending what we have at home.

This is an Eastern European thing, a legacy of communism. True, in its initial stages. National identity is stronger in Eastern Europe, partly because the Iron Curtain hindered the inflow of Western culture and partly because these societies are less differentiated and more homogeneous. Because citizens share similar interests, consensus can be reached more easily and then spread elsewhere. And the new nationalist consensus has already spread west of the former Iron Curtain. 

Over the next two to three years, this consensus will spread into other small countries or regions where the elites are close to the people, where English isn't widely used, and where the culture is similar and tends to be locally produced. The next dominoes to fall will thus probably be Slovenia and Croatia to the south and Switzerland, Bavaria, and Saxony to the west. This political change will happen as much through ideological conversion of old parties as through electoral upsets by new parties.

The nationalist consensus will spread to other countries with the help of another factor: the relative weakness of the local elite and, conversely, the relative strength of public feeling that change is necessary. If we look at Europe as a whole, we can identify two zones where the elites are weak and the desire for change is correspondingly strong. One is Serbia/Macedonia/Bulgaria. The other is Italy.

Serbia

Although Serbia is next to Hungary, it has less in common with that country than does Austria or Czechia. As a state within Yugoslavia, it was never part of the Warsaw Pact and only an associate member of Comecon. It was communist, yes, but it remained nonaligned during the Cold War. In addition, its religious heritage is Orthodox and not Catholic. Like much of the Orthodox world, it had once lived under Muslim rule and thus views the Islamic world differently—as a former colonizing power and not as a former victim of colonialism.

Currently, Serbia is ruled by the SNS (Srpska napredna stranka), which won 48% of the vote in the 2016 parliamentary elections. The party originated in a group that broke away from the much more radical SRS (Srpska radikalna stranka), a nationalist party that opposes European integration and globalism. Internationally, the SNS cooperates with the FPO of Austria (Freedom Party) and Yedinaya Rossiya (United Russia). 

Nonetheless, Serbia’s governing party is acting more and more like postnational Western elites. In 2015, it gave 600,000 migrants free passage through the country, partly under pressure from the EU—as the foreign minister hinted in an interview with Deutsche Welle:

DW: Serbia is one of the main countries that refugees transit on the Balkan route to the European Union. What measures has your country adopted in response?

Ivica Dacic: Up to now we had a fair and constructive approach to this issue, and for this we were praised by the entire world and commended for our behavior from the European Union, the United Nations and all world powers. I have to note that in 2015 we had 600,000 migrants pass through Serbia. (Deutsche Welle 2016)

The government is in fact seeking EU membership:

Serbia's prime minister said Wednesday [June 28, 2017] her future government's goal is membership in the European Union along with modernization of the troubled Balkan country.

Ana Brnabic told Serbian parliament that the government will lead a "balanced" foreign policy, seeking good relations with Russia, China and the U.S.

Lawmakers are expected to vote her government into office later this week. If confirmed, Brnabic will become Serbia's first ever female and openly gay prime minister.

"The time before us will show how brave we are to move boundaries," Brnabic said in her speech. "Now is the moment to make a step forward and take our society, country and economy into the 21st century."

She warned that "if we don't take that chance, we can hardly count on another one again."

When President Aleksandar Vucic nominated the U.S.- and U.K.-educated Brnabic to succeed him as prime minister earlier this month, it was seen as an attempt to calm Western concerns that Serbia was getting too chose to Russia despite its proclaimed goal of joining the EU. (Gec 2017) 

This pro-EU attitude has been adopted in the name of realism. Unemployment hovers at 20% and, despite widespread privatization, the painful transition to a market economy is showing no signs of ending. For advocates of EU membership, the solution is to be patient and to work at becoming like Western Europe. This discourse has a strong element of faith:

There is a Serbia of lies, deceptions, myths, hatred, and death. It is a rural, patriarchal, collectivistic, clerical, anti-Western and anti-modern Serbia. It is also a Serbia manipulated by cynical leaders who exploit its primitiveness and stupidity. Whenever this Serbia had its say, it brought death onto others, and misery onto itself. But, there is another Serbia, urban, modern, pacifist, cosmopolitan, liberal, democratic and European! This is our Serbia! This other Serbia is the only possible future for all of us! We will work hard together with our neighbors and foreign friends to reform Serbia and make it worthy of the European future that awaits it. (Vetta 2009)

Neighboring Bulgaria, however, has been an EU member since 2007 and a NATO member since 2004, yet there too the "transition" shows no signs of ending. The unemployment rate is lower, around 10%, but this figure excludes the large numbers of young Bulgarians who have left the country. From almost nine million in 1988, the population has fallen to a little over seven million today. Serbia is likewise losing its young people, as is most of Eastern Europe.

The transition to a Western market economy has been problematic wherever one goes beyond the Hajnal Line—this imaginary line that runs from Trieste to St. Petersburg. Individualism is weaker and kinship correspondingly stronger, with the result that nepotism and familialism prevent the market from working optimally. We in the West call this "corruption," yet most people in the world think it's normal to favor your kin, just as it's normal to favor yourself. Kith and kin are an extension of the self.

To be sure, consumerism is making Serbian culture more individualistic and hence more accommodating to the market economy, but this cultural change is still incomplete and not without adverse effects. In Eastern Europe, like elsewhere, people buy prestigious consumer goods that they don't really need and, often, don't have the means to pay for. They go heavily into debt and decide to postpone having children. With the exception of Russia and Albania, the one-child family has become the norm throughout Eastern Europe. Economic change is thus linked to a demographic change that is ultimately more serious:

Serbia has been enduring a demographic crisis since the beginning of the 1990s, with a death rate that has continuously exceeded its birth rate, and a total fertility rate of 1.43 children per mother, one of the lowest in the world. Serbia subsequently has one of the oldest populations in the world, with the average age of 42.9 years, and its population is shrinking at one of the fastest rates in the world. A fifth of all households consist of only one person, and just one-fourth of four and more persons. (Wikipedia 2017)

Many Serbs are still hoping that stronger ties with the West will solve their problems. Yet, increasingly, this seems to be a vain hope. The Western model of economic and social development may not be equally applicable to all cultural settings. Indeed, it might not be applicable anywhere in its current form, given its promotion of individualism and its rejection of enduring collective identities like the family, the ethny, and the nation. 

Faith in the Western model is giving way to disillusionment throughout Eastern Europe, and a feeling of having reached a dead end, as Viktor Orban wrote in 2011:

[...] Europe now stands at a fateful juncture. For over twenty years I have been taking part in various European counsels and conferences, and at these gatherings one thing has been consistently clear: the participants have always agreed that there is a well-worn, time-tested path down which it is both worthwhile and indeed necessary to continue plodding. But over the course of the past year and a half the mood at these gatherings has changed fundamentally. Today all of Europe is compelled to face the unpleasant fact that we have run out of well-worn paths. At most the familiar paths will lead us back to the familiar past and its mistakes, setbacks, and failures. (Orban, 2011)

In itself, disillusionment does not cause political change. One must articulate an alternative to the status quo and make it known through mainstream or alternative media. This is one thing that defenders of the status quo fear the most, such as those in Serbia:

Traditional media outlets in Serbia see themselves constantly confronted with direct or indirect pressure. That pressure ranges from direct threats against public media journalists to economic pressure applied to private media companies, especially through mechanisms such as the control of paid advertising. The situation has caused many citizens to turn to Facebook to get their news. For a large portion of society, Facebook and Twitter have become people's main source of information. "It is a reaction to government control of traditional media outlets," says Zeljko Bodrozic, from the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia (NUNS). "Besides a few other online portals, social media outlets have become the only source for independent news information."

[...] Television outlets, as well as radio and popular daily newspapers, continue to set the tone and influence opinion. "At the same time," says Bodrozic, "social media has been 'hijacked' by the governing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). The government cannot forbid or limit internet use, but it can poison independent news sources or make them appear senseless by actively deploying internet trolls." (Deutsche Welle 2017)

Interestingly, Facebook is cooperating with Serbian authorities in this crackdown on alternative media. News sources will now have less prominence on Facebook unless they're willing to pay for placement in the main feed (Deutsche Welle 2017).

The SNS leadership has come a long way from its nationalist origins. Could this be a double game? Are they trying to get the perks that come with EU candidacy (loans, investment, visa liberalization) while having no real intention of joining? There is probably a mix of motives. Many party members have misgivings about EU membership but feel it's necessary to get Serbia back on its feet. Others are tired of being vilified in the Western media and even in Hollywood movies. For them, EU membership will be a ticket to international acceptance. Finally, others have fully internalized the worldview that prevails in the West, certainly at the U.S. and U.K. universities that the prime minister attended.

In any case, it doesn't matter what the governing party really thinks. All that matters is what it does, and that, in itself, has already caused irreparable harm.

Next week: Italy

References

Deutsche Welle (2016). 'In 2015 we had 600,000 migrants pass through Serbia' Date: 13/02/2016

http://www.dw.com/en/in-2015-we-had-600000-migrants-pass-through-serbia/a-19046668

Deutsche Welle (2017). Facebook dual feed experiment: Giving users what they want or enabling state censorship? Date: 03/11/2017

http://www.dw.com/en/facebook-dual-feed-experiment-giving-users-what-they-want-or-enabling-state-censorship/a-41230356

Gec, J. (2017). Serbia's next premier: EU membership, modernization priority, World Politics Review, June 28

https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/22580/serbia-s-next-premier-eu-membership-modernization-priority

Orban, V. (2011). The Year of European Renewal - The Prime Minister's Thoughts on the

Hungarian EU Presidency, Hungarian Review 1, 5-11.
https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=28361

Vetta, T. (2009). Revived nationalism versus European democracy:

Class and "identity dilemmas" in contemporary Serbia, Focaal-European Journal of Anthropology 55, 74-89
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/focaal/2009/55/focaal550106.xml?

Wikipedia (2017). Serbia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia#Demographics

Why they can and we can't

Emmanuel Macron (Wikicommons: French government)

This week, Bill 62 became law in Québec. People now have to show their faces when giving or receiving public services. And that last term is interpreted broadly. If you're riding on a bus or going to a clinic, you're using a public service. Although the words niqab and burqa appear nowhere in the legislation, the intent is to remove the most extreme forms of Islamic dress from public space.

Elsewhere in North America such a law would be unthinkable, even among conservatives. Indeed, the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, Patrick Brown, condemned it in the strongest terms. So it is all the more surprising that this law was passed by the Liberal Party of Québec, whose electorate, membership, and campaign donors overlap considerably with those of the Liberal Party of Canada ... led by Justin Trudeau. This was undoubtedly a factor in his muted response.

So what's going on? What makes such a law possible in Québec but impossible in English Canada? One reason is language. The French language reduces the inflow of American cultural norms via books, magazines, movies, videos, TV programming—all of which condition us to think that some things are possible and others aren't.

Conversely, the French language makes Quebec much more open to the cultural norms of the Francophone world. And those norms have been increasingly hostile to niqabs and burqas. In 2011, France banned them in all public places, after passage of a similar law in Belgium the year before. Similar bans have been imposed or are being debated in francophone Africa, including some Muslim-majority countries (Chad and Senegal). There is a real fear in France and elsewhere that Islamic dress, like public prayers in the street, is part of a conscious effort by Islamists to dominate public space—to create the impression that this is their space and that "strangers" must act accordingly.

And the current French president, Emmanuel Macron? What does he think?

The burqa must be banned. I don't think it's necessary to go further. I'm for secularism. A complete ban at school and in public services, and in society a ban on some signs like the burqa that disrespect gender equality and the civility that exists between men and women in French society. (Coquaz 2017).

Secularism is there to say, "I don't want society to be submitted to a religion's hegemonic temptations." Yesterday, the Catholic religion. Today, for many of our fellow citizens, the Muslim religion. It's very important to enforce the neutrality of the public service. Religion cannot be present at school. Nonetheless, I hear few people upset when the consequences of this debate send more and more children to faith-based schools that teach them hatred of the [French] Republic, dispense teachings essentially in Arabic or, elsewhere, teach the Torah more than basic skills. (Dély 2016)

Respectable opinion in Québec tends to follow respectable opinion in France. If a goodthinker like Macron¹ thinks the burqa should be banned, who's to argue?

Another factor is the social distance between the elites and the common people. It's a lot smaller in Québec, the rich and powerful being no more than one or two generations away from Jos Bleau and Johanne Bleau. So they feel a stronger sense of commonality with the average man and woman. And if they don't, they soon get told to remember who they are and where they come from. This is, incidentally, a common complaint among Québec celebrities. No matter how famous you become, you’ll always be that snotty kid who had trouble tying up his hockey skates.

So when the governing party does an about-face on a controversial issue, it's not because some policy wonk told them to do so. It's because they've been harassed by their constituents, including friends, relatives, and neighbors. In this case, there was a groundswell of feeling to get burqas off the streets. In English Canada, politicians would simply turn a deaf ear. In Québec, they tried doing that but were brought into line by public opinion.

Societally speaking, Québec is more like Israel or Eastern Europe, where the elites are less differentiated from the common people, either because the country itself is recent (Israel) or because the original elites were eradicated by socialist regimes (Eastern Europe).

As coincidence has it, this past week also saw the election of a nationalist party in Czechia, on the heels of a similar election win in Austria (October 15). There is now a large bloc of like-minded countries in central and eastern Europe: Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary. The thinking used to be that nationalists would first come to power in France. After all, they're stronger and better organized there, aren't they? Well, yes, but so are the elites. And those elites have strong links to elites elsewhere.

Some people will attribute Québec's Burqa ban to a third factor: Québec nationalism, specifically the nationalist movement that reached its peak back in the 1970s. To be honest, not much remains of that movement even within the Parti Québécois, which has become a post-national party like the SNP in Scotland. In any case, the Burqa ban is supported by 73% of people in Québec, whereas support for the Parti Québécois is only about a third of the popular vote (TVA Nouvelles 2010). This is an issue that seems to transcend traditional party loyalties.

In sum, it looks like nationalist parties have a better chance where:

- English isn't widely used

- Culture is locally produced

- Elites are more strongly linked to the local population than to elites in other countries, particularly the globalist elite based in the United States and the United Kingdom.

In other countries, nationalists may have better luck advancing their arguments outside the political process. In France, the Front National has failed to gain power but it has widened the bounds of acceptable discourse and acceptable policy, as seen in Macron's position on the burqa.

Note

1. During the election campaign, Macron criticized another law that banned wearing of the hijab (which covers only the hair and not the face) in public primary schools, middle schools, and secondary schools. To date, he has not tried to repeal that law.

References

Brown, P. (2017). Neutrality is not enough. If feds won't lead Canada, and this racist law passes, ON must support a Charter challenge. October 20

https://twitter.com/brownbarrie/status/921344747263758336

Coquaz, V. (2017). Hortefeux invente une ambiguïté de Macron sur la " burqa ", Libération, May 23

http://www.liberation.fr/desintox/2017/05/23/hortefeux-invente-une-ambiguite-de-macron-sur-la-burqa_1571738

Dély, R. (2016). Emmanuel Macron : " La République est ce lieu magique qui permet à des gens de vivre dans l'intensité de leur religion " Marianne, October 1

https://www.marianne.net/politique/emmanuel-macron-la-republique-est-ce-lieu-magique-qui-permet-des-gens-de-vivre-dans-l

TVA Nouvelles (2010). Les Québécois contre la burqa en public, July 28

http://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2010/07/28/les-quebecois-contre-la-burqa-en-public