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The July 4 landslide defeat of the neoliberal pro-war British Conservatives by the neoliberal pro-war Labour Party poses the question of just what the media mean when they describe the elections and political alignments throughout Europe in terms of center-right and center-left traditional parties challenged by nationalist neo-fascists.
Political differences between Europe’s centrist parties are marginal, all supporting neoliberal cutbacks in social spending in favor of rearmament, fiscal stringency and the deindustrialization that support of U.S.-NATO policy entails. The word “centrist” means not advocating any change in the economy’s neoliberalism. Hyphenated-centrist parties are committed to maintaining the pro-U.S. post-2022 status quo.
That means letting U.S. leaders control European politics via NATO and the European Commission, Europe’s counterpart to America’s Deep State. This passivity is putting its economies onto a war footing, with inflation, trade dependence on the United States and European deficits resulting from U.S.-sponsored trade and financial sanctions against Russia and China. This new status quo has shifted European trade and investment away from the Eurasia to the United States.
Voters in France, Germany and Italy are turning away from this blind alley. Every incumbent centrist party has recently lost – and their defeated leaders all had similar pro-U.S. neoliberal policies. As Steve Keen describes the centrist political game: “The Party in power runs Neoliberal policies; it loses the next election to rivals who, when they get in power, also run neoliberal policies. They then lose, and the cycle repeats.” European elections, like this November’s one in the United States, are largely a protest vote – with voters having nowhere else to go except to vote for the populist nationalist parties promising to smash this status quo. This is continental Europe’s counterpart to Britain’s Brexit vote.
The AfD in Germany, Marine le Pen’s National Rally in France and Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are depicted as smashing and breaking the economy – by being nationalist instead of conforming to the NATO/EU Commission, and specifically by opposing the war in Ukraine and European isolation from Russia. That stance is why voters are supporting them. We are seeing a popular rejection of the status quo. The centrist parties call all nationalist opposition neo-fascist, just as in England the media describe both the Tories and Labour as centrists but Nigel Farage as a far right populist.
There Are No “Left-Wing” Parties in the Traditional Meaning of the Political Left
The former left parties have joined the centrists, becoming pro-U.S. neoliberals. There is no counterpart on the old left to the new nationalist parties, except for Sara Wagenknecht’s party in East Germany. The “left” no longer exists in the way that it did when I was growing up in the 1950s. Today’s Social Democratic and Labor parties are neither socialist nor pro-labor, but pro-austerity. The British Labour Party and German Social Democrats are no longer even anti-war, but support the wars against Russia and Palestinians, and have put their faith in neoliberal Thatcherite/Blairite Reaganomics and an economic break from Russia and China.
The social democratic parties that were on the left a century ago are imposing austerity and cutbacks in social spending. Eurozone rules limiting national budget deficits to 3% mean in practice that its shrinking economic growth is to be spent on military rearmament – 2% or 3% of GDP, mainly for U.S. weapons. That means falling exchange rates for eurozone countries.
This is not really conservative or centrist. It is hard-right austerity, squeezing labor and government spending that the left-wing parties supported long ago. The idea that centrism means stability and preserves the status quo thus turns out to be self-contradictory. Today’s political status quo is squeezing wages and living standards, and polarizing economies. It is turning NATO into an aggressive anti-Russia and anti-China alliance that is forcing national budgets into deficit, leading social welfare programs to be cut back even further.
What Are Called Extremist Right-Wing Parties Are Now the Populist Anti-War Parties
What is called the “far right” is supporting (at least in campaign rhetoric) policies that used to be called “left,” opposing war and improving the economic conditions of domestic labor and farmers – but not those of immigrants. And as was the case with the old left, the right’s main supporters are the younger voters. After all, they are bearing the brunt of falling real wages throughout Europe. They see that their path to upward mobility is no longer what it was for their parents (or grandparents) in the 1950s after World War II ended, when there was much less private-sector housing debt, credit-card debt or other debt – especially student debt. Back then, everyone could afford to buy a house by taking out a mortgage that only absorbed 25% of their wage income, and was self-amortizing in 30 years. But today’s families, businesses and governments are obliged to borrow rising sums just to maintain their status quo.
The old division between right and left parties has become meaningless. The recent rise in parties described as “far right” reflects the widespread popular opposition to the US/NATO support of Ukraine against Russia, and especially to the consequences for European economies of that support. Traditionally, anti-war policies have been left-wing, but Europe’s “center-left” parties are following America’s pro-war “leadership from behind” (and often under the table). This is presented as an internationalist stance, but it has become unipolar and U.S.-centered. European countries have no independent voice.
What turns out to be a radical break from past norms is Europe following NATO’s transformation from a defensive alliance to an offensive alliance in keeping with U.S. attempts to maintain its unipolar dominance of world affairs. Joining America’s sanctions on Russia and China, and emptying out their own arsenals to send weapons to Ukraine to try and bleed the Russian economy has not hurt Russia, but strengthened it. The sanctions have acted as a protective wall for its own agriculture and industry, leading to import-displacing investment. But the sanctions have hurt Europe, especially Germany.
The Global Failure of Today’s Western Version of Internationalism
The BRICS+ countries are expressing the same political demands for a break from the status quo that national populations in the West are seeking. Russia, China and other leading BRICS countries are working to undo the legacy of debt-ridden economic polarization that has spread through both the West, the Global South and Eurasia as a result of the US/NATO and IMF diplomacy.
After World War II, internationalism promised a peaceful world. The two World Wars were blamed on nationalist rivalries. These were supposed to end, but instead of internationalism ending national rivalries, the Western version that prevailed with the end of the Cold War has seen an increasingly nationalist United States lock in Europe and other satellite countries against Russia and the rest of Asia. What poses as an international “rules-based order” is one in which U.S. diplomats set and change the rules to reflect U.S. interests, while ignoring international law and demanding s that American allies follow U.S. Cold War leadership.
This is not peaceful internationalism. It sees a unipolar U.S. military alliance leading toward military aggression and economic sanctions to isolate Russia and China. Or more to the point, to isolate European and other allies from its former trade and investment with Russia and China, making those allies more dependent on the United States.
What may have seemed to Western Europeans a peaceful and even prosperous international order in the 1950s under U.S. leadership has turned into an increasingly self-promoting American order that is impoverishing Europe. Donald Trump has announced that he will support a protectionist tariff policy not only against Russia and China, but also against Europe. He has promised that he will withdraw funding for NATO, and oblige European members to bear the full costs of restoring their depleted supply of armaments, mainly by buying U.S. arms, even though these have turned out not to work very well in Ukraine.
Europe is to be left isolated. If non-centrist political parties do not intervene to reverse this trend, Europe’s economies (and also America’s) will be swept up in today’s domestic and international economic and military polarization. So what turns out to be radically disruptive is the direction in which today’s status quo is heading under centrist parties.
Supporting the U.S. drive to break up Russia, and then to do the same to China, involves joining America’s neocon drive to treat them as enemies. That means imposing trade and investment sanctions that are impoverishing Germany and other European countries by destroying their economic linkages with Russia, China and other designated rivals (and hence, enemies) of the United States.
Since 2022 Europe’s support for America’s fight against Russia (and now also against China) has ended what had been the basis of European prosperity. Germany’s former industrial leadership of Europe – and its support for the euro’s exchange rate – is being ended. Is this really “centrist”? Is it a left policy, or a right-wing policy? Whatever we call it, this radical global fracture is responsible for deindustrializing Germany by isolating it from trading with and investing in Russia.
Similar pressure is being made to break European trade away from China. The result is a widening European trade and payments deficit with China. Along with Europe’s rising import dependency on the United States for what it used to buy at lower cost from the East, the weakening euro position (and Europe’s seizure of Russian foreign reserves) has led other countries and foreign investors to offload their euro and sterling reserves, further weakening the currencies. That threatens to raise the European cost of living and doing business. The “centrist” parties are not producing stability, but economic shrinkage as Europe becomes a satellite of U.S. policy and its antagonism to the BRICS economies.
Russian President Putin recently said that the break in normal relations with Europe look irreversible for the next thirty years or so. Will an entire generation of Europeans remain isolated from the world’s most rapidly growing economies, those of Eurasia? This global fracturing of America’s unipolar world order is enabling the anti-euro parties to present themselves not as radical extremists but as seeking to restore Europe’s lost prosperity and diplomatic self-reliance – in a right-wing anti-immigrant way, to be sure. That has become the only alternative to the pro-U.S. parties, now that there is no more real left.
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I concur. Left/Right terminology is no longer meaningful.
MAGA wants to help American workers, does that make it a Left party? The DNC serves Wall Street, does that make it Right party? Such cases could be made, but such efforts would result in only confusion.
___
A better option is Populist/Globalist.
Populists believe in:
��� • Limited or no migration
��� • Traditional values
��� • Living wages for blue collar workers
��� • Avoiding foreign wars (e.g. Afghanistan, Ukraine)
��� • Reindustrialization for national security raw material extraction & manufacturing. This includes gradual decoupling from foreign suppliers in critical (but not all) goods.
Globalists believe in:
��� • SJW deviant dogma (e.g. DEI, ESG, global warming)
��� • Corporate supremacy and wage suppression
��� • NeoLiberal foreign wars and NGO interference
��� • High migration, including the Great Muslim Replacement of European Christians and Jews.
The author should not over emphasize the U.S. We have our own Populist movement in MAGA, and hope to push out (or at least reduce) Globalist NeoLibs this fall. This should cut off much of the arms funding for Führer Zelensky and his neo-Nazis.
Pushing Russia towards China and Iran is a disastrous policy error. It will take multiple MAGA administrations, but Trump’s 2nd term will begin the necessary reset of U.S.-Russia relations.
Europe has Populist Orban and MEGA. Will other nations step away from the Scholz/Macron led folly of Kiev aggression? Alas, the UK is likely to go the wrong direction, at least in the short term.
PEACE 😇
Yes. When it comes to Left vs. Right or Liberal vs. Conservative, the end result is always the same: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Uniparty is far more accurate. Another good paraphrase is a riff on Henry Ford’s choice of color for the Model-T: You can vote for any candidate you like, as long as he serves the bankstas.
For the Illinois senate election of 2004 (The Great Model-T Race), it literally was Henry Ford’s infamous “choice”: The zeks there could indeed have any color they wanted – as long as it was black. The ruling overlords must have gotten a chuckle out of that one.
Nice overview. Years of covert CIA political manipulations have paid off. The CIA/NSA run a massive spy system mostly based in England and Germany to spy on EU members. Bribery and blackmail are the norm. Any who acts in their national best interest like Orban in Hungary is called a “autocrat” and “pro Putin.”
Here is Europe’s leading leftist, who was considered a moderate a few years back.
Video Link
To paraphrase Ezra Pound, a centrist party is currently defined in Europe as one that is obedient to Judeo-American interests. Moreover, a far-right candidate is anyone who speaks of limiting Brussels’ power in favor of nationalist policies that favor the indigenous European population.
It’s ironic, because America and its media lackeys will denounce as an extremist any candidate in Europe who promotes national self-determination. At the same time, however, they will support any ethnic group with ambitions of independence, as long that group resides within an adversarial state. While suppressing nationalist tendencies in Europe, they simultaneously promote these tendencies in countries like Iran, Russia, and China, in hopes of breaking these states into smaller pieces that are easily-dominated.
Hudson seems to view anti-immigration as a right-wing policy. Yet, up until a few years, there was nothing particularly left-wing about open borders. Libertarians are considered right-wing, but they advocate for the abolition of borders.
He also says that the right-wing has become anti-war, which was a former leftist position. Didn’t America’s liberal party, the Democrats, get us involved in most of the wars during the twentieth century? Are conservatives supposed to be pro-war?
Austerity is associated with the political right, but that is because conservatives seek to shrink the size of government. Austerity, per se, is neither left nor right, but something that leaders do out of necessity.
This is to say, Hudson’s demarcation of the left and right are not consistent with my perspective, so it makes me question when he writes:
If there is “no more real left”, then how could there be a “real right”? Hudson clearly laments that the leftist parties of his younger years have ceased to exist, but he demonstrates little understanding of conservative goals or policies.
The problem is that World War Two skewed everyone’s understanding of the left-right paradigm, because the National Socialists were a leftist government that was socially conservative.
here’s all the “new political vocabulary” you need:
Zionist Uniparty: because all the political parties (including the fake-populist “Right”) in all the remnant, borderless White nations are firmly in the grip of an international sanhedrin of Zionist banksters and billionaires.
and voting at the Jews and their hirelings will change nothing….except for the worse.
Zionist Uniparty for the win. No alternatives allowed. Voat moar harder, zeks.
So there’s more money for a war with Iran? I suppose that wouldn’t count as a “foreign” war in your vocabulary, right? After all, you don’t view Israel as a foreign country, right again? Just asking…
At days’ end, whatever political appellation sits in a parliament, there is always a gun in the street to impose the appellations’ will on the populace.
What kind of economist calls a rise in public spending as % of GDP in the UK from 35% in 2000 to 45% now ‘neoliberalism’?!?
G00gling “Far right” yields About 215,000,000 results
“Far Left” About 28,000,000 results
Everything is Far right to the establishment. “Far right” can be construed as trigger response to any soupçon of distinct Nationalism, and world governments can’t exist while that notion of identity remains.
What will it take to completely destroy the mainstream media which plays the central role in destroying Nations?
ROTFLMAO
Sociopath Khamenei spent 4 years trying to start a war. Trump wisely refused to be baited into such action.
Not-The-President Biden has been sending cash to the mullahs, making things worse in Lebanon and Gaza. One can expect Trump’s 2nd term to reinstate prior tools used to contain Iranian misbehavior, such as sanctions. There will be no American ‘boots on the ground’.
Ultimately the Iranian people have to free themselves from the horror their despotic theocracy. It cannot be done from the outside.
PEACE 😇
Michael Hudson seems to be the only analyst using what he calls “classical economics”. Who else is trying to explain what ‘uni-empire-globalism’ is? John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are using their ‘realism’ to explain global events… but they totally fail (i.e. don’t even try) to identify the ‘economic motivations’ that are driving events (which makes me very disappointed in, and perhaps a little suspicious of, Jeffrey Sachs since he’s supposed to be an ‘economist’… while John Mearsheimer’s analysis would be immensely strengthened if he included the economic forces).
After 40 years in corporate America, while studiously reading about ‘current events’, Michael Hudson is the only author I’ve found who supports my experience that everything in this globalized world is about the conflicting interests of the thriving 5% managerial class verses the increasingly shameless/ignorant/distracted/impoverished 95% working class (“classical economics”?).
For the past 40-50 years the 5% have dramatically increased their wealth and power while the bottom 80% have been systematically/methodically looted and impoverished. For the 5% global elite (i.e. the 5% ‘leaders’ in each of the world’s 200 countries!) everything is beyond fantastic. For the 80-95% the world is fine (“don’t worry… be happy”). For the bottom 80% the whole world is turning into a third-world shit hole. Michael Hudson is the only ‘economist’ who has (finally in recent years) had the strength-of-character to quit shifting the blame for our cultural deterioration to the 1%, 0.1, 0.01%, etc. No, it’s the entire 5% corporate structure, the entire ‘global managerial class’ that has become thoroughly corrupted/incompetent/evil… they have convinced themselves that workers are inferior consumer morons who deserve nothing but to be reduced to slavery and/or exterminated via drugs, wars, etc.. MBA anybody???
The one thing I’d really like from my #1 hero Michael Hudson is a thorough analysis (i.e. a thrashing and take-down) of ‘Libertarian Economics/Politics’. By the end of 2016 almost all of the many ‘traditional liberal’ independent/alternative news sites were totally corrupted/destroyed by the anti-Russia/China, pro-war, anti-Trump, global warming, woke virtue-signaling victimhood hysteria. HuffPost, Alternet, RealNewsNetwork, NakedCapitalism, CounterPunch, TruthDig, TruthOut, Etc./Etc… all transitioned to ridiculous, vicious, irrational, psycho-babble and, as a result I migrated rightward. After a number of years it finally dawned on me that ‘the right’ is totally captured by an economic cult called “libertarianism”. I went deep down that rabbit hole and it was Michael Hudson that helped me dig my way out.
Libertarianism is a massive wall of propaganda/dogma that I believe is the biggest pillar that props up the “global neo-liberal order”. Anyone who tries to free themselves from the neo-liberal dogma will also have to wade through the endless landmines of the libertarian swamp. For example, I look at the daily articles at LewRockwell.com. Their anti-war articles (e.g. terror, Middle-East, Russia/China, energy, culture, drugism, wokism, gayism, racism, etc….) are good… but the libertarian economics articles are, for me, vomit inducing. Never will those articles cast any blame on the 5% managerial class. Libertarians like Lew Rockwell will only blame ALL the problems on GOVERNMENT… never the now-filthy rich corporate/managerial 5%… who’s annual income here in the Dallas area starts (repeat… “starts”) at $600k/yr.
Lew Rockwell will not tell you the story of how Boeing’s management criminally broke ALL the safety engineering rules by short-term-profiting tens-of-$billions by deciding to place the modern, high-efficiency, much-larger-diameter jet engines under the wings of the old 737 airframe (which long-term would inevitably… just as ALL the GOOD engineers/people said… destroy the company… which it has).
Libertarian cult dogma begins and ends with the concept that corporate managers are Gods that can do no wrong… that white-collar crime (e.g. pharmaceuticals, designed-to-fail consumer-everything) never has and never will exist as a social problem if only there is “no government” and a “free market”). Libertarians never talk about how the world would be a MUCH better place if there were 10-30, instead of only one, competing Microsoft’s, Boeings, WalMarts, Googles, etc. Libertarianism is the cult that tricks the entire 95% into believing that they too can get into the 5% and live life “huge”… like all the celebrities they worship all day, every day.
Thank you Dr. Hudson… there’s been very little from you in recent months… I’ve been worried. Hopefully you’re busy with some project. Please consider doing an interview or book about “Libertarianism and the New Cold War… Why does it do nothing to stop the coming use of nuclear and biological weapons… or the impoverishment of the average global family?”
Labour Friends of Israel hides “supporters” list ahead of election.
From 2015!
And still the Zio Turds try their best but keep on failing miserably 😂👏👏
Israeli Propaganda Isn’t Fooling Anyone – Except Israelis.
‘Hasbara’ is the Israeli euphemism for propaganda, and there are some things, said the late ambassador Yohanan Meroz, that are not ‘hasbarable.’ One of them is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
And propaganda shall cover for everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite the Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2015-06-04/ty-article/.premium/propaganda-without-end-amen/0000017f-e136-df7c-a5ff-e37ea0de0000
Are you referring to the following?
‘Biden Allows Iran to Access Another $10 Billion Amid Gaza War’
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202311150106
Thanks for the compliments. Yes, I’ve been working on a new book — the last thousand years of finance politicizing itself, from the crusades to WW I. This summarizes most of my ideas. Libertarianism is simply anti-government — that is, against government regulations of finance and its allied real estate, oil and mining sectors. This is no a militarized aggressive doctrine.
Hey ,thats Iranian money .
Israel has been getting 10 billions in different forms and continues to get since Gaza massacre .
The Zio has started a campaign against Qatar:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/smear-campaign-targeted-qatar-deepfake-videos-new-york-times-square
Zio will destroy what ever is left of Christianity and of Anerica.
I like this Political Vocabulary:
Video Link
Dear Mr. Hudson,
The reason why your fan Steve in Dallas addresses you once in a lifetime to say :
is more than a strange obscure desire, or words written out of a whim. It is rather because your life’s mission very aim, to get society on your side, is subverted and made impossible by libertarianism.
To which you say,
.
How is that different from harmful drugs and opiates?
The rhetoric with which drugs are being spread is what?
Peace and rest. Inner calm and world harmony.
And the end result for the mind is deadly, or deadening.
That is what libertarianism does in my daily observation of others — and in my own mind! Libertarian or anarchist talking points leave me speechless.
To give an example, Western, anti-communist libertarianism is at least for me obviously stupid, being based on historiographical falsehoods. But, then there are appreciators of Marx, such as in “33 Myths of the System,” that are very difficult to grapple with.
There is NO arguing with opiates. On the otehr hand, you can’t “JUST SAY NO” to ‘civil discourse.’ So, what does one do?
With due respect to Prof. Hudson, libertarianism is restricted to the backwoods of USA. Outside their home turf, those professing it participate in capitalist excesses They are party to undermining the liberty of foreign peoples. By claiming to oppose big government, they evade the essence of capitalism. This is entrenched even in their religion.
“Fellowwhite” should definitely be part of a “new political vocabulary.”
What’s a “fellowwhite”?
Jews like you, A123.
While promoting an anti-White agenda, some (many) Jews literally identify as a “fellow white.” But deep down, they’re not White, they’re Jewish:
Video Link
Yes, “fellowwhite” should definitely be part of a “new political vocabulary.”