Four more years “in search of lost time” for Europe? “Madame Alternativlos” and her eurozone austerity disaster

Angela Merkel was sworn into office as German Chancellor for the first time on precisely this date, November 22^nd, in 2005, eleven years ago. On Sunday (November 20th) she announced her candidacy at the next parliamentary elections in Germany, well ahead of her initial intention to wait until January. The election is due to take place in approximately ten months from now, most likely in late September or early October, 2017. The current “political climate“ in Germany seems to be that there is no alternative to her continuing on after the next election. Yet, there is.

Chancellor Merkel (July 2010), here pictured with hands folded in a diamond shape, a
gesture which  has widely been interpreted as her signature hand gesture, or
the signature hand gesture of her "there is no alternative" attitude .
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Just three days prior to that, at Thursday's (November 17^th) press conference with US president, Barack Obama, in Berlin, at the occasion of Obama's last state visit to Germany, she had evaded clear answers to questions about her own future beyond 2017 and had urged everyone to wait until the beginning of the election year itself. A couple of minutes later, she also stated „Demokratie lebt vom Wechsel - democracy is kept alive by change“. This was, of course, in reference to the current transition from the incumbent president Obama to president-elect Trump in the U.S., but it could also have been a hint at her own future. Yet, in hindsight, and in line with the decision she announced just a few days later, it turned out not to be, or in other words, to merely be a diplomatic phrase. The current “political climate“ in Germany seems to be that there is no alternative to Merkel (aged 62) continuing on after the next election, thus extending her tenure to over twelve years, and to fifteen years if she would stay on for the entire next four-year term. Thus she would, in late 2019, be overtaking the famous first post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (fourteen years, 1949-1963) and, at the end of the said term, in 2021, be just short of the sixteen years her mentor in the 1990s, Helmut Kohl, was in office (1982-1998; both Adenauer and Kohl also representing her own party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)).

Yet, within the last couple of months, meetings have taken place of some members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens (bourgeois centre-left), and the democratic socialist Left Party (Die Linke), in order to (tentatively) make preparations for a possible alternative centre-left coalition to replace Merkel's Grand Coalition (formed by her own Conservative fraction (made up of the CDU and the - more conservative - Bavarian sister party CSU) and the SPD) a year from now. For this to be possible, the SPD would have to modify its current profile the most, by moving left again, away from current centrist or even centre-right positions on most issues, that the party took to be able to govern together with Merkel; but this seems in the realm of the possible in light of the (by German standards) still rather early pre-election stages we're currently in (usually the main campaigning doesn't really kick off before the end of the winter, so about five months ahead of the election date).

Latest polls (if we can still “trust“ any of them after the failures of the pollsters in the UK and the US this year) suggest that a “Red-Red-Green“ coalition is just short of the 50% mark and thus a majority in parliament; but it could gain more dynamics if, from the coming spring at the latest, it presents itself as a viable left-wing alternative to Merkel's current centre to centre-right policies - as, with the exception of the refugee policy (at least prior to the cynical Turkey "refugee deal"), the Grand Coalition is centre-right to hard right on most other issues. This is true especially with regard to fiscal policy, where the mantra of “fiscal responsibility“ or “fiscal conservatism“ has led to austerity, both domestically (German: „schwarze Null“ ("black zero"), i.e. a balanced budget, a no-debt policy, and no Keynesianism, despite Germany's current interest rate for borrowing being negative (!!)) as well as, much more drastically, outside Germany, in the “Euro crisis“ countries. Greece, which was driven into abject poverty, but similarly Portugal and Ireland, and to some extent Italy, were most affected by German-initiated austerity “measures” to “solve” the “Euro crisis” - i.e. socialize the debt by cutting public goods and services, and privatize the profits of banks and corporations (by “bailing them out”).

At the same time, the German government is increasing the military budget, allowing arms exports to autocratic states in the Middle East and elsewhere (most prominently Saudi-Arabia and Oman) and ratifying the notorious transatlantic "free" trade agreements with Canada (CETA) and the US (TTIP), which are opposed by many in the European populace (Berlin saw a demonstration of more than 200 000 against TTIP already in October of 2015). With a centre-left government, a change of direction in this crucial field (national and European economic, fiscal, infrastructure and social policies) can at least be hoped for – a bit “against hope”, of course, as there would be strong resistance to any Keynesianism or any kind of real European "Marshall Plan" by the European and global financial institutions, such as the IMF and some other EU institutions (such as the ECB or the infamously political (neoliberal) European Court of Justice), but still a spark of hope.

Anti-austerity protest in Athens, Greece, on June 21st, 2015,
"ΟΧΙ" στην ΕΞΌΝΤΩΣΗ ("no to annihilation")
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

In light of Brexit, the upcoming presidency of the (at least economically (remains to be seen?)) nationalist Donald Trump, the likelihood of a much more illiberal or conservative-nationalist government in France early next year, and generally an increasingly more illiberal political and societal climate in Europe and globally, Merkel has been dubbed as the “new” or “last remaining” leader of the “free world”.

Abstracting and creating agitprop realities: a longue-durée view of political “storytelling” on two sides of the same post-Communist coin

Anyone who is - in a non-ideological way - trying to make sense of the major political stories of the most recent past and of the present “news” (or disinformation) content featured in the media, is having a hard time figuring what is really going on. The amount of information (mostly agitprop (=agitation and propaganda)) coming from the different corners of the boxing ring that is the arena of political ideologies is incoherent and contradictory, to put it mildly. That being said, we will still try to point out what in our view are the five most significant discrepancies of the last twenty-five years in the “political storytelling” between East and West, South and North, i.e. the periphery and core or centre of the global political order (or rather disorder) that has since been centered around the United States of America. It has, however, been an economic and political pecking order that has constantly been challenged and reshuffled ever since the end of the Cold War.
 

  

The Soviet flag being taken down on the Kremlin, Moscow, on December 26, 1991. This
marked the end of the existence of the Soviet Union sixty-nine years after its foundation (Source: YouTube)

In the first “long decade” (1988/89 to 2001) following the anti-Soviet reforms and/or protests that lead to revolutions, that started from Hungary (Miklos Németh/Gyula Horn) in November, 1988, and spread all across Central and Eastern Europe until even the Soviet Union itself was dissolved in late December, 1991, the US had its unchallegend “unipolar moment”. Washington's relations with both the now weakened Russia and the emerging China were mostly neutral or even amicable, they were seen as (second-rate) “partners”; post-Soviet Russia was in the U.S. view demoted to a regional power. The U.S.-led involvement in the war in the collapsing Yugoslavia (against a culturally Christian Orthodox, Russophile Serbia) and the first post-cold war NATO expansion into territories that just ten years earlier had been part of the Warsaw Pact, i.e. the Soviet military and political sphere of influence (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland), didn't meet any fierce resistance at the time - although Russia did support Serbia against the Western forces, but still had to tacitly accept the negative outcome for it (most significantly the breakup of Serbia with the foundation of Kosovo, and the independence of Montenegro that followed later).

Some (ideologically challenged, naïve, or unforesightful) elites in the U.S. felt that Francis Fukuyama's “end of history” had indeed come, with the main enemy of the previous five decades demoted and, in the short-term (i.e. normal U.S.) perspective at least, no one else on the radar (Europe or the EU, as more or less even until today, couldn't be taken seriously then, except as an economic power). The “end of history” story was the first discrepancy between U.S. “storytelling” or “created reality” and factual challenges of that reality outside that bubble (mind you, the U.S. was dealing with such “important” issues as the sex life of their president during those years). The ideologues in the bubble of the 1990s had dismissed or underestimated what the involvement (by economic, military and/or political, covert intelligence operations) of their own country and its Western (and some non-Western) allies in the Middle East and South Asia had created as a backlash. Muslim-majority, but mostly secularist states had turned into new challengers of the American hegemony in their region, into extremist, Islamist fundamentalist states, committing or at least supporting acts of terrorism (Iran already since back in 1979, with Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, some factions in Palestine and Egypt following suit), with other states in danger of also turning fully Islamist due to the catastrophic economic circumstances, that make a totalitarian, fundamentalist religious extremism attractive to desperate young populations. Furthermore, inequivocal and uncritical US support of Israel (and all the illegal Israeli policies) in the Israeli-Palestine conflict play(ed) its part in the trouble that had (and still has) been brewing there for decades. Those “chickens came home to roost” in a big way in what has to date been the most visible and obvious attack on and challenge of the U.S. hegemony, on that sunny New York morning on September 11, 2001 (soon abbreviated simply as “9/11”). Ironically (if we follow what has generally been presented as the narrative), most (fifteen out of nineteen) of the terrorists were not from Iran or Afghanistan, but citizens of Saudi Arabia, which officially has been (and still is) a US ally, but at the same time, the House of Saud (which is amicably linked to the “House of Bush”) has, more or less openly, financed Islamist terrorism regionally and globally.

Then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld speaking at a press conference in the pentagon barely eight hours after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Also at the podium: Sec. of the Army White, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Shelton, Sen. Warner (Virginia) and Sen. Levin (Michigan) 

So, this is the second discrepancy between created reality and, at least “historical”, i.e. geopolitical, “truth”. The centre, i.e. the U.S. government, with its “friends and allies” in tow, described “9-11” mainly as “an attack on our Western values of democracy and freedom” which had to be answered by a “crusade”, a “war on terror” (George W. Bush), that is going on to this day; the periphery, where the retaliatory action happened, had to suffer from two long and protracted wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and their consequences. Many instances of war crimes, e.g. torture and human experimentation, have been committed by U.S. forces as part of the “war on terror”. The periphery side of the “storytelling” was done by channnels such as Al-Jazeera: founded in Doha, Qatar in 1996, it came into prominence in the West in the wake of “9/11”, with the most comprehensive coverage of what was happening as a reaction to those attacks, i.e. the war in Afghanistan. It presented the “collateral damage”, i.e. the civilian victims of the bombings or drone strikes, and aired views that were very critical of that war and of the U.S. policies in relation to it. In November of 2001, the Afghan offices of Al-Jazeera were destroyed in a U.S. bombing raid on Kabul; the following month, a reporter of the network was abducted and brought to Guantanamo. So, the views on this “war on terror” differed, just as the results did: while there hasn't been a terrorist attack on U.S. soil anymore since “9/11”, U.S. allies have been hit in the years as a result of their participation in the controversial Iraq War (Madrid 2004, London 2005).

                         
                     George W. Bush: "CIA people [i.e. torturers] are really good people,
                               and we're lucky to have them" (Source: Young Turks)

The war on terror, dubbed “operation Enduring Freedom”, actually didn't bring freedom to many, on the contrary, it has curbed many freedoms, for both centre and periphery: the civil rights of both U.S. and non-U.S. populations were severely infringed upon by acts such as the Patriot Act, which legalized massive surveillance (e.g. collection of all internet and phone data), basically abolished the basic legal concept of habeas corpus, i.e. the right to protest against unlawful detention, and promoted a militarization of the police force, especially in the U.S. As for (more or less covert) paramilitary or proxy operations abroad, private mercenary armies, unaccountable and “off the record”, have been hired to do the “dirty work”. Anyone can be dubbed an “illegal combatant”, and captured anywhere around the world, be it in the actual war zone or from their home, e.g. in Germany (Khaled al-Masri), and held indefinitely at camps such as Bagram or Guantanamo, where they faced “enhanced interrogation” (torture). Politicians all across the globe (but especially those of the “Five Eyes”, i.e. U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have since used the “war on terror” to massively increase the surveillance of their citizens.

The conclusion of this second discrepancy or paradox is: The “democratic freedoms” were “defended” by getting rid of fundamental elements of democracy, i.e. civil rights. Whistle-blowers like Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who have disclosed these paradoxes, i.e. the war crimes and/or mass surveillance practices mentioned above in the “name of freedom”, have paid the price of completely or at least massively losing their freedom of movement for that, as they are either already under arrest or facing arrest once they would be within reach of U.S. authorities. Those responsible for the, if not illegal, yet despicable practices, are getting away with them, scot-free.


                                 
            Trailer for the documentary "Citizenfour" by Laura Poitras, with Glenn                                   Greenwald, on the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (December 2014)
                                                   (Source: YouTube)

Even if we leave the morals aside and look at the results, we have to conclude that, despite all the military and intelligence efforts, the goal of reducing global terrorism has utterly failed: there has been a fivefold increase interrorist fatalities since “9/11”, groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaida have not been weakened significantly, at least in the regions where they originated (Afghanistan, Middle East); others, such as the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” IS (Islamic State in Syria and Iraq) terrorists, are a new Frankenstein's monster that sprung up as a result of the Iraq War and the civil war in Syria, armed with supreme weapons that had been supplied to the post-Saddam Iraqi Army and the Syrian Free Army/opposition to President Assad by Western countries. So, a new monster has been created, and the old ones haven't really gone away. Let's leave aside the debate on how beneficial it is to certain ideologues of illiberal “security measures”, in the West and elsewhere, to keep such monsters alive as welcome enemies and distractions from other urgent problems and issues.

Hass auf „Museln, Sozialbetrüger, linke Demonstranten, Asylanten“ - krude Weltsicht einiger weniger Rechtsextremer „von nebenan“ oder breite Reaktion auf zunehmende Unsicherheiten unserer Zeit?

Das (Wieder-)Erstarken von Populismus und Intoleranz in weiten Teilen Europas ist der sozio-ökonomischen Prekarisierung beträchtlicher Teile seiner Bevölkerungen geschuldet. In Österreich ist bei der nächsten Nationalratswahl die Regierungsübernahme durch Rechtspopulisten möglich bis wahrscheinlich. Die Textanalyse einer Hass-Hymne.

Heinz-Christian Strache, Chef der rechtspopulistischen Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), die bei den Wahlen im September 2013 gut 20% der Stimmen erringen konnte, bei einer Wahlkampfveranstaltung

„Land der Museln, Eurozone – Moschee und Minarett statt Dome, Land der Sozialbetrüger – wir werdn blöder, anstatt klüger – Land der linken Demonstranten, Räuber, Diebe, Asylanten – mutig in die neuen Zeiten, Richtung Abgrund wir stolz schreiten, – vielgeprelltes Österreich.“

So hatte im Mai 2013 ein Schärdinger Polizist und FPÖ-Ersatzgemeinderat die österreichische Bundeshymne verunglimpft. Er wurde zwar deshalb wegen Herabwürdigung des Staates, Verhetzung und Verstoß gegen das Beamtendienstrechtsgesetzt angezeigt. Es wurde aber deutlich, dass rechtsextreme Ansichten – in Österreich genauso wie in anderen Ländern - nicht nur „am Rande der Gesellschaft“ vertreten werden (wie es z.B. von deutschen (Unions-) Politikern immer beschwichtigend behauptet wird), sondern auch von Beamten, d.h. „Staatsdienern“ selbst, wie dieser Fall zeigt. In der „Version der Hymne“ des „Freiheitlichen“ spiegeln sich klar die populistischen Parolen des Parteichefs H.-C. Strache und seiner Redenschreiber wieder, die die Ängste und Gefühle jener Menschen aufnehmen, die solcherlei Aggressionen entwickeln (weil sie die Komplexität der Moderne nicht oder nur schwer fassen können), und sie mit dem biologischen Urinstinkt des Menschen gegen „das Fremde“, das Nicht-Konforme verbinden. Ziemlich erfolgreich, wie das Wahlergebnis, das gut 20% für die FPÖ und insgesamt fast 30% für alle rechtspopulistischen Parteien auswies, gezeigt hat.

Zum Text: „Land der Museln“ wird abgeleitet aus den „Überfremdungs-“ oder gar „Umvolkungs-“Ängsten, die von Strache und Co. geschürt werden; Moslems sind als (meist) Ausländer, (meist) Nicht-Weiße, als Nicht-Christen und in (meist) wirtschaftlich schwächerer Position ein Paradeopfer der rechten Propaganda. Paradoxerweise stehen aber viele konservativere oder gar islamistische Muslime dem Weltbild europäischer oder US-amerikanischer Nationalkonservativer oder Nationalsozialisten näher als „inländische“ weiße Linke, z.B. was die Rolle der Frau anbetrifft, das Familienideal, Vorbehalte gegen Emanzipation, Feminismus, freie Sexualität und andere alternative Lebensformen und/oder Orientierungen.

Die „Eurozone“ als Feindbild steht hier einerseits für die Ablehnung der Aufgabe jeglicher nationaler Identität (denn mit der Nation oder der „Volksgemeinschaft“ identifiziert sich der Rechtsextreme sehr stark, mit Transnationalem kann er wenig anfangen), andererseits stellvertretend für das Feindbild „die da oben“ oder die „weit weg vom einfachen Mann“, die in den Hauptstädten sitzen, Wien oder Brüssel, und die Interessen des „einfachen Volkes“ in dessen Gefühl nicht mehr vertreten (dieses wird, wie vieles andere hier Angeführte auch, durch die zuspitzende Propaganda der national orientierten Boulevardmedien verstärkt).

„Moschee und Minarett statt Dome“, wieder der Rekurs auf das Fremde, in diesem Fall Nicht-Christliche, das angeblich überhand nimmt, wobei die gesellschaftliche Realität eine andere ist, dass nämlich in den allermeisten Fällen die Diskriminierung oder Gewalt nicht von den Fremden, sondern von den rechten "Inländern" ausgeht (man vergleiche etwa die Anzahl rechter Morde an Ausländern oder Linken in Deutschland seit 1990 (184, die prominentesten die "NSU"-Morde), mit denen durch Linke an Rechten (keine)).

„Sozialbetrüger“, das Motiv des alten rechten Feindbildes der angeblich massenhaft existierenden, dem „braven“ rechtschaffenen Bürger auf der Tasche liegenden Arbeitslosen oder jedenfalls Empfängern von Transferleistungen, das hier der einfachste Nenner für jene ist, mangels anderer, für diese Schichten nicht greifbarer, Feindbilder (oder über die diese aufgrund gewisser Medienkonsum-Gewohnheiten nichts wissen). „Wir werdn blöder, anstatt klüger“, dafür ist der Autor, der auf die simplen Welterklärungsmodelle eines Strache anspringt, das beste Beispiel. „Linke Demonstranten“: stellvertretend für alle die die Schein-Gewissheiten, Einstellungen oder Lebensformen der rechtschaffenen, arbeitenden Bürger anzweifeln; „links sein“ und „demonstrieren“ ist für diese nicht konform und daher abzulehnen, genauso wie natürlich „Räuber, Diebe, Asylanten“ alle über einen Kamm zu scheren sind, als Parasiten, die ihn seines Besitzes und seines Lebensstandards berauben wollen.

„Mutig in die neuen Zeiten, Richtung Abgrund wir stolz schreiten“ - auch hier wieder die Untergangsszenarien, die von den Rechtspopulisten beschworen werden, wenn die Entwicklung zu kultureller Liberalisierung, offener Gesellschaft, Europäisierung und Internationalisierung weiter voranschreite (gegen die sie natürlich deshalb angeblich vehement kämpfen; viele der rechtspopulistischen Politiker (jedenfalls der FPÖ) haben sich jedoch eher persönlich bereichert als politisch etwas bewegt). Dann wird der Nationalstaat, das „vielgeprellte Österreich“, natürlich von den diffusen feindlichen Mächten übervorteilt und ausgenutzt.

Es ist ein perfekter Spiegel der Unsicherheiten jener Wählerschichten, die ihr vertrautes Umfeld immer mehr verändert sehen (bzw. ihren Horizont durch die Globalität der Moderne erweitern müssten, dies aber nicht können bzw für unzumutbar halten), aber mit dieser Veränderung nur schwer umgehen können und denen die Toleranz für Fremdes oder Nicht-Konformes aufgrund von Berührungsängsten oder national-konservativer Erziehung von klein auf fehlt. Dazu kommt eine oft schlechte wirtschaftliche Situation; auch wenn sie Arbeit haben, ist diese oft unbefriedigend, (zeitlich) überfordernd und/oder finanziell prekär. So lebt diese rechtsextreme Wählerschicht die durch sozio-ökonomische Umstände (Prekarisierung) in ihm aufkommenden Aggressionen nicht aus, indem es sich, im politisch linken Sinne, für eine echte soziale Veränderung dieser Umstände einsetzt, sondern es will eigentlich (natürlich unterschwellig) eine, natürlich unmögliche, Regression in die vertrauten nationalen, von Fremden (Ausländern, Nicht-Christen) und fremden, nicht-konformen Ansichten oder Einstellungen (Alternative, Linke, sexuell anders Orientierte) unberührten Umfelder der Konformität, von Arbeit, Familie (inkl. der Geschlechter-Rollenbilder Lohnarbeit/Hausarbeit-Küche), Haus, Heimat, Kirche. Diese wird als natürlich empfunden, alles Fremde als widernatürlich, künstlich. Biologistische Argumentation und Rhetorik (z.B. der "deutsche Volkskörper", der durch "Parasiten" wie Ausländer und Juden geschwächt wird) war bereits in der Sprache der Nationalsozialisten.eines der Hauptelemente