Sure, the Populists Gained, but the Real Winners May Be for Europe
The results this week of the European Parliament elections were a humiliating blow at home to President Emmanuel Macron of France, as his party finished second to the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen.
But in the Parliament itself, his party could be the kingmaker because there will be no working majority without it.
That gives Mr. Macron, who has been the biggest booster among European leaders of deeper integration between European Union members, an opportunity to push through change — and to counter the populist and nationalist right.
Mr. Macron’s party — which did not even exist in the last European elections in 2014 — together with a group of liberal parties can create a sustainable working majority of pro-European parties.
These parties, and in particular the Green Party, which did especially well with young voters worried about climate change, have made clear they intend to use their new position to effect change in both who runs the European Union and its policies.
The new majority will also be able to stand up to, and potentially block, the more emboldened populist and nationalist right, which increased its share as a group by five percentage points and now holds about 25 percent of seats.
Altogether, the pro-European parties, along with the Greens, will control 502 of the 751 seats, limiting the power of the populists to gum up the system, and providing leverage for Mr. Macron and his allies in their desire to shake Europe to embrace a different future.
With results from the May 26 elections for European Parliament showing his new Diem MeRA25 party would win one seat in the 751-member body, former Greek finance chief Yanis Varoufakis said it was “a small political revolution.”
In March 2018, Varoufakis announced the launch of his own political party, MeRA 25, with a stated aim of freeing Greece from "debt bondage". He stated that he hoped the party would be based on an alliance of "people of the left and liberalism, greens and feminists". The party, whose name stands for "European Realistic Disobedience Front", is affiliated to DiEM25.
On 13 September, Varoufakis penned an op-ed piece in The Guardian about the need for an international progressive movement, alongside a similar piece by fellow progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. On 26 October in Rome, Varoufakis announced the Progressive International, which was described as a "common blueprint for an International New Deal, a progressive New Bretton Woods". The organization officially launched on 30 November in Sanders' home town of Burlington, Vermont.
Our new international movement will fight rising fascism and globalists .
Our task is not unprecedented. Fascists did not come to power in the mid-war period by promising violence, war or concentration camps. They came to power by addressing good people who, following a severe capitalist crisis, had been treated for too long like livestock that had lost its market value. Instead of treating them like “deplorables”, fascists looked at them in the eye and promised to restore their pride, offered their friendship, gave them a sense that they belonged to a larger ideal, allowed them to think of themselves as something more than sovereign consumers.
That injection of self-esteem was accompanied by warnings against the lurking “alien” who threatened their revived hope. The politics of “us versus them” took over, bleached of social class characteristics and defined solely in terms of identities. The fear of losing status turned into tolerance of human rights abuses first against the suspect “others” and then against any and all dissent. Soon, as the establishment’s control over politics waned under the weight of the economic crisis it had caused, the progressives ended up marginalised or in prison. By then it was all over.
Is this not how Donald Trump first conquered the White House and is now winning the discursive war against a Democratic party establishment? Is this not reminiscent of the Conservative Brexiteers’ sudden appreciation of a National Health Service they had starved of funds for decades, or the energetic embracing of democracy that Thatcherism had subordinated to the logic of market forces? Are these not the ways of the hard right governments in Austria, Hungary and Poland, of Greece’s Golden Dawn Nazis and, most poignantly, of Matteo Salvini, the strongman steering the new Italian government? Everywhere we look today we see manifestations of the resurgence of an ambitious Nationalist International, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s. As for the establishment, they are behaving as if with a penchant to repeat the Weimar Republic’s every mistake.
But enough of the diagnosis. The pertinent question now is: what must we do? A tactical alliance with the globalist establishment is out of the question. Tony Blair, Hilary Clinton, the social democratic establishment in continental Europe are too compromised by their monetary links to a degenerating financialised capitalism and its accompanying ideology. For decades they relied on free market populism: the false promise that everyone can become better off as long as we submit to commodification. They’d like us to believe in a never-ending escalator that will take us to the heights of consumer satisfaction, but it doesn’t exist.
The anti-austerity maverick will head the list of Demokratie In Europa, a German political party that is part of the pan-European, cross-border movement DiEM25 set up by Varoufakis in 2016. It will seek to gain seats for the first time in the European Parliament.
Although he is not a German citizen, Varoufakis and his movement said he meets the conditions to stand as a candidate in Germany as he is an EU citizen who has a residential address in the country.
The 57-year-old economics professor said in a statement on Sunday that his party will offer a "Green New Deal for Europe: a realistic, credible, rational and immediately implementable policy agenda for the whole of Europe".
According to the party's campaign programme, it will push to "ban tax havens within the EU" and put those outside the bloc on a black list.
It will also seek a "new EU budget" to fund projects like building up green infrastructure, fighting poverty and integrating immigrants.
The budget would be partly financed by taxes on carbon and financial transactions, said the programme.
Varoufakis bitterly opposed Chancellor Angela Merkel's austerity-for-aid insistence in the Greek debt crisis, but has praised her for keeping Germany's doors open to asylum seekers.
