The Right-Wing Resurrection
Conservatives rule almost all of Europe. What they will do with all their power is an open question.
With Silvio Berlusconi regaining power in Italy, Europe's right-wing parties can look out proudly on a continent they control. From north to south and east to west, Europe is painted blue. Social democrats hold ministers' jobs in coalition governments in Germany and the Netherlands, but governments there are headed by the right. Just three of the European Union member states—Britain, Spain and Portugal—are governed exclusively by the left. The arrival of Gianni Alemanno, a post-fascist politician, as mayor of Rome and the good showing of Boris Johnson, the populist Tory Euro-skeptic, as mayor of London completes the triumphant march of the European right into the corridors of power. In Brussels, a successful attempt by the conservative president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to become president of the European Union at the expense of the left's leading contender, Tony Blair, would further confirm the dominance of Europe's conservatives as the continent's political masters. (A decision is expected later this year.)
Not since the 19th-century concert of nations, when reactionary conservatives like Metternich, Talleyrand and Wellington stamped hard on liberal and proto-labor politics that challenged kings and emperors, has Europe seen so many right-wing politicians ruling the roost.
A decade ago it seemed very different. A majority of Europe's countries had center-left parties in power. Bill Clinton genially presided over gatherings of Blair, France's Lionel Jospin, Germany's Gerhard Schröder and Sweden's Goran Persson to pontificate grandly on progressive governance. But these left-liberal talkfests produced no enduring political program or vision. True, some center-left leaders like Blair can point to job creation and growth. But they managed only to manage, not change, their nations. The 1968 generation found itself in office but uncertain how to use government power to make its wishes reality.
But now that Europe's conservatives have won so much power, what are they going to do with it? The answer, alas, appears to be not much. Postwar conservatism had big leaders with a clear sense of destiny, like Churchill in Britain, de Gaulle in France and Adenauer in West Germany. They had their differences and limitations but exuded a sense of authority and belief in a value system shaped by the horrors of the first half of the last century. These conservatives created social capitalism, resisted communism and upheld Roman Catholicism and Judeo-Christian values. The big thinkers of the day, like Friedrich von Hayek, showed the futility of the state's seeking to own and plan the economy. Raymond Aron stood as a tolerant rock against admiration for Stalin and Mao by intellectuals and French and Italian communists. Conservative Catholics like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman created the European Common Market and forced the liberalization of economies, which allowed Europe to post growth rates between 1950 and 1975 that we now see only in Asia. Conservatives forged an Atlantic alliance and ignored the anti-American ideologues who argued that NATO equaled U.S. control of Europe.
Today's conservatives running Europe have plenty of ministerial limousines, but they have no leaders, thinkers or philosophies. European capitalism is atrophying. France's Nicolas Sarkozy replaced Jacques Chirac with the pledge to make people work harder and longer so France would again be the nation of Enrichissez-vous! (Get rich!), the injunction of bourgeois France in the 19th century. But Sarkozy is a disappointment. He jet-sets around the world with his stunning wife, Carla, but growth is dropping in France. Every time a market-opening reform is proposed, like having more taxis in Paris or allowing competition among pharmacies, France's vested interests block it. Sarkozy is repeating the mistake of all his predecessors by trying to borrow his way out of trouble.
Germany has recovered its zest for exports, but this is largely due to the tough medicine imposed by Schröder; he held down wages to allow investment to take place. His successor, Angela Merkel, has no idea how to change Germany's thinking to reduce the 4 million-strong unemployment queue. Berlusconi has already had two attempts at applying his business brio to Italy's economy and government, which cannot even get rubbish off the streets of Naples. Third time lucky? No one in Italy is counting on it. Instead, his mid-April victory was followed two weeks later by the election of Alemanno, the first right-winger to become mayor of Rome in decades. His plan for the city includes expelling 20,000 foreign undesirables.
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Member Comments
Posted By: a.sarris @ 05/08/2008 9:34:07 AM
Comment: "I can tell you that no amount of racist policies that the government of Athens (or should I say the gov't of the Former Ottoman Province of Yunanistan) will exterminate the ethnic Macedonians that live under Greek rule in the Aegean part of Macedonia. " writes good Mr zoranm5.
This is why the door to the EU and NATO will remain shut. Admisssion to these alliances requires relations of good neighbors, and we cannot be expected to admit to these organizations nations who covet our territory. You can call yourself whatever you want, but no amount of chest beating will change those of you who are not Albanians from slavs, who speak a slavic language and use a slavic alphabet. If you are not Greeks (praised be the Lord!) why the fixation on Alexander the Great (the name of your airport) or the sun of Vergina (found on the tomb of Phipip the II) on your flag? None other than lay the ground for territorial claims. Greeks at one point or another occupied most of the land of the ill-fated Yugoslavia (union of southern slavs) and all of Asia Minor, now occupied by Turkey. The simple historical fact is that after the wars of 1912/13 those are the borders. At the time of the treaty of Buccharest in 1913 and up to 1948, there is no mention of a slavic Macedonian nation or language. How come? How come the Bulgarians understand you without translators and call your language a bulgarian dialect? Are they also Macedonians, and do you perhaps have claims on their territory as well?
Therefore unless you see reality, we will close our borders, and airspace, and ports, and commerce, and the doors to the EU and NATO. And you can stay in Vardarska, land-locked with the Albanians at your west, the Serbs at the North, and your Bulgarian brethren in the east.
Posted By: zoranm5 @ 05/07/2008 12:53:04 PM
Comment: I applaud the comment: "The conservative government of Greece stopped a brave small democracy like Macedonia from joining NATO in an argument over its name that was little more elevated than the row among Swift's Lilliputians..." And as for people like a.sarris, please give me a break. Who are you, and what makes you such an expert on what is the ethnic make up of the citizens of the Republic of Macedonia? I can tell you that no amount of racist policies that the government of Athens (or should I say the gov't of the Former Ottoman Province of Yunanistan) will exterminate the ethnic Macedonians that live under Greek rule in the Aegean part of Macedonia. Like it or not, we exist, we are ethnic Macedonians and time will come when the Athenians will realize that instead spreading hatred, we should all learn to live and prosper together. I am an ethnic Macedonian (as in not Greek, not Serbian, not Bulgarian or Albanian) and I speak the Macedonian language. I do not tell you what you are and please you extend me the same kind of courtesy. And as for you last point I could say: "Aegean Macedonia to the Republic Macedonia and the rest to Turkey," but I will not
say it as I am not a hard core and unreasonable nationalist as you appear to be. And as far as the open borders of Greece, shame on you, how can you even imply this? The former Turkish province of Greece is one of the most xenophobic, minority unfriendly, genocide prone non-democratic country of the world. Recently, Macedonian passport holders with proper visas were turned back from the border point of entry at the mercy of the border patrol officer gangsters (unfortunately this is the best word that describes them). And need I mention the complete economic embargo of the mid 1990s that crippled the Macedonian economy, which is today somehow resurrected by somewhat more subtle measures of the Athens government. Which country puts airplane passengers at risk and forbids flying through their airspace just because the name of the company that the passengers chose to fly with is "Macedonian Airlines?" You guessed it: The Former Turkish Province of Yunanistan (Greece). Get a grip, smell the coffee and the reality as well
Posted By: a.sarris @ 05/07/2008 6:21:45 AM
Comment: "The conservative government of Greece stopped a brave small democracy like Macedonia from joining NATO in an argument over its name that was little more elevated than the row among Swift's Lilliputians..."
This comment is revealing the extend to which the author is ignorant of European history. And that also those who froget it are condemned to repeat it. The dispute is not simply about the name, but about who they are, and by extension what they want. The inhabitants of Skopjia claim to be descentants of the Macedonians of alexander the great, and on that basis they choose a name and lay claims to the historical area of ancient Macedonia, including the "Macedonia of the Aegean" On this falsehood they try to build a nation. In fact, 30% of them are Albanian moslems. The remainder are Slavs, who moved into the area in the 7th century after Christ, the speak a bulgarian dialect, and use the Cyrillic alphabet which was introduced to the slavic populations when they converted to Christianity by the Monks Curillus and Methodius. The Macedonians of Alexander the Great were greeks (like the Athenians and the spartans), spoke greek, and used the greek, not the cyrillic alphabet. The myth of the "macedonian nation" in Vardaska was created by Tito after WWII to keep a barrier between Bulgaria and the province of Skopjia, and also to lay claim to Salonica and the neighboring areas. FYROM is no "brave little republic", but an impostor. Unless they see reality, the path to NATO and EU will be closed, and Greek cooperation and open borders will also disappear some day. And this falsity would best go: Tetovo to Albania, the rest to either Serbia or Bulgaria.