Watching the news on TV after European elections, we can think that Descartes really gave a good explanation of error.
Watching the news on TV after European elections, we can think that Descartes really gave a good explanation of error. The Understanding is limited, for we do not have a clear and distinct idea of everything; but the Will is unlimited, for does not keep itself within the limits of understanding. So the Will goes further than the understanding, and then the error springs. I say this because I am very skeptical with regards to the possibility of so many people (both journalists and tweeters) understanding everything about so many parties of so many countries. However, every journalist on TV, no matter how little they have studied, or how precarious are their intellectual abilities, has a great Will making them conclude that European liberal democracy is going to end because European voters voted for parties which are admitted in liberal democracy – and these journalists make no accusation of fraud. They say all this nonsense because they think that, if a political actor is against unrestrained immigration, that’s automatically a neo-Nazi, and there is no need of finding out about their programs and trajectories, nor the situation of each country.
Obviously, this story only makes sense if we accept a very peculiar conception of what is a liberal democracy, to wit: the political regime which elects only parties and candidates which are approved by CIA. Upon the whole, the only thing that surprises me is that these so-called far-right parties were not extinguished for the sake of democracy, since it is usual here, at USA’s backyard (South America), to use Judiciary power for taking popular leaders out of electoral contests. As this resource begun to be used even inside USA (see Trump), it would be natural to repeat it in Europe. I don’t believe that the CIA puppets would be ashamed of shutting down a lot of parties in Europe, since the Western media establishment was promoting as a serious political book a work entitled “The People vs. Democracy: Why our Freedom is in Danger and how to save it.” The title is not ironical, and its author, Yascha Mounk, goes page after page deploring the electoral results of other countries, as if the whole world had the obligation to vote for a candidate who suits his own taste.
So, the Western media’s discontent with the result of European elections is, indeed, a surprise. I thought of these explanations, which are not mutually exclusionary:
1) Far from being omnipotent, USA’s and UE’s elites are so alienated, that they could not foresee the growing of their enemies;
2) The European electorate indeed escaped from control because of the economical war against Russia, which threw upwards the cost of living (we don’t even need to think of aids sent to Ukraine in order to realize that the war is too bad for Europeans’ pockets);
3) A relevant share of the so-called “far-right” is a product designed for disguising as anti-system the system’s most radical economic prescriptions. In other words, it is perfectly possible that there is a Milei for each country in USA’s sphere of influence.
Complex things hardly have a single explanation; therefore, I believe that it is more prudent to explain the growth of the so-called far-right in Europe by a combination of these three. We don’t need to say that any of these actors condemned by TV “experts” are fine, but we neither should believe that the condemnation by such “experts” means that such actors are indeed anti-system. At this point, CIA must have noticed that their media campaign against popular politicians have an opposite effect. Therefore, Milei stays in a curious position: even though the media yells that he is really evil, the media coverage of his government is extremely favorable. If Milei’s public budget has a surplus, then Milei’s administration is wonderful, even though Argentinians are eating less meat and milk, and the price of energy soared.
This explanation must be taken into account, since Milei himself claimed the electoral success in Europe as his own, being himself a part of a phenomenon the he called “the new Rights”. A cartoon which he retweeted puts him aside with Trump and Wilders containing a wave of cultural Marxism. But Trump surely is not the same as Milei, since he defends protection to national industry and is far from being an ancap.
Here we must come back to the explanation number 1: USA’s and EU’s elites are not omnipotent, so it is normal to pretend to have more power than one actually has. Therefore, between ancaps claiming victories of the so-called far-right, and such victories being actually of the ancaps, there is quite a distance. CIA would be very glad if Trump were just like Milei!
And precisely because USA’s and EU’s elites are not infallible, it is impossible that they could control all European electorate and make them willingly accept the Green Agenda, the sanctions against Russia and the aids to Ukraine, plus unlimited immigration. What they could do in this situation? I think of embracing one of these options: they either sell fusionism as the new official ideology and hope that people buy it, either they embrace publicly the authoritarian and technocratic character of CIA’s liberal democracy.
Fusionism is an ideology invented in the USA, during the 1950’s, by Frank Mayer, and widely sold under the deceitful name of “conservatism” by William F. Buckley Jr. Fusionism separates moral from economy and fuses conservative morals with liberal economy. No one knows how can a Uber driver possibly have a traditional home, with housewife and kids, but it is very cool to defend, from the lips, traditional family, and heartily support the deregulamentation of markets. Few people knows it today, but the cover boy of so-called American conservatism, the former CIA agent William F. Buckley Jr., openly supported drugs legalization, and, at the same time, disapproved its use by conservatives. How a Uber driver and a cleaning lady will stop their kids from using drugs without the reinforcement os state, no one knows.
Fusionism is right-wing wokeism: considers that the state is a matter for technocrats and that politics must be limited to the discussion of customs. Society must discuss the morality of anal sex, and things that are properly legislative must be decided by “experts”.
It is quite possible, however, that fusionism propaganda doesn’t work, because no politician can live for a long time on the basis of customs discussion. Ruined the fusionist alternative, all that will remain for liberalism is showing its authoritarian face and claiming that Europeans must be treated in a harsher manner that the Germans were treated in 1945. After all, only Nazis would refuse to support the Kiev regime and its Azov Batallion!
ERRATA:
In my last article, I trusted a laudatory article from a newspaper of PT sympathizers and, for this reason, I listed Ricardo Lewandowski as an ethnic Jew appointed to Supreme Court by PT. It seems to be a erroneous article, since Lewandowsky is a common last-name of Polish Slavs (contrariwise to what is said in the newspapers article), and the Justice’s mother, a Swiss, was a Catholic woman who had an Italian last-name.
Bruna Frascolla é historiadora da filosofia, doutora pela UFBA, e ensaísta.