gracchusdixit

Consumed as we are by the frenzied chaos of the Trump White House, few Americans have been able to catch their breath long enough to notice what is happening elsewhere in the western world.  A wave of aggressive, inward-looking nationalism, much like the creed preached by Donald Trump and his Breitbart or Russian handlers, is sweeping across Europe like rolling thunder.

The first thunderclap was heard when a slim majority of the British electorate voted to leave the European Union.  Many Americans were shocked or mystified by this decision, but then promptly forgot about it, because no immediate apocalypse occurred.  It will take years for Britain to unwind its relationship with the EU, and until that unwinding is complete, the full force of this suicidal decision is unlikely to be felt.  When it finally comes,  however, it will come like a whirlwind.

In the meantime, many other, even more serious decisions are coming much faster.

On March 15, the Dutch will vote in a national election.  The head of a far-right,  nationalist party, Geert Wilders, has been surging in the polls and now seems likely to win, for many of the same reasons that swept Trump into power:  hatred of immigrants, suspicion of global institutions, nostalgia for an earlier, supposedly better age.  Because there are a dozen or so political parties in the Netherlands, a coalition is usually required for a government to be formed.  Wilders may not be able to become prime minister, if other parties decline to ally themselves with his provocative agenda.   Even if that happens, however, for Wilders to take the lead in this election would mark a stunning reversal of the tolerant, liberal traditions of the Netherlands.

Five weeks after the Dutch vote, the French will go to the polls.  The French electoral system is unusual, in that it has two rounds.  In the first, a field of presidential candidates—in this case, five—will be winnowed to two, and then, in a second round in early May, the finalists will face off to decide the ultimate result.  It seems all but inevitable that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, will be one of the finalists.  The Front National is virulently anti-Muslim and anti-European, and Le Pen has promised, if elected, to pull out of the European Union—despite the fact that France all but invented the EU and plays a leading role in its administration.

In July, the last round of financial aid to Greece will expire.  Greece is entering the ninth year of one of the worst economic depressions in history.  Twenty-three percent of its population and 49 percent of its young people are unemployed.  The country’s GDP is half what it was before the depression began.  The average wages of those who lucky enough to have jobs have declined by 30 percent.  Nonetheless, the European Central Bank continues to demand that Greece produce a budgetary surplus large enough to give its lenders a profitable rate of return.  It is no accident that the ECB is controlled by Germany, and it will come as no surprise that German banks top the list of Greece’s lenders.  Since it is all but impossible that Greece will be able to meet these demands, its de facto bankruptcy will inevitably become official, at which point its only option will be to withdraw from the euro and perhaps from the European Union itself.  This could ignite a panic in financial markets.

Two months later, in September, another election will take place, in Germany.  Less than a year ago, it seemed all but certain that Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, would be a shoe-in to retain power.  That is no longer the case.  When Merkel decided to open Germany’s borders to thousands of refugees seeking to escape the murderous chaos of Syria, millions of anti-immigrant Germans balked.   Mutter Angela, the nickname by which she was once affectionately known, has become a slur.  It now seems likely that Merkel and her Christian Democratic Party will not win enough votes to govern alone.  The only plausible coalition partner will be Germany’s socialist party, which is the largest in Europe and steadfastly opposes Merkel’s neoliberal governing philosophy.

Why is all this happening?  What accounts for the social and economic thunder rolling across the western world?

In the run-up to our recent presidential election, the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, declared:  “To stop neofascism, you must stop neoliberalism.”  Whatever else you may think of Jill Stein—and there plenty of reasons to be skeptical of both the candidate and her motives—she was certainly right about this.

The neofascist tendencies of Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, and their counterparts throughout Europe, have been fueled by the fundamental flaws of the “neoliberal” economic and social order, which has failed to attend to the needs of ordinary people, creating grotesque inequalities of wealth and income, and subordinating community and country to the profit motives of rootless corporations.

The central intellectual flaw of neoliberalism is its conflation of the liberal political and social ideals of the Enlightenment with a free-market economic agenda.  This confusion has a long pedigree, beginning with Adam Smith in the 18th century.  But its principal architect was an Austrian-born economist named Frances Hayek.  In 1943, Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, his most famous book, in which he asserted that property rights, private enterprise, and the so-called “free market” are the fundamental underpinnings of every other freedom.  He went on to claim, absurdly, that any attempt by government to intervene in the workings of the market is a step in the direction of tyranny, a step on the “road to serfdom.”  We have Hayek to thank for the dismal fact that many Americans reflexively condemn any attempt to reform our ridiculously dysfunctional healthcare system as “socialized medicine.”

No matter what neoliberal ideologues may say, property rights are not the same thing as human rights, the “free market” is not synonymous with a free society, and the social contract between individuals and their government cannot be reduced to a business transaction or a journal entry on a balance sheet.  Until the governing elites here and in Europe come to their senses and acknowledge the failures of the neoliberal order—the  endless financial bubbles and busts, the systemic corruption, the unconscionable redistribution of wealth from the 99 percent to the one percent—the thunder of neofascism will continue to roll.  If these governing elites do not come to their senses soon, lightning will inevitably strike.