DiEM 25: A movement to take Europe back from authoritarianism, corporate rule and austerity

2015 saw a surge of  leftist and radical movements and the rise of anti-austerity forces across Europe.

So it is interesting to see this week's launch of DiEM 25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), a new left-wing cross-European progressive movement to democratise Europe and present alternatives to austerity and authoritarianism.

The purpose of DiEM is to act as a bridge to bring together the movements that flourished before 2015, together with Europeans awakened in 2015 (e.g. by the Athens Spring) who now see that the EU will either be democratised or it will disintegrate (with frightful repercussions for Europeans and for the world at large).

DiEM aims to provide existing movements and the new forces of progressive change with the ‘infrastructure’ necessary to build up the cross-European response.

The Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis launched DiEM 25  at the Volksbuehne theatre in Berlin, which is known as a landmark in German leftist activism.

Varoufakis left his position within the Greek leftist Syriza government in July 2015 after he refused to accept a third financial aid package from European Union creditors that imposed more rigid austerity terms on the Greek people.

Varoufakis claims that Europe is controlled by authoritarian technocrats and the leftist movement is necessary  to take back power from what he described as a shadowy world of bureaucrats, bankers, and unelected officialdom.

In speaking at the launch Varoufakis describing the EU’s current state as “a post-modern version of the 1930s,” and warned against a return to individual nation states and “building walls again.” He also warned against turning Greece and Italy into “concentration camps” for refugees.

Footage of the launch is here.

An outline of the launch and those involved is here.

In launching DiEM 25 Varoufakis said:

“To counter this de-politicisation of political decision making, which reinforces the economic crisis and the crisis of legitimacy facing Europe, we need a movement that rises up throughout in Europe, at once, with the same agenda everywhere to re-politicize political decisions and to democratize the decision making process,”

“There is no other means by which to arrest the awful feedback between authoritarianism and failed economic policies—a feedback that, left unchecked, will wreck Europe and help ultra-nationalism triumph.”  

DiEM's online manifesto is  here. One aim is  to prevent the disintegration of the European Union.

The Manifesto states:

Our goal to democratize Europe is terribly urgent, for without a swift start it may be impossible to chisel away at the institutionalized resistance in good time, before Europe goes past the point of no return. We give it a decade, by 2025.

If we fail to democratize Europe within, at most, a decade; if Europe’s autocratic powers succeed in stifling democratization, then the EU will crumble under its hubris, it will splinter, and its fall will cause untold hardship everywhere – not just in Europe.

In this long article Thomas Fazi supports the broad thrust of DiEM's manifesto but questions some of its strategy and general goals.

Honoring Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015)

Sadly, the distinguished political theorist and philosopher Sheldon Wolin has died in Salem Oregon. Wolin was 93.

 

Wolin was one of the US's leading political philosophers and someone who enlivened leftist and radical political philosophy, whilst retaining a commitment to the radical possibilities of democracy.

 

Sheldon Wolin's final book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism is without doubt the most important book I have read in the last decade.

 

In that book, Wolin describes inverted totalitarianism as the fusion of corporate and political power. Wolin makes clear that inverted totalitarianism is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany. 

 

Wolin argues that contemporary democracies and corporate capitalism have inverted the ways that authoritarian regimes politicize all spheres of life.  State and corporate power are increasingly enmeshed. He warns that the combination of state power and unchecked economic and corporate power now verge on total power and has created its own pathologies.

 

Wolin argues that political and corporate forces don't necessarily seek to replace democratic structures. Rather, they claim to honour democracy, electoral politics, freedom of speech and the right to assembly, whilst all the while capturing, manipulating and corrupting the levers of power to serve  political, economic, corporate and business interests.  

 

Wolin also examines the myths and mythmaking used  to justify this interlocking of corporate and state power, including the claim of a failing economy, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, privatisation and the never-ending war on terror.

Wolin warns that corporate power no longer answers to state or citizen control. The institutions of government, economy, civil society and society no longer play the role they were intended for. They primarily serve the interests of the political, corporate and business classes.

 

For Wolin,  corporate power and political power are now so closely intertwined and the much of the citizenry so demobilised, that genuine democracy is a remote possibility, expressed in what he described as  rare “fugitive” expressions of the popular will. 

 

Wolin argues that inverted totalitarianism destroys democracy, politically demobilises citizens, projects power and wealth upwards and creates instability, passivity and precarious existence for the majority of citizens.

 

Wolin writes that inverted totalitarianism:

 

'is not expressly conceptualised as an ideology of objectified in public policy but is furthered by decision makers, power holders and citizens who unaware of or blind to the deeper consequences of their actions or actions'

 

Chris Hedges, who is a passionate supporter of Wolin's work has written this piece in memory of his friend and colleague. A series of interviews with Sheldon Wolin by Chris Hedges are here and here.

 

Other pieces written in memory of Sheldon Wolin are here, here, here, here, here and here

Arundhati Roy on a democractically elected totalitarian Indian Government

Interview here with Arundhati Roy on the result of the recent Indian elections, which resulted in the election of Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi. 

Arundhati Roy argues that India has an elected totalitarian Government:

“Now, we have a democratically elected totalitarian government. Technically and legally, there is no party with enough seats to constitute an opposition. But many of us have maintained for several years that there never was a real opposition. The two main parties agreed on most policies, and each had the skeleton of a mass pogrom against a minority community in its cupboard. So now, it’s all out in the open. The system lies exposed.”

As Barbara Crosette writes in The Nation, Modi's political origins are in the radical fringes of a Hindu nationalist party unashamedly influenced by 1930s European fascism, complete with theories of a master race. Crosette  argues that Modi's election presents India with its greatest political challenge since the nation was formed in 1947.

Arundhati Roy sees that the Modi Government is beholden to the mining and resource companies who bankrolled his campaign. She believes he will hand over land to the mining and infrastructure corporations and attempt to crush those resisting the forcible takeover of their land:

“The contracts are all signed and the companies have been waiting for years. He has been chosen as the man who does not blink in the face of bloodshed, not just Muslim bloodshed but any bloodshed.”

In her view India's chosen economic development model has a genocidal core

“How have the other ‘developed’ countries progressed? Through wars and by colonising and usurping the resources of other countries and societies. India has no option but to colonise itself............ Bloodshed is inherent to this model of development. There are already thousands of people in jails. But that is not enough any longer. The resistance has to be crushed and eradicated. Big money now needs the man who can walk the last mile. That is why big industry poured millions into Modi’s election campaign.”

An interview with Arundhati Roy about the dark forces underlying the Indian election is here.

Chris Hedges and Chris Floyd on the Manning sentence

Chris Hedges on the 35 year sentence handed down to Chelsea (Bradley) Manning:

Although it was less than I thought the judge was going to throw at him, my gut reaction was quite emotional. I was quite upset. I think that that’s because this is part of a larger process by which any attempt to shine a light on the inner workings of power is not only being shut down, but those with a conscience who attempt to inform the wider public of, in the case of Manning, crimes that have been committed—war crimes—have become, in this society, criminals. The whole moral and legal system has been inverted. … We are seeing all of the traditional checks by which we are able to thwart government tyranny ripped down. So I look at what happened today as a kind of process, and a very depressing process, whereby not only civil liberties are shredded, but any capacity for the investigation and uncovering of the abuse of power is effectively thwarted.

On his blog Empire Burlesque Chris Floyd  points out that Manning has been given a far harsher sentence for revealing war crimes than Lt. William Calley and his My Lai massacrers were given for actually committing war crimes.  Floyd writes:

35 years for leaking documents -- while the mass murderers, drone bombers and death-squadding assassins of the Potamac Empire live free in pomp and privilege.

In an earlier piece Chris Floyd writes:

Reality in such systems -- systems that have openly demonstrated their willingness to torture people, lock them up for years without trial or kill them outright at the arbitrary order of the leader and his minions -- is not a TV show, not a movie with well-marked 'character arcs' ending in triumph for the bruised but unbowed hero. It's a dirty, ugly, degrading business, an uneven fight, pitting unarmed truth against vast, implacable, dehumanizing forces of violent domination. It is a war with many bitter defeats, both outwardly and in the souls of those caught up in it. It involves loss, destruction, humiliation, torment, ruin and doubt. There are no "heroes" in it, only human beings: some of them fighting to hang on to their humanity as best they can -- and others who have surrendered their humanity to the forces of domination.

Bradley Manning doesn't have to be a "hero." He doesn't have to make a stirring speech to give people a vicarious thrill for a moment before they click over to check their Facebook page or pop in another box set. He has shown clearly that he stands on the side of humanity -- and now he is paying the price for it. The very fact of his case has revealed the true nature of the system arrayed against him, and again.

In a  longer piece in Truthdig Chris Hedges writes:

Wednesday’s sentencing marks one of the most important watersheds in U.S. history. It marks the day when the state formally declared that all who name and expose its crimes will become political prisoners or be forced, like Edward Snowden, and perhaps Glenn Greenwald, to spend the rest of their lives in exile. It marks the day when the country dropped all pretense of democracy, obliterated checks and balances under the separation of powers and rejected the rule of law. It marks the removal of the mask of democracy, already a fiction, and its replacement with the ugly, naked visage of corporate totalitarianism. State power is to be, from now on, unchecked, unfettered and unregulated. And those who do not accept unlimited state power, always the road to tyranny, will be ruthlessly persecuted.

Currently reading: Genealogies of Citizenship by Margaret Somers

Margaret Somers  book Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights is one of the finest books of contemporary social and political analyses I have read for a long time.

The book describes and analyses how decades of market fundamentalism have transformed increasing numbers of rights-bearing citizens into socially excluded internally stateless persons.  Somers argues us that the power and authority of the market is distorting the meaning of citizenship from non-contractual shared fate to conditional privilege, making rights, inclusion and moral worth dependent on contractual market value.

I rank it with Sheldon Wolin's remarkable book Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism  as among the most prescient and significant diagnoses of our social, economic and political current malaise.

John Pilger and the political extremism that masquerades as democracy

John Pilger's latest article in New Statesman exposes the political and corporate extremism that masquerades as democracy:

Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.

Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the "collection room" and, unofficially, as the "room of horrors". It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny "cover to the enemy". This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.

In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that "the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children". The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand.  Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children.

Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women's Union. The union's president, Nguyen Thi  Thanh  Hoa, described "the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation". She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims. 

Aldis hand-delivered the letter to the office of Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee. He has had no reply. When Amnesty International pointed out that in 2001 Dow Chemical acquired "the company responsible for the Bhopal gas leak [in India in 1984] which killed 7,000 to 10,000 people immediately and 15,000 in the following twenty years", David Cameron described Dow as a "reputable company". Cheers, then, as the TV cameras pan across the £7 million decorative wrap that sheathes the Olympic stadium: the product of a 10-year "deal" between the IOC and such a reputable destroyer.

History is buried with the dead and deformed of Vietnam and Bhopal. And history is the new enemy. On 28 May, President Obama launched a campaign to falsify the history of the war in Vietnam. To Obama, there was no Agent Orange, no free fire zones, no turkey shoots, no cover-ups of massacres, no rampant racism, no suicides (as many Americans took their own lives as died in the war), no defeat by a resistance army drawn from an impoverished society. It was, said Mr. Hopey Changey, "one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of [US] military history". 

The following day, the New York Times published a long article documenting how Obama personally selects the victims of his drone attacks across the world. He does this on "terror Tuesdays" when he browses through mug shots on a "kill list", some of them teenagers, including "a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years". Many are unknown or simply of military age. Guided by "pilots" sitting in front of computer screens in Las Vegas, the drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of lungs and blow people to bits. Last September, Obama killed a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, purely on the basis of hearsay that he was inciting terrorism. "This one is easy," he is quoted by aides as saying as he signed the man's death warrant. On 6 June, a drone killed 18 people in a village in Afghanistan, including women, children and the elderly who were celebrating a wedding. 

The New York Times article was not a leak or an expose. It was a piece of PR designed by the Obama administration to show what a tough guy the 'commander-in-chief' can be in an election year. If re-elected, Brand Obama will continue serving the wealthy, pursuing truth-tellers, threatening countries, spreading computer viruses and murdering people every Tuesday. 

The threats against Syria, co-ordinated in Washington and London, scale new peaks of hypocrisy. Contrary to the raw propaganda presented as news, the investigative journalism of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identifies those responsible for the massacre in Houla as the 'rebels' backed by Obama and Cameron. The paper's sources include the rebels themselves. This has not been completely ignored in Britain. Writing in his personal blog, ever so quietly, Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor, effectively dishes his own 'coverage', citing western officials who describe the 'psy-ops' operation against Syria as 'brilliant'. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.

And as brilliant as the psy-ops of the Guardian's latest promotion of Alastair Campbell, the chief collaborator of Tony Blair in the criminal invasion of Iraq. In his "diaries", Campbell tries to splash Iraqi blood on the demon Murdoch. There is plenty to drench them all. But recognition that the respectable, liberal, Blair-fawning media was a vital accessory to such an epic crime is omitted and remains a singular test of intellectual and moral honesty in Britain. 

How much longer must we subject ourselves to such an "invisible government"?  This term for insidious propaganda, first used by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and inventor of modern public relations, has never been more apt.  "False reality" requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, "austerity" and "perpetual war": an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it?

The politics of uprising

photo by AP Photo/M.Spencer Green from the Nation

Important  piece here from the  US Nation magazine by John Nichols on the new politics, which is arising not from established political systems or political parties, but from the streets.

As Nichols points out this is a politics of "uprising". This is a politics that challenges policies of austerity and corporate power and marches and votes to put human needs ahead of corporate greed.

The  focus of these uprisings is increasingly on the excesses of corporate capitalism and the merging of corporate power with political and state power, what the distinguished American political scientist Sheldon Wolin calls "inverted totalitarianism".

And importantly it is an uprising that positions itself outside the existing political structures and political parties. 

The proponents of austerity—from Madison to Washington to Berlin to Athens—would have us believe that nations, states and communities must sacrifice public education, public services and healthcare in order to balance budgets. Yet the same politicians who preach that there is no money for vaccinations and school lunches can always find the money for corporate tax breaks, payouts to defense contractors and wars of whim.

Politicians in both parties tell austerity lies.

But the people are pushing back.

There’s an uprising brewing, not just in Europe but in American states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. There’s a dawning recognition that it is neither morally nor fiscally prudent to sacrifice human needs in order to pay for wars—or to redistribute more of the wealth upward. We do not need “shared sacrifice” and the lie of austerity. We need new priorities.