When, almost 3 years ago, Donald Trump took the oath of office, he proclaimed that he would unite America. Everyone knew that he would do the opposite, but at least he said it. In the political whirlwinds since that day, even lip service to the idea of “uniting” a country has disappeared from the political vocabulary almost everywhere. Occasional references are still made to the nationals of a country (Salvini speaks of “italiani”) or to the country as if it were a singular entity (Macron extolls “la France”), yet these words are the thinnest of wrappings for divisive agendas. To say that today’s politics and political leaders in Europe are nationalists (declared or closet) is wrong. The vast majority of them are propounding and trying to implement policies aimed at satisfying the wishes (real or imagined) of minorities within their countries, not at achieving consensus to support the majority.
It is too facile to suggest that this has always been so. True, a case can be made that in the long post 1945 period, a period that has now finally ended, a unity call of one kind or another was essential to achieving political power. While fairly generalized prosperity was around (meaning up till the 1970s), little in the way of political kudos was to be gained by preaching disintegration. Dictatorships in Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Greece), regimes that were founded and run for minorities, were breaking up. There were crucial exceptions. Mrs Thatcher led the way, epitomizing the philosophy of social fracture with the famous phrase “there is no such thing as society”. Gradually, a few others nudged in the same direction (Gerhard Schroeder is a case in point). But it is now that division has become the buzzword.
The “We” in the title of this comment is interpreted differently depending on who you are, your history (personal and public), and the power you think you and those you might identify with believe you can wield. The decade now closing has been that of disintegration. It has provided enormous empirical evidence of inequalities of every sort, fueled movements to insist on identities of multiple kinds, and called into question (though not nearly enough) the utility of institutions and procedures that, just a few years ago, were treated as sacrosanct. Simultaneously, rights of countless types have been asserted. A massive chorus of demands for “entitlements” has reached a crescendo in the very period when austerity has ensured that more and more people in Europe are deprived of basic requirements.
What accounts for the emphasis on division as the recipe for progress? There is certainly no shortage of justificatory claims. Where geography and history rank high in the arguments, Scotland and Cataluna are prime examples of places where substantial parts of the populations see separation from the constitutional entities they currently belong to as fundamental to achievement of dignity and advancement. Where arguments about economic burden sharing within countries carry major weight, there is no need to go beyond La Lega (which is still “Nord” despite the name change) and Vlaams Belang. They want separation because they perceive themselves as transferring wealth to regions that, in their view, have not earned it nor are likely to. When burden sharing is viewed across Europe, plenty of political groups want to opt out of systems they consider should not apply to their countries. AfD, for instance, decries almost every sort of general policy that has been adopted by successive coalition governments as a betrayal of the interests of German people, in particular the “true Germans”. The ruling political parties in Poland and Hungary firmly oppose any number of actions taken by the EU as infringements of their sovereignty and as schemes designed to limit their freedoms to pursue their own routes. In Holland the views expressed at the beginning of the century by Pym Fortuyn have more recently been presented, in much cruder form, by formations wanting to give the country more scope to stay out of EU mechanisms. The whole Brexit fiasco has been built around the notion that the UK has somehow been victimized by manoeuvers on the European mainland.
Yet underlying many, if not most, of these complaints has been the conviction that “la casta”, interpreted as the set of institutions and people making up the political, business (financial) and media elite, itself is the cause of divisions – and thereby has driven others to fend for themselves. The myriad tirades against politicians everywhere (“they are only in it for themselves” has been heard in a thousand forms and places throughout the past years); the ferocious protests against institutions, ranging from the demonstrations 20 years ago in Seattle against the (now largely defunct) WTO, to the protests a decade ago in Genoa against the G20; the powerful and successful mobilization against the TTIP in the middle of this decade pinpointing how the closed door dealings were seeking to create arrangements largely detrimental to the interests of most Europeans; and the countless efforts against corruption and criminality at the top of the political pyramid (Malta has now become the fulcrum): all these exemplify the profound concern that progress has been hijacked by the unholy alliance of big business and government. At root, if la casta does not represent public interests, assorted groups of people will have to do it for themselves.
This rude “awakening”, people shocked out of their slumber, has unsurprisingly led to a wide array of contradictory groupings, initiatives and actions. While deep seated worries about the nature and mechanisms of “representative democracy” have been around for a long while (as exemplified in the work “Tegen Verkiezingen” of David Van Reybrouck and reinforced by numerous experimental efforts to devise alternatives to standard electoral processes, especially in France), the apathy towards “the churn of the urn” may be gathering strength. In 2017, just before the French elections, Brice Teinturier published his essay on the “PRAF” phenomenon (“Plus rien a faire, plus rien a foutre”). Despite reasonable turnouts for the European elections in mid- 2019, the sense that we are heading for the last chance saloon is hard to escape. Unless somehow the casta ceases to be what it is, and connects with the complexities of Europe, then divisions will simply grow.
Is there any prospect that “the drive for divisiveness” will yield positive results, at least for significant parts of populations? The answer is a qualified “yes”. It is possible that the apparent clarity and distinctiveness of messages designed to push particularist agendas might generate some useful outcomes that help people outside the group that is promoting the messages. Take a highly controversial example, the case of Chile. The political repression launched a half century ago provided a context for a savage economic revolution. Over the decades this produced terrible suffering, yet also boosted changes in the economy which benefitted a wider group. The share of the population living in poverty remained relatively large, but there were economic gains. Attempts at far more inclusive policies were made under some subsequent governments, and these contributed to closing some of the wounds. But the demonstrations of the past few weeks have again shown that the divisions are by no means gone. In that splendid country then, as in so much of Europe today, the radical overthrow of the society was purportedly justified by an alleged need to “become more competitive”, to simultaneously defend the interests of foreign business and finance, and to “modernize”.
Thus President Macron understandably laments the exceptional complexity (and injustices) of the “systeme des retraites” in France and insists it has to be changed. Though numbers of people in France may agree that things are not as they should be, there nevertheless appears to be substantial support for the grevistes. Change, however much it may seem essential, accentuates division (doubly so in a country where the whole Macron Presidency has been marked by acute social unrest). The President himself is reported to set so much store by this divisive initiative that he indicated he would not stand again in 2022 if the changes do not take place – in response to which many hope they can treat this as a promise rather than a threat.
In times of war, it was always a maxim that success required unity. The advice remains at the core of performance programs in team sports, in successful business organizations, and in numerous social activities. The warmth stemming from shared endeavors and shared achievements continues to exercise a powerful pull today. Yet the divisions exacerbated during the past decade have raised the question as to whether the unity call has outrun its life in the social sphere. Europe is the continent where the unity message, embodied in the welfare state, has been paramount. It is on that pedestal that the continent has stood. Now the issue is whether social division can keep the region erect.
Peter O’Brien, 10 December 2019
