Murdoch style rightwing news is an extremely potent democracy killer. The UK with all its public services and incredible universities and museums taking everyone else's culture great cosmopolitanism collapsed to Brexit. The United States is clearly cooked. And just before the US election, Canada was having a huge rightwing anti immigrant fake grass roots moment. Silver lining of our bad outcome was they woke up a bit. The formula is perfected in English speaking countries, we're infected. And it's not just us, Russia's got their multiple Fox style state media outlets. They're cooked.
So for this stuff to succeed it has to grow out of something. Germany's got institutional limits on rightwing speech and right now has a much much lower percent of psychologically rightwing personalities compared to say the USA (like 8% instead of 29% or whatever). So it can nip it in the bud more easily. But what about other Nordic pluralist countries with healthier social democracies? How is France not going to collapse into the feedbacking amplification of doom — whatever rightwing meme power tipping point? Isn't like Italy already compromised since the 90s?
Like, is Europe just one media generation behind us, where social democracy is large but not inherently self sustaining, and therefore vulnerable? Or do you guys have some structural advantage where maybe you can save us all? Or at least yourselves?
Brexit was a defense reaction against the class warfare by the wealthy liberals of the UK, one they had been very successfully waging on the rest of the population. If you fail to see that you cannot understant anything about european poitics.
First you must understand whta the british (and the rest of the western subcontinent here) were against. "Cosmopolitanism", as it turns out if you look carefully at all places famous for it throughout history, is linked to plutocratic/oligarchic rule, imperialism, slavery, profound inequality of wealth and social status. Athens, Rome, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, London, all
cosmopolitan cities... The "free movement of people and capital" is to the benefit of plutocrats and to the detriment of the rest. Those summer holidays in the Mediterranean for the working class only work if the wages can cover the cost... those squeezed out then fail to see the appeal of
freedom of movement they can no longer afford. Liberalism from the 1990s onwards until now in "Europe" built on the material foundations laid out by social-democracy and communism. And wasted them away. Or rather,
financialized them away.
Public utilities, transportation, housing, education, health care - all public goods built up under reasonably competent governments until the 1980s, wether communist or social-democratic, wer, after the triumph of liberalism, privatized, which is to say stolen by the liberal plutocrats. By stealing ownership of them an uper caste could change rent incomes from the mass of the population. This is too plain to hide, the victims know it.
The fact that a portion of that ruling class supported brexit changes nothing about the above. It only shows that the upper class is divided on future strategy, but then what is new about that?
Europe is ending its liberal period. Public discontentment is hight but more importantly there is little left to steal (in Europe there's pensions). Greed alone is enough motive to the upper class to divide on what to do next. Some in the UK came up with the "Singapore-on-the-Thames" and supprted brexit out of greed. They miscalculated, believing the UK had more clout that it really has. Murdoch is one among many of that divided class.
The issue is that liberalism simply hit its "limit to growth, na dthat became especially obvious as the anti-slav crusade (new resouces to plunder) failed completely and backfired. Now for a plutocrat to grow it must eat another plutocrat... which means that political liberalism with the fetishsm of rules
is no longer useful for the ruling class that had been using it. Liberalism therefore has already became openly "illiberal". Consider:
The UK's government ordered the largest mass arrest of people for the crime of speech, just this week. t wasn't prompted by "Murdoch". It wass the zionists in charge there.
Likewise, the german govermment has its police beating up people for the crime of denouncing an ongoing genocide. The "right wing media" has nothing to do with it.
It wasn't the "right wing media" that invalidated an election in Romania, and then on top of that prohibited the leading candidate from running in the repetition vote.
Just as it wasn't the "Murdoch media" that ordered the irish to vote again when they rejected the Lisbon Treaty.
The european political classes, the brand of european liberalism that became hegemonic on the 1990s, was anything but democratic. Liberalism was always only a fig leaf. It was imperial and elitist, disguised as "technocratic". The EU they crafted was
meant to supress democracy, reduce voting to an empty ritual of choosing one of many parties all with the same policy (whatever they claimed in campaign). But now the reality of the consequences of exploitation at home (class war, the other class reacts) and collapse of imperial power abroad (the cope is great but cannot hide defeat after defeat, and midget status diplomatically and militarily) made liberalism no longer useful as a propaganda device to control
the voters. So the liberals deliberately walk towards the same exit as their great-grandfathers did in the 1930s. They turn their coats and pretend they're nationalists. Except,
this time they lack the material support to succeeed in the pretense. These are people who would cling to power for as long as they could, wading through (other people's) seas of blood if they must. But the states they control no longer have the power to wage wars as distractions for social tensions, or sources of plunder to keep the plutocratic system going.
Fortunately they are much too incompent, and weakened their states already too much, to cause World War III. Their downfall is their own doing, the likes of Murdoch have nothing to do with it. The so-called "far-right" many are already morphing into are mere opportunists riding a wave of rejection against the status quo, but without any solution to adress that rejection and anger. Liberal turncoats and faux conservatives (what is left to conserve?) who know no new tricks will quickly fail.
What will follow. Intresting question. Times are rather uncertain. I can see the failure of this generation of politicians, the ones in power and the ones pretenting to be the alternative. I won't guess at the shape of things to come. But people sould keep in mind Mao's dictum which applies in time sof change: power springs from the barrel of a gun. Even in politis so rotten that they lost the ability to
manufacture guns. I think that the fate of each country in Europe will be highly contingent on its specific conditions. No longer any shadow of
union.
* which is to say, after Gorbachev and his gang dismantled the USSR as an alternative system
