Jacobin Magazine: The Politics of France Insoumise

Perry Anderson described France Insoumise’s April 2017 presidential campaign as “an impressive feat.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s rallies gathered huge crowds, and he was widely recognized as the winner of the televised debates. In the final weeks of the campaign he achieved a spectacular increase in his support. Despite this major advance, Mélenchon came in fourth place, after Emmanuel Macron, the Front National’s Marine Le Pen, and François Fillon, the candidate of the conservative Les Républicains. In the parliamentary elections that took place in June, France Insoumise (FI) obtained seventeen seats, an insufficient number to have any real influence in parliamentary negotiations. Macron’s party La République En Marche secured a majority in the National Assembly, while Les Républicans came in second place. [...]

In this context, France Insoumise has at least three major resources that it can rely on while building itself as the main opposition to Macron and his neoliberal policies: Mélenchon’s charisma; the enthusiasm aroused by his presidential campaign; and the party’s parliamentary presence, which grants it a certain media visibility. FI intends to oppose Macron both in parliament and the streets, which also means using its platform to call for protests. The first test for this strategy arrived last September, when the party called a demonstration against Macron’s labor reform, which deepens the liberalization of labor relations and slashing of labor rights promoted by former president François Hollande. The protest was a success (around 100,000 people took part in the march) but it was not enough to stop the so-called XL labor reform, which was eventually approved in November. This raised the question of where the formation would go next. [...]

At the same time, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his collaborators have created a new kind of political organization, which they refuse to call a party. Indeed, France Insoumise’s membership is flexible and there are no elected decision-making structures. This organizational model raises questions. Who, then, makes the decisions? How legitimate are France Insoumise’s present leaders? How much power do militants have? These questions recall the insights in American activist Jo Freeman’s 1970 essay “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” Freeman argued that the absence of formal decision-making structures in political organizations is “a way of masking power,” and put forward a set of principles for promoting democracy which are applicable both to social movements and parties, such as the circulation of tasks, the distribution of authority among a wide array of individuals, and the accountability of leaders to the people who have elected them.

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The New York Review of Books: Italy: ‘Whoever Wins Won’t Govern’

Letta, however, had the added quality of being the nephew of Gianni Letta, a close adviser to Silvio Berlusconi and significant figure in the media magnate’s center-right Forza Italia party, which was supporting the government. When Berlusconi was found guilty of corruption in August 2013 and, after endless wrangling and stalling, finally expelled from the Senate, Letta’s government was seriously weakened. In February 2014, Letta was replaced by Matteo Renzi, then the mayor of Florence and the new leader of the Partito Democratico. [...]

That Renzi found the energy to persuade the Senate to vote for its own demotion is extraordinary. But he had promised a referendum on the reforms before they would become law. In the run-up to that vote, the press presented him as a man seeking to grab power for himself, his family, and his buddies, rather than sharing it among the endless factions that make up Italian politics. Few Italians believe in the possibility of anyone seeking power genuinely in the interest of the nation as a whole. In the December 2016 referendum, Italian voters rejected his reforms, Renzi resigned, and the country was once again consigned to be governed by a gray, accommodating figure, Paolo Gentiloni. After a debacle of this magnitude, it seems unlikely that anyone will try to reform the Italian constitution for decades to come.

As if this failure were not demoralizing enough, the forthcoming election will be held under a new electoral law laboriously put together during Gentiloni’s government after the previous system, which Berlusconi introduced in 2005, was pronounced unconstitutional. The complications and compromises of this law would beggar belief, if Italians were not inured to such things. Essentially, it mixes some constituencies whose representatives will be elected by straight majority vote (or first-past-the-post) with other, larger constituencies where a number of representatives will be chosen on a proportional basis. Though the districts and distribution for each chamber differ, both chambers will comprise roughly one third directly-elected delegates and two thirds by the proportional system allocated according to numbered lists of candidates submitted by every party. Constitutionally, the House of Deputies and the Senate will continue to have equal power and thus the ability to cancel out each other’s decision-making and legislative powers. [...]

Despite this, there is no serious debate about Italy’s relations with the EU, or about its foreign policy in general and the country’s position in the world. There is equally an absence of any radical proposals for getting the economy moving again. Extraordinarily, given his record in office and ineligibility to serve in the government, Berlusconi is offering himself as a safe pair of hands who could guide his party’s elected representatives from outside parliament, thus saving the country from the presumed incompetence of the Five Star Movement.

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Political Critique: How Eastern European populism is different

As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Goultchin of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shown, only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, belong to the ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.   [...]

Aside from hard data, we need to consider the underlying social and political factors that have made populism so much stronger in Eastern Europe. For starters, Eastern Europe lacks the tradition of checks and balances that has long safeguarded Western democracy. Unlike PiS Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto ruler, Trump does not ignore judicial decisions or sic the security services on the opposition. [...]

Another major difference is that Eastern Europeans tend to hold more materialist attitudes than Westerners, who have moved beyond concerns about physical security to embrace what sociologist Ronald Inglehart calls post-materialist values. One aspect of this difference is that Eastern European societies are more vulnerable to attacks on abstract liberal institutions such as freedom of speech and judicial independence. [...]

Moreover, in the vastly different political landscape of Europe’s post-communist states, the left is either very weak or completely absent from the political mainstream. The political dividing line, then, is not between left and right, but between right and wrong. As a result, Eastern Europe is much more prone to the “friend or foe” dichotomy conceived by the anti-liberal German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Each side conceives of itself as the only real representative of the nation, and treats its opponents as illegitimate alternatives, who should be disenfranchised, not merely defeated.

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Social Europe: Hungary’s Enfeebled Democracy

However, this ‘explanation’ begs as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it ignores the extent to which public sentiment has been cynically manipulated in Hungary since 2015, with a succession of massive, mostly government-funded propaganda campaigns calculated to create and sustain a full-blown moral panic about the existential ‘threat’ to Hungary posed by migrants and by the EU’s alleged efforts to prevent Hungary from controlling its own borders. In recent weeks, the Fidesz-KDNP government has placed whole page advertisements in ‘sympathetic’ newspapers and paid for thousands of billboards falsely accusing the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist, George Soros, of wanting to “settle millions of migrants from Africa and the Middle East”. If ordinary Hungarians fear large-scale immigration from outside Europe and believe that only Fidesz will protect them from the supposed machinations of Soros that is because government propaganda has succeeded in convincing them that such fears are reasonable and well-founded.  

The weakness of Hungary’s opposition parties is only partly due to their political ineptitude, their inability or unwillingness to form effective, long-term alliances or their alleged failure to promote policies that are genuinely popular with the electorate. Quite simply, Hungary’s opposition parties lack the resources or the means to counter the insidious anti-immigrant, anti-EU, anti-globalist and anti-opposition propaganda, which projects Fidesz-KDNP as the ‘saviour’ of the Hungarian nation at a time, so Hungarians are constantly warned, of unparalleled crisis. One of the latest advertisements placed by Fidesz, now appearing in newspapers and on billboards, shows a grinning Soros in front of a partially destroyed fence. Several of Hungary’s leading opposition politicians – Bernadett Szél of LMP, Ferencz Gyurcsány of DK, Gábor Vona of Jobbik and Gergély Karácsony of Párbeszéd – are pictured standing on either side of the financier. In this carefully crafted advertisement, each of the politicians is brandishing giant wirecutters. The message to Hungary’s electorate could not be clearer or more deceitful – a vote for some of Hungary’s most popular opposition figures would lead to the rapid dismantling of Hungary’s border defences, resulting in a potential onslaught by ’alien hordes’.

The robust performance of Fidesz-KDNP in opinion polls – together with the continuing weakness of the opposition parties – also stems from the growing control exerted by Orbán and his allies over Hungary’s print and electronic media. Marius Dragomir, Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society at the beleaguered Central European University, estimates that ’some 90% of all media in Hungary is now directly or indirectly controlled by Fidesz. That will indisputably give them a major lead in the elections’. In addition to public sector radio and television, which have been transformed into a platform for government propaganda, the bulk of supposedly ‘independent’ print and electronic media outlets in Hungary are now owned by business interests aligned with Fidesz. As emphasised by Dragomir, ‘Hungary is a classic case of media capture where the government’s head honchos, hand in glove with the country’s oligarchs, have used policy and public funding to turn independent media into a mere government establishment.’

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Political Critique: Romaphobia. The last acceptable racism?

There are several reasons that might explain why Roma are stigmatised. The first is exclusion. For centuries, Roma have been excluded from nation-building exercises promoted by political entrepreneurs, their difference harnessed as fuel to build the nation as ‘us’ (the majority) not ‘them’ (Roma). Roma, as a heavily constructed and policed identity, become necessary ‘others’ positioned outside of the nation. Roma then become easy targets for political elites who want to bolster their own popularity and power. An example of this is seen in Hungary with Roma culture and identity consistently equated with criminality by media and politicians. [...]

This Romaphobia ‘loop’ is fuelled by distrust and a lack of understanding between the majority and Roma communities. Changing the hearts and minds of the majority is made more challenging by the presence of Romaphobic statements made by political representatives, the persistence of entrenched negative associations of Roma/Gypsy identity in everyday discourse, as well as the inability of Roma communities to effectively break these stereotypes. In Italy and France, for example, elites have actively targeted Roma communities, creating a narrative which maintains that Roma are not part of French or Italian societies even though Roma have lived there for over 500 years.

Another reason is avoidance: some Roma want to avoid the enveloping arms of the state and create opt-out strategies to actively resist incorporation into society. The ultimate aim here is to retain control over one’s own affairs believing that survival cannot be left in the hands of others. For a community which has been persistently persecuted, such a strategy is understandable. However, this oversimplifies the story as many Roma actively participate in societies across Europe.

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The Atlantic: The Problem With #MeToo’s Agenda

The Atlantic writer Caitlin Flanagan argues that the #MeToo movement is becoming big enough to be rendered meaningless. If #MeToo is to succeed, Flanagan posits, it needs to refocus on its original goal.

Vox: Mass shootings and the limits of human compassion

We were told it was the 18th school shooting in the United States this year; that there have been 1,607 mass shootings since the slaughter in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. We were reminded it was only five months ago that a gunman killed 58 in Las Vegas, and that a year and a half has passed since 49 died in a nightclub shooting in Orlando. [...]

There’s a profound and infuriating psychological concept that can help explain increasing numbness in the face of long, slow-burning tragedy like mass gun violence in America. It’s this: As the number of victims in a tragedy increases, our empathy, our willingness to do something, reliably decreases. [...]

“There is no constant value for a human life,” University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic, the leading expert on psychic numbing, told me last year in an interview I can’t stop thinking about. “The value of a single life diminishes against the backdrop of a larger tragedy.”

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Politico: Kosovo: A young country, being shaped by its youth

With 53 percent of its people under the age of 25, Kosovo also has the youngest population in Europe. In Pristina, the capital, the average age is 28.

Kosovo is one of the continent’s poorest countries. Unemployment is high, at almost 30 percent, with young people disproportionately affected. The young nation is also grappling with radical Islam: some 315 people, including dozens of women and children, joined the Islamic State group in recent years.

In the decade since independence, many Kosovars — young people especially — have lost confidence in the country’s institutions and grown disillusioned with widespread corruption and political cronyism. One in two Kosovars wants to emigrate to Western Europe, a 2016 study found. But some young people are choosing to stay in Kosovo and help to shape its future.

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