Europe's RW parties team up with Putin = the parties of NO

[uhnope]

The recent creation of the Eurosceptic far-right faction Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) by Marine Le Pen, the leader of French party National Front, means there is a new and more powerful pro-Kremlin caucus in the European Parliament. ENF members consistently push Moscow’s interests in committees and plenary sessions, while masking their actions by saying they are lobbying the needs of interest groups.

In total, up to 20 percent of all MEPs currently vote at times in the interests of Putin’s Russia: in addition to ENF, there is the strongly pro-Russian far-left group European United Left — Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL); Nigel Farage’s Eurosceptic group Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD); and various non-affiliated members of the parliament. At the same time as these groups advance Kremlin interests, they accuse their pro-European opponents of being puppets of the United States, thereby bolstering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cause of trying to undermine Euro-Atlantic relations.

ENF was created on June 15 and currently its caucus consists of 38 members representing 8 different nationalities. More than half of them hail from France and are members of Le Pen’s National Front party. Other members represent various Eurosceptic far-right parties across Europe, including the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Belgian Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”), the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), the Polish Congress of the New Right (KNP), and the Italian Lega Nord.

http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2368-europes-new-pro-putin-coalition-the-parties-of-no

[doxyluv13]

1. Hogwash from a suspicious source

nt.

[uhnope]

2. that's laughable. Sounds like what a Putin apologist would say. nt

[Igel]

3. Don't know about the source.

Also don't know about every detail.

But for the most part, true. Le Pen's group got a hefty subsidy from Putin. Others sent observers to the Crimea and gave the Russian takeover and voting a clean bill of heath. Others provided volunteers to help the Russian nationalists and Communists in the Donbas. Etc.

The tie-in is clear and vaguely Nazi (it pays to remember that Hitler remade Nazism a bit, and Nazism started around the time Hitler was born). Whenever you see a push for local cultures and traditions and a need to renew and revitalize them, to defend them against outsiders and return to local cultural traditions, you're seeing one of the roots of Nazism. The goal is to say "our group is different and we need a clear dividing line between us and them." That's somebody everybody can get behind--whether in the US with identity politics or in 1930s Germany.

No, that by itself is not Nazism. But Communism was "international" and "cosmopolitan" (Stalin revised this for the USSR, to be sure, as did Mao, N. Korea, and others--nationalism is an evergreen for dictators).

The goal for that kind of thinking is some sort of return to sovereignty. Often that lack of feeling of sovereignty is at the personal level, but it feeds into community and ethnic layers as well. If you have to work with 20 different ethnicities to govern, it means you have a lot less leeway to do things your own way and keep your culture "pure" from outside influences and also fight "cultural appropriation" because that diminishes your own cultural uniqueness. You might have to change; you might find that there are other ways, equally valid, so the hated Other can't be hated quite so much. That erodes group boundaries, and before you know it cooperation is breaking out all over and your little power base is diluted and fraying around the edges.

Many on the far left think they can get more power and have things done their way if the EU vanishes; many on the far right think the same thing. Both find colleagues in Russia, in which the Communists have the right name and hearken to past glories and social programs, while the nationalists push for local uniqueness. There's even a "national Bolshevik" party in Russia that strongly supports the rebels in the E of Ukraine and virulently hates the EU.

[bemildred]

4. Divide and rule.

The question is: what are we going to do about it? More austerity means more of this sort of thing working, these parties getting stronger.

[geek tragedy]

5. if you don't want flies on your sidewalk, clean up the dog shit nt

[bemildred]

6. Fueling the Continent’s Far-Right Fascists

For a moment this summer, it appeared that Greece had cornered its creditors. In a hotly contested vote in which their European neighbors openly intervened, Greeks overwhelmingly voted to reject more austerity.

In a controversial turnaround, however, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras then submitted to the demands of eurozone leaders for more austerity measures in return for a bailout loan of 86 billion euros. Tsipras lamented that he’d had no choice — resistance would have meant a forcible exit from the eurozone.

Humiliated and vanquished, the Greek government returned to the negotiating table to accept the surrender terms. The spectacle resembled an ISIS-style execution of a whole country — in full view of a global audience.

The final details remain to be hammered out, but there’s no doubt that the deal imposed by the Eurozone on Greece will allow Athens neither to pay off its crushing debt nor to recover from the depression it’s in now. The deal is a triumph for finance capital, but it was exacted at a terrible cost — one that will eventually boomerang on the banks, the European Union, and its enforcer, Germany.

http://fpif.org/europes-big-banks-are-fueling-the-continents-far-right-fascists/

[geek tragedy]

7. like watching a really bad marriage go into the uneasy reconciliation phase

of the cycle.

Lots of failure on all sides.