{"id":127770,"date":"2019-02-11T12:01:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T12:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=127770"},"modified":"2019-02-10T09:09:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T09:09:36","slug":"europe-is-in-danger-but-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/02\/europe-is-in-danger-but-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe is in Danger! But Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 Feb 2019 – <\/em>Now a hue and cry has gone up that Europe is in danger.\u00a0 The continued existence of Europe\u2019s core ideals –of its very essence– is said to be threatened.\u00a0\u00a0 The occasion of today\u2019s hue and cry is the possibility that the populist far right might sweep the elections of May 2019. I take this opportunity to question what I take to be the conventional wisdom of the official story.<\/p>\n

The official story, as I detect it in the mainstream media, is that the world is divided into two kinds of people.<\/p>\n

One kind, the \u2018good people\u2019, are rational and civilized.\u00a0\u00a0 They believe in freedom, in human rights, in free trade, in capitalism properly regulated; they read Goethe; they visit the art treasures of The Louvre and other fine museums; they listen to Luciano Pavarotti, they support the European Union.\u00a0\u00a0 Some, like the 50 intellectuals who recently signed a manifesto declaring that Europe is in peril, also read Erasmus, Dante, and Comenius.<\/p>\n

The other kind, the \u2018bad people\u2019, are a grab bag of diverse extremists.\u00a0 What they have in common is that they are irrational and uncivilized.\u00a0\u00a0 Their archetypes are Hitler and Stalin.\u00a0 They include Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden, ISIS and the apartheid <\/em>regime in South Africa, and recently Recep Erdogan, Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump and the new president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro.\u00a0 They include both the populist right and the leftists who march and shout: like the gilets jaunes, <\/em>the indignados, <\/em>and the occupiers of Wall Street.<\/p>\n

According to the official story, history in its broad outlines (not unlike the universal history of the philosopher Immanuel Kant) is about the slow but sure progress of freedom and reason.\u00a0 Freedom and reason are always threatened and sometimes they are overwhelmed by unfreedom and unreason.\u00a0 The worst threat of all was the Nazi holocaust.\u00a0 In 1941 the Nazis had overwhelmed almost all of the European continent.<\/p>\n

That time Europe (and therefore civilization) was only saved because the Brits held out and the Yanks came to the rescue.\u00a0\u00a0 But this time it is worse!\u00a0 The Brits and the Yanks have changed sides!\u00a0 Britain has fallen to the Brexiters.\u00a0 The USA has been taken over by its lunatic fringe.<\/p>\n

Stalwarts of freedom and reason like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are beleaguered in the homelands of the Enlightenment, under siege from the right and from the left.\u00a0\u00a0 Around the world, nations that never did accept the Enlightenment, like the Russians and the Chinese, take centre-stage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Europe is in danger!\u00a0 But why?<\/em><\/p>\n

I want to question the conventional wisdom of the official story.<\/p>\n

There is something wrong with identifying the ideals and the essence of Europe with freedom, reason, human rights, free trade, capitalism properly regulated, great books, the art treasures of The Louvre and other fine museums, Luciano Pavarotti, and the European Union.<\/p>\n

What is missing is the heart of what the economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein called the European World System.\u00a0\u00a0 As a matter of real history, it was that European system that expanded to become the Modern World System.\u00a0\u00a0 That is why Europe and European civilization can claim to be the origin, the centrepiece, and the implicit ideal of today\u2019s global economy.<\/p>\n

And what is the heart of the European system now global?\u00a0 It is production for sale for profit, starting with money and ending with more money, and then doing the same thing over and over again.\u00a0 It is accumulating.\u00a0\u00a0 That is what the European merchant adventurers, backed by their soldiers and their fleets, taught the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

The European system is a system with losers.\u00a0\u00a0 It always has been a system with losers.\u00a0 Ever since it began it has generated malcontents.\u00a0\u00a0 It has always been imposed by power and it has always met resistance.\u00a0 It has always been a system that generates its own enemies.\u00a0\u00a0 It still is.<\/p>\n

Europe is a danger to itself.\u00a0 It is a danger to the rest of the world.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Emmanuel Macron recently confessed to the gilets jaunes, <\/em>\u2018We have failed to create a society of equals.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 But that failure is nothing new.\u00a0\u00a0 The European system has always been a system where if a poor person gets a job it is because a richer person becomes still richer by hiring him or her.<\/p>\n

Macron\u2019s confession was suitable for a left-wing audience.\u00a0 Speaking to a right-wing audience he might have followed the lead of Angela Merkel, who has confessed that the effort to build a multi-cultural civilization in Germany has been a failure.\u00a0\u00a0 Or he might simply have said, \u2018We have failed to establish law and order.\u2019<\/p>\n

Any way you look at it, the failures of Europe are nothing new.\u00a0\u00a0 They have been happening over and over again ever since Europe as we know it began.<\/p>\n

When a system consistently produces its own enemies, century after century, is it not obvious that the causes of the threats to its continued existence could not possibly lie<\/em> entirely in the unreasoning anger, or in the twisted ideologies that pretend to be rational, <\/em>of its enemies?<\/p>\n

Is it not time for the \u2018good people\u2019 to accept their share of responsibility for the fact that the \u2018bad people\u2019 exist?<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Prof. Howard Richards is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. He was born in Pasadena, California but since 1966 has lived in Chile when not teaching in other places. Professor of Peace and Global Studies Emeritus, Earlham College, a school in Richmond Indiana affiliated with the Society of Friends (Quakers) known for its peace and social justice commitments. Stanford Law School, MA and PhD in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara, Advanced Certificate in Education-Oxford,\u00a0 PhD in Educational Planning from University of Toronto. Books:\u00a0 <\/em>Dilemmas of Social Democracies with Joanna Swanger,\u00a0<\/em>Gandhi and the Future of Economics with Joanna Swanger, <\/em>The Nurturing of Time Future, Understanding the Global Economy (available as e-books),\u00a0<\/em>The Evaluation of Cultural Action (not an e book).\u00a0 <\/em>Hacia otras Economias with Raul Gonzalez, free download available at www.repensar.cl<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Solidaridad, Participacion, Transparencia: conversaciones sobre el socialismo en Rosario, Argentina. <\/em>Available free on the blogspot lahoradelaetica.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Feb 2019 – Now a hue and cry has gone up that Europe is in danger. The continued existence of Europe\u2019s core ideals –of its very essence– is said to be threatened. The occasion of today\u2019s hue and cry is the possibility that the populist far right might sweep the elections of May 2019. I take this opportunity to question what I take to be the conventional wisdom of the official story. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}