Europe’s democratic Left still misses the point about nationalism
Amid all the shame and dishonour in the history of the ideological left — a brand of thinking which I contrast with the entirely honourable leftist traditions of trade-unionism and social activism –there has emerged across Europe in recent years a new kind of intellectual leftist. Many of these people have been on a journey: Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister (1998-2005) and one-time radical is a celebrated example. That journey has taken them to within an inch of the centre of the political spectrum: they have, in most cases, acknowledged the horrors of communism; they have ditched their anti-Americanism; they will countenance an assertive foreign policy (many supported the Kosovo operation and the invasion of Iraq); they are deeply concerned about the rise of Islamism; they oppose anti-Semitism; they are supportive of and not hostile to capitalism. In Britain, this shift bore fruit in the form of the so called Euston Manifesto Group, one member of which writes an illuminating piece in today’s Observer newspaper.
The writer, Nick Cohen, is an intelligent and interesting thinker: someone who rises far above the general standards of bland mediocrity on the comment pages of the British press. He is one of the best representatives of the afore-mentioned class of leftist journeymen in the European political classes. The jolt to the senses is all the sharper, therefore, when one crashes into remnants of the old ways of thinking.
Writing about the British Conservative Party and its long traditions of euroscepticism — see my last blog but one: Dead man walking? Democracy in Europe — Cohen laments Conservative Party leader David Cameron’s intention to pull away from the mainstream parties of the European centre-Right due to concerns that they have simply given in to the push for a supranationalist Europe.
“The Tories will ally instead with the proudly ignorant parties of eastern Europe. Know-nothing chauvinism, sexual and religious prejudices, and conspiracy theories from Europe’s dark heart motivate them, but they are against federalism and that is all that matters to Cameron.
“Already, we have had the spectacle of the “decontaminated” Conservative party courting the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom party, several of whose MPs marched on 16 March in Riga with veterans of the Latvian SS. In Warsaw, the Tories are as keen to woo the Polish Law and Justice party whose leading figures have variously opined that Obama was the “black messiah of the new left” whose victory marked the “end of the civilisation of the white man” and that “homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilisation”.
For the full article click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/17/david-cameron-conservatives-european-elections
Cohen is right to warn the Tories against falling into the company of the far-Right. But his thinking is deficient in failing to see the bigger forces at work. For the central problem in Europe is that the European Union is now so out of kilter with public opinion, the pratices of Brussels have become so anti-democratic, that this has opened up the space in which far-Right parties can flourish. If you want to register your opposition to EU policies, if you feel that your national parliament is becoming emasculated by the encroachments of the EU, if you are shocked by the EU’s decision to force re-runs of referendums when the result has gone against them you cannot, in most cases, register those entirely legitimate concerns by giving your vote to a mainstream party. In Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, more or less everywhere in Europe, the mainstream parties of Left and Right are entirely committed to forging ahead with an “ever closer union” whatever their people really want.
The great exception to this is Britian where the mainstream party of the Right — the Conservative Party — is at least rhetorically committed to reforming the European Union on inter-governmental lines. That is something that Cohen should be celebrating as an instance in which public opinion is being properly mediated through a mainstream party. In Britain, you don’t have to vote for the far-Right because British democracy is functioning as it should.
But the fatal flaw in Cohen’s thinking is the same fatal flaw that afflicts his reformist colleagues across Europe. Nationalism is a dirty word. There is no feeling for the objective historical reality that the nation state is the only place in which democracy can ever truly flourish. That is why federal arrangements have always either collapsed when people have been able to choose — the demise of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are the obvious examples — or exist amid constant bickering and recrimination — Belgium, Canada, even Spain for example.
Democratic nationalism is a concept which largely eludes such people. The nation is always to be an object of suspicion. In Europe, the superiority of supranationalism is the default assumption on which many such people now operate. They are failing to see just how dangerous supranationalism can be. They will see it soon enough. Europe cannot go on in the manner of the last few years without suffering serious damage to the liberal-democratic order.
Cohen is a good man and a good writer. But he and his allies need to work their arguments on Europe, nationalism and democracy a good deal harder.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Thank you-its the first time I have seen this position defended in any media.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Cohen makes his argument in terms of national interest so I’m not sure why you’re lumping him with the supra-nationalists. I happen to have some sympathy for Cameron’s decision in this instance but Cohen surely has a point in arguing that not much is going to be achieved by allying oneself with this crowd.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
After reading this, I’m inclined to think there might be a reason to get up early, slip the old plimsolls on and go for a run. I am not alone.