‘The kids aren’t alt-right’ Steve Bannon’s demolition derby is behind the curve of EU politics - Hoofdinhoud
Source: in 't Veld, S., 23 October, 2018, 'The kids aren't alt-right', Retrieved from this link
Steve Bannon’s demolition derby is behind the curve of EU politics, writes Dutch liberal MEP Sophie in ’t Veld.
Strange things are about to happen on the alt-right side of European politics, or so we are told. The fact that Trump strategist Steve Bannon has set up shop in Brussels, offering ‘advice on messaging, data targeting and think-tank research’ to all who share his appetite for destruction, has set off a minor frenzy among populist hopefuls.
Belgian laywer and patrician politician Mischaël Mondrikamen was happy to do the groundwork for The Movement, as it is to be called. In the Netherlands, vainglorious Burke-boy Thierry Baudet suddenly discovered George Soros as the perfect imaginary enemy - the kind of talk that might earn him some very real friendship from across the Atlantic. In France and Italy, the extreme right was eager to grab some of the limelight, and who knows what they’ll get out of it behind the scenes?
Though they downplay its importance now, Bannon’s already got Europe’s sovereignist strongmen singing from the same hymn sheet: Pick me, pick me!
You never know what might come of it. Politics, after all, is a game of energy and conviction – and nothing convinces and energises a politician like a campaign manager telling him he’s the chosen one.
In All the King’s Men, the classic tale of a humble man’s descent into the grimness of populism, Robert Penn Warren artfully describes how the cynical political operative, Tiny Duffy, turns a decidedly average politician into the people’s tribune – starting with his own self-image: ‘If he had got into the election on his own hook, he would have taken a realistic view. But this was different. He had been called. He had been touched. He had been summoned. And he was a bit awe-struck by the fact... For him to deny the voice of Tiny Duffy would have been as difficult as for a saint to deny the voice that calls in the night.’
Never underestimate the power of a galvanised ego.
Herding cats
But don’t overestimate it either. It will take more than the Bannon charm to repeat, here in Europe, the wonderful work he has achieved on behalf of huddled masses and Christian zealots in the US. His public insights into EU politics so far have been pretty humdrum, as are his apostles.
Take his go-to man, Mischaël Modrikamen, who’s been in the business of politics since 2010. In Belgium’s elections of that year, his Parti Populaire won one seat, only to expel the owner of it from the party after two months. The same happened to the Flemish co-chair, effectively turning Belgium’s only supposedly ‘national’ party into a regional phenomenon – and an underwhelming one at that. In 2014 they added a member of the Walloon Parliament, who then also left the party, while Mondrikamen himself failed to get elected on both occasions.
In short, unlike Mr Bannon himself, his European apprentice seems like the kind of man who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. It will take more to unite and organise the alt-right.
It’s not that they haven’t tried before.
One ongoing attempt is called Agenda Europe, which since 2013 has been rallying European forces around a Manifesto to ‘restore the natural order’, aimed in practice at undoing progress made across Europe in marriage equality, the right to divorce, access to contraception, LGBTI rights, etcetera. Known campaign targets include Poland’s draconic abortion bill of 2016, EU-wide citizens’ initiatives for a ban on same sex marriage and abortion, or Romania’s recent referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage.
Another initiative, the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, driven by strange bed-fellows fundamentalist protestants and ultra-conservative Cardinals, has been active for a decade and also received the plans of their patron Steve Bannon as something of a Second Coming. They too use the language of universal rights and human dignity to work against individual freedoms. They too know very well how to use the organisations, funding and credibility that the EU offers, through links to parties in both the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) groups of the European Parliament. Luca Volonté, the Dignitates Humanae Institute’s chairman, has admitted to siphoning €2,3 million of Council of Europe funding into anti-abortion and gay marriage foundations. Again, the thinking is the same as the cynics who surrounded Tiny Duffy: ‘You got to make good out of bad.’
So Europe’s nationalists already had a shared agenda, a transatlantic network and plenty of money before Bannon showed up. That hasn’t offset their real problem, which goes much deeper.
Populism’s discontents
What they don’t have, and what Bannon has entirely misunderstood, are two things:
One is a common position on the EU. Despite appearances, and the shared fun of taunting Brussels, Europe’s populists are a very mixed bag. Hungary’s Orban is a shrewd political operator with plenty of nuisance value, but he is not a Christian soldier like Poland’s Kaczynski. For them and other colleagues, the cloak of an anti-European revolt and Christian values allows them to mask their corruption and hunger for power. If Trump’s America gives these men another alibi to do their thing within their own countries, they will gladly make use of it. What they won’t do, is leave or destroy the European Union – precisely what populists in the EU’s west, and in the US, are aiming at.
They couldn’t do it if they wanted to. Across the EU, support for Europe has been going up since Brexit. Polls show young people especially believe in the EU’s future. And countries of central and eastern Europe are consistently among the most pro-European – we’re talking numbers above two thirds or more in favour. Small wonder even Viktor Orban has repeatedly and categorically refused the hand offered to him by Nigel Farage. He knows cutting himself off from EU funding would ruin his business model, and distancing himself further from his public opinion would undermine him politically. He won’t even leave his political party, the highly respectable European People’s Party, for fear it will cost him dearly.
Because what they also don’t have, Europe’s alt-right, is public opinion’s trust. By far the most impressive popular revolts we have seen on Europe’s streets in recent years have come out against Bannon’s buddies wherever they are in power. From anti-corruption demonstrations in Romania and Slovakia, to massive pro-choice manifestations across Poland and civic protests against Orban and his cronies on the streets of Budapest, Europeans know that the supposed ‘sovereignty’ of their leaders means serfdom for their populations. In Europe, the elites betraying the ordinary guys and girls are precisely those acting along the Bannon playbook.
Forward movement
Don’t get me wrong. No one will minimise the risk of next year’s EU elections. In recent years, every referendum and every election has been turned into a democratic demolition derby. Collecting the wreckage might well make Steve Bannon seem very successful for a while, but the whole flavour of his movement appears to be so... 2016?
Europe has moved on, that’s what last week’s elections in Luxemburg, Belgium and Bavaria show. Thanks to Trump and Brexit, people are starting to realise the damage populism does. They know who’ll be left with the bill. They know that, when the Bannons and the Farages of this world are done playing, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men cannot put their societies together again.
The real political momentum will take place on the constructive and progressive side of the political spectrum. A groundswell has emerged to take EU politics back to the middle ground, where regaining trust and restoring stability are top of people’s list of priorities. It is not the first time Europe is going through tough times. We lived through two world wars, half a century of military and communist dictatorship and several Balkan wars. Just the last decade we went through a financial crisis, a Eurozone crisis, a refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, climate disasters and Brexit. It was the decade of Trump, Putin, Kim Jung-Un and Assad. On top of these massive external challenges, Europe was strained by Euroscepticism and public distrust. Not a single day passed without apocalyptic predictions of the end of the EU being nigh. We spent a decade in a near-permanent existential crisis mode.
But the European Union is defying Cassandra’s prophecies. The EU has weathered the storm. It has suffered damage and it clearly needs a profound renovation. But we, Europeans, are stronger and smarter than some think. The vast majority of Europeans will keep a clear head. They will make sensible and pragmatic choices for the future. They realise our well-being depends on our unity.
Europeans are eager to look forward again, and the winners of next year’s election will be those who have the energy, the vision, the promise people know they can still count on when the cameras have left, and the champagne populists have recrossed the Atlantic.