Mark Rutte to lead the Netherlands for the 4th time – Further austerity and xenophobia predicted
Rutte’s history of austerity, while favouring large corporations, is set to continue
The Netherlands held its national parliamentary election this past week and exit polls suggest that People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), led by incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte, will lead another four-year term. Under his stewardship, wealth inequality and ethnic profiling have increased, homelessness has doubled, almost 10% of the population live below the poverty line and the number of hospital beds keeps depleting. Meanwhile, the Netherlands continues to provide a ‘home’ to those that seek a tax haven, ranking 4th globally. This status inflicts an estimated tax loss on other countries to the tune of 36 billion USD per year.
This sweeping win of Rutte’s party is somewhat disappointing considering that his cabinet was tainted by a xenophobic scandal only a few months ago — choosing to resign instead of facing a parliamentary probe over the affair. Indeed, the Toeslagenaffaire revealed that the Dutch administration used racial profiling to falsely accuse 26,000 parents of social benefit fraud since 2006.
The pandemic too played a role, somewhat pacifying the election campaign. Unlike previous years, the election lacked any major political theme and upheavals. This reflects the contentment of a majority of Dutch voters with Rutte’s handling of the pandemic, despite the Netherlands being one of the slowest countries to roll out the COVID-19 vaccine at the European level.
As it has become a habit in Europe now, the far right has secured consequential wins during this election. The PVV (Party for Freedom) of Geert Wilders that seeks to deport Muslims, ban the Quran, deploy the military to quell protests and further privatise mass communications — remains in the Parliament as the 3rd largest party. More concerning is the rise of two Eurosceptic, populist far-right parties: the FVD, winning 5% of votes, as well as newcomers to the Parliament, JA21. The latter party is led by former FVD member, Annabel Nanninga, who has repeatedly used racist slurs when referring to refugees crossing the Mediterranean sea.
On the topic of the European Union, Mark Rutte’s VVD wants the EU to act as a counterweight to China and Russia, which are behaving ever more assertively. The pro-European and 2nd biggest party, D66, led by former top diplomat, Sigrid Kaag, has gone as far as calling for a European army. Another Europhile and pan-European party, Volt, which has entered the Parliament for the first time and secured 3 seats, further supports militarisation via increased defence spending, while most other parties are interested in more cooperation between European armed forces.
The climate and the healthcare sector will continue to suffer
As previously investigated by DiEM25 Zuid-Holland, Dutch party programmes are far from the drastic systematic changes that are required in order to reverse climate change. DiEM25’s press release showed the shortcoming and unambitious nature of these programmes, sidelining workers’ rights and social equality for economic profits.
In fact, Rutte’s history of austerity, while favouring large corporations, is set to continue. So far, no serious healthcare system reform is envisaged, and it is clear that hospital capacity will keep being cut once the pandemic slows down. At the same time, expanding Dutch nuclear power is firmly on the political agenda of the ruling party.
On a more local level, the Haagse Stadspartij, active in The Hague, aims to combat inequality, expedite the construction of affordable housing, combat climate change and desegregate the city. Daily life — from affordable housing to health services — are anchored at the municipal level. Thus, the next local elections in March 2022 will be crucial to stem the tides of inequality and xenophobia in the Netherlands.
Some smaller parties have emerged, rising as progressive forces against reactionary ones. One of them, Bij1, a radical left party, stands out in the Dutch political landscape by its unapologetically anti-racist stance. The new party, created in 2016, enters the Parliament for the first time by securing one seat. With a focus on radical anti-capitalist change, decolonization and social housing, this party is a breath of fresh air in Dutch politics where right-leaning neoliberal groups are over-represented. Join us to develop an alternative socio-political model for the Netherlands!
Gabrielle Fradin and Amir Kiyaei are members of DiEM25 in the Netherlands.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Photo Source: Photo by João Guimarães on Unsplash.
Sarah Everard reveals ingrained misogyny in UK society and its judicial system
The abduction and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard who was walking home in south London on March 3, has produced an outpouring of sympathetic grief from the nation’s women and those who care for them
Perhaps this overwhelming response to an event that is tragically not at all unprecedented, has to do with the fact that the accused is a Metropolitan policeman. But it is also the response of people who are aware of the tide of domestic violence which has increased under lockdown, and the experiences of sexual harassment, degradation, trolling and stalking which have afflicted so many young women in the UK, experiences which they have been sharing in unparalleled numbers. The political class and the media recognised very quickly that they had another potential George Floyd moment on their hands.
Photo: One of the many vigils held across the UK. In Sheffield, over one hundred people attended to lay flowers and light candles.
Why they thought they could get away with the Metropolitan police forcibly removing the speakers from the rostrum for a peaceful vigil in solidarity with Sarah and her family, attended by hundreds of women and men on March 13, it’s hard to tell. Four women were arrested for breaches of COVID-19 regulations, but the pictures which went round the world of the resulting scrummage with five burly policemen forcing a masked young woman to the ground showed conclusively that it was not ‘social distancing’ they were after. This had more to do with landmark government legislation currently going through Westminster that strengthens police discretionary powers against ‘protest’, now being extended to include any action deemed by them to be publicly disruptive. This has rightly been described as part of the UK Government’s “trumped-up war on woke.”
Nothing however, not even Meghan’s revelations, have deflected attention from the wave of new questions being posed by the social media commentary on Sarah Everard’s tragic death. What is misogyny? What is the link between these extreme acts and the whole spectrum of male abuse and humiliation of women at home and in public? Why aren’t we surprised that the killer accused of her death is a policeman? Is there a relationship between the ‘pandemic’ of domestic abuse that people were flagging up even before COVID-19 and the sheer predominance on our TV screens of fictional entertainment that dwells lovingly on the killing of women? Or the new access to online pornography? Or the backlash against feminism?
Women want answers, and they want action to be taken this time which will make a difference
They talk about tackling the disgracefully low rate of successful prosecutions against alleged rapists. How the whole judicial system needs to be overhauled. They talk about rethinking how masculinity is inculcated in the earliest months and years, and how to improve ‘relationship studies’ in schools. There is a feeling, akin to the George Floyd moment — that really following up on all these questions will take us uncomfortably close to some of the basic thuggish motors of what UK society and culture has become. But this time, we can’t afford to look away.
At the very same moment, Boris Johnson, not content with a police bill that makes defacing statues and monuments punishable by up to 10 years in jail (a harsher punishment than that meted out to rapists as some Labour MPs have pointed out) , has chosen to unveil the biggest defence increase since the early days of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, of £21.5bn, on swarm attacks of drones that can paralyse the enemy, and by increasing its nuclear arsenal for the first time since the Cold War. Given the challenges of pandemics and climate crisis that the entire international community faces, ratcheting up global tensions and squandering our much-needed resources to do so is a calculated gauntlet thrown down to all those who really hoped he had meant to tackle inequality and ‘build back better’.
But this glimpse of his ‘global Britain’ only makes the conversations we all need to have about masculinity and the quest for control that comes from power waged over nature, fellow men and women that much more urgent. The feminist movement needs to think about force, violence and war — and the real strength which lies in mutual vulnerability once recognised — vulnerability between human beings, including men and women, and the mutual vulnerability of ‘man’ and nature.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Photo Source 1: Gerry Popplestone on Flickr.
Photo Source 2: Tim Dennell on Flickr.
Why should we care about the monarchy?
In a week that began with International Women’s Day, a series of revelations demonstrated the endemic misogyny, racism and inequality that infect every corner of British life
A ‘bombshell’ interview of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex by Oprah Winfrey about their decision to step away from royal duties was replete with references to overt racism within the royal family as well as psychological abuse and neglect. Meghan in particular spoke of the total lack of support offered to her in the face of horrific and relentless abuse in the media and how this drove her to suicidal thoughts. The response of the UK tabloids and right-wing media was characteristically vile, with an incandescent Piers Morgan, “ghosted” by Meghan and now coincidentally her most virulent critic conveniently using his outpouring of vitriol and refusal to roll back his comments as a perfect excuse to begin jockeying for a better-paying job at the nascent GB News.
Later that week, the murder of Sarah Everard by a Metropolitan Police officer highlighted the ubiquity of gendered violence in our society. With the increasingly evident decriminalisation of rape and a recent YouGov survey revealing that 97% of young women have been sexually harassed, it is clear that violence against women is woven into the fabric of our society. Not content with being directly complicit in Everard’s murder, Metropolitan Police also felt the need to aggressively police the outpouring of grief that followed, violently cracking down with truncheons and riot police on unarmed attendees of a peaceful vigil. With thousands of women discussing the lengths they have to go to in order to simply feel safe walking the streets of their city at night, it might seem peculiar to devote attention at this time to the most out-of-touch institution in the United Kingdom (facing stiff competition) — the monarchy.
But if we believe, as socialists and progressives, that systems of oppression and injustice are self-perpetuating, then it must be true that one of the oldest, most immutable pieces of the superstructure should be identified as a key site of reproduction for the intersecting misogyny, classism and racism that permeates our society.
There is no way to reform the worst excesses of the monarchy, in the same way that there is no way to reform a militarised, racist, misogynist police force
If we are to take a step towards a more fair and equal society, we can’t content ourselves with socialist policies that redistribute wealth, we must dismantle every institution which doesn’t derive power directly from ordinary people. To many on the left in Britain, it almost seems like discussing the monarchy is beneath them, almost grubby – low-hanging fruit compared to attacking the very real manifestations of inequality in our society, embodied by the ever-loyal Tory Party.
The left should be much more active in making the case for a republic, reclaiming the productive discourse around our constitutional monarchy from liberals, right-wingers and technocrats who tinker around the edges. We should take up the mantle of Tony Benn’s Commonwealth of Britain Bill, making us a federal republic with guaranteed social and economic rights, and a constitution that codifies these protections. Throw in a Green New Deal and you’ve got a solution to the crisis of union, the climate crisis and the economic crises we face…
The monarchy, the police, the House of Lords, multinational corporations and the right-wing media are confidently self-reproducing (true in a very literal sense for the royal family) systems of inequality, unafraid of negative ‘optics’ because their power and position does not come from the public. Any institution premised on the superiority of bloodline is inherently racist, misogynistic and a slap in the face of anyone with an inkling of an understanding about social justice. So why does it still endure? To understand this toxic relationship between the famously boot-licking British public and their gilded overlords, it is worth also thinking about the imperial context and the importance of a racialized ‘other’ to the monarchy, without which they would not make sense.
The Commonwealth, the supposedly ‘voluntary association of 54 independent and equal countries’ doesn’t seem so free and voluntary when you consider that only two out of that number were spared colonisation by the British (Rwanda and Mozambique). It goes without saying that during the decades of decolonisation that followed the Second World War, the vast majority of former colonies jettisoned the vestiges of monarchy as quickly as possible, leaving the largely white dominions and a few smaller island nations clinging to the Crown. Even Barbados is set to become a republic later this year.
Unsurprisingly, since becoming republics, not a single Commonwealth nation has sought to restore Queen Elizabeth as head of state. Coercive, extractivist and violent imperial structures of oppression tend to alienate those suffering under the yoke of oppression by those living in gilded palaces wearing priceless heirlooms, while as imperial subjects their family members starve to death or die in concentration camps.
Prince William, like his father Prince Charles, spent a large part of the week following Meghan and Harry’s interview being photographed and filmed spending time around as many black people as possible. Urgently claiming that “We’re very much not a racist family” would come across as desperate in most contexts, but when those claims come directly from a man second in line to inherit a throne based on centuries of racialised violence, slavery, white supremacy and subjugation of one quarter of the globe, it comes across as a bare-faced lie.
While questions around which members of the royal family voiced concerns about Archie’s skin colour are certainly worth exploring, within the context of an imperial project based on the racially-justified oppression of millions of people, each and every member of the royal family is racist. It’s alarming that some people are only just realising this fact. You needn’t look particularly hard to find overt examples of racism by the royals in public either, looking at Princess Michaels’ deeply racist Blackamoor brooch or virtually anything uttered by Prince Philip when speaking to a non-white person in the last 50 years.
Where individual behaviour is concerned, if racism is fair game, so is the complete disempowerment of women, which may seem like a paradox given the Queen is of course matriarch of the royal family. But cast your mind back to what is potentially the longest car-crash in recorded history, Prince Andrew’s Newsnight interview in which a very sweaty royal alleges he is physically unable to sweat whilst denying knowledge of his close friend Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific sex trafficking and sexual violence.
Andrew is very much still under investigation in the US, but is refusing to cooperate in a rape investigation in which he is a prime suspect. This man is still eighth in line to the throne. There is a conceivable possibility in which this man’s bloodline will allow him to be head of state for well over one hundred million people. Let’s also not forget rules of primogeniture that were legal until 2011, meaning that women in the royal family were bumped down the line of succession by each male birth, enshrining in law the idea that women were worth less than men.
The grotesque wealth of the royal family has been underplayed and hidden in recent years
Their wealth would have transformed them into pariahs in any ‘normal’ country with a properly functioning media and political arena. From the millions hidden in offshore tax havens, such as the Queen’s rainy-day funds uncovered in the Panama Papers, to more recent revelations that found the royals have frequently lobbied for legal changes to hide their embarrassingly large fortunes. On top of the terrifying consequences of an unelected monarch abusing their supposedly ceremonial power to influence elected officials on thousands of occasions, the royal family enjoy one of the most privileged tax statuses in the country.
Free from paying inheritance tax, and enjoying a Sovereign Grant payment close to £100 million each year as well as countless priceless assets and properties, there is a strong case to be made for the royals being among the wealthiest people to have ever lived. Pink-faced royalists will breathlessly argue that the royals bring in billions in tourism each year, (surely not in 2020, comrades?) whilst ignoring the fact that the famously republican French welcome far more tourists each year and rake in billions more in income.
The very existence of a royal family in Britain should serve as an embarrassment, a reminder of the centuries of brutal subjugation that millions were forced into across the globe, and an ever-present blotch that makes a mockery of democracy in our society. The sad situation reminds me of Alexei Yurchak’s ‘hypernormalisation’ in Everything Was Forever, Until it was No More, although as a surrogate for Soviet Russia we have our own failing system and a similar lack of imagination outside of the status quo. Any pretence of a functioning, healthy democracy is utterly imperiled by the existence of the royal family, yet a recent snap poll demonstrated that 63% of those surveyed believed Britain should continue to have a monarchy.
Is this sad state of affairs simply a legacy of the incomplete English Revolution? The lack of a codified English constitution has led to a system that Walter Bagehot described as a ‘republic masquerading as a monarchy’. If that is the case, then at the death of Elizabeth II let the masquerade come to a long overdue end, with Britain and those clutching to the last pathetic vestiges of an imperial dream finally free to rebuild themselves as functioning democracies. We must learn from the examples of failed revolutions of the past, such as the German Revolution of 1918 and understand that we can’t simply unpick at the thread of the monarchy and hope the ornate tapestry of our class-based, racist, misogynistic society will unravel. Republicanism offers us the chance to shatter the gilded predominance of racist, misogynistic and grotesquely wealthy at the highest echelons of our society, and to dismantle a legacy of oppression that dates back to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
We can use the opportunities offered up by republicanism to move forward into the future
After successive defeats at the ballot box, it is clear that the British left will always struggle to win power and change society using the rules of the established status quo. So let’s take up the call of republicanism to offer a positive programme that does away with the shackles of the past, and eliminates the festering social and economic inequalities that have been entrenched here for centuries.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The invisible labour of women keeps our societies and economies going
Without care work, nothing works
The care economy is one of the most essential and indispensable sectors of society. Every form of capitalist society is founded on unequal relations. As Nancy Fraser puts it, it squeezes social capacities such as care work and processes of social reproduction to labour without pay. This results in a major crisis not just of “care” but of social reproduction as a whole:
“…capitalist societies separate social reproduction from economic production, associating the first with women, and obscuring its importance and value. Paradoxically, however, they make their official economies dependent on the very same processes of social reproduction whose value they disavow.”
Care work is all forms of labour that provide services to people such as child care and rearing, domestic work (eg. cooking, cleaning, taking care of the sick, taking care of the elderly, doing grocery), teaching, health care (eg. nurses, therapists, physicians): work that is disproportionately performed by women and feminised bodies whose identities are also met at the intersection of race, migration status, and class. Historically and culturally, work performed by women is not valued as economically relevant, more than often it is either unpaid, badly remunerated, or the object of systemic exploitation and not accounted for and rendered invisible in the economic discourse and in society as a whole.
Globally, women perform 76% of unpaid care work responsibilities. Though discussions regarding care work have become more mainstream, actual policies, laws, or even definitions have not come anywhere near to addressing the real-life implications of the matter. This has been a barrier towards women’s empowerment, independence, and participation in the paid labour market, making them extremely vulnerable to marginalisation, violence, economic migration and abuse.
Invisible labour keeps our societies and economies going
Invisible labour is an expression coined in 1987 that refers to unpaid work that is unacknowledged and as a result, is also unregulated economically, legally, and socially. Eventually, this term became synonymous with domestic work such as household labour and child-rearing for which women often, if not always, carry the brunt. Recently, a calculator was made to compute the value and cost of invisible labour which exposes the actual amount — both figuratively and financially — of the contributions women have shouldered despite its non-payment. In fact globally, women spend on average 4.1 hours per day on unpaid care work, with unpaid healthcare-related work amounting to $1.5 trillion, and with all types of care work considered, is worth $11 trillion.
Invisible labour has affected women’s well-being and as women have participated in the paid labour force and even climbed once unattainable ladders, studies continue to show that women still carry all the unpaid work as extra labour called “the second shift” once they get home.
This is on top of women being employed in more vulnerable or precarious jobs, and still earning less than men. Furthermore, discrimination, implicit biases, wage penalties, and many other factors contribute to the ongoing gender pay gap. In fact, in November 2020, women effectively started to work for free.
The gendered implications of COVID-19 show us how far we still are from a truly equitable and just society
Women’s work has been framed as a natural resource, making the pandemic’s impact fall disproportionately on them. Since the pandemic, disparities that used to be invisible are more evident. All the unpaid work that women have done in the shadows has been placed in the public eye showing how it has kept many sectors and economies afloat. COVID-19 has also exposed the various negative impacts women have suffered as stated in the UN report on Women.
According to the report, economic and social stress combined with movement restrictions intensified domestic violence. An incalculable number of women are trapped at home with no recourse towards healthcare systems and justice services: domestic violence calls increased by 25% in 2020. In addition, during this crisis, economic impacts hit women and girls harder which makes them less able to respond to economic shocks, the majority of job losses having in fact been suffered by women. With schools closing and lock-downs, this adds more work for women at home making them unable to take on paid work.
Globally, women comprise 70% of the health workforce, which makes them frontliners in the pandemic as midwives, caregivers, nurses, doctors, or community health workers; and yet they are still underrepresented in policy or decision-making processes that render them more vulnerable during this health crisis. On top of this, with healthcare facilities being overburdened, women and girls take on the role of taking care of the sick and elderly. Migrant women also become extremely vulnerable through intersecting political issues (class, race, gender, age), working as they do in sectors that are the hardest hit at the moment.
The mental load of women is also another issue exacerbated by the global crisis: cognitive related tasks such as remembering, overseeing, decision making, anticipation, planning, and management performed by women is often the most invisible of all labours, taken for granted yet bearing the full consequences for women’s inequality.
One thing is for sure, the coronavirus has pushed back decades worth of gains women have fought for towards equality.
Targeted actions towards addressing the care economy are needed
In order to address the inequality in unpaid care work, policies such as redistribution is one key to achieving women’s empowerment as well as better equitable outcomes for countries. Employers and states can also implement flexible work time and place, child care support or subsidies, maternity protection, parental or paternity leave, and other infrastructures that support family life. This is in recognition that, more often than not, workplaces and work cultures are designed around men who have stay-at-home partners or wives doing all the unpaid labour.
As a program of DiEM25, one of the Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE) policies recommends implementing a Care Income (CI) to compensate for care-related activities. This is in recognition of the value of care work in our societies and economies, and the importance of empowering marginalized sections of the population, especially women, that are exposed to violence, inequality, and abuse. By providing for a CI, it will help remedy structural disadvantages faced by women and other caregivers. The GNDE focuses on intersectional justice ensuring that no group of people is excluded from Europe’s transition.
Photo Source: Cedric Fauntleroy from Pexels.
Violence and its forms: maintaining focus for collective action
From the brutal crack-downs in Myanmar and Hong Kong to the inequity of resource allocation under COVID-19, violence has become less the aberrant exception than the flagrant corollary of ‘business as usual’
The pace of repression across the globe is now so unremitting it is hard to tabulate, much less to process psychologically. Slavoj Žižek has distinguished three types of violence — subjective (which is generally overt; `the man with the gun’); symbolic (which is encoded in language), and systemic (enacted in and by economic structures and institutions). While traditionally only the first was acknowledged within the ideology of liberal individualism, now all three are apparent to all.
The continuous news feed compels spectatorship of the brutalisation of others, even as neoliberal economies confer degrees of oppression in all global locations. We are simultaneously shamed by the violations we witness by the perpetrators of violence on the one hand and inspired by the courage of protestors in the direct line of fire on the other. As UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar observes, “you see the very best and the very worst of our humanity unfolding as we speak”. Where and how does the pervasiveness of violence in its many forms place us regarding the challenges which are now so numerous and so acute?
The scope and spread of coercion in neoliberal societies
The breadth and reach of coercive practices and policies is now so pervasive that it is easy to miss shifting dynamics in the escalating erosion of basic rights. No longer is it only peaceful protestors who are the target of state assaults. As attested by the proactive police harassment of families and ordinary people who were simply walking in a piazza of Athens last week, you can be the target of assault even when you are not protesting at all. As Yanis Varoufakis notes, this shameful episode represents: “a clear attempt by the government to provoke violence in order to change the conversation.”
The aim is to deflect attention from public policy, or the lack thereof, in the current period of a public health crisis. The strategies — as well as fact and process — of violence need to be consistently monitored. The violence of sectional interests in neo liberal societies is hydra-headed. This means it continues in forms which while overt in some contexts, can be difficult to detect in others. The violence belied by ostensibly neutral terms of linguistic practice (i.e. the symbolic variety described by Žižek ) can become so normalised that we become inured to it. At the same time, entities such as ‘the state’ — which while encompassing complex processes are also familiar — metastasise in insidious ways (as the activity of the `deep’ state illustrates).
How do we maintain and hone attention to the deployment of power — from state and corporate to linguistic practice — in the face of such complexity? Yanis has made a distinction between simple and simplistic analysis. While complexity abounds, the key issue is asymmetrical power and ‘the gist of it is really very simple’. With that salutary reminder, we need to retain a laser-like focus on the permutations and combinations by which the asymmetry of power is enabled (in order, of course, to combat it).
From the dual state to the deep state: concealment and revelation
In his study of the jurisprudence of the Third Reich, Ernst Fraenkel delineated the concept and functions of ‘the dual state’. This hybrid state comprised the ‘normative’ state (by which pursuit of government policy operated according to rules) and the `prerogative’ state which superseded it (where no such constraints applied).
The pioneering concept of the dual state provided the first account of the mechanisms by which raw power could be exerted behind and above standard principles of the rule of law. As such, it foreshadowed the contemporary `deep’ state, whereby corruption proliferates and operates with impunity.
In his 2020 text Kleptopia, Financial Times investigations correspondent Tom Burgis details the vast network of unchecked money flows which ensure that ostensibly democratic countries — as well as outright dictatorships — function in alignment with oligarchical preferences at the literal expense of the public interest. Burgis also wrote the award-winning text The Looting Machine, which addresses the modern plundering of Africa.
We are encouraged to respect elected governments and ‘the rule of law’. But what happens when the state has been hijacked by corporate interests, and the process of defrauding is unchallenged by the laws we are required to uphold?
Following the money
“It’s been a long time since I’ve known what was proper or improper.” He smiled.
“Only whether it suits me or not.”
— Mario Vargas LLosa, Conversation in the Cathedral
The above remarks are made in the context of the purchase of shares (which within the structural arrangements which uphold their exchange, we know can be sold at far more than their purchase price within short periods of time). While ideological differences clearly remain crucial, the massive and escalating inequality within and across diverse societies shows that they can also be manipulated and literally capitalised upon. Greed can transcend partisan affiliations.
Calling out “[t]he dishonesty and double standards of democratic countries [which] have powered the rise of autocratic myth-makers elsewhere”, European diplomatic correspondent Michael Peel identifies ‘a basic lack of decency’ which goes `far beyond any question of pro- or anti-Western ideology’. This is together with hypocritical praise for an international `rules-based system’ which `seemed to exist only to the extent that those who controlled it found it helpful for themselves and others to obey’.
From systemic exploitation of others to the trashing of truth, Trump merely tore the fig-leaf of respectability from standard US administration and practice. Revealing in this context is the contempt of an unidentified aide in the Bush presidency nearly two decades ago for ‘the reality- based community’ (`We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality’).
With respect to the transnational trough of exorbitant greed — in which the corresponding money flows are unimpeded by the normative rules to which whole populations are required to adhere — corruption and absence of accountability are themselves part of the currency and `stock in trade’. Ideological difference can serve as a smokescreen behind which oligarchical transactions continue unabated.
Ethics and internationalism
Yet the blatant brutality of the violence against peaceful populations in diverse parts of the globe — perpetrated by national `security’ agencies against their own people — is also now revealing an aspect of power which is generally less visible. This is the more covert structural violence which sustains it and which is ordinarily not on display.
That overt violence is being enacted simultaneously in diverse geographical locations also graphically reveals that concerted military assaults on unarmed members of the public are not the aberrations of ‘national’ governments alone. Rather they are the product of systemic international processes which proceed ‘quietly’ beyond public purview until military means are required for them to be maintained.
The scale and scope of the overt violence is now leading to this dual recognition. As the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar said last week (and as also applies in relation to Hong Kong, Belarus, and any number of diverse locations) the current violence “requires a unified response that is outside of the context of geopolitical backgrounds… no matter where you’re from and no matter what your ideology is.” Coordinated arms embargoes are required internationally because `what is happening in Myanmar is abhorrent and it has to stop’. As noted in the recent article from the Progressive International:
“[t]he people interviewed span a range of ages, ethnicities, and political views, and in ordinary circumstances they might struggle to agree on politics. Yet the desire to overthrow dictatorship has evoked a rare unity among the public.”
In a recent interview Žižek referred to his prior hope that the pandemic might lead to a pause in the waging of new military conflicts (a hope, he said, which showed his vestiges of humanism!). The pandemic — which has so graphically highlighted the disparities of global inequity — has not only not served as a brake on militarism. Neither has it served as disincentive to overt government assaults on their own people.
The evidence of this is chilling and it is before our eyes. It requires an internationalist `following of the money’ to disrupt the often covert supply of arms which enables the overt violence now being perpetrated by governments in the form of targeted massacres against their own peacefully protesting citizens.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Draghi’s outrageous deployment of McKinsey, Europe’s predicament
DiEM25’s proposals
Last week, upon hearing that Mario Draghi, as Italy’s new PM, employed McKinsey to advise the government on how to spend the billions of the EU Recovery Fund, I tweeted, in anger and frustration:
So predictable, so sad: Mario Draghi hired McKinsey to 'organise' Italy's distribution of Recovery Fund monies. What next? Get the Mafia to re-organise the Ministry of Justice?
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) March 8, 2021
A furore followed within Italy’s twitter. Here I stand by my tweet in an interview with La Stampa, answering also questions on Europe’s preposterous response to the economic challenges of COVID-19 and to DiEM25’s proposals, from March 2020, on how the EU should have responded.
In Italy your tweet about McKinsey has triggered a huge debate. Don’t you think it was inappropriate to compare the management-consulting firm to the mafia?
PM Draghi’s decision to engage McKinsey was scandalous and an insult to the good people of Italy. In effect, it constitutes a statement that, to distribute EU funds, Italian democracy needs advice from a consultancy firm with a track record bordering on the criminal. Thus the humourful, and perfectly apt, punchline suggesting that if Mario wanted to do a little worse he would need to engage the Mafia in re-organising the Ministry of Justice.
The Italian Ministry of Economic Affairs has explained that McKinsey’s contract is worth approximately 20.000€ and the consulting company will not “organise Italy’s distribution of Recovery Fund money”, as you wrote. “McKinsey – explained the Ministry in a note – will offer only a technical-organizational support”. Do you see that as a step forward?
I see it as a guilty attempt to wriggle out of a disgraceful cockup. What is the difference between “helping organise” from offering “technical-organisational support” of Italy’s distribution of Recovery Fund money? None! As for the fee, even if they did it pro bono, their engagement is an affront to the Italian people’s well-developed sense of decency.
McKinsey & Company is one of the most prestigious consulting management firms in the world and has advised corporations and governments around the world. Also France hired McKinsey to help in the pandemic. So, why do you think it is wrong to hire McKinsey?
They are certainly “powerful”. But prestigious? Not in the slightest. Only very recently they were fined $600 million for helping push drugs that contributed to the death of 450 thousand Americans. Tom Peters, an ex-McKinsey employee, explained in the Financial Times how the firm cynically calculated the expected fines to pharmaceutical companies from intentionally causing thousands of deaths and then advised them to go ahead! So, yes, it was more than wrong for PM Draghi to hire McKinsey. It was immoral.
In your last interview with La Stampa, almost one year ago, you affirmed that the EU Recovery Fund “will not be enough for Italy without Eurobonds”. Now we know that Rome will receive 209 billion euros. Did you change your mind about this?
No, quite the opposite. They time has come to inform the Italian public of how hopelessly inadequate the Recovery Fund is. To begin with, $120 of these billions are loans, which is the last thing Italy needs as loans cannot ameliorate the insolvency problem at hand. Only around $80 billion will come in the form of grants, to be distributed over six years, at the rate of $13 billion every year. Compared to the increase in Italy’s debt, both private and public, this is a drop in the ocean or, put more scientifically, it is macroeconomically insignificant. In conclusion, sadly, what I said a year ago is now fully confirmed.
Politically, in Italy, “The Times They Are a-Changin”. We’ve got a new premier, Mario Draghi, and the party of Matteo Salvini have accepted to participate in the new government of national unity. Only Giorgia Meloni is in the opposition. What do you think about this unpredictable scenario?
A clear defeat for Italian democracy. By dominating the opposition, Giorgia Meloni and her neofascist party will be the only beneficiaries of the discontent that will, inevitably, grow as the overblown optimism following Mr Draghi’s appointment gives way to the harsh reality.
Why don’t you trust Mario Draghi? In the last decade it was one of the most important people for the survival of the euro and he has been accused of helping Southern European countries ECB. Have his monetary policies damaged Athens?
My opinion of Mario Draghi is irrelevant. Yes, in 2015 Mr Draghi strangled Greece’s democracy, and in the process damaged European democracy, by shutting down Greece’s banks in order to blackmail the Greek people into accepting yet another unpayable credit card from the troika under neo-colonial conditions. Mario was, in my opinion, given an ultimatum by Berlin: Crush the Greeks if you want to be allowed to buy Italian, French and Spanish bonds.
Still, if Mario had been chosen by a majority of Italians, in an election where he had presented his program to the public, as a democrat I would congratulate him. In other words, what is relevant is that, once again, Italian democracy has been replaced by a system where the Prime Minister is selected behind closed doors by political leaders striking deals that have nothing to do with the programs they put to the people.
So what should Italy and, I would say, Europe do to the deal with the economic depression caused by COVID-19?
DiEM25’s answer, presented a year ago, remains valid: First, get the ECB to issue a proper, 30 year, Eurobond to the tune of at least €1 trillion and use that money, on the basis of an automated formula, to ensure that the new debt caused by the pandemic is europeanised – as opposed to burdening Italy, Spain, France, Greece or Germany. Second, the ECB should regularly credit the bank accounts of every European family directly — as both Presidents Trump and Biden have done in the US. Third, Europe should invest, centrally, in a Green Energy Union/Grid to the tune of 5% of Europe’s GDP, to be funded by European Investment Bank bonds that the ECB supports in the bond markets.
What about Europe? Will it be stronger or weaker after the pandemic?
Much, much weaker. Investment fell during 2020 by 50% and the output gap grew to 8%. The Recovery Fund will only make up for, at best, one-eighth of this over the next few years. It is too little and it will come too late to prevent another wasted decade for the Eurozone.
How are things going in Aegina and in Greece? I’ve read that until the 16th of March you will be still in lockdown. How is the economy going under the conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis?
Aegina remains a gem but, alas, the Mitsotakis government, lacking anything resembling a plan, is proceeding with wishful thinking as his only compass. As for the economy, judge for yourselves: In 2010 Greece went bankrupt because our public debt rose to €300 billion, our GDP fell to €220 and the budget deficit exceeded 10% of GDP. Today, public debt exceeds €355 billion, GDP languishes at €166 billion and the budget deficit exceeds 10%.
To conclude on a more political note, has DiEM25 any relationship with the Italian Democratic Party? Do you know, or have you ever met, Enrico Letta?
DiEM25 neither has nor wishes to have a relationship with the Democratic Party, which we consider to be a major contributor to Italy’s woes and, also, a stagnant party lacking any capacity for innovative, progressive thinking. As for Enrico, yes, I know him well and I like him very much, personally. Last time we met was in Paris where he invited me to address his students at Sciences Po. Is it not wonderful that politicians, economists, artists etc. can disagree strongly and still benefit from dialogue while enjoying each other’s company?
This article was originally published in La Stampa.
You can also read it in Yanis Varoufakis’ personal blog.
Photo Source: Philip McMaster on Flickr.
Help save Plečnik Stadium of Ljubljana
The Stadium of Ljubljana is a part of our cultural heritage and a central part of our community life, but it is being scrapped for more skyscrapers, shopping malls and casinos
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia. It is a European city of 300,000 inhabitants.The people of Ljubljana are proud of architect Jože Plečnik and his works, which were mostly built within the city in the first half of the 20th century. With his specific style — a combination of neoclassical and modern architecture — he is Slovenia’s only architect that is well known and recognized by a global architectural public. His works are all listed as national cultural monuments, many of them are nominated for the UNESCO World heritage list.
One of his works is a stadium, built in the north of the city centre, between the years of 1925-1935 in an existing gravel pit. The Bežigrad Stadium (now known as Plečnik Stadium) is a simple structure, consisting of only a perimeter wall, entrance colonnade, glorietta grandstand, two small pavilions and tribunes. For many years, it was the central Slovenian stadium, hosting important athletic and football competitions as well as outdoor concerts. Still, the stadium was always open to public and community use and the pupils of elementary school standing right next to it were freely using its running tracks and athletic facilities.
Photo: Our Stadium – Our Pride, a post card from 1930s.
Photo: The stadium today, by Marusa Vehovar.
In 2010 Ljubljana built a new, much bigger and contemporary stadium for more than 16.000 visitors less than 3 kilometers from the old stadium. Since 2007, the old stadium is under the threat of being destroyed by a new owner, a public private partnership — BSP. It consists of a private developer Joc Pečečnik, the Municipality of Ljubljana and the Olympic committee of Slovenia. Joc Pečečnik is a nouveau riche who made his fortune by manufacturing electronic roulettes for casinos and whose company was the first European company to be granted a licence for running a gambling business in the US.
The old stadium will be rebuilt as a Disney world like stage set
The proposed project for a new ‘sports’ park includes a skyscraper, shopping mall, casino, two thousand underground parking places — in all, more than 220.000 square meters of commercial spaces. The new development would only preserve 5% of the existing structures. The rest would be demolished and rebuilt as replicas.
Photo: The BSP project – cross section. In the red square it is indicated what is left of the old Stadium – drawing prepared by Dr. Miloš Kosec for Outsider.
The BSP project also envisions building commercial facilities on the communal gardens that have belonged to the Fond housing estate, since it was built in the 1930s beside the stadium. The gardens have since become the property of the city of Ljubljana in the process of the privatisation of state owned apartments, not long after Slovenia declared its independence. They now represent the city’s share in the partnership.
There is currently strong opposition from the Slovenian and international professional public. The stadium was included on a 7 Most Endangered 2020 list of Europa Nostra, the leading citizens’ movement to protect and celebrate Europe’s cultural and natural heritage, and a Heritage in Danger site by Docomomo International, a non-profit organization dedicated to documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement. But the developer, strongly supported by the city mayor, is insisting on the realisation of the BSP project as planned.
Photo: The BSP project – aerial view, GMP Architekten, Germany.
Ljubljana does not need another commercial development — Slovenia is already among the countries with the highest number of square meters of shopping malls per inhabitant. Furthermore, on a human scale, it entails the destruction of a green open space that has been an integral part of community life in the area. Most importantly, such a development will mean the permanent loss of a national monument that is part of Slovenia’s national cultural heritage.
Since 2008, the stadium has been fenced-off and exposed to decay. Currently, the BSP is still waiting for a building permit, after the already issued consensus from the Agency for protection of cultural heritage was withdrawn by the Ministry of Culture.
Unfortunately, according to an extremely unhealthy current political situation in Slovenia, strong pressure from many powerful and influential politicians is to be feared. It is my great concern that the BSP project will soon be given a green light, despite this project’s devastating consequences for our community life and cultural heritage.
Slovenia is currently governed by an extreme right wing neoliberal government, led by Janez Janša, an ex hard core communist. Inspired by the developments in Hungary, he is trying to gain control over the democratic society and all its subsystems, through the meticulously planned placing of his supporters in all relevant positions, especially in the media and police.
We are calling for support to build a strong public opposition to the project
We ask that the Olympic committee of Slovenia to step out of the partnership, and demand that the Municipality of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Culture buy back the Pečečnik’s share of the Stadium. We ask that they organise a public, participatory process for a new project. This new project must aim to renew the Stadium to its original form and return it for a free use to all the citizens of Ljubljana.
This campaign is part of DiEM25’s Campaign Accelerator project.
DiEM25 members are currently discussing possible actions to address the issue discussed in this article. If you’d like to be involved, or if you have knowledge, skills or ideas to contribute on this, get in touch.
Why we need to liberate animals as part of the Green New Deal
When aiming to topple hierarchies, aim at the foundation
Being part of the libertarian left, the most liberal among liberals, we are fighting for the oppressed: working class, Blacks, women, Trans people, people with disabilities etc. Yet, we still managed to forget someone, in fact — billions of beings.
In the time you’ll read this article more than 350,000 land animals were killed just for food. They will have died in vain, not because of necessity but because of the greed of big corporations. In 21st century Europe there really is no need to eat meat, dairy products or eggs. Why then is the abolition of animal agriculture not a part of the political agendas of contemporary party alternatives?
As politicians who hate politicians, DiEM25 forged the The Green New Deal for Europe as a set of measures that encompasses both social and environmental causes. When fighting for the abolition of animals, we are actually tackling both.
When it comes to ecology, animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse emissions, which is more than all that of the transportation sector combined. That is partially because methane, which is produced in large quantities by cows in the milk and meat industry, is estimated to be 86 times more destructive for global warming than CO2. While we fear plausible wars for drinking water, animal agriculture is using 20-33% of freshwater in the world.
Big businesses in animal agriculture are fueling the climate crisis
These businesses are really vicious, and the list of their atrocities is long: ocean dead zones, deforestation, biodiversity loss and so on. Ultimately we’ve even seen that they are the ones who were setting Amazon on fire (unfortunately not Jeff Bezos’s corporation, but the rainforest). They are accountable for up to 91 percent of destruction of “Earth’s lungs”. But the environmentalists that wanted to keep the privilege of eating “local grass-fed meat” are also being let down by a groundbreaking study. The research shows that the environmental impact of organic meat is as bad for the climate and still far more damaging than the worst plant foods:
“Organic livestock are not fed imported fodder and are often grass-fed, but this means they produce less meat and grow more slowly, therefore spending longer emitting greenhouse gases before slaughter. Plants grown organically have half the climate costs of conventional produce as they do not rely on chemical fertilisers, but all plants have far lower emissions than animal products.”
That’s why even UN backed Chatham House Report suggests that 3 levers are required for our food system:
- Transition to a plant-based diet: excluding all the animal products (meat, eggs, milk, dairy products, etc.).
- Rewilding the land: the return of land to a wild state and the reintroduction of animals and plants that once lived there.
- Nature friendly farming techniques: switching to agroforestry, supporting natural pollination and steering away from the chemicals as much as possible.
The report also stresses that the second and third points are very much dependent on the first one, because we need to reclaim animal agricultural land in order to achieve them. There is a lot of data that compares the impact of animal consumption to plant-based equivalents and it all shows a huge difference. Just to name a few:
- It takes 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant-based diet than it does to feed meat eaters.
- Compared to the meat burgers, vegan burgers require between 75 – 99 percent less water; 93 – 95 percent less land; and generate 87 – 90 percent fewer emissions than regular beef burgers, consuming nearly half the energy to make.
- Cutting meat and dairy out of your diet can reduce your eco footprint up to 73 percent.
This is where DiEM25 and The Green New Deal for Europe come into play. We need to establish the Green Public Works (GPW), a public investment agency that will channel Europe’s resources into green transition projects. Accordingly, the GPW program should invest in plant-based alternatives. Not just for ecological reasons, but also for ethical ones.
Even when farms are following so-called ‘humane standards’, their regular practices involve: killing a few-days old runt piglets by a blunt trauma in the head, doing tail cutting and teeth removals without pain relief, sending male chicks live into a blender. Consequently, more animals die in the span of three days than humans have been killed in wars in all of recorded history.
Since we want to abolish hierarchies, then let’s include the animals that are in the very bottom
Indeed, in order to bring an established structure down, you must aim at its foundation. Kids are first taught that the lives of pigs or mice don’t matter, and then grow up to believe the same about immigrants. I am positive that it isn’t the other way around. The hierarchy of domination is slowly built upon. Homo sapiens practiced the oppression of non-human animals long before taking Black people into slavery or Jewish people into concentration camps.
According to numerous academic studies, speciesism (prejudice that leads to discrimination of non-human animals) correlates with racism, sexism and homophobia, which in turn all correlate with each other. The concept that connects them is called Social Dominance Orientation, or, the belief that hierarchies are something that is just and desirable. SDO is also heavily connected with conservatism and right-wing authoritarianism. Surprise, surprise.
Meat identity politics is an underrated right wing micro-genre IMHO pic.twitter.com/yu1S5wbtng
— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) February 18, 2021
Photo: Twitter: Alex Jones – “Celebrating Americana with some Red Meat, f-you Obama!”
So there is the right-wingers’ identity obsession with meat on the one side, and, leftist trivial “excuses” on the other. In both cases, non-human animals are the ones who suffer. Like Isaac Bashevis Singer said, “In relation to animals, all people are Nazis. For the animals, life is an eternal Treblinka”.
Rather than running away from the “V” word (veganism), we should move closer to a “way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.”
We need to take a strong anti-species stance and facilitate real political action on this issue
Just like “ecology without class struggle is just gardening”, human rights without animal liberation is just a farce or a mirage of a speciesist mind. There is no such thing as single-issue struggle, since we are not living in a single-issue world.
Including animals in your circle of compassion won’t take anything away from your search for economic, racial and/or gender justice. It will just add another necessary dimension, a dimension that brings the hope for billions of sentient beings with the capacity to suffer, love and feel sad or happy.
We have nothing to lose, but a whole Planet to win. There is no planet B.
Join the Green New Deal for Europe for the global climate strike!
Find out more about the Tweetstorm action.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Photo Source: Leah Kelley from Pexels.
Join the Green New Deal for Europe campaign during the global climate strike!
GNDE campaign for global climate strike: 9 – 19 March 2021
DiEM25 Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE) is spearheading a social media campaign.
The campaign has five core objectives:
- To raise awareness of the Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE) as the only credible plan that both identifies the current global problems and presents policy solutions to tackle them
- To develop a popular GNDE responding to citizens’ needs with concrete solutions, translating it according to how it relates to communities lives, and to issues that directly affect them
- To encourage people to join DiEM25 to help us push this agenda forward through collective action
- To create local DiEM25 Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs) or other grassroots groups to initiate climate activism
- To generate extensive social media visibility and viral presence and visits to the website and further detailed information, facts, and stories
How are we doing it?
Ten-day countdown: 9 – 18 March
We have developed social media messaging content and key messages relating to the GNDE as a whole and also to the 10 Pillars and related policies. Between 9 – 18 March we will be posting this content on the GNDE Twitter account, aiming for multiple posts a day, and using the campaign hashtags of #RealDeal and #GNDE, but also #NoMoreEmptyPromises which is the campaign hashtag for Fridays for Future.
Tweetstorm at the European Parliament: 19 March
To coincide with the Global Climate Strike on 19 March, and specific action being taken by the Fridays for Future movement, we will initiate a Tweetstorm on this day aimed at the European parliament Twitter account (@Europarl_EN). Based on the content used in the “Ten-day countdown”, we will turn our content into specific demands (related to the 10 Pillars of the GNDE) that the European Parliament would need to address to tackle these global issues. We will again use the hashtags of #RealDeal #GNDE and #NoMoreEmptyPromises .
Our Facebook and Instagram accounts are also going to convey similar messages, so make sure to follow!
How can you help?
You can share, like, retweet and comment in support of the campaign to bring the GNDE and encourage your networks and other potential influencers to get involved to do the same!
You can also generate your own original content out of our policy and spread the word about GNDE as the real deal. Just remember to add our hashtags #RealDeal #GNDE !
Thank you for your support.