A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE WEST TODAY: LESSONS FOR OTHERS

A couple of years ago this writer contributed to Chintan an article in three parts (1) in which he analysed the gradual drift of Europe and the USA towards a post-democratic statute, under the pressure of prevalent ideological dogmas, internal compulsions and external circumstances. Since then we have witnessed a reinforcement of those trends, as well as the rise of inevitable reactions from populations increasingly alienated from their rulers and distrustful of the political systems. The successive crises caused by the COVID pandemic and its public management and the war in Ukraine have only accelerated the transition of those societies away from the liberal democratic practices that  Western states belonging to the so-called ‘Golden Billion’ had broadly followed after the second World War.

The consequences of that gradual seismic shift are apparent to all. The European Union, Britain, and the remaining members of the British Empire, Canada, and Australia, are on the brink of a resentful divorce with the United States, still the nominal ‘leader of the Free World’ that paradoxically claims to have long been exploited by its allies and satellites. Every hegemon learns in due course about the ‘burden of Empire’. Europeans are bitterly divided concerning the situation of the European Union and the international scenario. The EU, which was from its inception an administrative commercial arrangement, as a consequence of ignoring its civilisational and religious past, has failed in its attempt to build a cultural and political community despite the tired rhetoric about ‘European values’; instead it has reached a crossroads between two divergent paths. On the one hand its ruling bureaucracy is constantly grabbing more powers and pushing for a more centralised union and on the other, more and more member-states, particularly in the East and centre of the continent, seek to recover autonomy or reclaim full sovereignty. The governments that still profess a commitment to the ‘United States of Europe’, such as Germany and France are at odds with a majority of their population, increasingly frustrated and suspicious about the EU’s institutions and policies whose goals often contradict the aspirations of the average citizen. The most visible instance of that disconnect is the immigration issue, regarded as a vital need for those ageing and relatively infertile countries by top bureaucrats but feared by all those who witness the gradual hybridization and Islamisation of the EU’s socio-cultural landscape. Evoking the ‘great (demographic) replacement’ can get someone banned from the public sphere or even from entering a country as happened recently to the veteran French intellectual Renaud Camus, who was not allowed to visit the United Kingdom, even though he does not allege a perverse pro-immigration Deep State conspiracy but merely describes the inexorable effect of ideological and socio-economic mechanisms.

However, ‘the great replacement’ is no longer a drawing room theory, it is an obvious reality, visible to anyone who travels across the continent and the British Isles. The only solution that European managing elites have found is to forbid the diagnosis and the explanations that challenge their dogmas. The authoritarian trend has gained momentum with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who poses as the Supreme Guide of the Union on matters as diverse as health policies, vaccine mandates, the promotion of LGBT ‘rights’, or the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The overlap between the EU and NATO has blurred the boundaries between economic cooperation and military coordination without providing any real defensive power and strategic credibility to Europe. Short on resources and unable to meet their bellicose commitments to the cause of Ukraine, European states are resorting to puerile gimmicks to vent their frustration, as seen in the multiple conclaves between leaders to discuss ways of punishing Russia through proliferating sanctions and confiscations. A few EU states recently closed their airspaces to the presidential planes of their counterparts on their way to the 80^th anniversary victory parade in Moscow (2). The growing arbitrariness of the self-proclaimed upholders of freedom reflects an incipient totalitarianism leading to the refusal to accept election results when they are at variance with the mandatory ideological  norms, as is currently the case in Romania and has long been the policy in France and Germany. The concept of the One-Party State that characterises conventional totalitarian dispensations has been replaced by the subtler system of allowing multiple parties, provided they have very similar agendas and practices. In the United States, prior to the disruptive advent of Trumpism, the collusion between ‘Demoblicans’ and ‘Repucrats’ (RINOS) was often derided in popular parlance.

Indeed, the utter confusion about what is Leftist and what is Right Wing in the emerging political spectrum has led some Western leaders to tacitly revise the hitherto consensual view about World War and even take pride in the fact that their ancestors fought the Soviets with the Reich during World War II. That return of a long-repressed nostalgia was made possible by the official, media-promoted lionisation of openly neo-fascist Ukrainian militias, raised to heroic status in their fight against Russia. There is a direct link between the rapid rise of parties such as the AfD in Germany, and like-minded ones in other countries, and the Western Establishment’s  call to mobilise against Russian Putinism, described as the new Stalinism. 

Paradoxically many of the neo-nationalist EU-skeptic parties, usually tagged as ‘antisemitic’, have come close to the Netanyahu government in particular, and the Zionist cause in general. Those strange bed-fellows are brought together by the opposition to Islamic power which the Israeli State uses to justify its refusal of a Palestinian State but their newfound convergence brings us back to the days of the Haavara (3), the pact between National Socialists and Zionists almost a century ago.

Europe is in a state of profound disarray, sandwiched between muscular Russia, a revived civilisational state at the heart of Eurasia, and a deeply conflicted United States where constitutional principles are being internally challenged by the woke Democrat Leftists and the MAGA Libertarians who are tearing the country apart as when the Devas and Asuras were pulling Vasuki in opposing directions. It is hard to tell if this churning turmoil will bring out a new dispensation or a downfall but the current state of the Western ‘liberal’ world points to the failure of regimes that are now managed according to managerial and juridical rules devoid of spiritual inspiration. The erasure of religious culture from European institutions has only made it easier for foreign faiths, historically regarded as inimical, to entrench themselves and claim the public space denied to the traditional beliefs. The Catholic and Protestant clergies, by their systematic promotion of immigration, neglect of ritual and liturgy, and unquestioning humanitarian globalism have fostered a form of cultural and social disarmament. Comparatively, Russia with its civilisational and religious self-affirmation (Russian Orthodoxy is not trying to compete with human-rights NGOs, unlike Western Christian denominations) and China with its crypto-Confucean creed of national discipline and cultural patriotism  are doing better in many respects than the self-proclaimed paragons of freedom and democracy and are even defeating them economically and strategically.

Budding grassroots movements in Western countries are unmistakably confirming this diagnosis. More and more people, especially among the youth of all social classes, are returning to traditional religion, awakening to spirituality and reclaiming patriotism, going against the grain and rejecting ‘mainstream’ political and religious leaders, as well as the modernist progressive trends in the Vatican, the Church of England and the Lutheran churches. 

The state of most Western democracies and their probable fate enshrine an object lesson for the rest of the world: dogmatically agnostic and spiritually skeptical societies, increasingly dependent on immigration for supplying ‘menial and hard’ workforce and for replacing their dwindling young generations, they face runaway social expenditures they can no longer afford and fear that they may not be able to defend themselves, partly because of the disenchantment and divisions among their citizens. Over-indebted states relying on imported labour and gradually diluting their distinctive identities may end up forsaking their independence and losing their self-awareness.

Notes-

1. Europe’s Transition to Post-Democracy, Lessons for India, I and II (November 24, 25, 2021).
2. https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/eu-states-close-airspace-to-fico-vucic-en-route-to-moscow/
3. The Haavara Agreement was a controversial deal between Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations in 1933 that facilitated the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. It allowed Jewish emigrants to transfer a portion of their assets to Palestine by purchasing German goods, benefiting both the Nazi regime and the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine.