The Breaking of Europe

 The political establishment of Europe has failed. It's only a matter of time before the full consequences of this failure are revealed. This failure will have some consequences for the United States as well.

  How these failures of the center-left political establishment will manifest themselves over the coming years is impossible to guess, but the political ideology best positioned to take advantage is the extreme right-wing.   Leftists have a narrow window to shape the outcome, but that window is closing. 

 The front line for this political conflict at the moment is on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is up first.

 (AP) — Portugal is facing days of political and economic uncertainty as the eurozone nation waits to hear whether the anti-austerity lawmakers who forced the government's resignation will take power — and how they intend to manage the country's fragile public finances.    The head of state is widely expected to invite Socialist Party leader Antonio Costa to be prime minister. Costa forged a pact with the Communist Party and radical Left Bloc to bring down the center-right government after 11 days, making it the shortest Portuguese administration on record.

 Portugal exited its bailout program some months ago, so unlike Greece it has a little wiggle room in its policies, but not much. Any dramatic changes will cause conflict with the EU.

  Next door to Portugal there is a very different political conflict brewing.

 Spain's government filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court on Wednesday, aimed at blocking an independence drive by the Catalan regional assembly and preserving Spanish national unity.    Catalonia's regional parliament passed a resolution this week which calls for secession from Spain and sets out a plan to form a Catalan republic within 18 months by starting to set up state institutions such as a tax office. The declaration specifically vowed to ignore the rulings of the Constitutional Court.

 Spain will soon see a general election that is no longer threatened by a Podemos victory, but will probably create more questions than answers.

  Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent, Europe has cut off money to Greece until it tightens mortgage reforms.

 Prime among the disagreements for the Greeks is protection for poorer families in danger of losing their homes through foreclosure.    Dijsselbloem said passing the foreclosures law was key before banks could be recapitalized, because it had a direct impact on the number of bad loans that banks would have to deal with through recapitalization.    Officials in the leftist-led government say a wave of evictions could boost support for the far-right Golden Dawn party.

 Put another way, Europe is demanding Greece evict tens of thousands of households from their homes in middle of an economic depression. Europe's centrist, neoliberal political establishment seems completely unconcerned with the economic and social chaos this will cause.

  Recall that when the Greek government wanted a referendum on the austerity policies in 2011, Europe ran their president from office. In spite of the results of the July referendum, Greece was made to kneel before Europe.    The Greek people will see yet again that democracy has failed to bring about a solution to their pain, leaving only the neo-nazis and communists offering any real solutions.    It's ironic that the far left and far right appear to show more respect for the democratic process than the mainstream parties.

  Taken together, this is a continent in political and economic crisis. However, this is a far cry from Europe's biggest problem.

The real problem

  In 1973, French author Jean Raspail, wrote the dystopian scifi book The Camp of the Saints. It was an extremely well-written book that only had one flaw - it was racist and xenophobic.   The premise of the book is that western civilization will be overwhelmed and destroyed by hoards of Asian immigrants. Why do I bring it up?    Because it returned to Europe's bestseller list in 2011.

  The far right has been on the rise in Europe ever since it became obvious that the neoliberal, center-left had no idea how to fix the economy after the 2008 crash. With the center-left already discredited, the far-right was slowly rising in popularity based on an anti-immigrant platform.   While still scary, the situation was still under control as long as nothing dramatic happened which would completely up-end the entire social structure of Europe, and what were the odds of that, right? Something like that only happens once every couple centuries.

 Sweden long prided itself on its generous asylum policy, welcoming twice as many refugees per capita as any other Western country. In 2014, for example, the country of 9.5 million took in more than 85,000 people, mostly Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and Somalia. But the new arrivals' failure to assimilate has sent voters stampeding to the right. The Sweden Democrats, a once-reviled party with roots in neo-Nazism, took 13 percent of the vote in last year's election to become the third-biggest party in Parliament, mostly on a campaign to halt immigration. Over the summer, as the flood of refugees pouring into Europe dominated headlines, the popularity of the Sweden Democrats soared, and now they are the most popular party in Sweden, with more than 25 percent support.

 If a neo-nazi party can rise to the top in Sweden, then the neo-nazis can take over anywhere in Europe. Elsewhere in Europe the far-right is much further along to becoming the ruling parties.

 It's well established in France. Le Pen has managed to purge the National Front of the overtly anti-Semitic tone set by her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Now the National Front is considered mainstream, taking 25 percent of the vote in local elections this year. Polls show that Le Pen may be one of just two candidates to make into the second round of the 2017 presidential election amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment. In Denmark, meanwhile, the far right is now part of the government. The Danish People's Party soared to second place in the June elections, amid public disgust over a shooting rampage in Copenhagen in which the son of Palestinian immigrants killed two people and wounded five. Already, it has slashed benefits for migrants in half and begun taking out ads in Lebanese newspapers warning asylum seekers not to come to Denmark. Nowhere, though, is the right stronger than in Hungary.

 In Hungary the fascist party is the third-largest party and is part of the ruling coalition. In former East Germany the neo-nazis are on the rise. Right now, neither Alternative for Germany nor the NPD, Germany's neo-Nazi party, is particularly powerful, but that could change.   Last month a euroskeptic party won the elections in Poland.   An anti-immigration party won in Switzerland last month, and a conservative anti-immigration party won in Croatia just last week.   A right-wing anti-EU party won in Finland last April.      Almost all of these events and trends happened before the flood of refugees hit Europe. That flood (and the backlash from it) is destined to get worse.

Picture all this political, economic, and social chaos...and then make it three times worse.   Luxembourg's Foreign Minister has warned that the EU could "break apart" under the strain of the refugee crisis.

   This is where some mainstream liberals often fail to get it. It's unrealistic to expect regular people of Europe to just suck it up. A political backlash of some sort is a reasonable response.

  Personally I find the obsession with race, ethnicity, and nationality, both on the left wing and the right wing, to be what Sigmund Freud termed the "narcissism of small differences". I think people that obsess on these things are disconnected from reality and issues that actually matter.   That being said, I recognize that the world we live in is full of people who do think these things are important, and that makes these things important. Thus asking people to just ignore or accept a huge flood of strangers changing the very culture of their communities in a flash is not a realistic attitude.

  A backlash to the flood of immigrants isn't always based on hate, or even fear. Sometimes it is simply about fighting back against the chaos. It only appears xenophobic.

  Slovenia started erecting a razor wire fence along parts of its border with Croatia amid heavy security on Wednesday, saying it wanted better control over the surge of migrants passing through as they make their way across Europe.

 The problem for Slovenia is that Austria, Hungary, and other nations along the migration route aren't accepting nearly as many refugees anymore. These leaves them with a large problem for a small country.

 Austria recently said it could accept only a maximum of 6,000 people a day from Slovenia as Germany, the preferred destination for most migrants, started to slow down the flow of migrants and intensified the screening process.     As a result, the Slovenian prime minister, Miro Cerar, said that it was likely that many of the 30,000 migrants who were in his country traveling northward from Greece could be stranded, and that he had limited space and resources to properly accommodate them during winter.    “It’s a big number,” Mr. Cerar said, adding that if Austria and Germany imposed tougher restrictions — or closed their borders entirely — as many as 100,000 people could end up in Slovenia.     “If we don’t act now, we could have a humanitarian catastrophe on the territory of Slovenia,” Mr. Cerar said at a news conference.

 

What it means

   It's important to recognize that racism is only a byproduct of fascism. Fascism is foremost about the exaltation of masculinity and extreme nationalism. That extreme nationalism is what makes the far-right political parties almost universally anti-Euro and even anti-EU.

   That means if Brussels continues to make a democratic and socialist solution to the economic depression in southern Europe impossible, and if the refugee crisis continues to overwhelm central Europe, then the political ascendency of far-right parties in several nations is virtually assured. Once that political victory happens, the first thing they will do is close their borders. The second thing they will do is begin the process of leaving the Euro and maybe the EU.   How all that plays out in Europe is an open question, but it could start happening as early as next year.

  The United States will get a secondary effect from this political earthquake. Critical nations leaving the Euro will shake the faith in that currency, and that means capital will flee Europe to the safety of the dollar. This will drive our already overinflated bond and real estate prices through the roof.   However, the overvalued dollar will also absolutely destroy our exporters.

  The only realistic way of avoiding this outcome from the refugee crisis is to get serious about finding peace in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the origins of these crisis.   However, there were no Syrians invited to the Vienna peace talks. None! From either side! It's a bad joke.    The Libyan peace talks are slightly more promising if only because at least there are Libyans there. But when it was revealed that the UN negotiator was taking a job in the UAE, one of the nations that have bombed Libya, talks have stalled.   Neither Afghanistan or Iraq have any real peace talks happening.