Top intellectuals "coming apart before our eyes"
"The idea of Europe is in peril."
Really? That surprises me. Evidence?
"From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause."
OK. If I understand you right, you are defending a Europe, or "an idea of Europe" in which "criticisms" and "insults" cannot be tolerated. Or - let's break down the process - in which initially mild "criticisms" are loftily ignored by a bureaucratic elite, to a point where frustration builds up and "insults" begin to be heard. And then, when even these are ignored, or are responded to with further "insults", you affect to be surprised that "desertions" begin to take place. Is that it?
“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry."
Wait a moment. You said that the idea of Europe is in peril. Which idea, precisely, do you mean? I ask because the notion of Europe as a continent has been in circulation at least since Herodotus, and was well established in intellectual common currency by the Late Medieval. It is therefore hard to imagine that such a venerable and useful idea as "let's draw a line roughly down through the Caucasus crest and give the landmass to the West a special name in recognition of its shared history" is going to disappear simply, as you suggest, as a result of a sudden swathe of poor electoral choices.
Let's be clear then. What is in peril, according to you, is not "the" idea of Europe, but A PARTICULAR idea of Europe, one which you happen to approve of. If so, why not come out and say it? What's wrong with being honest?
“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues."
If such abstractions only existed in the minds of a demagogues, it is hard to see what danger there could possibly be. If I stand on a soapbox and tell curious crowds that we must reconnect with our "national cohnbendit", it is unlikely that I will gain a large following among the majority who confessedly have no idea what a "cohnbendit" is or might be. Once again, try being honest. You know perfectly well that "soul" and "identity" are abstractions that exist in the minds, not only of the demagogues, but of the large numbers of people who form their natural or target constituency. While ill-defined, and thus vulnerable to manipulative resignification, the concepts are not meaningless. For example, ask a sample of Dutch citizens whether they regard the opera as part of their "national identity", then ask a sample of Italians, and compare the results. If "national identity" was a meaningless term, you would not get those results.
People have an idea of their country. Its name evokes images in their minds. Some of these have strong emotional associations. This should not be a problem (unless the images in question involve, say, pogroms or book-burnings, and the emotional connotations accruing thereto are positive, which I suspect is not the case outside of the diseased imaginations of a tiny number of psychotic extremists, if that).
And if such vague but benign notions of national identity are not a problem per se, nor appear to contradict the existence of an "idea of Europe", why do the demagogues (as you describe them) find it necessary to place "reconnecting with the national soul" in opposition to "building Europe", as you say they do? Might it not be because there is a particular "idea of Europe" - the one you defend here - that is perceived as a threat to this "national identity"?
Wrongly perceived, you will perhaps reply. Well, maybe so. If you want to make the case that there is no necessary opposition between your "idea of Europe" and, say, a Brit's "idea of Britain" or "national identity", that the two can coexist in perfect harmony, fine, I'll listen, and I might even end up agreeing with you if you make a good argument. But loftily and sneeringly dismissing "national identity" as a mere piddling "abstraction" is hardly a promising beginning to such an argument. After all, your "idea of Europe" is every bit as much an "abstraction" as the national identities you profess to despise... and, unfortunately for you, one that is far less widely shared, or stable, or evocative of strong feelings and loyalties.
"Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes."
The first sentence here, with its coy refusal to name names, its incendiary rhetoric and almost complete lack of falsifiability, strikes me as a textbook example of demagoguery (that thing you were railing against in the previous paragraph), but let's leave that aside. What we find here is, first, a frank admission that the UK (that mere "ally...across the Channel") is not and never was an integral part of your "idea of Europe"; and second, an extraordinary rewriting of history, whereby the sacrifice of 20 million Russians who also helped to "save [Europe] from suicide" merits not the barest mention.
Once again, let's be clear. The people who saved Europe from suicide in the last century are not to be found in the governments of any country today, nor are they represented by those governments. Those heroes have not "abandoned" anyone or anything. But if we think their sacrifice was important, we could do worse than remind ourselves what it is they thought they were fighting for. No, you tell me. You're the Top Intellectuals. Put that fragile ideal into words. I dare you.
This is the noxious climate in which Europe’s parliamentary elections will take place in May. Unless something changes; unless something comes along to turn back the rising, swelling, insistent tide; unless a new spirit of resistance emerges, these elections promise to be the most calamitous that we have known. They will give a victory to the wreckers. For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us.
Nobody sane wants explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. If we are serious about opposing these destructive forces, we need to look at what might be causing them. Here are a couple of summary analyses:
(A) These unpleasant consequences derive from the unwillingness of the dull-witted, uneducated masses, prey to the blandishments of "demagogues" and "false prophets", to kowtow humbly to the "intelligence and culture" of their betters, specifically the powerful, unelected lunimaries of the EU's policymaking superstructure.
(B) These unpleasant consequences derive from a combination of global economic downturn (2008 onwards) and the rise of populist political forces taking electoral advantage of genuine, palpable failings in the political system in which they find themselves.
Personally, I find (B) not only more persuasive, but also more constructive as an analysis,. Rather than indulging in handwringing over the alleged stupidity of the masses (to which the only short-term solution would appear to be some sort of massive onslaught of propaganda and attempted brainwashing, along the lines of what you say the Kremlin is doing, but this time conducted by the "right" machiavellians), I prefer to think that there are specific political issues that need solving, and that the best way to find out what these are is to listen to the views of the electorate in the countries in question. Furthermore, I also find it highly significant that the rise of populist political tendencies has turned out to be not a local or national but a continent-wide phenomenon. This would suggest that at least part of the problem that needs to be fixed is likewise continent-wide in scope. I don't want to be excessively reductionist or simplistic, and I'm not going to advance the absurd proposition that the EU is the source of all Europe's current ills; but it does at least seem, prima facie, to be more a part of the problem than anything else.
"We count ourselves among the European patriots (a group more numerous than is commonly thought, but that is often too quiet and too resigned), who understand what is at stake here. Three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is a new battle for civilisation."
I personally have never met a European patriot. That is, I have never met anyone who would be willing to march into battle to the strains of An die Freude. I can't say that I'm sorry. I'll take your word that this is not an empty set, but you haven't given me any reason to care what such an exotic coterie of people might think.
I agree that civilization is not a given, and has to be fought for. In fact, I think this proposition might command near-universal assent among the very deluded, unwashed masses you so pompously rail against. Perhaps the difference is what is understood by civilization, and what is considered a threat to it.
I have written endlessly on this elsewhere, but if you want a summary of what I think: civilization is a state of affairs likely to obtain in a society wherein certain basic freedoms are guaranteed and no one has too much power; current threats are varied, but include authoritarianism; the accumulation of power by unaccountable bodies remote from the citizens they purport to serve; dogmatism and illiberalism visible in a proliferation of petty regulations (corruptissima re publica plurimae leges); in some cases, frontal attacks on ancient freedoms; and increased social polarization derived from the aforementioned broken covenant between citizenry and government, in which the EU is complicit insofar as it has spent the last forty years undermining the accountability of national democracies to their voters, in part by providing them with the perfect alibi for poor decisions and fatalistic inaction.
Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake forbids us from giving up.
I find the word "virtuous" in the above sticks out like a sore thumb. So this is where we're at now? "My Europe is more virtuous than yours"? Likewise, "above themselves" is very, shall we say, Freudian. You just can't help it, can you, Top Intellectuals. Every word here drips with lofty, supercilious contempt for the common citizen.
I won't bother quoting the rest, although the peroration is interesting:
In this strange defeat of “Europe” that looms on the horizon; this new crisis of the European conscience that promises to tear down everything that made our societies great, honourable, and prosperous, there is a challenge greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal democracy and its values.
Yes - there is a challenge. No - the EU (your blinkered, elitist, romantic and authoritarian notion of "Europe", so elaborately disguised and tricked out here) has nothing to do with what made "our societies" great and honourable, or even prosperous (such prosperity as we saw in Europe prior to 2008 was the direct result of the single market, and not of the ECJ, the Commission, the EP or the Brussels Gravy Train). If the intention is to counter authoritarianism, xenophobia, antisemitism, religious interference in secular matters, neo-Nazism or islamofascism, we are all on the same side. If the aim, as it rather seems here, is to defend the corrupt institutions of a bloated and outdated centralised political federation whose long-term mission creep has, in the course of the Brexit negotiations, boiled over into blatant revanchism and the most sinister form of overreach, then I'm afraid that, if you want to get anyone on board your proposed new "surge", you're going to have to hold your Top Intellectual noses, come down from your ivory tower and actually engage with the European citizens you so openly despise: perhaps, even, by actually presenting, in place of the overblown High School rhetoric, some cogent arguments.
Or have today's "intellectuals" forgotten how to do that? I've often wondered this of late.
Really? That surprises me. Evidence?
"From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause."
OK. If I understand you right, you are defending a Europe, or "an idea of Europe" in which "criticisms" and "insults" cannot be tolerated. Or - let's break down the process - in which initially mild "criticisms" are loftily ignored by a bureaucratic elite, to a point where frustration builds up and "insults" begin to be heard. And then, when even these are ignored, or are responded to with further "insults", you affect to be surprised that "desertions" begin to take place. Is that it?
“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry."
Wait a moment. You said that the idea of Europe is in peril. Which idea, precisely, do you mean? I ask because the notion of Europe as a continent has been in circulation at least since Herodotus, and was well established in intellectual common currency by the Late Medieval. It is therefore hard to imagine that such a venerable and useful idea as "let's draw a line roughly down through the Caucasus crest and give the landmass to the West a special name in recognition of its shared history" is going to disappear simply, as you suggest, as a result of a sudden swathe of poor electoral choices.
Let's be clear then. What is in peril, according to you, is not "the" idea of Europe, but A PARTICULAR idea of Europe, one which you happen to approve of. If so, why not come out and say it? What's wrong with being honest?
“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues."
If such abstractions only existed in the minds of a demagogues, it is hard to see what danger there could possibly be. If I stand on a soapbox and tell curious crowds that we must reconnect with our "national cohnbendit", it is unlikely that I will gain a large following among the majority who confessedly have no idea what a "cohnbendit" is or might be. Once again, try being honest. You know perfectly well that "soul" and "identity" are abstractions that exist in the minds, not only of the demagogues, but of the large numbers of people who form their natural or target constituency. While ill-defined, and thus vulnerable to manipulative resignification, the concepts are not meaningless. For example, ask a sample of Dutch citizens whether they regard the opera as part of their "national identity", then ask a sample of Italians, and compare the results. If "national identity" was a meaningless term, you would not get those results.
People have an idea of their country. Its name evokes images in their minds. Some of these have strong emotional associations. This should not be a problem (unless the images in question involve, say, pogroms or book-burnings, and the emotional connotations accruing thereto are positive, which I suspect is not the case outside of the diseased imaginations of a tiny number of psychotic extremists, if that).
And if such vague but benign notions of national identity are not a problem per se, nor appear to contradict the existence of an "idea of Europe", why do the demagogues (as you describe them) find it necessary to place "reconnecting with the national soul" in opposition to "building Europe", as you say they do? Might it not be because there is a particular "idea of Europe" - the one you defend here - that is perceived as a threat to this "national identity"?
Wrongly perceived, you will perhaps reply. Well, maybe so. If you want to make the case that there is no necessary opposition between your "idea of Europe" and, say, a Brit's "idea of Britain" or "national identity", that the two can coexist in perfect harmony, fine, I'll listen, and I might even end up agreeing with you if you make a good argument. But loftily and sneeringly dismissing "national identity" as a mere piddling "abstraction" is hardly a promising beginning to such an argument. After all, your "idea of Europe" is every bit as much an "abstraction" as the national identities you profess to despise... and, unfortunately for you, one that is far less widely shared, or stable, or evocative of strong feelings and loyalties.
"Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling apart before our eyes."
The first sentence here, with its coy refusal to name names, its incendiary rhetoric and almost complete lack of falsifiability, strikes me as a textbook example of demagoguery (that thing you were railing against in the previous paragraph), but let's leave that aside. What we find here is, first, a frank admission that the UK (that mere "ally...across the Channel") is not and never was an integral part of your "idea of Europe"; and second, an extraordinary rewriting of history, whereby the sacrifice of 20 million Russians who also helped to "save [Europe] from suicide" merits not the barest mention.
Once again, let's be clear. The people who saved Europe from suicide in the last century are not to be found in the governments of any country today, nor are they represented by those governments. Those heroes have not "abandoned" anyone or anything. But if we think their sacrifice was important, we could do worse than remind ourselves what it is they thought they were fighting for. No, you tell me. You're the Top Intellectuals. Put that fragile ideal into words. I dare you.
This is the noxious climate in which Europe’s parliamentary elections will take place in May. Unless something changes; unless something comes along to turn back the rising, swelling, insistent tide; unless a new spirit of resistance emerges, these elections promise to be the most calamitous that we have known. They will give a victory to the wreckers. For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us.
Nobody sane wants explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. If we are serious about opposing these destructive forces, we need to look at what might be causing them. Here are a couple of summary analyses:
(A) These unpleasant consequences derive from the unwillingness of the dull-witted, uneducated masses, prey to the blandishments of "demagogues" and "false prophets", to kowtow humbly to the "intelligence and culture" of their betters, specifically the powerful, unelected lunimaries of the EU's policymaking superstructure.
(B) These unpleasant consequences derive from a combination of global economic downturn (2008 onwards) and the rise of populist political forces taking electoral advantage of genuine, palpable failings in the political system in which they find themselves.
Personally, I find (B) not only more persuasive, but also more constructive as an analysis,. Rather than indulging in handwringing over the alleged stupidity of the masses (to which the only short-term solution would appear to be some sort of massive onslaught of propaganda and attempted brainwashing, along the lines of what you say the Kremlin is doing, but this time conducted by the "right" machiavellians), I prefer to think that there are specific political issues that need solving, and that the best way to find out what these are is to listen to the views of the electorate in the countries in question. Furthermore, I also find it highly significant that the rise of populist political tendencies has turned out to be not a local or national but a continent-wide phenomenon. This would suggest that at least part of the problem that needs to be fixed is likewise continent-wide in scope. I don't want to be excessively reductionist or simplistic, and I'm not going to advance the absurd proposition that the EU is the source of all Europe's current ills; but it does at least seem, prima facie, to be more a part of the problem than anything else.
"We count ourselves among the European patriots (a group more numerous than is commonly thought, but that is often too quiet and too resigned), who understand what is at stake here. Three-quarters of a century after the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there is a new battle for civilisation."
I personally have never met a European patriot. That is, I have never met anyone who would be willing to march into battle to the strains of An die Freude. I can't say that I'm sorry. I'll take your word that this is not an empty set, but you haven't given me any reason to care what such an exotic coterie of people might think.
I agree that civilization is not a given, and has to be fought for. In fact, I think this proposition might command near-universal assent among the very deluded, unwashed masses you so pompously rail against. Perhaps the difference is what is understood by civilization, and what is considered a threat to it.
I have written endlessly on this elsewhere, but if you want a summary of what I think: civilization is a state of affairs likely to obtain in a society wherein certain basic freedoms are guaranteed and no one has too much power; current threats are varied, but include authoritarianism; the accumulation of power by unaccountable bodies remote from the citizens they purport to serve; dogmatism and illiberalism visible in a proliferation of petty regulations (corruptissima re publica plurimae leges); in some cases, frontal attacks on ancient freedoms; and increased social polarization derived from the aforementioned broken covenant between citizenry and government, in which the EU is complicit insofar as it has spent the last forty years undermining the accountability of national democracies to their voters, in part by providing them with the perfect alibi for poor decisions and fatalistic inaction.
Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake forbids us from giving up.
I find the word "virtuous" in the above sticks out like a sore thumb. So this is where we're at now? "My Europe is more virtuous than yours"? Likewise, "above themselves" is very, shall we say, Freudian. You just can't help it, can you, Top Intellectuals. Every word here drips with lofty, supercilious contempt for the common citizen.
I won't bother quoting the rest, although the peroration is interesting:
In this strange defeat of “Europe” that looms on the horizon; this new crisis of the European conscience that promises to tear down everything that made our societies great, honourable, and prosperous, there is a challenge greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal democracy and its values.
Yes - there is a challenge. No - the EU (your blinkered, elitist, romantic and authoritarian notion of "Europe", so elaborately disguised and tricked out here) has nothing to do with what made "our societies" great and honourable, or even prosperous (such prosperity as we saw in Europe prior to 2008 was the direct result of the single market, and not of the ECJ, the Commission, the EP or the Brussels Gravy Train). If the intention is to counter authoritarianism, xenophobia, antisemitism, religious interference in secular matters, neo-Nazism or islamofascism, we are all on the same side. If the aim, as it rather seems here, is to defend the corrupt institutions of a bloated and outdated centralised political federation whose long-term mission creep has, in the course of the Brexit negotiations, boiled over into blatant revanchism and the most sinister form of overreach, then I'm afraid that, if you want to get anyone on board your proposed new "surge", you're going to have to hold your Top Intellectual noses, come down from your ivory tower and actually engage with the European citizens you so openly despise: perhaps, even, by actually presenting, in place of the overblown High School rhetoric, some cogent arguments.
Or have today's "intellectuals" forgotten how to do that? I've often wondered this of late.
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