Bren­dan Ogle: Almost inevitably the day that Britain will not leave the Euro­pean Union (EU) has arrived. West­min­ster is in chaos and our near­est neigh­bour is in the midst of a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis. A gen­er­al elec­tion there may not be far away. Maybe the con­tempt the Irish estab­lish­ment has shown for the very idea of Jere­my Cor­byn as British PM will be tem­pered by the thought of Boris John­son in Down­ing Street.

But, intrigu­ing as these ques­tions may be, there are more fun­da­men­tal mat­ters at hand. The far right is on the rise across Europe, and in the com­ing elec­tions up to a third of seats could well go to these extrem­ists. In Italy, Aus­tria and Swe­den seri­ous far right move­ments have arisen and tak­en – or come extreme­ly close to tak­ing – pow­er. The Brex­it debate itself was dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly influ­enced by UKIP, while France has long had a strong Nation­al Front. Dur­ing recent vis­its to Ger­many, I have been sur­prised to see in prac­tice just how quick­ly the AfD has arisen and become influ­en­tial, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the work­ing class. These events do not hap­pen in a vac­u­um.

The EU itself, and the sti­fling con­sen­sus that sus­tains it in its cur­rent form, is direct­ly respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the con­di­tions with­in which these threats are aris­ing. More­over, the com­plete fail­ure of a pro­gres­sive left to form a con­ti­nent-wide move­ment insist­ing on fun­da­men­tal EU reform adds to the impend­ing sense of cri­sis.

The EU has become the biggest sin­gle club of neolib­er­al hege­mo­ny on the plan­et. It is anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, fea­tur­ing a close to pow­er­less ‘par­lia­ment’, a coun­cil made up of heads of mem­ber states or gov­ern­ments, and a pow­er­ful com­mis­sion of unelect­ed ‘com­mis­sion­ers’ all of whom are faith­ful to the neolib­er­al text­book. What does this text­book involve? The pur­suit of ‘eco­nom­ic growth’ as the sole mea­sure­ment of human progress, irre­spec­tive of its often dis­as­trous social con­se­quences, for a start. Add to that the ero­sion and then pri­vati­sa­tion of high-qual­i­ty pub­lic ser­vices in keep­ing with a dog­ma of min­i­mal­ist ‘state inter­ven­tion’, and the com­plete erad­i­ca­tion of mean­ing­ful par­tic­i­pa­tive democ­ra­cy in its insti­tu­tions. Oh, and low tax­es. And the rich­er you are, the low­er those tax­es get.

These unbend­ing tenets informed the deci­sion to place the wel­fare of cit­i­zens, and even entire coun­tries like Ire­land and Greece, well below the needs of finan­cial insti­tu­tions when those very insti­tu­tions crashed the econ­o­my in 2008. The resul­tant chaos will be repeat­ed when the same thing inevitably hap­pens again (quite soon I sus­pect), giv­en the com­plete absence of reform and the mas­sive under­ly­ing debt in these ‘pil­lar insti­tu­tions’. This week Pres­i­dent Michael D. Hig­gins again called for sys­tem­at­ic reform stat­ing ‘…if the intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tion of the union’s mem­bers is sim­ply one of reac­tion and adjust­ment to a wild unreg­u­lat­ed glob­al­i­sa­tion. The prospects are poor.’

The mas­sive social inequal­i­ties with­in the EU are not acci­den­tal. The pover­ty, home­less­ness, pre­car­i­ous employ­ment, low pay, lack of social mobil­i­ty and much more are the inevitable con­se­quences of an eco­nom­ic mod­el, slav­ish­ly fol­lowed, that puts extreme ide­ol­o­gy above the con­cerns for Europe’s cit­i­zens.

There should be room for a debate on these mat­ters. TV shows and radio pro­grammes, fea­ture arti­cles and edi­to­ri­als, should facil­i­tate respect­ful debate and dis­cus­sion. But not a bit of it. The tra­di­tion­al media, in gen­er­al, is now no more than an ‘ide­o­log­i­cal sect’ facil­i­tat­ing the unques­tioned pur­suit of the only cur­rent­ly per­mis­si­ble eco­nom­ic mod­el. It’s like pro­pa­gan­da, but on an inces­sant and grand scale. And it has worked. As my friend Stephen Nolan of Trade­mark Belfast often says, ‘peo­ple can now read­i­ly imag­ine the end of the world, but they are inca­pable of imag­in­ing the end of cap­i­tal­ism’. It’s a kind of eco­nom­ic ‘Stock­holm Syn­drome’.

Rea­son­able crit­i­cal voic­es in the nation­al con­ver­sa­tion were first iso­lat­ed, then lam­pooned, and final­ly strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get­ed to clear the way for a sti­fling con­sen­sus. Lis­ten to the names, the voic­es, and the agen­das on the pan­els even the largest pub­licly-fund­ed talk shows have these days dis­cussing these vital issues. Bal­ance? Yeah, Right!

The result is the reac­tion that is now emerg­ing unchecked, for the present, through social media. It is pan­der­ing to people’s legit­i­mate con­cerns about their own iso­la­tion. Words like ‘cor­rup­tion’ – some­thing that has con­cerned many of us for years – are put out front and cen­tre first. Sup­port is then gar­nered from peo­ple who opposed recent social changes in areas such as abor­tion, gen­der rights and sex­u­al free­doms. Con­cerns about vac­ci­na­tion and flu­o­ri­da­tion are added. Con­spir­a­cies abound, tap­ping into people’s under­stand­able dis­trust of an estab­lish­ment that has indeed ‘con­spired’ against them. And to this mix of indi­vid­u­als a num­ber of strate­gi­cal­ly organ­ised, fund­ed and inter-linked groups then do two things: first­ly, wrap a green flag around those lis­ten­ing to them (nation­al­ism), and then blame their real tar­get for all these ills. The ‘oth­ers’.  ‘Them’.

Yes­ter­day pub­lic bill­boards were launched by a par­ty that has no sig­nif­i­cant mem­ber­ship yet, cast in the image of UKIP’s Nigel Farage, called the ‘Irish Free­dom Par­ty’. This expen­sive and co-ordi­nat­ed oper­a­tion uses the Irish lan­guage and Fine Gael hero Michael Collins while talk­ing about low­er tax­es (a key alt-right fun­da­men­tal) in the same breath as more hous­es, and of course ‘bor­ders’. Think Trump in a tri­colour and you have it in one. At the low­er end we have an ‘award win­ning jour­nal­ist’ who could be accused of incit­ing hatred against the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, pro­gres­sive activists includ­ing vac­ci­na­tion advo­cates, and even dead women. She does so with an inde­cent and fanat­i­cal zeal. A recent dis­gust­ing tweet about the slaugh­ter of 50 inno­cents in New Zealand was fol­lowed with­in days by this con­spir­acist triv­i­al­is­ing the death of a young woman from cer­vi­cal can­cer by describ­ing her pass­ing as an ‘alleged death’.

Those who want to live in a bet­ter world that isn’t full of hate while under­es­ti­mat­ing these threats are play­ing with fire. Whether with­in polit­i­cal cir­cles, the media or the legal sys­tem, those of us seek­ing pro­gres­sive reform based on wealth re-dis­tri­b­u­tion down­wards, bet­ter pub­lic ser­vices, tax jus­tice (high­er tax­es for cor­po­ra­tions and those who can pay them), debt for­give­ness and basic human­i­ty applied to bor­der con­trol need to find new ways to reform our soci­ety in our people’s inter­ests.

Con­tin­ued fail­ure to do so may well mean that the 2020s are not that dis­sim­i­lar to the 1930s. Think I am exag­ger­at­ing? Yes, peo­ple keep telling me that. I hope they are right. But inter­est­ing­ly, on recent vis­its to Berlin and Ham­burg nobody felt I was over­play­ing the dan­ger.

ENDS