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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35170 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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The war between the future Italian Government and the EU is beginning.

After a question by a student, the Commission President von Der Leyen, said that the EU will use "all their instruments, as happened against Hungary and Poland" against Italy in the case of "democratic backsliding".

As always, after this, accusation from every part came, with the Left defending it and the Right attacking it. Notice that von Der Leyen is part of the CDU(PPE), but their policies have always been center-left.

Apart from this phrase (von Der Leyen is not new at speaking too much with the wrong words at the wrong time), it will be noteworthy to see what will happen if Italy enter the bad boy group with Poland and Hungary, especially when also Sweden and Spain will probably see governments with the hard-right inside or at the helm.

The instrument of "follow liberal human rights or sanctions" can work against Warsaw and Budapest, but against all these countries?

What will happen will define how democracy will function in the EU, and if parties that are not part of the PPE-PSE-Liberal-Green megagroup will bow and assimilate to the center-right, or will follow the Orban line.

For now, it looks like the Italian Goverment will follow a moderate line, considering that economic recession is behind the corner and the debt is exploding again.

Does the EU have an American-like deep state bureaucracy that is going to push for its own identity-politics left-of-center thing regardless of who is elected or appointed to what office? If so, is this bureaucracy in sync with much of the elite media so that going against it gets you labeled as basically evil and stupid?

It's not even 'deep-state'. It's basically just how the EU functions. The European Commission is made up almost entirely of career bureaucrats (who are largely social left-of-centre neoliberal types). The Commissioners themselves are basically unelected appointees from the member states, and while nominally they're subjected to an approval vote from the European Parliament, it's really just rubberstamping.

So it's "deep-state" by design and without pretense.

The EU has a bureaucracy that makes no bones about openly pushing for the "ever closer Union", ie. federalization of EU; that is the true ideological quest of the Eurocrats, not identity-politics or left-of-center politics as such. The federalization project has tended to be evolve at a snail's pace, though. We'll see if the coming years speed it up.

I am personally undecided what balance of EU-beuracratic following of American progressivism is an artifact of American cultural influence versus federalist designs. Eurocrats absolutely have their own sort of internal messaging programs and strategies to try and build public support, but while one part of that is pro-Europe, another is the teardown of prior loyalties, especially nationalist inclinations. Identity-politics as framed by the US- white versus black- is a meaningful alternative framing to European 'identities,' as it homogenizes European diversity into a collective that the EU can claim to represent as Europeans, as opposed to national identities that object to EU-centralization on national grounds.

For the lack of / failure to create a European nationalism despite significant effort, diluting the rest works almost as well.

I don't think it's very useful to look at EU messaging and such through the lens of how well it fits American progressivism. If you look at, for example, the Twitter accounts of European Commission and European Parliament, it is generally vaguely progressive/technocratic, but the common themes include:

  • EU as a climate leader (absolutely more central here than climate/environmental issues are in US Dem messaging, for instance; even Biden's major climate act had to be called Inflation Reduction Act, lol)

  • EU as a global actor, currently particularly in the sense of EU supporting Ukraine (Europeans have never exactly needed American progressives to tell them to fear Russia and oppose Russian expansion)

  • EU as an innovation leader (businesslike technocratic appeal of the EU)

  • European unity (connected to the above, at the moment)

These are all quite similar to the main arguments of local Europhiles, and they're fairly consistent with messaging the EU has pushed out for a long time. Race/gender/sexuality messaging is not nearly as prominent, apart from some appeals to "women's achievements" style basic feminism.

Race/gender/sexuality messaging is not nearly as prominent

It's becoming more and more prominent such as the European Commission's Anti-Racism Action Plan 2020-2025. Feminism/"gender equality" has always been a core component of EU social messaging.

It is partially an importation of American progressivism, albeit adapted to local conditions.

Again, I'm not arguing that there isn't a progressive element to EU messaging - rather that the EU messaging is quite different from current American progressive messaging, where race/sexuality/gender messaging often seems to be front and center, not something that usually takes a back seat compared to the issues I mentioned.

Yes, and I'm saying it is becoming more and more prominent and is on track to becoming front and centre.

I'd say yes with a high degree of confidence.

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