The way that politicians today fight over democracy, with no restraint or shame, has made it highly prized prey. In Austria, Green MP Alex Korun was probably quite right to see the election of the environmentalist candidate Alexander Van der Bellen as president of the country as a “victory for Austrian civil society” which had roused itself late in the day to prevent the victory of a right-wing extremist. A few hours later, however, the populist leader of the Five Star Movement, Beppe Grillo, was proclaiming after the “no” delivered on the reform of Italian institutions proposed by Matteo Renzi that “Democracy is the winner!” Who is telling the truth? In fact, both: Luigi Pirandello’s “each in his own way” is here being proved correct. The question to be asked now – in Austria, Italy and right across Europe – is, what kind of democracy are we talking about?
At the last meeting of the Party of European Socialists in Prague in early December, Jeremy Corbyn launched a head-on attack on the populist right which, while it may correctly identify the problems of our time of growing insecurity and falling living standards, delivers as its response only the “toxic dead-ends” of the past: “They are political parasites feeding on people’s concerns and worsening conditions, blaming the most vulnerable for society’s ills instead of offering a way for taking back real control of our lives from the elites who serve their own interests”, inveighed the leader of the Labour Party (The Guardian, 3 December). His argument is no doubt sound, even though the ambiguity that he is foisting on Labour on how to react to Brexit seriously weakens the power of his argument – and omitting to mention that left-wing populism that brings protectionism is scarcely any better does nothing for his credibility or that of the party he leads. Yet, he is totally correct on one point: “The strength of populism is in understanding the anger and the malaise affecting not only those who feel they have been done down and the casualties of globalisation but also all those who feel overwhelmed by recent events”, agrees Belgian philosopher Vincent de Coorebyter (Le Soir, 1 December). In short, according to this professor at Brussels Free University: populism “is doing better than other political movements” because it is “a good listener”, even though it has shown itself incapable of “separating out the different reasons for concern and indignation” being expressed. All it does is “feed on all the various grievances” so that it can deliver the tirades that have seen it rise in polls and even at the ballot box, even if the solutions it offers are backward-looking and illusory.
And all the while, what are the “other political movements” in the member states doing? By and large, they are in denial! They’re not singing “Don’t worry, be happy” but they might as well be. For example, when Elodie Lamer reports that the president of the Eurogroup, when asked about the failure of the constitutional reform Matteo Renzi had wanted to make, says that institutional reform is important to have an efficient administration, going on: “A functioning political system is essential if one wants to modernise Europe, but this is not unique to Italy” (EUROPE 11682). What institutional reform is Jeroen Dijsselbloem preparing for the Netherlands, a member state where the Freedom Party of the nationalist and populist Geert Wilders is credited with 30% of voting intentions in next year’s general elections? What reform has this “Daddy precision” of the eurozone suggested that Dr Schäuble’s Germany should implement to loosen the noose of austerity which, everywhere, is sucking the blood out of the ever-broader fringes of the peoples of Europe and bringing colour to the cheeks of extremist political movements? Above all, are Jeroen Dijsselbloem and his colleagues, and the members of the European Council, too, prepared to admit that, if “a functioning political system is essential if one wants to modernise Europe”, now is the time – urgently – to consider the rickety institutional system which is, bit by bit, inexorably leading the European Union to its doom?
Of course, it won’t come to that, as you know, “the people don’t want it”. Quite the contrary, the political leaders of the traditional democratic movements can hear only the call for a return to fully sovereign states protected by national borders coming from discontented citizens. The call for which the populists make themselves the unequivocal mouthpieces. That is the justification for their inertia. That is also the reason why, month by month, popular distrust is growing for a European project that has been hijacked by those in power whose paths are being dictated by the populists and extremists. That is why the European project is in mortal danger.
In the small world of the French intelligentsia, Alain Minc does not have only friends; he probably has barely more admirers than detractors. Yet this graduate of the Ecole national d’administration has, in his writing, produced more than nonsense. In 1995 in L’ivresse démocratique, he delivered a warning: “Public opinion will be at the start of the 21st century what the working class was at the beginning of the 20th: a reality, a myth and a psychosis”. He cautioned that “the democracy of opinion” had “begun its reign”, its master being the individual – “narcissistic, unstable and uncertain”, little given to “reactions of solidarity” as a result of excessive cultivation of “opportunism, consumerism and a visceral sense of freedom”. Thus, he observed, “public opinion has, in its way, become omnipresent and totalitarian”. Or to use the intuition of de Toqueville, public opinion has today become “a sort of great pressure from the mind of all on the intelligence of each”. It is public opinion expressed by the populists, nationalists and other extremists that is setting the tone. It is public opinion that paralyses the minds of honourable politicians to the point of deceiving themselves and taking the European Union to the edge of the precipice. Let them be aware, they will only save the European Union, they will only save their honour, if they realise that public opinion as described provides evidence of peoples’ – of the European people’s – least noble instincts. They need to recover some composure by listening to those in civil society who are working to find an honourable way out of the existential crisis, to build a Europe more in tune with the people. Their ideas may sometimes be ill-considered or even iconoclastic but these ideas are potentially beacons of hope, where those of the populists are reactionary and promise the worst. European leaders need to acknowledge that Mr Minc is correct when he said that, if the elites which they embody “want to be more than just scapegoats, they need to assign themselves a mission: to become the indefatigable activists of reason”. Since 1995, the elites have, indeed, become scapegoats but there is still time for European leaders to become “the indefatigable activists of reason” through which they will save the European project! (Original version in French by Michel Theys)