Is liberal democracy a tool of Russian and Chinese warfare? You might think so from this piece

Then-President Trump Hosted Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the Oval Office back in 2019 as a signal of his Administration's support for far-right governments restricting democratic processes and overriding the rule of law for the benefit of authoritarian governments and the oligarchs they represent.

The relationship of the Trumpists and the Republican Party to particular authoritarian movement provides an important perspective on the argument made by Buddhika Jayamaha and Jahara Matisek in an article for the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute's journal Parameters, "Social Media Warriors: Leveraging a New Battlespace" Parameters Winter 2018-19.

Jayamaha and Matisek make a disturbing argument treating foreign governments surreptitiously using Facebook ads as a form of warfare.

Hungary's Embassy put on a conference for Christian Right Republicans promoting Orbán's brand of völkish family policy in 2019. Ariana Eunjung Cha reported for the Washington Post. (2)

The conservative Christian Post carried this report by Samuel Smith, 'Make Families Great Again': Hungary seeing more babies, fewer abortions through pro-family policies 03/17/2019:

“I was very proud to be a minister here and hearing from our American friends how much they admired the Hungarian family policies,” Katalin Novák, the Hungarian minister of state for family, youth and international affairs who gave a keynote address at the event, told The Christian Post in an interview. ....

Today, the Hungarian government spends nearly 5 percent of its GDP towards incentives for those in the predominantly-Christian nation to get married and have children — lots of them. ...

Participants in the conference included White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, President Trump’s special assistant on domestic policy Kathryn Talento and Health and Human Services senior policy advisor Valerie Huber.

The event also included Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., Andy Harris, R-Md., Paul Gosar, R-Ariz and Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb.

Others included Family Research Council President and USCIRF commissioner Tony Perkins, former White House advisor Sebastian Gorka, American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp and as Emilie Kao, the director of the Heritage Foundation's DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society.

“We are working closely with the U.S. administration on family issues. They would also like to get some detail on our pro-family policies and the measures that we have introduced in the last nine years,” Novák, who is also the vice president of the Fidesz Party explained. (3)

The ever-odious Sebastian Gorka - whose public persona is that of a creepy James Bond movie villain - is now Senior Director for Counterterrorism in the Trump 2.0 regime. I'm not focusing here on Orbán's family policy, which is part of a broader xenophobic and anti-EU policy that promotes a conservative, traditionalist vision of society. It is also exceptionally unlikely to achieve even its stated goal of increasing Hungary's birth rate to the replacement rate by 2030. Rolling back time is just a hard thing to achieve.

But that 2019 conference, explicitly approved by the Trump 1.0 White House, is an illustration of one of many ways that politics in one country provides ideas to people elsewhere. And how governments promote that effect in ways that cover a full range from perfectly legitimate to illegal.

Jayamaha and Jahara Matisek in Parameters are addressing a real and legitimate national security issue. But I'm struck by their framing, which on a generous interpretation could be easily adapted to justify authoritarian policies. They lay out their perspective this way:

Civil society presents a fundamental blind spot in the American military understanding of warfare. Long associated by philosophers as a bulwark against tyranny in liberal democracies, civil society has been weaponized by hostile actors, such as Russia and China, and violent nonstate actors, such as the Islamic State. The adversaries’ strategy involves infiltrating Western civil society in order to foment dissent and create breaches along ethnic, racial, religious, and socioeconomic lines.

The new tactics create ideologically sympathetic individuals who desire policy changes that align with the adversarial state’s ideology or that promote detrimental and self-destructive views; these views, in turn, can undermine societal cohesion while disrupting foreign policy choices. This approach accentuates attacks on Western civil society across multiple dimensions by using social media warriors who indirectly receive orders from, and are secretly paid by, Moscow, Beijing, and other Western adversaries. These social media warriors and their handlers regard the internet as an unguarded, undersurveilled, and ill-defined human-to-human interface that can be easily manipulated. Subsequently, social media forums such as Facebook and Twitter become a battlespace of ideas, injected with disinformation in hopes of influencing individual, societal, and political behavior.

As a consequence, the discourse of Western civil society is shaped in ways fundamentally hostile to the effective functioning of pluralist liberal democracies. Fomenting dissension by spreading divisive social media posts and polarizing memes leads citizens in Western societies to like, and to share, the messages as well as to advocate for the ideas, thus creating a destructive civil discourse. In a homogenous society, such as Iceland, this type of campaign has less impact because the societal differences are primarily economic. [my emphasis]

Let me interrupt here to point out that the population of Iceland is roughly 360,000. The city of Atlanta GA alone has around 486 thousand.

But in countries with a variety of cultural and historical cleavages, malicious civil discourse deepens existing divisions that make social relations more acrimonious.

Disinformation tactics against civil societies in the United States and its Western allies are not particularly new. The novelty, however, is the use of free and open civil discourse, which is traditionally a Western strength, as the center of sociocultural strategy aimed at manipulating civil society into a new battlespace. The first component of this strategy relies on the existence of the internet and the use of social media. With the internet as the medium, individuals conduct essential societal interactions through a variety of apps and platforms that provide instantaneous, uberefficient, daily social contacts without the boundaries that affected civil interaction during the twentieth century. Anti-Western actors use these virtual networks to produce and to breed ideas degenerative to stable societal norms, which ultimately impact policy debates and elections. [my emphasis]

The rest of the article is filled with words, phrases, and comments to describe this process like these quotes:

• Many virulent Salafi-Jihadists preach Western destruction in Western capitals and large cosmopolitan cities where their dialogue is legally protected.
• ... undermining Western policy-making capacity and state power
• ... in liberal democracies that are easily exploitable by hybrid actors who face few mechanisms of enforcement.
• The value of freedom to liberal societies further complicates efforts to detect hostile attempts to create schismogenesis [social division] because recognizing the activity requires substantial domestic surveillance.
• ... the West’s adversaries rely on a strategy of socially embedding hostility into the political discourse, converting civil society from a constructive force into a destructive one.
• The strength of American democracy similarly promotes the same rights for all groups whether they are white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, or Black Lives Matter marches in Houston, Texas.
• ... Western laws, traditions, and norms prevent governments from investigating the actions of civil society organizations without reasonable cause.
• Each individual has the potential to undermine the strengths of each aspect of civil society from within, sometimes with the complicity of individuals, sometimes via inadvertent foreign threats, and sometimes through soft power influence such as China’s educational exchanges through the Confucius Institute.
• Nefarious governments, state affiliated proxies, and nonstate actors can, and do, exploit this defining liberal principle.
• Many citizens with access to social media are subconsciously led to choose one side of a purely manufactured debate.
• Such warfare is difficult for political and military leaders to respond to adequately, which has dark implications for how democracies are supposed to work.
• ... the same Western culture and civil society institutions that made America and the West culturally stronger than the Soviet Union have been exploited by the losing side of the Cold War.

Parameters is not National Review. And the Strategic Studies Institute is not FOX News. But FOX and National Review are also not official military journals. Which means that these kinds of ideas in Parameters are considered part of the respectable spectrum of US military scholarship.

So, on the one hand, Jayamaha and Matisek are identifying some legitimate issues about information operations directed by governments.

But it's also striking that they raise some dilemmas that are as old as the concept of free speech as though they are dramatic new developments of the last decade or two. And they use vague, insinuating language that was actually common as dirt during the Cold War to blur distinctions that are actually not only much easier to make than their article suggests, but actually are extensively made in law and established political and diplomatic practices.

They allude to the dilemma of intolerant groups exploiting the freedom of expression in liberal states as though it were some relatively recent discovery. Here is how Rainer Forst in Toleration in Conflict (English version, 2013) describes the great liberal theorist John Locke's view on the limits of toleration as he laid them out in his Epistola de tolerantia (Letter Concerning Tolerance) of 1685:

In the second part of the essay, in which Locke rhetorically addresses the king, he recommends, for the sake of the preservation and stability of the kingdom, that the king should grant toleration to the Protestant Dissenters and also to the sects (which, in Locke's opinion, would then neutralise each other), but deny it to the 'papists'. For the latter defend opinions which are 'absolutely destructive' for the government because of their loyalty to the pope and possibly to foreign Catholic powers; they use toleration only for their own purposes but do not accept it as a claim on themselves; and) in contrast to Protestant groups) they cannot be integrated through toleration but would remain 'irreconcilable enemies'. Locke would continue to defend this, for his time typical, anti-Catholic position in the Epistola de tolerantia though he insists that in doing so he is guided not by dogmatic religious considerations but by political ones. [my emphasis]

Which brings us back to the March 2019 conference on family values sponsored by the Hungarian Embassy and hosted by the Library of Congress. There are elaborate laws and practices associated with such events. There is nothing illegal about attending such a conference. Presumably the attendees were generally sympathetic to the cause being promoted. Although the Christian Post quotes one of them, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, criticizing Hungary's program of providing direct government payments to encourage parenthood, apparently finding it too socialistic for his taste.

Is any of this illegal? No, certainly nothing that I see in these reports.

Is it somehow sinister? Well, I think pretty much anything to do with the hate group Family Research Council is politically sinister. But it's not because of the fact that they attended a Hungary-sponsored event.

I'm not attempting here to address in any detail the various issues raised in the Parameters piece. What I am doing is using the "Making Families Great Again" event as an illustration of how there is a broad, largely familiar range of official international functions that are well understood and well regulated under US and international law. If you go listen to a speech by a foreign ambassador, that's an entirely legitimate thing to do in the US. If you knowingly accept secret payments from a foreign government to do some kind of assignment for them, then you probably are violating the law against working as an unregistered foreign agent. (Although if you're as dumb as Don Trump, Jr., you might be able to convince a prosecutor that you're just not smart enough to have broken the law.)

Russian intelligence agencies using Facebook ads and troll farms is a legitimate legal concern. But that can be addressed without framing every idea that might transcend a national border as, "the same Western culture and civil society institutions that made America and the West culturally stronger than the Soviet Union have been exploited by the losing side of the Cold War." And, not to be picky. But I'm not sure that Russia, Hungary, or even China qualify as "the losing side of the Cold War."

It's also problematic to frame such efforts as cyber warfare. Knocking out a country's power grid or inserting malicious software into military communications systems, yes, those qualify.

But when military officials or spokespeople or publications start identifying civilian trolls, even ones paid by unfriendly foreign powers, as "warriors"; or describing people who repost memes from such trolls as "undermining Western policy-making capacity and state power" in a "battlespace" that benefits "nefarious governments, state affiliated proxies, and nonstate actors"; or griping that this here pussy-ass librul democracy nonsense is lettin' danjerous furriners git away with too much bad stuff - then it's worth it for people who actually support democracy to take a critical look at what's being advocated.

Orbánism and authoritarianism in Hungary

Shalini Randeria analyzes examples of how rightwing populists can turn a democratic government into an authoritarian one without staging a coup, or a sudden revolution overturning the old governmental system, or blatantly going outside the letter of the law. Her article gives particular attention to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party, who she describes as practicing "soft authoritarian rule" via "electoral authoritarianism."

She focuses on the use of ethnonationalist demagoguery and extreme gerrymandering in Hungary.

Randeria writes that one of the characteristics of ethnonationalist´politics to encourage "pro-natalist" policies. This means some form of promoting a higher rate of reproduction by those who are part of the favored type of people, or ethnic group, or Volk. This also tends to enable traditional masculine attitudes, some of them more toxic than others. She cites the new anti-abortion laws in Poland, and Hungary's withdrawal of rights based on non-binary, non-traditional gender identities, as well as the Orbán government' hostility to women's rights in general. "A politics that defines an ethnically, "racially" or religiously homogeneous nation as a political ideal and goal mobilizes against alleged internal enemies, for example, against cosmopolitan elites, minorities or against migrants."

(All the translations from German in this post are mine.)

Even the word "migrants" has an ideoligical twist in its use by European xenophobes. They assume that "refugee" and "immigrant" are more sympathetic and neutral terms. So they prefer to talk about "migration" and "migrants," because that invokes more of an image of people voluntarily wandering from one country to another.

"Pro-natalist" creates there is an implication and sometimes a more explicit demand to promote people from the pure natural ethnic groups to have more children. 

This is a big joke in the real world. Not one of the 27 countries in the European Union has a birth rate as high as the "replacement rate" that would keep the country's population stable over the long term. That rate is generally taken to be 2,1 children per woman. New immigrants, i.e., people who immigrate as adults, tend to have more children. But children of immigrants tend to have birth rates reflecting that of the country in which they grew up.

Which isn't surprising. Because children of immigrants to Hungary or Poland or Austria who grow up in those countries are Hungarians and Poles and Austrians. So that is one of many ways they are like their fellow Hungarians, Poles and Austrians.

Randeria gives a good description of voter suppression measures in Hungary, which she rightly compares to those the Republican Party in America is actively pursuing. She also compares gerrymandering by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez to that of Orbán. I'm not familiar with drawing of electoral districts in Venezuela during his Presidency, and that charge is new to me. I do know about the American Republican Party's redistricting habits. And they are very compatable with Orbánism.

But the political body is deformed not only by population politics, but also by a strategic transformation of the electoral law. The fact that Viktor Orbán, as well as Hugo Chávez, used this tactic shows that such attacks on democracy do not only come from the far right. [Until recently, Fidesz had been a conservative party in the European Christian Democratic tradition.] The American political scientist Kim Lane Scheppele of Princeton University uses the term "autocratic legalism" to describe how legal and constitutional measures shift the democratic rules of the game toward illiberalism. In this respect, a variety of soft authoritarian tactics and practices can be observed. One measure favored by American Republicans is gerrymandering. The strategic manipulation of constituency boundaries is intended to distort election results in the long term in order to secure a political advantage for one's own party in the long term. [my emphasis]

There can also be other kinds of gerrymandering. In the US, we're all to familiar with racial gerrymandering. But since we're talking about electoral districts, partisan political considerations are always present.

Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary has taken this tactic to the extreme: it first halved the number of constituencies and then completely redefined the boundaries of these constituencies throughout the country. Constituencies that traditionally voted for Orbán's Fidesz party by a majority came out much smaller than those in which opposition parties could count on greater electoral success. [Opposition voting strength was diluted, in other words.] As a result of these demarcations, Orbán's Fidesz party won two-thirds of the seats in parliament in 2014 with only 45 percent of the vote. With this majority in his back, it was easy for Fidesz to make further constitutional changes. As early as 2012, there had been a constitutional amendment under Orbán, in which ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring states and without residency in Hungary were given the right to vote. A full 95 percent of these new voters outside Hungary's borders voted for the Fidesz party in 2014. In doing so, Orbán‘s government has succeeded in changing the electorate to serve its [Fidesz’] own long-term advantage. [my emphasis]

The gerrymandering is indeed extreme. But the addition of ethnic Hungarians living in other countries is also a disturbing piece of enthonationalist chauvinism, connected with resentments over the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Although Orbán isn't about to start a war with any of Hungary's neighbors over it, countries like Romania have reason to be concerned about Orbán's posturing.

Shaun Walker reported last year (Hungary marks treaty centenary as Orbán harnesses 'Trianon trauma' Guardian 06/04/2020):

While never speaking directly about reclaiming lost territory, Orbán’s government has made Hungarian minority populations in neighbouring countries a cornerstone of its foreign policy, pumping money into cultural centres, media outlets, churches and football clubs in the region and handing out Hungarian passports to those who want them. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians have taken up the offer, and the vast majority have cast votes for Orbán’s Fidesz party, cementing its control over Hungarian politics.

Last month, Orbán caused consternation in a number of regional capitals by posting a map of historical Hungary on his Facebook page as part of a post wishing students good luck with their history exams. Slovenia’s president, Borut Pahor, expressed “rejection and concern” over the map. The rights of Hungarian minorities have caused tension in relations with both Romania and Ukraine in recent years. [my emphasis]

Viktor Orbán's Hungarian ethno-nationalist posturing, including provocations over the Treaty of Trianon

Hungary's authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán likes to be provocative. He recently posted on Facebook a photo of a plaque with what he calls the "seven laws of the Hungarian national policy," i.e., slogans for the nationalist politics of Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party. (Orbán sorgt mit seinen "sieben Geboten" für neue Aufregung Kurier 25.03.2021.

The seven include (my translation from German):

• The homeland exists only so long as there is someone who loves it!
• Every Hungarian child is a new guard post!
• Without strength, justice is worth little!
• Only what we can defend belongs to us!
• Every match lasts until we win it!
• Only the country has borders, the nation has none!
• No Hungarian is alone!

Part of Orbán's political schtick is to fan nationalist resentments about the territorial losses Hungary incurred at the Treaty of Trianon (1920) after the end of the First World War. (Shaun Walker, Hungary marks treaty centenary as Orbán harnesses 'Trianon trauma' Guardian 06/04/2020; Nick Thorpe, The 100-year wound that Hungary cannot forget BBC News 06/04/2020)

After the Hungarian Communist regime headed by Bela Kun that held power from March to August 1919 was ousted, the Allies proceeded to divvy up around two-thirds of what had formerly been considered territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, which had been part of the now-destroyed Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Habsburgs. From the 2020 Britannica Online article on the treaty:

By the terms of the treaty, Hungary was shorn of at least two-thirds of its former territory and two-thirds of its inhabitants. Czechoslovakia was given Slovakia, sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, the region of Pressburg (Bratislava), and other minor sites. Austria received western Hungary (most of Burgenland). The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) took Croatia-Slavonia and part of the Banat. Romania received most of Banat and all of Transylvania. Italy received Fiume. Except for plebiscites in two small regions, all the transfers were effected without any plebiscites. [my emphasis]

Hungary's neighbors and fellow EU members understandably take a dim view of revanchist Hungarian treatments of the lost territories, to which Hungary has no claim in international law.

Fidesz' revanchist politicking has gone beyond sentimental historical retrospectives to actually extending Hungarian citizenship to some of those considered to be members of the Hungarian community in other countries. Lili Bayer and Matei Rosca report in Hungary’s century of anger Politico EU 06/04/2020

While some of Hungary’s neighbors are now fellow EU and NATO members, the Treaty of Trianon remains among the most controversial and sensitive issues in the region’s politics, made all the more complex by Hungary’s alliance with Nazi Germany and attempts to reclaim the lost lands during World War II.

Over the past few years, tensions have simmered as Budapest raised concerns over the rights of Hungarian-speaking communities in Romania and Ukraine, while officials in surrounding countries looked on with discomfort as Orbán’s government poured large sums of money into Hungarian-speaking areas in neighboring states. Last year, the Hungarian government withdrew financial backing for a festival in Slovakia organized by a far-right group after its support for the event came under scrutiny.

Unlike some of his political rivals, Orbán grasped early on the power of Trianon in the popular imagination, even for people who were born decades after the treaty was signed. A survey conducted in 1991 across Europe found that Hungary, which had just become a democracy, had the largest majority of respondents claiming that pieces of neighboring countries belong to them — 68 percent.

Each year, the Hungarian leader’s most important political speech takes place not in Hungary, but in Romania. He often refers to the treaty — telling his supporters about a glorious past that was unfairly taken away.

A decade ago, Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party extended citizenship and voting rights to Hungarian-speakers in surrounding countries — who have become among the party’s most loyal voters. The Fidesz party’s delegation to the European Parliament currently includes one member from the Hungarian-speaking community in western Ukraine. [my emphasis]

Hungary as a model for American authoritarians

Paul Krugman points to Hungary as a credible model for how the US can become an authoritarian country with democracy effectively suppressed (American Democracy May Be Dying New York Times 04/09/2020):

To see how a modern democracy can die, look at events in Europe, especially Hungary, over the past decade.

What happened in Hungary, beginning in 2011, was that Fidesz, the nation's white nationalist ruling party, took advantage of its position to rig the electoral system, effectively making its rule permanent. Then it further consolidated its control, using political power to reward friendly businesses while punishing critics, and moved to suppress independent news media.

Until recently, it seemed as if Viktor Orban, Hungary's de facto dictator, might stop with soft authoritarianism, presiding over a regime that preserved some of the outward forms of democracy, neutralizing and punishing opposition without actually making criticism illegal. But now his government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to abandon even the pretense of constitutional government, giving Orban the power to rule by decree. [my emphasis]

The Austrian Social Democratic politician Muna Duzdar (the first Muslim to serve as a member of an Austrian national government), posted this criticism of a new anti-LGBTQ position of Hungary's government on Facebook:

My translation from the German]:

This is happening in the middle of our neighboring country, Hungary, an EU Member State. I do not recognize this country. I often wonder how this development into an authoritarian state could be so rapid. Unfortunately, we also see clearly that minorities are the first to be oppressed and stigmatized.

But what I have been observing with incomprehension for years in Austrian politics [is]: before our borders, our neighbor is step-by-step saying goodbye to democracy and the rule of law, but I have never heard a word of criticism, but only appeasement, from the current Chancellor [Sebastian Kurz] and the turquoise ÖVP [Kurz’ Christian Democratic conservative party]. Can you understand why this is so? What does Kurz have in common with Orbán?

The linked article, Ungarn will trans* Personen nicht mehr anerkennen NOIZZ.de 07.04.2020, comments:

Orbán ist seit 2010 Ministerpräsident Ungarns und verfolgt einen politischen Ansatz, mit dem er die Demokratie des Landes nach und nach zerstört. In der vergangenen Woche hat das ungarische Parlament den rechtsnationalen Orbán per Dekret die volle Regierungsgewalt zugesprochen, solange das Coronavirus als Bedrohung für die Nation angesehen wird – und damit die letzten demokratischen Kontrollsysteme des Parlaments ausgehebelt. Denn mit seinen aktuellen umfassenden Sondervollmachten kann Orbán ohne zeitliche Befristung und gegebenenfalls ohne parlamentarische Kontrolle regieren – eine Demokratie ist das nicht mehr.

[Orbán has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010 and has been pursuing a political approach that is gradually destroying the country's democracy. Last week, the Hungarian parliament granted full government power to the right-wing nationalist Orbán to rule by decree, as long as the coronavirus is seen as a threat to the nation – thereby undermining parliament's last democratic control systems. With its current comprehensive special powers, Orbán can govern without a time limit and, if necessary, without parliamentary control – that is no longer a democracy.]

Hat Basti eine kohärente Politik gegenüber den Visegrad-Staaten?

Hier sind fünf aktuelle Geschichten aus der Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten:

• Visegrad-Gipfel: Viel Übereinstimmung, nur nicht bei Atomkraft 16.01.2020
• Kurz und die Visegrad-Staaten: Nur beim Migrationskurs im Gleichschritt 17.01.2020
• EU-Budget: Bundeskanzler Kurz ist nun doch zu höheren Zahlungen bereit 12.02.2020
• Edtstadler in Ungarn - Positionen bei EU-Budget "weit auseinander" 10.02.2020
• Edtstadler wirbt bei Visegrad-Staaten um Sparkurs beim EU-Budget 10.02.2020

Offensichtlich können die Außenbeziehungen zwischen zwei Ländern sehr kompliziert sein. Die Visegrad-Gruppe-Länder Tschechien, Ungarn, Polen und die Slowakei versuchen, in einigen Fragen innerhalb der EU als Block zu fungieren, insbesondere bei ihrer Ablehnung der Einwanderung.

Österreichs derzeitiger Bundeskanzler Sebastian "Basti" Kurz hat in seiner aktuellen türkis-grünen Regierungskoalition und seiner früheren türkis-blauen Koalition eine deutlich einwanderungsfeindliche Position eingenommen, die der der Visegrad-Gruppe ähnelt.

Österreich ist gegen Atomkraftwerke und besorgt über die Umweltrisiken solcher Anlagen insbesondere in der Tschechischen Republik.

Aber Österreich ist auch eines der reichsten Länder der EU und ein Nettogeber für die EU. Basti hat sich nach dem Brexit gegen eine geringfügige Erhöhung der österreichischen Beiträge zum EU-Haushalt ausgesprochen, aber er hat jetzt einfach nachgegeben und zugestimmt.

Die einwanderungsfeindliche Haltung und die anti-EU-Haltung über das Budget sind Positionen, die Basti und seine ÖVP einen nationalistischen Ton anschlagen lassen, um Wähler der rechtsextremen FPÖ anzusprechen.

Aber gerade die jüngste Diplomatie mit Ungarn ist offensichtlich nicht kohärent.

In der akuten Phase der Flüchtlingskrise 2015 war es Ungarn, das absichtlich Zehntausende Flüchtlinge nach Österreich freiließ, die meisten von ihnen auf dem Weg nach Deutschland. Trotz Bastis "Grenzen-dicht"-Positionierung gegen Flüchtlinge hat er sich mit Ungarn und den übrigen Visegrad-Staaten verbündet, um jeden neuen, pragmatischen Ansatz in Bezug auf die Einwanderungssituation der EU zu blockieren und das derzeitige Dublin-System beizubehalten, das den Großteil der Verantwortung für Flüchtlinge aus dem Nahen Osten und Nordafrika auf die EU-Mitglieder Griechenland, Italien und Spanien ablagert.

Tatsache ist, dass die Türkei jederzeit eine neue Massenbewegung von Flüchtlingen in die EU auslösen könnte, nur indem sie einen Teil der vier Millionen Flüchtlinge, die sie derzeit hält, nach Norden entsendet. Das NATO-Mitglied Türkei befindet sich derzeit in einem Schießkonflikt mit Syrien und Russland und ist in eine riskante, umstrittene Intervention in Libyen verwickelt, auch auf der gegenüberliegenden Seite Russlands. (Erdogan: Turkey will hit Syrian government forces 'anywhere' Aljazeera 12.02.2020; Konflikt zwischen Russland und Türkei in Syrien spitzt sich zu Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 11.02.2020)

In diesem Zusammenhang scheint Österreichs Diplomatie gegenüber den Visegrad-Staaten verwirrt. Basti sprach sich dafür aus, möglicherweise sein Veto gegen die höheren EU-Beiträge einzulegen, was insbesondere mit der EU-feindlichen Haltung Orbáns übereinstimmt. Aber dann warf er das Handtuch.

Dabei ließ er seine EU-Ministerin Karoline Edtstadler in Budapest für Bastis Penny-Pinching werben. Aber Ungarn ist sehr abhängig von EU-Subventionen. Alle vier Visegrad-Gruppenmitglieder sind Nettoempfänger.

Bei allen Anscheinen sieht es nicht sehr kohärent aus.

Boris Johnson and the road to "illiberal democracy"

There's a difference between revolution and revolutionary methods. Sociologists and political scientists can come up with more-or-less well-delineated definitions to clearly distinguish them. For most people, the distinction is about as vague as it is irrelevant.

Britannica Online provides a useful general definition of the concept as it evolved since antiquity (Revolution, 2019), including references to these modern theories of revolution:

The 16th-century Italian writer Niccolò Machiavelli recognized the importance of creating a state that could endure the threat of revolution; but, at the same time, his detailed analysis of power led to a new belief in the necessity of changes in the structure of government on certain occasions. This new acceptance of change placed Machiavelli at the forefront of modern revolutionary thought, even though he never used the word revolution in his texts, and he was primarily concerned with the creation of a truly stable state.

The 17th-century English writer John Milton was an early believer in revolution’s inherent ability to help a society realize its potential. He also saw revolution as the right of society to defend itself against abusive tyrants, creating a new order that reflected the needs of the people. To Milton, revolution was the means of accomplishing freedom. Later, in the 18th century, the French, Haitian, and American revolutions were attempts to secure freedom from oppressive leadership. Modern revolutions have frequently incorporated utopian ideals as a basis for change. [my emphasis]

The Britannica editors also give credit to Immanuel Kant, who "believed that revolution was a 'natural' step in the realization of a higher ethical foundation for society," noting that the Kantian "idea helped serve as a basis for the American and French revolutions." Although in the former, more people got it directly from Thomas Paine rather than from Kant.

They even give credit to Hegel as "a crucial catalyst in the formation of 20th-century revolutionary thought" who "saw revolutions as the fulfillment of human destiny, and he saw revolutionary leaders as those necessary to instigate and implement reforms." A new biography of Hegel by Klaus Vieweg that emphasizes Hegel's republican thought rooted in the French Revolution, as suggested by its subtitle, Hegel: Der Philosoph der Freiheit [Hegel: The Philosopher of Freedom] (2919). Hegel, like Thomas Jefferson, was deeply engaged with the political ideals of the French Revolution and supportive of them, while of course keeping a critical view of its actual outcomes. Paine himself was an elected deputy to the French Revolutionary National Convention, though his service was interrupted for a year when he was imprisoned for his criticism of the Terror.

In the United States for the last 40 years, Republicans have tended to be more comfortable than Democrats with using "revolution" to describe their goals, e.g., the Reagan Revolution, the Gingrich Revolution. Although Bernie Sanders' use of "political revolution" currently has Republicans, corporate Democrats, and poor babbling Chris Matthews reverting to a more classical conservative view of at least feigning horror over the very notion.

But in our current, much-discussed trend in the world of rising authoritarianism, including in the US, Europe, Latin America, and India, some governments and parties are using and advocating methods that the Founding Father of modern reactionary thought, Edmund Burke, might have regarded as French Jacobin approaches.

The authoritarian, "illiberal democracy" that Viktor Orbán established after winning the Hungarian Presidency in 2010, he moved rapidly to build the current version of government in Hungary, using extreme gerrymandering, wide-ranging control of the press with help from allied oligarchs, politicized institutions of justice, without resorting to tactics like jailing or murdering journalists. Elections are still nominally free and competitive and people aren't arrested for political reasons. But the system is sufficiently rigged that Orbán's party can retain control without winning a majority in elections.

Peter Oborne has a thought-provoking take on Britain's Trumpish Prime Minister which is a reminder that there are various potential models for those seeking to get rid of democracy (Boris Johnson as a revolutionary figure, Boris Johnson is leading a revolution, and this time it's coming from the right Middle East Eye 02/08/2020:

Most of us were taught in college to think that revolutionary movements come from the left. It seemed to make sense: Robespierre, Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, Mao. It may be time to reconsider. Johnson is leading a revolution, and this time it's coming from the right.

He's either forgotten, does not know, or most likely does not care that the Conservative Party came into existence in the wake of the French Revolution as a defender of great institutions - monarchy, parliament, rule of law, the church - against abstraction, ideology and political violence.

This means that Johnson repudiates the doctrines of every Conservative leader from the Duke of Wellington onwards. Johnson's hostility to institutions is so striking that I don't believe he can be viewed as a Conservative in the way the term has been understood over the last two centuries.

The party he leads has detached from its moorings, while Johnson himself should be understood as part of a group of populist leaders that includes Donald Trump, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and most relevantly Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. [my emphasis]

He cites various examples of Johnson's authoritarian bent, including trying to politicize the courts, attacked and restricted journalists Trump-style, and a five-week shutdown of Parliament last fall that the British Supreme Court ruled illegal.

Oborne also calls attention to the often-mentioned charismatic leader in building an authoritarian political order. He cites an article by New Statesman international editor Jeremy Cliffe (Central Europe’s authoritarians show where an unleashed Boris Johnson could lead Britain 12/18/2019) on authoritarianism in the Visegrad nations - Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Cliff sees Boris Johnson as having just followed an "electoral narrative of 'people versus politicians' requiring rescue by a muscular father-of-the-nation type" that "is straight out of the Visegrad playbook."

But I try to be cautious about the notion a single charismatic leader as a ncessary element of authoritarian rule. All movements, including democratic ones, need leadership. Conventional wisdom often equates populism with authoritarianism and rightwing politics. I take a more restrictive view of populism as a way of doing politics that pose an antagonism between "the elite" and "the people." There are left and democratic versions of populism. And charismatic leadership does not equate to authoritarian or antidemocratic political goals.

But the institutional moves toward dismantling democracy and the rule of law need to be taken very seriously. And in the United States, the Democrats need to take "revolutionary" actions by the Republicans as the sign of asymmetric polarization that need to be countered within the rule of law. But they need to give up the fantasy that they can be countered with covering and "bipartisan" platitudes.

The advantage of having no political biography in times of rapid change

The Green-oriented Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung broadcast a Facebook video on Sunday (today) featuring a discussion between political scientist Ivan Krastev historian Holly Case on the topic "Europe ’89: The promise recalled." At one point, Krastev talks about how in a time of drastic change like 1989 in eastern Europe is that there is an advantage in not having a biography. Because that means that one is not constrained in the political sphere by statements made over the last 20, 20, 30 years. (An advantage that Joe Biden would love to have in the 2020 US Presidential election.)

This sheds some light on the phenomenon that after the 1989 changes in several countries, people who had been active for years in the opposition to the previous regimes often did not play prominent roles in national politics in their countries after the change. Part of the reason is that oppositionists themselves were often committed socialists who looked to reform and democratize the existing Communist systems, and in the new environment their politics were suspect for many. And, of course, there were exceptions like Lech Wałęsa in Poland and Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia (now the two countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia).

But the advantage of having a limited public political biography gives a person the freedom to adopt positions that are popular at the moment without having to backtrack from previous positions. Angela Merkel, who was a chemist in East Germany in 1989, made full use of this advantage. As did Viktor Orbán, the current authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary, who became famous and popular in the early 1990s as a prominent democratic reformer.

Orbán, born in 1963, was a founding member of Fidesz, which began as an independent youth organization in 1988 when Hungary was already experiencing some liberalization as a result of the perestroika period in the Soviet Union. Fidesz became a political party in 1989 and is Orbán's ruling party today. Fidesz was seen as a moderately left liberal party when it first won seats in Parliament in 1990. Orbán himself achieved his first national fame with a speech in June 1989 before a large demonstration in Budapest, in which he criticized the ruling Communist Party and called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. (Béla Rásky, Wie das System Orbán Ungarn seine Zukunft raubt Die Presse 13.06.2019)

Bernie Sanders opposes the Orbanization of the US media

The Washington Post editor Martin Baron got all huffy over Bernie Sanders' criticism of the WaPo. Which led to non-Bernie fans tweeting things like this:

The Washington Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, put out a statement dismissing Bernie Sanders' claim that Bezos controls its coverage as a “conspiracy theory”. Sanders is becoming an anti-free press crank like Trump.

— Frank Schaeffer (@Frank_Schaeffer) August 27, 2019

Martin Baron has a good reputation as an editor, even with Charlie Pierce, who is known to be fairly blunt in criticizing editorial policy at different publications. And Frank Schaeffer is also one of the most prominent and important critics of the Christian Right in the US.

But, sorry, Virginia, there really is a corporate/"pro-business" press. This really shouldn't surprise anyone. Pretty much any labor union organizer from the 1820s until today could have explained that point. Very rarely have large newspapers hesitated to back the business position in strikes. And there has been a remarkable increase in business concentration among newspapers in recent decades.

Digby Parton recently (What would you say if you saw this in another country? 08/25/2019) flagged a piece describing how Viktor Orbán method of bringing much of the press in Hungary under his control without bringing them directly and formally under the control of the state, i.e., by having friendly oligarchs dependent on the government buy up the papers. (Lucan Ahmad Way and Steven Levitsky, Lucan Ahmad Way and Steven Levitsky Washington Post/Monkey Cage 01/04/2019.

Oligarchical control of media is also a big problem for democracy in South America.

So why be Pollyannish about the same phenomenon in the US?

As much as it might upset people who are scared of having Sanders as President, he's addressing the American version of the problem. He has an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Bernie Sanders on his plan for journalism 08/26/2019 (internal links not included):

... two Silicon Valley corporations — Facebook and Google — control 60 percent of the entire digital advertising market. They have used monopolistic control to siphon off advertising revenues from news organizations. A recent study by the News Media Alliance, a trade organization, found that in 2018, as newspaper revenues declined, Google made $4.7 billion off reporting that Google did not pay for.

At the same time, corporate conglomerates and hedge fund vultures have bought and consolidated beleaguered local newspapers and slashed their newsrooms — all while giving executives big payouts. Gannett’s proposed merger with Gatehouse Media, for instance, will consolidate hundreds of publications under one mega-corporation’s control and slash $300 million worth of “synergies” — which is often corporate-speak for layoffs. Matt Pearce, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, notes that “the new Gannett/Gatehouse CEO is getting $4.5 million in bonuses and stock just for walking in the door.” [my emphasis]

There are completely legitimate ways to use antitrust law and other regulations on business ownership to block this process and roll it back. And Sanders' position on this addresses the very real problem of the "Orbanization" process going on with the American media:

Also, Jeff Besos does own the Washington Post. Jeff Besos is the founder and current CEO of Amazon, now one of the most powerful monopoly corporations and one of the most problematic, not least because of its awful labor practices. There's also this from, yes, the Washington Post (Aaron Gregg, CIA long relied exclusively on Amazon for its cloud computing. Now it is seeking multiple providers for a massive new contract. 04/02/2019):

The Central Intelligence Agency is taking early steps toward procuring a massive cloud computing infrastructure to support its national security mission, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, with plans to award a contract worth “tens of billions” of dollars to more than one cloud provider by 2021.

The cloud effort, known as the C2E Commercial Cloud Enterprise, builds on an earlier $600 million cloud computing contract that was awarded to Amazon’s cloud computing division in 2013. And it runs parallel to a separate, $10 billion cloud effort being pursued by the Defense Department. Both efforts are meant to outfit U.S. national security agencies with next-generation cloud computing innovations from Silicon Valley. [my emphasis]

Did Martin Baron did think very carefully about running that article and especially carefully about its wording before they ran it? Does the fact that the Washington Post owner's company Amazon does business with the CIA, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business, taken into account by reporters and editors when reporting on the CIA or on other national security issues? My wild guess is, yes.

A perestroika era look at capitalism, socialism, and democracy (1 of 2)

This year we're getting retrospectives of the Revolutions of 1989, when Soviet-model socialist governments in eastern Europe entered the political crises that finally ended them.

I'll make a tiny contribution here by discussing a long essay I finally got around to reading that had been in my mental queue for a while. It's a German translation of an essay by a dissident Soviet writer, Juri Burtin, Die Achillesferse der Marxschen Geschichtstheorie ["The Achilles Heel of the Marxist Theory of History"] that appeared in the annual journal Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 13 (1991), then published in East Germany for the Institute for Marxism-Leninism in Moscow. Burtin's essay was first published in the USSR in 1989.

I was interested in it as an example of someone examining the changes during a huge transitional moment in the socialist world.

I have to admit Burtin's essay was a somewhat disappointing experience. The most engaging thing about it was to disaggregate the various strands of the argument. It reads to me like the work of a committee, or like a discussion by three main participants that was summarized by someone else into an article using a single voice. One of the participants argues that Marxism was a dynamic democratic theory that has continuing significance and application. Another argues that, okay, the whole thing sounded good a century ago but it missed pretty much everything that was important. Another one is looking for a gig as an advocate for neoliberal, "free-market" radical reform in socialist countries. All combined into one by by feature writer that tosses in some dignified coffee-table-book reference to make it all sound sensibly important.

It is a transition piece in that it tries to argue for the complete failure across the board of Marxist thinking while trying to frame it in the traditional Soviet style of proceeding from Marxist premises in developing the argument.

Since Burtin is trying to argue on a Marxist theoretical basis, he praises Marx and Engels toward the end as incredible geniuses when it came to analyzing the developments of their own time and finds them thoroughly committed to democracy. But he also argues that they were massively deceived about the nature of capitalism and that the path their embraced inevitably leads to dictatorship, even one-person dictatorship.

We might say that it's not an entirely consistent picture. Not even in a "dialectical" sense. Although he does make some effort to present it that way, also not very convincingly.

I'm doing this in two separate posts. This one focuses on ...

Democracy

Burtin makes a version of the democratic determinist argument so popular among Western neoconservatives at the time, which is that capitalism inherently tends to produce liberal democracy:

... die für Diktatoren aller Zeiten und Volker „überflüssige" Demokratie eine Lebensbedingung der modernen Gesellschaft - nicht mehr und nicht weniger -; sie ist ebenso nötig wie Luft und Wasser. (S. 197)

... the democracy that for dictators of all times and peoples is "superfluous" is no more and no less the condition for life of modern society; it is just as necessary as air and water.

(All translations from the German in this post are mine.)

This was the era that spawned celebratory optimism about the definitive triumph of both Western-style liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism. Francis Fukuyama's 1989 essay "The End of History?" gave this view its iconic name. It was appealing for for advocates of the neoliberal position on economics that came to be known as the "Washington Consensus" because it allowed them to argue that spreading conservative economics and corporate-deregulation trade treaties would promote conditions leading to liberal democratic governance and its maintenance.

In 2019, in the times of Putin and Orbán, Bolsonaro and Modi, Trump and Salvini, the notion that liberal democracy is inevitably advancing in the world seems downright quaint.

But people in 1989 didn't need 30 years of future vision to have reservations about that idea. The 19th century examples of Britain and the United States could support that understanding. But capitalism was also developing in France and Germany, the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires, and they don't fit as well into the framework of liberal democracy being inevitably produced by capitalism. The Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes were both brutal examples of capitalist countries with non-democratic regimes. Both also provide dramatic cases of big capitalist interests decided they thought democracy was not in their interest.

And the brand of neoliberal capitalism that became the standard for the "end of history" was pioneered and tested in the military dictatorships of Chile (1974-90) and Argentina (1976-83). No, the necessary link between democracy and capitalism is not self-evident.

But in 2019, this provides a nostalgic take as an argument for democracy:

Was nun die eigentliche Demokratie betrifft, so genügt es zu ihrer Charakterisierung vielleicht, sich an einen einzigen Fakt zu erinnern - Watergate, die Geschichte, wie der „Durchschnittsamerikaner", gekrankt durch die Unehrenhaftigkeit seines Prasidenten, diesen aus dem WeiBen Haus verjagte. (S. 198)

[As for democracy, perhaps it suffices here to characterize it by remembering a single fact - Watergate, the story of how the "average American," sickened by the dishonorable conduct of his President, chased him out of the White House.]

Yes, in 1989, America's willingness to use the impeachment process to force out a criminal President could be used as an obvious argument for the value of democracy. Nixon's resignation was only 15 years in the past then. Thirty years later, American democracy isn't looking quite so robust in the face of far more serious misconduct by the White House's current occupant.

The parts of the essay on democracy are basically a polemic against the idea that concentrated wealth, class realities, or oligarchical corruption can put any meaningful constraints on democracy. And therefore for the idea that it's illegitimate to talk about such problems restricting democracy.

Burtin actually makes a Burkean argument about democracy, nominally democratic but actually reactionary. Since he's framing the argument in terms of historical Marxism, he discusses Marxist and Leninist concepts of democracy and makes ritual invocations of "the classics of Marxism" (194)

He simultaneously argues that Marx and Engels had a radical democratic perspective and that their perspective was fundamentally anti-democratic:

Der Kern meines Gedankens besteht darin, daB wir Menschen am Ende des 20.Jahrhunderts in einer Welt Ieben, die schlecht oder gut sein mag, die aber von der, auf deren Boden die ldeen nicht nur von Marx, sondern auch von Lenin geboren wurden, wie der Himmel von der Erde entfernt ist. (S. 205)

[The core of my thought is that at the end of the 20th century we humans live in a world that may be bad or good, but on whose soil the ideas born not only from Marx but also by Lenin, are as far removed as the heavens from the earth.]

Burtin makes what amounts to a conventional Cold War commentary on the Marxist concept of "dictatorship of the proletarian". Here the broad theoretical argument about Marxism as an economic-social-political worldview is complicated by the particular forms the workers' state took in the Soviet bloc and China and related systems. In the 19th century, the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat was connected with the Marxist notion that government under capitalism functions as a de facto dictatorship of the capitalist class. The broad social-democrtic and Marxist goal then was to fight for parliamentary democracy with the goal of achieving control of the governmental organization and reorient it to policies in the interest of the working class and the establishment of socialism. In the classical Marxist conception, this would be a government representing the majority that would have to resort to "dictatorial" means in the case that the capitalist opposition would attempt to overthrow the democratic government by force.

The concept of the "withering away of the state" identified with Engels that also engendered much discussion, controversy, and a flood of polemics over the last couple of centuries is also related to the classical Marxist definition as the state as an instrument of class control. Once classes in the historical sense are abolished, a state in the sense of a mechanism of class domination would no longer exist. Public administration would still be needed, including very complex types. But that would not be a "state" in the previous sense.

(If anyone feels inspired to run down Frederick Engels’s version of this, it’s in Anti-Dühring, Part 3 (Socialism) Chapter 2 (Theoretical), where he writes that in the transition to socialism, The proletariat [working class] seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state.“)

It's safe to say that the general understanding of what governments ("states") are today would also view administration of a classless society as a "state". If those 19th-century concepts seem quircky in contemporary terms, I would argue that that is also related to how Marx and Engels translated the Hegelian notion of the end of history. It wasn't because they were engaging in fuzzy utopianism, as Burtin heavily insinuates.

It was also a matter of practical discussion in Engels' time what form the democratic state should take, i.e., the social democrats tended to favor a unitary parliamentary government and weren't especially fond of Madisonian-Montesquieuian notions of separation of power and checks-and-balances, which also provide a supply of quotes that can be used polemically in Burtin's style of polemics.

Burtin's gauzy theoretical arguments on those historical concepts say nothing particularly meaningful about the real existing democratic deficits in the socialist countries of 1989. And his treatment of the history of democratic concepts is interesting as an example of an 1989 attempt at theoretically understanding an important transitional historical moment. But as historical arguments, they are notably lacking.

Staatspropaganda und rechtsextreme Parteien in den USA und Europa

Jo Becker hat eine nützliche Geschichte in internationalen rechtsextremen Netzwerken und wie sie in Schweden funktionieren, The Global Machine Behind the Rise of Far-Right Nationalism New York Times 08/10/2019.

Die Geschichte schenkt einem Vorfall, bei dem ein russisches Fernsehteam einheimischen Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund Geld anbot, um eine Störung zu inszenieren, die sie dann filmen konnten, ziemlich viel Aufmerksamkeit. Dies war in der Suche nach der Verstärkung eines Themas ausn einem propagandistischen FOX News-Bericht, zu dem Trump eine breitere Öffentlichkeit gegeben hatte:

Zuerst kam ein inzwischen berüchtigter Kommentar von Präsident Trump, der darauf hindeutet, dass Schwedens Geschichte der Aufnahme von Flüchtlingen die Ursache für einen gewalttätigen Angriff in Rinkeby am Vorabend war, obwohl eigentlich nichts geschehen war.

"Sie sehen sich an, was gestern Abend in Schweden passiert. Schweden! Wer würde das glauben? Schweden!" Mr. Trump sagte Anhängern bei einer Kundgebung am 18.Februar 2017. "Sie nahmen in großer Zahl [von Flüchtlingen]. Sie haben Probleme, wie sie es nie für möglich gehalten hätten."

(Alle Übertragungen aus dem Englischen in diesem Beitrag sind meine.)

Es gibt immer ein seltsames Problem in dem, was man internationalistischen Nationalismus nennen könnte. Wenn eine Partei ein engstirnigen nationalistischen, ethnopopulistischen Programm verfolgt, ist das offensichtlich nicht mit einem Gefühl der internationalen Solidarität vereinbar.

Aber das ist nichts Neues. Die faschistischen Bewegungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Europa und während des Krieges hatten erhebliche Wechselwirkungen und verstärkten sich gegenseitig auf verschiedene Weise. Den inneren Feind eines Landes zu unterstützen, dessen Regierung als feindselig gilt, ist kaum eine neue Entwicklung in Politik und Staatskunst. Und da die Amerikaner aus unseren vielen Regimewechsel-Operationen lernen sollten, könnten die Ergebnisse die verfolgten politischen Ziele eher schädigen als verbessern.

Es ist auch wichtig, sich daran zu erinnern, dass rechtsextreme Parteien das Europäische Parlament und die Wahlen gut genutzt haben, um für ihre Botschaft zu werben. Sie haben einen institutionellen Anreiz, auf der Ebene des Europäischen Parlaments Bündnisse untereinander zu schaffen, genau wie die prodemokratischen und pro-EU-Parteien. Das trotz einiger direkt konkurrierender Forderungen, wie die Forderungen der Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) an den norditalienischen Raum Südtirol.

Der Artikel zeigt auch, wie verschwommen die Grenzen zwischen staatlich gelenkten Propagandaoperationen, "normaler" nationaler Politik und dem Zusammenspiel von Ideen zwischen verschiedenen Komponenten der Zivilgesellschaft sein können. Ein illegaler Wahlkampfbeitrag ist ein diskreter Akt, der verfolgt werden kann und gegen den Abwehr- und Strafmaßnahmen ergriffen werden können. Aber ob Propaganda- und Desinformationsoperationen in einer gegebenen Situation wirksam sind, hängt weitgehend davon ab, wie widerstandsfähig die Zielgruppen darauf reagieren. Das heißt, wie gut die Zeitungen sind, wie gut die Verbraucher sind, wenn sie kritische Sorgizwar auf das anwenden, was sie hören, die Führung und den Rahmen, die von politischen Parteien und zivilgesellschaftlichen Gruppen bereitgestellt werden.

Ein falscher oder irreführender Bericht kann kurzfristig Reaktionen auslösen, die konkrete Auswirkungen auf Politik und Politik haben. Obwohl die Beurteilung dessen, was auch eine Frage des kritischen Urteils ist, obwohl gelegentlich die Auswirkungen einer bestimmten Geschichte auch durch politische Umfragen gemessen werden können.

Wenn es um rechtsextreme Demagogie geht, "werden Hasser hassen" ("haters gonna hate"). Es wird also noch lange Politiker geben, die es versuchen. Aber es ist etwas, was zentristische und sogar linke Parteien in den USA und Europa schwer zu meistern scheinen, wenn man ihr effektiv entgegenwirkt, ohne ihm unnötige Zugeständnisse zu machen. Die Situation in der EU wird durch die seit langem im Krafte Dublin Regulation (Gesetz-Texte hier), die in der Praxis die meisten Belastungen für die Bearbeitung von Flüchtlingen für EU-Mitglieder wie Italien und Griechenland aufsicht und es einigen der reichsten Länder wie Deutschland, Österreich und Frankreich ermöglicht, eine proportionale Lastenteilung zu vermeiden. Und es gibt zentristischen und linken Parteien die Möglichkeit, einwanderungsfeindlich zu sein, aber immer noch sich als "gute Europäer" zu inszenieren, weil sie "nur" die ordnungsgemäße Durchsetzung der Dublin-Verordnung fordern. Ein Modell der Solidarität ist es nicht.

Beckers Artikel schenkt den russischen Operationen viel Aufmerksamkeit. Aber es lohnt sich, daran zu erinnern, dass es bei allen Gemeinsamkeiten von Putins Regierungsführung und seiner Einiges Russland Partei für rechtsextreme Gruppen in Europa und den USA wenig Grund zu der Annahme gibt, dass Russland eine ideologische Agenda verfolgt. Es ist eine klare Option, die die Mächte ausgleichen kann, damit Russland die Einheit der NATO und der EU schwächen kann. Politisches Chaos und Inkompetenz in den EU-Ländern können diesen Zielen ebenso gut oder besser dienen, als eine entschieden prorussische Regierung zu haben. Und nicht alle rechtsextremen Parteien der EU sind so prorussisch/pro-Putin wie die in Österreich, Italien und Frankreich. Die russlandfreundliche Position Viktor Orbáns macht zum Beispiel die antirussischen polnischen Rechten nicht glücklich.

Mark Galeotti schreibt über Putins verschiedene Propagandabemühungen (Russian Political War, 2019):

Für einige stellt diese multivektorische Herausforderung eine außerordentlich komplexe und disziplinierte Kampagne dar, Geopolitik als dreidimensionales Schach. Und doch ist klar, dass viele, selbst die meisten, einzelinitiativen weitgehend unverbunden, oft opportunistisch sind, ihre Bewegungen sind von lokalen Bedingungen, Sorgen und Überlegungen geprägt. Sie verbinden sich nur manchmal und oft ungeschickt. Es scheint keinen detaillierten Masterplan zu geben, sondern vielmehr eine umfassende Strategie, die Europäische Union (EU) und die NATO zu schwächen, Europa und die Vereinigten Staaten voneinander zu verdrängen und im Allgemeinen ein politisches und kulturelles Umfeld zu schaffen, das für Moskau und seine Interessen. [meine Hervorhebungen]

Eine letzte Bemerkung. Beckers Bericht schreibt über, "Alexander Dugin, ein ultranationalistischer russischer Philosoph, der 'Putins Rasputin' genannt wurde." Dugin wird oft als ein Lieblingsideologe Putins bezeichnet. Aber auch hier ist es irreführend anzunehmen, dass Putin einer "Duginisten"-Ideologie folgt. Aber, wie Galeotti bemerkt, "ausgesprochen 'eurasisch' russischen Nationalisten Alexander Dugin hat ... manchmal zu einem virtuellen ideologischen Sprecher des Staates erhoben, dann ausgeschlossen, wenn es bequem ist." Aber Dugin hat eine wichtige Sichtbarkeit in der europäischen extremen Rechten.

Fabian Schmid in Russischer Neofaschist Dugin vor Akademikerball in Wien Der Standard 01/18/2018: "Dugin gilt als Vordenker der sogenannten "Eurasien"-Bewegung, die eine "multipolare Welt" fordert und sich gegen den angeblich "dekadenten Westen" richtet."

Für Identitäre bezieht sich eine "mutipolare Welt" auf das Konzept der "reinen" Ethnostaaten. Es ist keine Art von libertärem Multikulturalismus, es ist genau das Gegenteil.

State propaganda mischief and far-right parties in the US and Europe

Jo Becker has a useful story on international far-right networks and how they function in Sweden, The Global Machine Behind the Rise of Far-Right Nationalism New York Times 08/10/2019.

The story gives quite a bit of attention to an incident where a Russian television crew offered money to local immigrant youths to stage a disruption that they could then film. This is was in pursuit of amplifying a theme featuring in a propagandistic FOX News report to which Trump had given wider publicity:

First came a now-infamous comment by President Trump, suggesting that Sweden’s history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened.

“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!” Mr. Trump told supporters at a rally on Feb. 18, 2017. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

There's always a strange problem with what could be called internationalist nationalism. If a party is pursuing a narrow nationalist, ethnopopulist program, that is not obviously consistent with a sense of international solidarity.

But this is nothing new. The fascist movements on the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and during the war had considerable interactions and mutually reinforced one another in various ways. Backing the internal enemy of a country whose government is considered hostile is hardly a new development in politics and statecraft. And as Americans should be learning from our many regime change operations, the results may actually damage rather than enhance the policy objectives being pursued.

It's also important to remember that far-right parties have made good use of the European Parliament and elections for it to promote their message. They have an institutional incentive to pursue alliances with each other at the European Parliament level, just like the pro-democracy and pro-EU parties. That in spite of some directly competing demands, like the Austrian FPÖ's (Freedom Party's) demands on the northern Italian area known as South Tyrol.

The article also shows how blurry the lines can be between state-directed propaganda operations, "normal" national politics, and the interaction of ideas among various components of civil society. An illegal campaign financial contribution is a discrete act that can be tracked and against which defensive and punitive measures can be taken. But whether propaganda and disinformation operations are effective in a given situation does depend largely on how resilient the target groups are responding to it. That is, how good the newspapers are, how good news consumers are in applying critical thought to what they hear, the leadership and framework provided by political parties and civil society groups.

A false or misleading report can set off reactions in the short run that have concrete effects on policy and politics. Although assessing what those is also a matter of critical judgment, although occasionally the effect of a particular story can also be measured through political polls.

When it comes to far-right demagoguery, "haters gonna hate." So there will be politicians attempting it for a long time to come. But effectively countering it without making unnecessary concessions to it is something centrist and even left parties in the US and Europe seem to be having a hard time mastering. The situation in the EU is compounded by the long-standing Dublin Regulation (legal text here), which in practice places most of the burden on processing refugees on EU members like Italy and Greece and allows some of the richest countries like Germany, Austria, and France to avoid proportional burden-sharing. And it gives centrist and left parties the option of being anti-immigrant but still posturing as "good Europeans" because they are "only" demanding the proper enforcement of the Dublin Regulation. A model of solidarity it's not.

Becker's article gives a lot of attention to Russian operations. But it's worth remembering that for all the common features of Putin's governance and his United Russia party to far-right groups in Europe and the US, there's little reason to believe Russia is pursuing an ideological agenda. It's an obvious power-balancing option for Russia to weaken the unity of NATO and the EU. Political chaos and incompetence in EU countries can serve those goals as well or better than having an overtly pro-Russian government. And not all the EU far-right parties are as pro-Russian/pro-Putin as those in Austria, Italy, and France. Viktor Orbán's Russia-friendly position doesn't make the anti-Russian Polish rightists happy, for instance.

Mark Galeotti writes of Putin's various propaganda efforts (Russian Political War, 2019):

To some, this multi- vectored challenge represents an extraordinarily complex and disciplined campaign, geopolitics as three- dimensional chess. And yet, it is clear that many, even most, individual initiatives are largely unconnected, often opportunistic, their moves shaped by local conditions, concerns and considerations. They connect only sometimes, and frequently clumsily. There appears to be no detailed masterplan, but rather a broad strategy of weakening the European Union (EU) and NATO, distancing Europe and the United States from each other, and generally creating a political and cultural environment more conducive for Moscow and its interests. [my emphasis]

A final comment. Becker's report writes about, "Alexander Dugin, an ultranationalist Russian philosopher who has been called 'Putin’s Rasputin'.” Dugin is often referred to as a favorite ideologist of Putin's. But here also, it's misleading to assume that Putin is following some "Duginist" ideology. But, as Galeotti observes, "Outspoken ‘Eurasianist’ Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin has ... at times been elevated to a virtual ideological spokesman of the state, then excluded when convenient." But Dugin does have important visibility in the European far right. Fabian Schmid in Russischer Neofaschist Dugin vor Akademikerball in Wien Der Standard 01/18/2018,  Dugin is considered to be a leading thinker of the so-caled Eurasian movement which postulates a "multi-polar world" and points to the alledgly "decadent West".
(my translation)
For Identitarians, a "mutipolar world" refers to the concept of having "pure" ethnostates. It's not any kind of libertarian multiculturalism, it's just the opposite.

"Socialism" and US politics in 2019 (and also 190 years before that)

Neil Buchanan back in February made a prediction that is holding up so far, Republicans Will Run an Entire Campaign Based on an Incorrectly Defined Word (Socialism) Because They Have Nothing Else Verdict/Justia 02/19/2019;

The 2020 strategy for Republicans is the mirror image of using happy words to hide ugly reality. They are misusing a word with actual meaning—socialism (more accurately, the term democratic socialism)—to stand in for everything that they cannot attack on the merits and for which they offer no alternative that they are willing to defend.

Paul Krugman takes time to look at the emptiness of the Republican accusation, also agreeing that it will be a standard Republican practice (The S Word, the F Word and the Election New York Times 06/27/2019):

Nobody in these [Democratic Presidential] debates wants government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean. Most of the candidates are, instead, what Europeans would call "social democrats": advocates of a privatesector - driven economy, but with a stronger social safety net, enhanced bargaining power for workers and tighter regulation of corporate malfeasance. They want America to be more like Denmark, not more like Venezuela.

Leading Republicans, however, routinely describe Democrats, even those on the right of their party, as socialists. Indeed, all indications are that denunciations of Democrats' "socialist" agenda will be front and center in the general election campaign. And everyone in the news media accepts this as the normal state of affairs.

Krugman takes the chance to situate the extent of Republican far-rright extremism by comparing it with the EU's most notorious case of an authoritarian "iiliberal democracy" in Hungary under President Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party. "One might even argue that the G.O.P. stands out among the West's white nationalist parties for its exceptional willingness to crash right through the guardrails of democracy."

I want to agree and disagree with Krugman on what socialism is. The agreement is his diagnosis of the Republians' rhetorical strategy. They are trying to make perfectly sensible policies like national health insurance sound equivalent to governments and policies that the public understands to be dictatorial, undemocratic, and otherwise disastrous. And it is dishonest and demagogic. It's also silly for Democrats like John Hickenlooper to try the same tack, because the Republicans are going to call any Democratic Presidential nominee socialist.

If you're determined not to vote for any candidate the Republicans will call "socialist," well, you're probably a Trump supporter. I would add to Buchanan's description that Republicans use "socialism" for "everything that they cannot attack on the merits and for which they offer no alternative that they are willing to defend", that they also use it for things they just don't like.

My disagreement with Krugman is actually more a different perspective when he says, "government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean." The "means of prodution" in that classical forumlation being all major industries, banks, and natural resources. That's mostly accurate. But I think it's also important to see socialism as the classical critical left perspective on capitalism.

The term socialist came into usage in broadly its current sense in Europe around 1830 and by the 1840s was beginning to come into general usage as a reference to the reformist doctrines that later came to be known as utopian socialist, particularly those associated with Robert Owen (1771-1858), Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Claude Henri Graf von Saint-Simon (1760-1825).

I wrote about the development of the term ten years ago in Who you callin' a socialist? 11/22/2009 in the previous iteration of this blog.

In the wake of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, socialist parties formed advocating for unions, the rights of the industrial workers, and for democratic governance. The history of the socialist movement is also a history of ideological arguments over what socialism should really mean as well as over strategy, tactics, peronalities, positions, fame, money and all the other things political parties fight over.

The same can be said for the intellectual trends associated with socialism, of which Marxism is the best known. And, of course, there have been multiple competing versions of Marxism to this day.

The European Social Democratic parties were the main political vehicles for socialist ideas in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early 20th. The most famous and influential of them was the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) whose prominent leaders included August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Clara Zetkin. Karl Marx and Frederich Engels identified with that party and with others in the international party associations known as the First International (International Workingmen's Association 1864–1876) and the Second International (from 1889 to today's Socialist International).

The SPD and the other social-democratic parties emphasized establishing parliamentary democracies, a goal which they shared with bourgeois pro-capitalist liberal parties. They did advocate government ownership of the means of production and they did regard themselves as revolutionary parties, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Revolutions of 1848 being their general model of the process. The American Revolution and the freeing of the slaves in the US Civil War were important but more indirect influences. The First International was enthusiastic for the Union cause in the Civil War.

But they were not focused on taking power by organizing citizens' militias and staging armed uprisings on the model of say, the Peasant Wars of the 16th century. They weren't pacifists. And the aftermaths of the French Revolution and the suppression of the 1848 revolutions, as well as the constant presence of Czarist Russia as a conservative force ready to intervene against democratic movements that would take power, made them very mindful of the danger of counter-revolutionary violence. But the SPD, even during the period of the German Sozialistengesetz of 1878-1890 when the SPD was officially outlawed, continued to organize and succesfully focused on peaceful (if not always legal) political activity. Successful enough that the SPD became the largest German political party - and the largest party advocating for parliamentary democracy - and regarded the period of illegality as their "heroic period."

An example of the diversity of opinion within the official socialist movement can be seen in Karl Marx' Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), his comments on the official program of the German party adopted in 1875. A quick scan of the text will show that he didn't endorse 100% of the formulations in the program. But he did approve of the assumption in the Gotha Program that the social-democratic goal was a "co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production." That is the idea to which Krugman refers when he writes that "government ownership of the means of production ... is what socialism used to mean."

In the 1890s, a major new trend gained popularity in the SPD that was known as Revisionism. Associated with Eduard Bernstein, it advocated a reformist goal for the party and rejected the Gotha Program idea of social revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and abolish it by doing away with the capitalist system. Karl Kautsky was the leading politician and theoretician of the more traditional "Marxist" approach that was still the official position of the SPD. This revolutionary/reformist dispute was reflected in other European social democratic parties, as well.

So, by the 1890s, there was already a major trend within the socialist movement that did not focus on establishing government ownership of the means of production but instead regarded their socialist perspective as a radical, pro-democracy criticism of the capitalist order. That's what I mean in the historical sense that socialism was the classical critical left perspective of capitalism, without being exclusively defined as state ownership of the means of production.

The Social Democrats had a huge and formal split over the outbreak of the First World War between those who supported their own country's side in the war and those who regarded it as an imperialist war in the interest of capital which the workers' movement should oppose by rejecting their own governments' participation in the war. But this split was not the same as the Revisionist-Marxist split. The "arch-Revisionist" Bernstein supported the antiwar position, while Kautsky initially supported the war but came over to the antiwar position by 1915. This difference resulted in a major, formal organizational split within the SPD.

The various brands of socialism emerging from the war was a far greater proliferation of positions. The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 produced new formal splits between supporters of the Bolshevik government and its political strategy (Communists) and those who criticized it for being dictatorial and rejecting the necessity of violent revolution on the Russian model (Social Democrats). There was a Leninist Communist International umbrella group (Third International) with the Second International defining itself in contrast. There was also an alliance of ten smaller national parties who rejected the terms of the Social Democratic/Communist split, including the "Austromarxist" Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), which didn't suffer a significant split over Bolshevism, known as the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP) which formally existed from 1921-23. Lenin mocked it as the "2 1/2 International".

Since 1917, there have been many varieties of groups identifying themselves and their goals as "socialist." Communism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, and Guevarism are some of the better known. Many of these disagreements were involved with international disputes among socialist states. The single most important was the Sino-Soviet dispute, whose start is conventionally dated to around 1956. It produced years of extensive polemics between the Chinese and Soviet Communist Parties over Marxist doctrine, argued in terms of socialist history.

During the Cold War, "socialism" in general became a smear word in American politics, especially because of the post World War II Red Scare often identified with Joe McCarthy, who represented its more paranoid and authoritarian form, but was actually a bipartisan project. See, e.g.: Michael Steven Smith, About the Smith Act Trials Encyclopedia of the American Left (1998).

Conservative parties in Europe made the same effort, but with less effect. France and Italy had substantial Communist Parties, and Social Democratic Parties defended their version of the socialist vision in contrast to Communist models. The German SPD kept the ownership of the means of production as an official party concept until their Godesberg Program of 1958, though in practice they had abandoned it after the First World War. While the Europen Social Democrats were officially reformist, they still supported public ownership in various areas. And because there were large, distinct parties arguing their varying perspectives, voters and commentators generally were able to distinguish clearly between the "socialism" of the Social Democrats and the "socialism" represented by the East Bloc and Chinese models of ownership and governance.

This theme of socialism as The Enemy evolved in a significant way after the conservative turn in Chinese politics in the mid-1970s marked by the ascendency of Deng Xiaoping in the leadership and later by the increasing de facto alliance of the US and China balancing off against the USSR. John Kenneth Galbraith quipped that China had been informally designated as an honorary capitalist country in Amreican politics. And after the fall of the Eastern bloc Communist governments in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, much of the American foreign policy establishment assumed the End of History had arrived, and Western-style capitalism and political liberalism had permanently triumphed. It was an overly hasty declaration of victory, to put it mildly.

With the end of history, the increasing prevelance of "neoliberal" thinking and policy in Western politics, the Republicans' continued dismissing of everthing they disliked as socialism, and the 2008 financial crisis, the idea of "socialism" didn't sound so threatening any more. If even public schools and fire departments are "socialist", that sounds pretty good to a lot of people. These are all reasons why such large numbers of younger American voters in particular express their approval for socialism in opinion polls.

Bernie Sanders, of course, had never been afraid of the label, even during the Cold War. And he was able to make his "socialist" critique of the failures of capitalism effective in building a political movement during his 2015-6 Presidential campaign and afterwards.

As the nearly two-century history of socialism suggests, disputes over the meaning of socialism and the best priorities and methods of achieving it are unlikely to end in any foreseeable future.

But I think it's reasonable to say that in the real existing political climate of the US in 2019, "socialism" as a framework of criticism of capitalism and its problems and failures now has a resonance and legitimacy that it hasn't had in a long time, maybe ever.

A final comment on "means of production." There is now a substantial historical record on state-owned enterprises, from the Soviet model to the present-day Chinese model to publicly-owned companies in social-democratic systems like France's and even publicly-run enterprises of various kinds in the US, including the Social Security system. Having a company that is publicly owned doesn't in itself mean it will act in the public interest or operate free from many of the same problems as a private business or corporations. And establishing democratic control over a company or segment of the economy doesn't have to mean government ownership.

And even though it's heresy to the neoliberal gospel, even very establishment economists recognize the existence of "natural monopolies", of which the OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms describes as:

... exist[ing] because of economies of scale and economies of scope which are significant relative to market demand. Natural monopolies are thought to exist in some portions of industries such as electricity, railroads, natural gas, and telecommunications. Because productive efficiency requires that only one firm exist, natural monopolies are typically subject to government regulation. Regulations may include price, quality, and/or entry conditions. [my emphasis]

Goverment ownership is also an option in those cases. A country may also nationalize oil or other natural resources as a matter of national security or because it is considered fundamental to national economic development. Those are not distinctly socialist ideas. But presumably socialists would agree that those are valid options. (See, now I'm splitting hairs about what a True Socialist is!)

Österreichs Kurz will keine NGO See-Rettungen

Österreichs Kanzler Sebatian "Milchgesicht" Kurz machte ein Gespräch mit Stephan Löwenstein und Thomas Gutschker von der FAZ (Sonntag): „Diese Politik beendet das Ertrinken“ 14.10.2018. (Die ganze Interview ist nur mit Abo erreichbar.)

Sie haben ihn bei einem zarten Punkt berüht: "Sie wollen in Ihrer Zeit als EU-Ratspräsident das Problem der illegalen Migration nach Europa angehen. Politisch hat sich seit Juli kaum etwas getan." Das stimmt. Und seine EU-Ratspräsidentschaft ist schon mehr als die Hälfte vorbei.

Der Standard berichtet über die FAZ-Sonntag Interview in Kurz setzt Schlepper und Hilfs-NGOs faktisch gleich 13.10.2018.

Der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung" sagte Kurz: "Es kann doch nicht sein, dass ein paar Nichtregierungsorganisationen das klare Ziel der 28 Staats- und Regierungschefs in Europa konterkarieren. Und das nicht nur mit dem Ziel, Leben zu retten, sondern gemeinsam mit den Schleppern Menschen nach Mitteleuropa zu bringen."

Der ÖVP-Chef nannte das Schiff "Aquarius 2", das von Ärzte ohne Grenzen und SOS Mediterranee betrieben wird. Schiffe wie die "Aquarius" versuchten, der libyschen Küstenwache beim Bergen von Migranten zuvorzukommen. Das schaffe absurde Situationen. "Wenn nicht europäische Schiffe retten, sondern libysche oder ägyptische, stellen sich komplexe Rechtsfragen gar nicht erst", sagte Kurz.

Kanzler Milchgesicht liebt leere Rhetorik. Und Österreich hat natürlich keine Küste. Aber trotzdem sind solche Aussagen nicht ganz harmlos. Kurz gibt dabei verbale Unterstützung zu rechts-populistischer, anti-Immigration Parteien und Politiker wie Ungarns Viktor Orbán (Fidesz), Italiens Innenminister Matteo Salvini (Lega) (der auch de facto Regierungschef ist), und seinem eigenen Vizekanzler Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ).

Prominent German historian Heinrich August Winkler takes a surprisingly shallow position on immigration in "Der Spiegel"

Heinrich August Winkler is one of Germany's best-known and highly respected historians. The author description Der Spiegel attaches to his article, "Der Westen erodiert" (4:2018 06/10/2018) calls him the most influential German historian.

That makes the section of his article on immigration all the more suprising. A new book by Winkler was just published, Zerbricht der Westen?. The article doesn't indicate whether it's excerpted from the book, and the book may present a more nuanced view of the issue.

But what made it into the Spiegel article can be generously described as frivolous. It could also be read as a concern-troll advocacy of the anti-immigration position nominally pretending to express sympathetic concern.

Labels for current issues change, sometimes quickly. The large influx of refugees in 2015 was certainly a crisis, and everyone recognized it as such. The solution that the EU found for it was the deal that Angela Merkel negotiated with Turkey's authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in early 2016. The deal was essentially that Turkey would hold refugees that reach Turkey in exchange for payments from the EU. The EU outsourced the problem to Turkey, in other words. Turkey now is holding something like three million refugees. My understanding is that a large majority of them live outside of refugee centers. The European press as well as politicians don't seem to feel a lot of impetus to report in great detail on their condition.

There has been a very visible increase in the number of immigrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Northern Africa at least since 2011. That date corresponds with the US-French-British military intervention that ended with the outster of Muammar Gaddafi's government and his lynch-murder of Gaddafit himself. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (in)famously celebrated Gaddafi's murder (after first being anally raped with a bayonet) as a delightful thing (Clinton on Qaddafi: We came, we saw, he died CBS 10/20/2011):

This delightful moment for the Secretary of State meant that Libya would then descend into failed-state conditions. (Ted Galen Carpenter, Libya Is a Failed State (and It's America's Fault) The National Interest 11/24/2017; Giorgio Cafiero and Daniel Wagner, Four Years After Gaddafi, Libya Is a Failed State FPIP 04/06/2015)

Qaddafi's regime was a brutal one. But the removal of his government had various baleful effects, including facilitating arms trafficking and attracting Islamist fighters from other countries. And it meant that Libya was no longer employing the large numbers of immigrant workers from nearby countries that they had been under Qaddafi. And we would probably shudder to think of the ways in which Qaddifi's government blocked irregular immigrantion out of the country and restrained the human smugglers ("coyotes" in American English, Schleppers in German) who were willing to provide passage to Europe. But after Qaddafi's overthrow in 2011, those factors no longer functioned with the same effectiveness.

After 2015-16, thanks primarily to the Turkey deal, refugee flows declined radically in 2017 and 2018. If the large influx of 2015-16 put real strains on the emergency services of EU countries, it would be pure demogoguery to make the same claim for 2017 and 2018. Since there's no shortage of xenophobic demagoguery, advocates for immigration sanity now tend to refer to 2015-16 as a "crisis" but stress that what the EU is facing directly right now can't be described as a crisis. And I try to be mindful of that important distinction.

But looking at the future, I tend to think it would be more accurate to describe the ongoing refugee flows as a long-term crisis that has acute and less acute phases. If Turkey changes its mind about continuing with the 2016 agreement, a new acute phase would follow.

Winkler's argument

Winkler begins the immigration section of his Spiegel article this way:

Deutschland ist am krisenhaften Zustand der Europäischen Union nicht unschuldig. Der deutsche (oder, was die Sache nicht besser macht, deutsch-öterreichische) Alleingang in der Flüchtlings- oder besser Migrationskrise im September 2015 konnte nicht ohne Auswirkungen auf die europäischen Nachbarn bleiben.

[Germany is not innocent in the crisis-like condition of the European Union. The German (or German-Austrian, which didn't make things better) go-it-alone path in the refugee, or better put, migration crisis in September 2015 could not help but have effects on the European neighbors.}

I'm not going to try to deconstruct every sentence of Winkler's argument. But these first two sentences unfortunately telegraph the rest of it pretty well. "Migration" versus "refugees" has become a political slogan. The anti-immigration politicians and publicists prefer to call the people desperate enough to take the high-risk, deadly smuggler routes to get to Europe "migrants", which makes them sound like seasonal workers following the harvests year after year. Refugee is both a discription and a legal category grounded in international law: people who flee their countries due to political persecution or massive violence, like that in civil wars. The latter kind of refugee is entitled to asylum in safe countries, which grants them legal residence, the legal right to work and other advantages. The xenophobes prefer to brand refugees as "economic migrants" who are just looking for a better job or to take advantage of European taxpayers living it up in the "hammock" of the host countries' social systems.

The "German-Austrian go-it-alone path" is a head-scratcher, at best a very clumsy description of the immigrantion crisis events of 2015-16.

He goes on to say that the big problem for the EU in 2015-16 was that Germany tried to tell all the other contries what to do in the crisis. And he says that the other EU countries should have made it very clear that they weren't going to take direction from Germany. He also criticizes the position of Germany, identified with Merkel's stand on the refugee crisis, of presenting itself as "the leading moral nation of Europe." And thus he blames Germany (and Merkel) for mismanaging the refugee crisis and therefore causing the increased political success of the extreme right since then.

How this differs from the simplistic sloganeering of the anti-immigrant right is unclear to me.

If we rewind to 2015, the crisis began with the influx of large numbers of refugees into Hungary through what became known as the "Balkan route." Germany pushed for a "European solution" in which each EU country would agree to take contingents of specified numbers of refugees. This was not only reasonable and practical proposal then. It's still a part of what would be a longterm solution to the chronic refugee crisis.

Hungary's Viktor Orbán, egged on by Vladimir Putin's government in Moscow in pursuit of its longer-term strategy to disrupt the EU, saw an opportunity to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment politically. So once Germany had announced its willingness to accept refugees as part of an EU solution, Orbán's government brought thousands of refugees to the Austrian border, telling them they were being welcomed in Germany. Austria then had an immediate decision: repel the refugees by force or let them through.

The upshot was that Germany agreed to accept large numbers of refugees to solve the immediate crisis and their EU partners for the most part refused to participate. The two most notable exceptions were Sweden and Austria. Evenually, Sweden accepted the largest number of refugees in that wave relative to the country's population. Austria was second, Germany third. But Germany accepted by far the largest number of refugees.

Sweden at some point stopped accepting further refugees. There is an unavoidable chain-reaction effect in such a situation. Once a country shuts its borders to further refugees, the next country in the chain has to decide whether they will accept more or also further limit immigration. The solution, an inherently unstable one, because became the 2016 deal with Turkey.

From the reporting on the 2015-16 crisis, there seems to be real reason to believe that Merkel was motivated by humanitarian concerns in her initial decision to accept large numbers of refugees. But she was also motivated by very practical concerns in dealing with a real problem. Germany, Sweden, and Austria provided a three-country interim solution to a European problem. The picture of Merkel as some kind of self-righteous moralist is a propaganda concoction of the far right. (Well, mostly.) Her deal with Turkey isn't one that Mother Teresa would have likely approved.

Winkler's Spiegel article seems to assume that the right solution for EU countries to the very real and ongoing immigration problem is to imitate the appproach of demogogic politicians like Austria's Sebastian Kurz or Hungary's Viktor Orbán by symbolically pounding their chests, shouting "Close the borders!", and trying to dump the problem onto some other country.

Immigration is a huge and comlex problem for the EU that can be temporarily mitigated by close-the-border chain reactions. But the refugee issue doesn't exist in a vaccum. The EU countries have to decide whether they want an optimal solution to the problem or prefer to lurch from crisis to crisis with all the risks and limitations that go with the current approach, i.e., dump the problem onto Turkey. (And, to a significant but lesser extent, onto the EU outer-border Italy and Greece.)

I doubt that advocates of practical solutions can ever communicate their message in as simplistic slogans as those the fear-mongers use: We're being overrun by foreigners! Political Islam! They're all rapists and murderers! Lazy bums trying to sponge off our tax euros!

But the radical right's simplistic solutions depend on creating phony problems. ("Little girls with hijabs, aaa-iii-eeee!!")

The people trying to find practical longterm adjustments have reality on their side. That always counts for something.

[04/16/2018: Corrected for clarity of wording and typographical errors.]