A nostalgic blogging moment, EU version

I had a flashback to the early years of blogging today when I saw a piece in Politico about European politics.

It was the software Movable Type released in October 2001 that really allowing blogging to take off and become A Thing. Blogs existed before that. Josh Marshall’s Talking Point Memo (TPM) started in November 2000 and provided frequent updates on the infamous Florida Presidential vote recount. But Movable Type made it possible for people to do a reverse-dated online diary – most recent entry at the top – without having to have extensive programming knowledge.

One of the main targets of bloggers in those days was the often lazy habits of the mainstream process, now known as the “legacy media.” Especially the superficial “horse-race” reporting on politics, i.e., whose polls are up and whose are down. And their shamelessly fawning reporting on figures like John McCain who was very good at playing to their egos and sloppy habits.

The legacy media in those early years tended to regard bloggers and amusing sideshows. Of, in Heather “Digby” Parton’s phase, “damn f*****g hippies,” or DFH’s for short. Digby is still blogging and writing for Salon and appearing periodically on The Majority Report, still delivering her usual excellent political analysis. She used to say that she started blogging as an alternative to yelling at the TV.

This all came to mind when I read a Politico piece titled, Trump’s Iran showdown is becoming Europe’s political nightmare. It is basically a rewrite of the same tired stories we’ve been seeing since 2015, about how the far-right parties in Europea are taking over. This just two weeks after a large majority in Hungary rejected and removed Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian regime despite the substantial authoritarian controls he had established over the voting system and much of the Hungarian media.

With energy prices climbing and growth sputtering, pro-EU governments are bracing for a crisis they have little power to stop — and that could rip through the bloc’s already weakened political mainstream.

Across Europe, unpopular incumbents are facing a populist backlash that could strike hard enough next year in France to propel National Rally to victory, putting the far right in the Élysée Palace and sending shockwaves around the world. (1)

Sometimes boring and lazy reporting has something interesting and useful further down in the article. Not in this case, the third-to-last paragraph is, “The economic gloom is also reopening one of the EU’s oldest fault lines: the fight between frugal northern countries and southern states demanding more support from Brussels.”

That some EU nations are wealthier and more prosperous than others isn’t exactly news. It has always been one of the central purposes of the EU and its predecessor, the European Community (EC), to promote economic integration, increase the collective prosperity of the block and to reduce the economic disparities among the members. What Politico there call a “fault line” has always been a central feature of the European Union.

What they don’t bother to mention is that austerity economic has been a huge, self-imposed burden on the EU. There are also a couple of serious problems in the design of the euro currency: lack of common responsibility of all the countries in the currency zone for debt incurred in euros (euro bonds) and the lack of sufficient money transfers from the higher-productivity countries to the lower-productivity ones. Those are not just some sentimental concepts, those are things a currency zone needs to have to work properly. That’s why in the US we national tax dollar transfers from the wealthier states – which tend to be Democratic ones – the poorer and poorest states, which tend to be Republican ones.

And the reporting there on the rightwing “populist” parties – some of which do actually use “populist” rhetoric – is really superficial. And, in this case, devoid of any reference to polling indicating the key issues and target groups most likely to support authoritarian rightwing parties. Instead, there are vague references to economic troubles that may have some kind of effect on politics – about as anodyne kind of thing an article like this can say.

To be fair, Politico also has an article from the same day on Sarah Rogers, a US diplomat who job is to promote far-right parties in Europe, particularly by promoting xenophobic nationalism. (2) The Nationalist International at work.

Here’s a flashback to 2015, a key moment in the euro crisis. German austerity won out in that moment, which was a really problematic one for European unity and gave a boost to the nationalist sentiments behind Brexit:

Notes:

(1) Sorgi, Gregorio and Griera, Max (2026): EU Parliament vs. Germany in the battle of the budget. Politico EU 04/28/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-eu-budget-2-trillion-germany-opposition/> (Accessed: 2026-28-04).

(2) Ross, Tim et al (2026): Trump’s Voice of America: The free-speech crusader pushing MAGA on Europe. Politico EU 04/28/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-voice-of-america-free-speech-crusader-maga-europe/> (Accessed: 2026-28-04).