The article by Elena Basile critiques the current state of Europe, highlighting its descent from progressive ideals to nationalist militarism. The European Parliament’s support for a potentially nuclear conflict with Russia, the ongoing support for Ukraine with lethal weapons, and the disregard for Palestinian rights are emphasized. Basile condemns the European leaders’ submission to external influences and their incompetence, leading to a betrayal of the values of peace, democracy, and freedom. The manipulation by security apparatuses and financial oligarchies is seen as driving Europe towards a potential nuclear catastrophe, reflecting a moral void and disconnection from the populace.
* * *
by Elena Basile
It’s hard to believe that the path of the West has led to today’s macabre farces. The progressive achievements towards a freer and more just society were supposed to culminate in nationalist militarism of a nihilistic Europe? From absolute monarchies to constitutional ones, from rights restricted to aristocracy and clergy to a bourgeois society, from the obscurantism of medieval religious superstitions to the Enlightenment, to Christian and Marxist humanism, to universal suffrage extended to women, to civil and social rights, to the declaration of human rights and the birth of a liberal order based on international organizations and International Law. What had seemed, even to the most skeptical, to be the heritage of a West that, despite the steep falls represented by Nazi and Bolshevik dictatorships, had managed to pursue the realization of humanistic ideals, now seems destroyed.
The European Parliament and the European Commission approve a potentially nuclear war against Russia. Lethal weapons to Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory, hypersonic missiles in Germany guided, as Domenico Gallo well illustrates, by technology that cannot compensate for human error, are the latest steps in an escalation wanted by the ancient Venus, a civil power we were proud of. Liberals, Christian Democrats, socialists, and greens are united. With their choices, they support the death of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians and the destruction of the country, as well as the brutal slaughter of innocents in Palestine. UN resolutions are ignored by Israel, whose Parliament has just voted against the State of Palestine. The ruling and service classes have no hesitation. The war cannot end, otherwise, it would mean surrendering to Russia. And in Gaza, the massacre of innocents continues under the guise of Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas. Subcultural lies that horrify are uttered by learned professors and venerable presidents, undisturbed by the bloodshed, the ongoing rearmament, the risk of human extinction.
Newspapers discuss whether Meloni’s non-vote in favor of her friend and powerful Ursula might cause Italy to lose a few points in the pleasant European club, whose members are now at an abysmal distance from the people, their struggles, and their interests. The house is burning, the values of peace and prosperity, democracy, freedom of thought, and free trade are denied, while newspapers make false distinctions between sovereigntists and Europeans. The green and digital transition, the social Europe, investments in research and development, development cooperation, the 2030 sustainable agenda, and migrant integration are already failed objectives for a Europe that has abandoned common debt and raises interest rates in favor of financing the US debt. It is preparing for a long war, bowing to the Sullivans, Blinkens, and Kirbys, whose faces express the moral void of our times. Emerging countries watch in perplexity at our slow suicide. They know that Russia has already won the war in Ukraine and that if it were to lose, it would resort to nuclear weapons. They cannot understand the rationale of the choices in the Middle East, a policy that fuels terrorism and excludes peace for Israel, risking an expansion of the conflict to Iran. The fact that the world is multipolar and that US hegemony is rejected by the Global South is a reality that only the European political media space seems to deny. India, which during the Cold War was part of the non-aligned, claims the autonomy of its foreign policy. It receives mafia-like threats from the United States through the mouth of US Ambassador Garcetti in New Delhi. It’s surreal to note how an unprepared political class, hacked by the United States, judges the complex strategies of powers such as Russia, China, India, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Iran, and their excellent diplomacies, distributing grades as if they were professors to their students. Think of Estonian Kallas, EU foreign policy representative, in a conversation with Lavrov, and you will have the sense of the Western paradox.
The European ruling class is easily manipulable and responds to exogenous directions from security apparatuses, the military-industrial complex, and financial oligarchies. The latter have, however, taken into account a restricted nuclear holocaust for some peoples. The continuation of dollar power and the dominance of the “indispensable” nation passes through partial nuclear massacre? The incompetence of European politicians is functional to the “sad but necessary” (Albright teaches) annihilation of some peoples, starting with the Ukrainians and Palestinians.
Il Fatto Quotidiano, July 26, 2024