“No one understands better than the people of this land how a severely
depressed economy, combined with a ritual national humiliation and
unending hopelessness, can hatch the serpent’s egg within its society.
When I return home tonight, I will find a country where the
third-largest party is not a neo-nazi party, but a nazi party.” -- Yanis Varoufakis
All Scottish Europeans need to understand that we live within a wider context than purely our relations within England's empire.
Europe is now on the brink. This is an epochal time. States and empires may fall or change hands, and coups and revolutions have already taken places as a result of the ongoing economic crisis, and the misery our corrupt liberal rulers have inflicted with austerity.
"You cannot promote nazism in one country and suppose that it will stay within that country’s borders. The wave of Nazism spreads to all, overstepping boundaries. That’s the reason they called Nazism “The Brown Plague.” Nazism must be stopped at the distant approaches, lest it arrive in your house. [...] Should anyone suppose that one can simply ignore Ukrainian fascism, and pay no attention to it, he is utterly in error. The nature of Nazism is such that it takes being ignored as encouragement, even as an acknowledgement of its strength. Nazism is never local; it can only root, and grow. Therefore the only way with Nazism is an active bitter struggle against it." - Open letter to Angela Merkel from veterans of Stalingrad.
In England, and Wales, there is a return to 'David Stirling style' end of empire chauvinist nostalgia mixed with a bit of Enoch Powell style imperial racism, in the service of some forces in the City of London.
In Scotland the spectre of Metternich, while currently a distant discordant and unpopular voice, is gathering pace, with certain Unionists rallying against "appeasement." Currently precocious, a rout of the Scottish Government would provide the conditions necessary for just such an approach. Putting democracy back in its box in Scotland (when Unionists discuss 'winning the peace,' that is of course what they mean) would require a crackdown and a linked demoralisation of the democracy movement. There are those who consider this political possibility feverish hyperbole, citing the UK as a liberal democracy where freedom of thought, speech and action are cherished norms. They would do well to observe the practices of the UK when it faces existential threat, and have a cursory swatch of the past 50 years of history in these islands. The UK is perfectly capable of running death squads, interning dissidents, or executing those it considers a threat to security. What has been done before, in our lifetimes, in the hinterland of the state we live in, can be done again.
It's always helpful in assessing political "possibles" to find out if there are any advocates of a particular approach. It turns out ending "appeasement" for the Jocks is actually quite popular with the grassroots of Unionism and the right of the Whitehall regime. No appeasement, and an iron fist state is now a popular message among the enemies of political and economic democracy in these islands. It is not part of any centrist liberal party's official programme, but UKIP advocate such an approach, and along with the reactionaries of the DUP, they may yet be in government before the next Holyrood election.
We as a continent face a choice. We can embrace the Green New Deal, and win greater economic democracy, or we can push regimes into reaction and outright fascism, by forcing their citizens into penury and desperate hopelessness.
There are those who argue that the proposals of Sinn Fein, the SNP, Syriza, Podemos, Plaid Cymru, the English Greens and other parties who would kill austerity are insufficiently radical, do not address fundamentals and so on. There is no doubt that they are often right, or at least partially correct in their specific concerns. There is no doubt too that space created by discrediting these parties of a reformed Europe would allow a yet more radical challenger, a less centrist voice, to emerge and articulate these demands. Again this is true. But political space in an era of revolution (no less a reactionary than Iain Duncan Smith terms our times such), where the centre of politics is collapsing due to the generalised misery it is enforcing, is also a crisis for the left. History has shown that where the left fails to capture the centre in times such as these, the Brown Plague is very happy to fill that void. A few wrong steps here and there, a miscalculation, a defeat in the negotiations for Syriza, or a demoralisation of the democracy movement and the SNP, and it could be Metternich or a jackboot.
Several countries in Europe (the Ukraine and Italy) have already fallen to foreign backed dictatorship. Recent polling in West Germany is unlikely to weaken the resolve of Germany's Tories to see Southern and peripheral Europe burn, and, amidst the depression caused by following the failed economic strategies of the early 1930s with predictable conclusions, many centrist governments teetering on the brink in the austerity consensus are egging on the smashing of Greece out of pathetic sectional interest.
A generalised defeat for the forces of progressive change in Europe, here in Scotland with the SNP, and abroad in Ireland, Greece, and Spain, may prove all the succour that the Serpent's Egg, now hatched and napalming housing schemes in the East of Europe, needs in order to hatch in Europe's South and North West.
All Scottish Europeans need to understand that we live within a wider context than purely our relations within England's empire.
Europe is now on the brink. This is an epochal time. States and empires may fall or change hands, and coups and revolutions have already taken places as a result of the ongoing economic crisis, and the misery our corrupt liberal rulers have inflicted with austerity.
 |
| Greece' third largest political party, the Nazi "Golden Dawn". |
 |
| Detailing the insignia of new government militas in the Ukraine, who deliberately evoke the iconography of Ukrainian Nazis during World War 2. The US installed Ukrainian coup regime is a mixture of Nazis and billionaire gangsters and their henchmen. It is currently carpet bombing and shelling housing schemes, and running paramilitary death squads in the East of the state for the crime of opposing the coup, and favouring democratic elections to decide the country's future. |
In England, and Wales, there is a return to 'David Stirling style' end of empire chauvinist nostalgia mixed with a bit of Enoch Powell style imperial racism, in the service of some forces in the City of London.
In Scotland the spectre of Metternich, while currently a distant discordant and unpopular voice, is gathering pace, with certain Unionists rallying against "appeasement." Currently precocious, a rout of the Scottish Government would provide the conditions necessary for just such an approach. Putting democracy back in its box in Scotland (when Unionists discuss 'winning the peace,' that is of course what they mean) would require a crackdown and a linked demoralisation of the democracy movement. There are those who consider this political possibility feverish hyperbole, citing the UK as a liberal democracy where freedom of thought, speech and action are cherished norms. They would do well to observe the practices of the UK when it faces existential threat, and have a cursory swatch of the past 50 years of history in these islands. The UK is perfectly capable of running death squads, interning dissidents, or executing those it considers a threat to security. What has been done before, in our lifetimes, in the hinterland of the state we live in, can be done again.
It's always helpful in assessing political "possibles" to find out if there are any advocates of a particular approach. It turns out ending "appeasement" for the Jocks is actually quite popular with the grassroots of Unionism and the right of the Whitehall regime. No appeasement, and an iron fist state is now a popular message among the enemies of political and economic democracy in these islands. It is not part of any centrist liberal party's official programme, but UKIP advocate such an approach, and along with the reactionaries of the DUP, they may yet be in government before the next Holyrood election.
We as a continent face a choice. We can embrace the Green New Deal, and win greater economic democracy, or we can push regimes into reaction and outright fascism, by forcing their citizens into penury and desperate hopelessness.
There are those who argue that the proposals of Sinn Fein, the SNP, Syriza, Podemos, Plaid Cymru, the English Greens and other parties who would kill austerity are insufficiently radical, do not address fundamentals and so on. There is no doubt that they are often right, or at least partially correct in their specific concerns. There is no doubt too that space created by discrediting these parties of a reformed Europe would allow a yet more radical challenger, a less centrist voice, to emerge and articulate these demands. Again this is true. But political space in an era of revolution (no less a reactionary than Iain Duncan Smith terms our times such), where the centre of politics is collapsing due to the generalised misery it is enforcing, is also a crisis for the left. History has shown that where the left fails to capture the centre in times such as these, the Brown Plague is very happy to fill that void. A few wrong steps here and there, a miscalculation, a defeat in the negotiations for Syriza, or a demoralisation of the democracy movement and the SNP, and it could be Metternich or a jackboot.
Several countries in Europe (the Ukraine and Italy) have already fallen to foreign backed dictatorship. Recent polling in West Germany is unlikely to weaken the resolve of Germany's Tories to see Southern and peripheral Europe burn, and, amidst the depression caused by following the failed economic strategies of the early 1930s with predictable conclusions, many centrist governments teetering on the brink in the austerity consensus are egging on the smashing of Greece out of pathetic sectional interest.
A generalised defeat for the forces of progressive change in Europe, here in Scotland with the SNP, and abroad in Ireland, Greece, and Spain, may prove all the succour that the Serpent's Egg, now hatched and napalming housing schemes in the East of Europe, needs in order to hatch in Europe's South and North West.
