The 2018 Rose Monday Parade in Dusseldorf mocking liberal Europe's new bêtes noires. Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
Throughout the autumn, the European Union has been engaged in a standoff with its two most antagonistic members, Hungary and Poland. At stake was whether the EU would finally take meaningful action against these pioneers of “illiberal democracy”, to use the infamous phrase of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. As of last week — and despite appearances to the contrary — it seems the Hungarian and Polish regimes have postponed the reckoning once more.
Last week, representatives of the European Parliament triumphantly announced a new disciplinary mechanism which, they claimed, would enable Brussels to withhold funds from states that violate liberal democratic standards. According to MEP Petri Sarvamaa, it meant the end of “a painful phase [in] the recent history of the European Union”, in which “the basic values of democracy” had been “threatened and undermined”.
No names were named, of course, but they did not need to be. Tensions between the EU and the recalcitrant regimes on its eastern periphery, Hungary under Orbán’s Fidesz and Poland under the Law and Justice Party, have been mounting for years. Those governments’ erosion of judicial independence and media freedom, as well as concerns over corruption, education, and minority rights, have resulted in a series of formal investigations and legal actions. And that is not to mention the constant rhetorical fusillades between EU officials and Budapest and Warsaw.
The new disciplinary mechanism is being presented as the means to finally bring Hungary and Poland to heel, but it is no such thing. Though not exactly toothless, it is unlikely to pose a serious threat to the illiberal pretenders in the east. Breaches of “rule of law” standards will only be sanctioned if they affect EU funds — so the measures are effectively limited to budget oversight. Moreover, enforcing the sanctions will require a weighted majority of member states in the European Council, giving Hungary or Poland ample room to assemble a blocking coalition.
In fact, what we have here is another sticking plaster so characteristic of the complex and unwieldy structures of European supranational democracy. The political dynamics of this system, heavily reliant on horse-trading and compromise, have allowed Hungary and Poland to outmanoeuvre their opponents.
The real purpose of the disciplinary measures is to ensure the timely passage of next EU budget, and in particular, a €750 billion coronavirus relief fund. That package will, for the first time, see member states issuing collective debt backed by their taxpayers, and therefore has totemic significance for the future of the Union. It is a real indication that fiscal integration might be possible in the EU — a step long regarded as crucial to the survival of Europe’s federal ambitions, and one that shows its ability to respond effectively to a major crisis.
But this achievement has almost been derailed by a showdown with Hungary and Poland. Liberal northern states such as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, together with the European Parliament, insisted that financial support should be conditional on upholding EU values and transparency standards. But since the relief fund requires unanimous approval, Hungary or Poland can simply veto the whole initiative, which is exactly what they have been threatening to do.
In other words, the EU landed itself with a choice between upholding its liberal commitments and securing its future as a viable political and economic project. The relatively weak disciplinary mechanism shows that European leaders are opting for the latter, as they inevitably would. It is a compromise that allows the defenders of democratic values to save face, while essentially letting Hungary and Poland off the hook. (Of course this doesn’t rule out the possibility that the Hungarian and Polish governments will continue making a fuss anyway.)
Liberals who place their hopes in the European project may despair at this, but these dilemmas are part and parcel of binding different regions and cultures in a democratic system. Such undertakings need strict constitutional procedures to hold them together, but those same procedures create opportunities to game the system, especially as demands in one area can be tied with cooperation in another.
As he announced the new rule of law agreement, Sarvamaa pointed to Donald Trump’s threat to win the presidential election via the Supreme Court as evidence of the need to uphold democratic standards. In truth, what is happening in Europe bears a closer resemblance to America in the 1930s, when F.D. Roosevelt was forced to make concessions to the Southern states to deliver his New Deal agenda.
That too was a high-stakes attempt at federal consolidation and economic repair, with the Great Depression at its height and democracy floundering around the world. As the political historian Ira Katznelson has noted, Roosevelt only succeeded by making “necessary but often costly illiberal alliances” — in particular, alliances with Southern Democratic legislators who held an effective veto in Congress. The result was that New Deal programs either avoided or actively upheld white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. (Key welfare programs, for instance, were designed to exclude some two-thirds of African American employees in the Southern states).
According to civil rights campaigner Walter White, Roosevelt himself explained his silence on a 1934 bill to combat the lynching of African Americans as follows: “I’ve got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America… If I come out for the anti-lynching bill, they [the Southern Democrats] will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.”
This is not to suggest any moral equivalence between the Europe’s “illiberal democracies” and the Deep South of the 1930s. But the Hungarian and Polish governments do resemble the experienced Southern politicians of the New Deal era in their ability to manoeuvre within a federal framework, achieving an autonomy that belies their economic dependency. They have learned to play by the letter of the rules as well as to subvert them.
Orbán, for instance, has frequently insisted that his critics make a formal legal case against him, whereupon he has managed to reduce sanctions to mere technicalities. He has skilfully leveraged the arithmetic of the European Parliament to keep Fidesz within the orbit of the mainstream European People’s Party group. In September, the Hungarian and Polish governments even announced plans to establish their own institute of comparative legal studies, aiming to expose the EU’s “double standards.”
And now, with their votes required to pass the crucial relief fund, the regimes in Budapest and Warsaw are taking advantage of exceptionally high stakes much as their Southern analogues in the 1930s did. They have, in recent months, become increasingly defiant in their rejection of European liberalism. In September, Orbán published a searing essay in which he hailed a growing “rebellion against liberal intellectual oppression” in the western world. The recent anti-abortion ruling by the Polish high court is likewise a sign of that state’s determination to uphold Catholic values and a robust national identity.
Looking forward, however, it seems clear this situation cannot continue forever. Much has been made of Joe Biden’s hostility to the Hungarian and Polish regimes, and with his election victory, we may see the US attaching its own conditions to investment in Eastern Europe. But Biden cannot question the EU’s standards too much, since he has made the latter out to be America’s key liberal partner. The real issue is that if richer EU states are really going to accept the financial burdens of further integration, they will not tolerate deviant nations wielding outsized influence on key policy areas.
Of course such reforms would require an overhaul of the voting system, which means treaty change. This raises a potential irony: could the intransigence of Hungary and Poland ultimately spur on Europe’s next big constitutional step — one that will see their leverage taken away? Maybe. For the time being, the EU is unlikely to rein in the illiberal experiments within its borders.
Wessie du Toit writes about culture, design and ideas. His Substack is The Pathos of Things.
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SubscribeWhat we have here is obfuscation of the word ‘liberal’. Like the US Democrat party, the EU is anything but liberal except for being repressively ‘tolerant’ of individual lifestyle choices (sexual freedoms posing as political freedoms). Poland and Hungary are doing what nations are supposed to be doing which is looking out for the best interests of their people. When the EU was about close collaboration and profitable trade agreements it worked toward the best interests of Europeans, but when it sought to exert influence in national cultural institutions it quietly crept into authoritarianism. National sovereignty is an obstacle to EU goals which will punish any European country that tries to strike out on its own. We are so far gone into this ‘liberal’ ideology that anyone who deviates from it is labelled right-wing, while acting in ways that were considered perfectly normal twenty or thirty years ago.
Well said. The much touted attacks on Hungary, the sudden appearance of a “vaccine” in answer to the WuFlu, the smell arising from the US election, the suppression of the Great Barrington Declaration and the threats to Brexit all show the international political class gearing up to do democracy down across the western world. It is they who are extreme – hard left; and as in 1989 they must be overthrown.
“the suppression of the Great Barrington” – LOL. It was all over the news.
yes it was-being denounced by the MSM!
But people like you (Over and over gain) tell us that no one trust MSM anyway…so why would the denunciation matter?
Because the masses follow the mass media and tend to believe what they are told by it. Like the current tragic farce of a “far and square win for Biden/Democrat Party” in the US with the information potentially damaging to Democrat Party has been and is being suppressed and the propaganda lines are being actively pushed.
Why do you think it is main stream? A large group with disproportional influence in society assumes the msm provide them with a full objective picture. Since the people of the media and politicians are encapsulated in this group you get a vicious cycle. I’ve noticed consistently that members of this group, even from different political affiliations, are scarily homogeneous and from similar backgrounds like university education.
Name 3 things that T. promised and achieved? I’ve not met anybody from this group that does not think that the question is preposterous.
Truth will only come out in competition between different ideas and perspectives. How many people with experience in manual labor write about their opinions?
Hardly a ‘sudden’ vaccine appearance ““ thousands of individuals and teams have been working hard for months.
In which case would there not have been murmurs, rumours, adumbrations of this particular triumph? No, sir; I fear it all looks very suspicious indeed.
Everything that you don’t like is suspicious.
Meanwhile there are tons of safe anti-virals that help lower the severity of the illness that are being ignored or banned that could have prevented many of the deaths that occurred. The only plan is distancing, washing hands, wearing a mask, destroying economies, pointing thermometers to peoples heads as if executing them, and vaccines? Really?!
‘Repressively tolerant’. Lol. Oxymoron
I can imagine the Eastern Europeans seeing what has become of liberalism and recoiling in justified horror. People being arrested for saying a women doesn’t have a p***s?
Liberalism ( “liberal” in the classical sense of devotion to human liberty, with a private sphere protected by natural rights, the equal moral dignity of individuals, freedom of conscience, and an unobtrusive state) has served us well but it, effectively no longer exists. In what parallel universe is it believable that taking away that most fundamental right, the right to free speech is actual liberalism.
Unrestrained by reason or religion liberalism’s fundamental flaw, it’s apparent insistence that any idea, any culture, is as good as the next one is leading to it’s demise. Why can’t we plainly see what the Eastern Europeans can.
Most of the population CAN see what the East Europeans see, which is why they vote against it whenever they get the chance… However this makes no difference and the left continues its long march through our institutions despite the wishes of the majority of the public
The first thing the Soviets did (radical leftists) when they took over is falsify elections, and I wonder if this has not been going on in Western Europe for a while. It should be noted that the liberals were winning in Poland until it was discovered a Russian company was running the elections. A very robust Election reform was carried out with even transparent voting boxes and ever since the governing party hated by radicals have been winning elections. Something to think about.
Liberal is not a strong enough word for these people or this movement. They’re leftists. Authoritarian leftists. It’s time we stopped calling them Liberal. Liberals don’t get upset at someone having an alternative view. The fact that a country exists where most people hold to what would be considered traditional-values makes these people upset. They don’t like that existing, so they work to demonize it and take it out. That’s not liberal, that’s authoritarian leftist deconstructionism. It’s a sort of cultural colonialism where they’re going to make sure that everyone thinks thoughts exactly like they do or else.
Poland and Hungary do not have a problem with people running around chopping other peoples heads off or blowing up kids at a pop concert. Wonder why. Looks like the leaders of those countries have leaders who actually care about their people. How novel.
You know the answer VERY WELL.
1) No colonial history
2) Communist countries until 1990
3) Muslims would rather migrate to Germany than Poland
1) You have obviously never heard of the Austro Hungarian Empire
3) They refuse to take muslim “migrants” thanks to their historical baggage of having to deal with the Ottoman Empire. They know exactly what is going to happen to Western Europe.
1) I have3) true but there is no connection with the current muslim population in EU and the historical conflict between civilization and savages.
Good luck in your delusion .You should get a job at “learning together”
Or Jeremy smith the Biden vote Counter LOL…..Globalism is Dead despite Sh*** emanating from Unelected Lords Most in Pay of EU & China..Next Election Independent &Anti-Westminster,Anti-Brussels (if it lasts until 2024) Will do well….
Wrong. Look around the world where 70% of wars involve Islam. It’s just a fact anyone can check on although it may be politically un-correct.
Not so sure about 3)
You might also add the visceral hatred of both Islam and the Ottoman Turk, that is so much part of the history of both Hungary and Poland.
Hungary was virtually destroyed by the Ottomans after the calamitous defeat at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. More than 150 years of occupation followed, during which amongst other things, Hungary’s major Cathedral and Coronation Church, which also contained many of the Royal tombs, was blown up and totally destroyed.
Poland on the other hand was almost continuously at war with the Ottomans or their Tartar allies from the late fifteenth century until the very end of the seventeenth century. The most memorable event being the defeat of the Ottoman army besieging Vienna, by the Polish army commanded by the redoubtable King John III, Sobieski in 1683.
Thus the current Islamic population of Poland is given as about 0.1% and that of Hungary 0.5%. QED.
And apparently Poland and Hungary want to keep it that way. Who are the left to boss them into anything else? Imperialists?
Worse, I think, but I daren’t mention the word on UnHerd for fear of provoking the Censor.
Ah, yes – the Censor – more powerful today than the Lord Chamberlain of yesteryear and much more pervasive; silencing the unwary, muffling the impassioned, complicating expression and shutting out the majority.
Like the UK right now are forcing gay marriage on to the Caymen Islands who don’t believe in it.
You think a war from 1526 is a reasonable explanation for “visceral hatred” of anyone in 2020?
I don’t know. Maybe ask the NY Times 1619 Project?
Excellent point-similarly with colonial guilt-or is there an arbitrary cut off date some where between 1526 and now!!!
Beat me to it!
Excellent answer!!
“Visceral hatred”? You see much of it about? I think there’s a problem of scale for many of the commentators here.
Did I say I condoned it? I think not.
Incidentally I’m rather surprised at your question, given your nomen.
Surely the Irish are notorious for never forgiving nor ever forgetting. In fact ‘you’ have almost made it an art form have you not?
I disagree that Poles have a visceral hatred of muslims or Turks. It sounds good, but I do not think this is true. Poles, in my experience, speak warmly of muslims and Turks. Many Poles visited Turkey en masse during Communism as it was easier to get permission to go there than to Western Europe, and they raved about it.
Yes I agree, I have overstated the case, which if far more applicable to both Hungary and Austria, to name but two.
The Poles are probably too busy resenting both the Russians and Germans, both of whom historically have been a far greater menace than the Ottoman Turk and his Tartar chums.
Barbary Pirates Took nearly 2million slaves from Western Europe inc.Baltimore Eireann It is Never highlighted in main TV channels why..?
That’s why in Britain the towns and villages were moved away from the sea until we became a stronger power.
Which is why in 1806 Earl Grey said “The sea is ours and we must maintain the doctrine that no nation, no fleet, no c**k-boat, shall sail upon it without our permission”.
He also liked tea.
Well, an aromatic enormity that masquerades aa tea.
One man’s visceral hatreds are another man’s traditional values.
Your country never suffered it in the way that they did. I don’t think Islam has changed.
Perfectly reasonable and logical to Hungarians. Your judgment is irrelevant.
I don’t see any visceral hatred of Muslims or Turks in Poland. Turkey was and is a destination for Poles to visit who speak warmly of the Turks and vice versa. Actually, Turkey held a spot for a Polish representative in one of their governing entities even when Poland did not exist as a nation. This is widely known in Poland and is viewed as a positive.
I envy them They know that Islam will not help their country unlike Britain and west EU. Right now Erdogan is attempting to revive the Ottoman Empire starting with the middle east.
If we were Romans ‘we’ would nuke Mecca tomorrow, and be done with them.
Islamic terrorism isn’t limited to countries with colonial/non-communist histories FFS. Islamists are theocratic fanatics, not reasonable freedom fighters.
It seems to me that Poland and Hungary are on the right track. They understand undemocratic regimes bulldozing their way over smaller countries. I am glad that they are able to be aware of the EU’s undemocratic leanings. Why do you think Britain left?
If there’s one thing that Western authoritarian leftists hate is anyone who’s not post-historic, liberal, globalists like them. Particularly there must be no Christianity informing one’s universal truths. So, these writers are freelancers who get paid to write things that push that agenda. The question is, who paid for this article? I can tell you that the same kind of authoritarian leftist agenda has won in America, and I think Europe is going to be shocked at what happens in America over the next few years. My advice to Europe is you need countries like Poland and Hungary. The left needs the right, and vice-versa. Alternative forms of thought need to be promoted and protected. So Hungary doesn’t want leftist gender studies in their universities. That is not a human rights violation. They don’t want leftist deconstructionists in their media. That is not a dictatorship. It’s protecting and preserving traditional values while others go into the brave unknown of Egalitarianism, and post-modern, post-reason potential chaos. Watch what and who leftists demonize. This is what they did in America. They convinced millions of people that Trump was the second coming of Hitler, and then they started demonizing the people who voted for him. Now there’s talk from some public officials about punishing those who enabled him to even exist politically. What that means is there are potentially millions of people who think that millions of other people in their own country are evil, backwards, and possibly need to be punished. That’s how bad things are here. Don’t let it happen in Europe. Let other nations be liberal or conservatives as they like, and stop demonizing them or meddling in their business.
This is a very biased article in favour of an anti-democratic, illiberal and increasingly tyrannical EU. I certainly dislike some of the anti-gay and anti- abortion sentiment (and indeed measures) currently playing out in Poland, but we need more countries to stand up to truly wicked EU. (And I was once a keen advocate for the EU).
Yes….truly wicked EU.
The EU has two clear imperatives.
One: To restore Germany to the fellowship of the human race. (impossible).
Two: To restore Gallic pride. (also impossible).
People have a right to their opinions. Period.
When it comes to elections, may the most popular win.
The loser does not have authority to “discipline” the winner.
In the US there were years of the MSM literally telling people that Trump was the second coming of Hitler. That he was a threat to the democracy, a truly evil man. So if you were convinced of that, that you were able to take down Hitler with a little election fraud, wouldn’t you say you’d have a moral imperative to? That’s what happened in the US, and anyone in a free democracy should be terrified. This is the power of media indoctrination. Millions of people convinced that they took down a Hitler level actor, and now they’re talking about going after anyone who voted for him, because, I mean those who enabled Hitler were bad too right? This should be a cautionary tale that the media can not only take down a political party forever, they can take down a whole country through feeding people information that they are taking down evil.
What appears to be missing here is acknowledgement that the governments in these two countries were elected by their people. What we’re seeing is the increasing binding of capitalism and liberalism, but with the latter also blending into socialism in so many countries, the inherent tensions are starting to show. The EU is a supremely capitalist construct that works when people believe they are the beneficiaries; when the mask slips, division grows between the haves and the have nots. With the latter typically being the majority, the ballot box is more frequently where the response is playing out.
The deep irony of all the bashing of Eastern European states is that is is done in the name of democracy — yet it is precisely these countries who (unlike Western Europe) are respecting the democratic choice of their electorates not to be swamped with mass immigration.
Speaking as an Eastern European, I do not believe that there was ever a risk of these countries being “swamped” – migrants knew exactly which side of the continent was better governed, richer and more tolerant.
It is also ironic that it is indeed us Eastern Europeans that make up the biggest group of immigrants in a lot of Western European countries such as Britain or Ireland.
In my view the biggest hurdle for these countries are their own incompetent and cleptocratic governments who historically since the fall of the Berlin wall lacked the skills and the imagination to revamp their hopelessly obsolete and uncompetitive industries.
I do not believe that there was ever a risk of these countries being “swamped” – migrants knew exactly which side of the continent was better governed, richer and more tolerant.
I think it’s true that migrants generally don’t want to go to Poland or Hungary, with two provisos: 1) EU citizenship is the same if it is acquired in Hungary or Germany; and 2) if the migrants don’t want to go to the former eastern bloc EU members, why is the EU pushing for a quota system that will force migrants to go to countries there?
Thank you for taking the time to reply Pete.
You are not wrong on either of your points! I think while it is possible to obtain a Hungarian or Polish citizenship surely the political environment and the language makes it very difficult to do so. I think the push for quotas is to achieve a more evenly distribution, and I honestly cannot see how that would work if it against the wishes of both the host country and its guests!
Actually, the fact that there are so many Eastern Europeans in Western Europe is because of German provoked wars with the last one ending in decades long Soviet occupation for Eastern Europeans. (Let us not forget the German funding of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.) This was further exacerbated by former Polish governments formed by re-packaged communists, and liberals funded by Germans who sold off Polish industry to foreign rivals who then closed those industries in Poland thereby creating huge unemployment. The CURRENT Polish government has done a fine job bringing back jobs, reducing poverty and demanding reparations for the mass theft of property, mass destruction in Poland, and the enslavement, terrorization and murder of millions of Poles by Germany during WW II that Germany is trying not to recompense.
Western civilisation is based on liberal values. That is the root of democracy. If we retreat from that we go the way of Russia, China, Africa, Middle East.
These are not countries most of us would be happy to live in. Indeed many of us would not survive living in such illiberal jurisdictions.
The problem here being that the EU does not see China as abhorrent, but as a model to admire and follow.
“China”
Define.
Whether we like it or not, the Chinese invented paper, gunpowder, the compass, and so on. I would have thought that this was admirable.
Yes China invented all three, and then failed to understand how to use any of them! Idiotic!
Thus the British Empire, and in particular the Honourable East India Company, managed to thrash them in the First Opium War of 1840, seize Hong Kong and force them to import the opium we had especially grown for them in Bengal.
Now that Is how to run an Empire is it not?
What, turning tons of people into drug addicts so that you can make a buck?
I’m not sure I’d use that as an example of the West’s better qualities as empire-builders…
The Bengali Opium farmers would have disagreed with you, as would millions of Chinese consumers, who lives were greatly ameliorated from the horrors of Manchu China.
Perhaps more correctly Western civilisation is rooted in liberalism and Christianity in the values realm and the primacy of truth and reason in the scientific realm. Increasingly what we have bears little relation to, or regard for, those roots and has morphed into a potentially dystopian disaster where the truth is whatever the loudest voice or the mob decrees and where the divine and sovereign individual is relegated to the status of a mere avatar of their identity.
I share your admiration of liberal values but unfortunately they need defending from people who don’t share them. The West has transformed the social attitudes of its populations in the last seventy years. Statements on race and gender that would have been commonplace a couple of generations ago are now unacceptable to most people and illegal in many countries. However having re-educated our own populations we have imported millions of new citizens whose attitudes and philosophies are more regressive than ours were in the nineteen fifties. The same could be said for the more recent countries that joined the EU.
The scope of liberalism is broader than leftist ideals. Hungary and Poland fall into the category of classical liberalism. They’re free democracies who’ve elected people who value what the majority wants. To impose the tyranny of the minority view on them in the name of liberalism is leftist authoritarianism.
“Hungarian and Polish regimes”
Aaaaa! Not governments but regimes. What next? Sanctions? Bombing? Invasion?
Democracy and national sovereignty are so racist. Let’s finish turning all the power over to our Imperial Corporate Overlords. They’ll let a few farthings trickle down to us, the deplorable masses, and throw in some gratis wokeness reeducation trainings if we’re lucky. If anyone doesn’t like it, there will never be a shortage of desperate replacements floating over the Mediterranean, and it wouldn’t it be terribly cruel not to take all comers.
Think i’ll Apply for A Job at Greedy Football Association, Doing deals for Top 6, Arsenal,Chelsea,Tottenham,Manchester Utd,manchester City,Liverpool Whilst Firing anyone who Mocks its ‘Woke’ hypocrisy..Top 6 Are Vulture capitalists
Funny how the behaviour of the Spanish government doesn’t seem to be a problem for the EU establishment
A poisonous cocktail of Teutonic barbarism and Gallic pride will acquiesce to any terror, to defend itself.
Now we see the beast for what it is, and thank providence for our salvation.
la Republique Barcelona..
In the end, we here in western Europe are only getting all of this through the filter of our own media, and quite frankly, I don’t believe anything anyone in the media, or political office, tells me anymore. What does “illiberal” even mean? Does it mean “oppressive” or “tyrannical”, or does it just indicate someone who doesn’t see things “our” way? Does “judicial interference” mean appointing crooked judges — as the Democrats are planning in the US and have already managed in some states — or does it mean appointing “textualist” judges who will actually follow the law instead of using their bench to advance their own political ideology?
Personally, I’m an EU agnostic. I don’t think it’s a particularly bad idea for a group of small and medium sized nations to band together to increase their influence in the world, and for the first 25-30 years of the EU, when it was a kind of souped-up trading bloc, it worked moderately well, usual UK grumbles about Johnny Foreigner not withstanding. The rot set in with those three deadly words, “ever closer union”. That’s what killed it, and now I wouldn’t shed too many tears if the whole thing collapsed. If it does, we’ll have the left to thank, as usual. They just don’t get the term, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” They just couldn’t leave it alone, and in their usual, “you’ll thank us for this later” fashion, they just had to keep pushing it.
The EU is a failing political project that is not serving the people of the member stares. The sooner it falls apart totally and then gets back to being a free trade zone that does not try to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states the better.
Point One: There cannot be a European nation because Europe does not have a demos, a people that thinks of itself as European, except in exalted circles.
Point Two: The only way for Europe to get itself a demos would be to fight and win a war that united all Europeans against a common enemy.
Point Three: The current ruling class in Europe is not liberal.
Had enough yet?
The use of the word “regime” applied to the governments in Poland, and also Hungary, is absolutely inappropriate and purely reflects the biases of this author, and not reality. Poland is a Democratic country that voted in the politicians that are governing and is in tune with the population that suffered immensely over the las hundred or so years, and has done much to bring Poland out of poverty, and to start demanding reparations from Germany for the devastation, mass theft of property, enslavement, forced labor and mass murder of its citizens during WW II and prior which was not recompensed after WW II because Poland was under the Soviet boot and not allowed to make any claims. For many Poles liberalism is considered corrupt, as the liberal party that governed prior to the current one, was financed by Germany, and dutifully sold off their production plants to German and other competitors, who promptly closed them down, thereby creating huge unemployment and further pauperization of Poles. The writer of this opinion piece is clearly biased in his opinions, which is okay, but he needs to listen to those who voted for the current Polish government, and not, as I suspect he is doing, just to the liberals who are in opposition to this government.
What happened to the South and Jim Crow?
We had presidential elections in Poland; the conservative/populist won the rural/old vote (51.03%) and the liberal won the young/urbane vote (48.97%).
It is the same story everywhere, the populist are holding winning elections by milking the old vote. Not sustainable long term.
As people age, they tend to become somewhat more conservative.
Or realistic – take your choice.
Either way, it’s a continuing process, therefore self-sustaining.
If that is the case the liberal revolution of 1968 would have been overthrown. Has that happened?
Yet people become more conservative but that is about money/taxes/budget not social values.
What Liberal Revolution?
Here in the UK the pill enabled some to “bonk like bunnies”, a few others indulged in substance abuse such as the extraordinary benign chemical known as LSD.
Otherwise we stopped hanging in ’64, won the World Cup in ’66 and were kicked out of Aden (& Empire) in ’67.
Hardly a revolution, and still the 38 ran from Victoria to Clapton Pond.
Non sequitur.
Evidence?
Yet another variant of the same wishful thinking that overlooks the fact that today’s old people were once young and young people continue to become old themselves.
People have said the same about the Conservative party, that once the old people die off the party will cease to have any voters. If that premise were true, the Conservative party should have run out of voters generations ago.
Actually probably education is a better answer to the voting preferences than simple age. Among the “old” only about 5-7% were university-educated, while in the last 20 years the rate has reached around 60%. It seems to have translated into political preferences. It’s not unique to these countries, you see this exact same split when looking for example at support for Trump by educational attainment in latest election.
Bingo. That is why the left saw the education sector (and media) as the absolutely crucial pillars to cultivate and spread their agenda into Western societies by the end of 20th century, with the goal of achieving control over societies and moulding the majority of the active population into their “liberal” (but actually similar to fascist approach to anything that does not conform to their beliefs/agenda) mindset.
The young grow older though, and tend to change their views as they gain experience and wisdom