Another background post that gives insight into anti-neoliberal globalist thinking and sentiment in Europe, here Eastern Europe, and the rise of Eurasia as distinct from Western Europe, as well as historical context, e.g., divisions along ethic and religious lines such as the Catholic and Protestant versus Orthodox and Islamic lines that previously shaped the region historically.
Somewhat long but important as background to developing social, political and economic trends. It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with the views but rather of appreciating the various views and how they are influencing the contemporary news and its likely unfolding, There are many factors in play that are either not recognized in the Western media or spun in terms of the Atlanticist view.
I have been saying for some time that globalization was not going to smooth and that it's progress would ignite historical differences and divisions on the way from ancient tribalism to the modern nation state to a world order that unites while preserving differences. Just as achieving the motto of the United States — E pluribus unum – From many, one — so too, birthing a realization of "one planet, one people" will be similarly conflicted and proceed in fits and starts.
It's not helping that the most powerful player is forcing the process along ideological lines that are especially favorable to the interests of what is fast becoming a transnational elite, resulting in de facto oligarchy masquerading as de jury democracy. Now resistance to that effort is arising even among former supporters and promoters like the Hungarian President Viktor Orban, resulting in his demonization in the West as an authoritarian fascist.
If you don't read the whole post, at least read these excerpts from an Orban speech:
Everyone was only talking about competition in the world economy. Globalization on the international scale made it necessary to do a lot of talking, writing and analysis about it, and this phenomenon is known in details. We can more or less know why a major economic interest group, for example the European Union, is competitive, or why it is losing its competitiveness. However, according to many, and I belong to them, today this is not the principal question. It remains an important question. As long as people live off money and economy, this will remain an important question. Yet there is an even more important race. I would articulate this as a race to invent a state that is most capable of making a nation successful. As the state is nothing else but a method of organizing a community, a community that in our case sometimes coincides with our country’s borders, sometimes not, but I will get back to that, the defining aspect of today’s world can be articulated as a race to figure out a way of organizing communities, a state that is most capable of making a nation competitive.
This is why, Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen a trending topic in thinking is understanding systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, maybe not even democracies, and yet making nations successful. Today, the stars of international analyses are Singapore, China, India, Turkey, Russia. And I believe that our political community rightly anticipated this challenge, and if we think back on what we did in the last four years, and what we are going to do in the following four years, than it really can be interpreted from this angle. We are searching for and we are doing our best to find – parting ways with Western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them – the form of organizing a community, that is capable of making us competitive in this great world-race.…
Consequently, what is happening today in Hungary can interpreted as an attempt of the respective political leadership to harmonize relationship between the interests and achievement of individuals – that needs to be acknowledged – with interests and achievements of the community, and the nation. Meaning, that Hungarian nation is not a simple sum of individuals, but a community that needs to be organized, strengthened and developed, and in this sense, the new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not deny foundational values of liberalism, as freedom, etc.. But it does not make this ideology a central element of state organization but applies a specific, national, particular approach in its stead.
Orban is rejecting the neoliberal ideology holding that free markets, free trade, and free capital flows result in a self-organizing and self-augmenting global system that spontaneously produces maximum utility for individuals and that "there is no such thing as society."
Quite clearly a challenge to the neoliberal globalization that is creating power, privilege and wealth for the few. Needless to say, the neoliberal globalists are not pleased, especially since Orban is not the only one saying this. In fact, they are giving it a name, "Putinism."
