Last Friday, a man attacked a group of people who were preparing a political demonstration in the central Marktplatz square, in the German city of Mannheim, with a knife. The images on the networks showed the perpetrator in detail, in particular his alienated face carved in hate, his hand fused with the dagger that, moved repeatedly, sought any human flesh, all the possible blood in the gap of time that his carnage lasted. There is a shot that shows the crucial moment in which he stuck his gun in the back of a police officer, who in turn was busily immobilizing another man who had wanted to stop the attacker. The police officer died shortly afterbut the image will have a successful career as a “meme”, that novel way that visual metaphors found to go viral, because it says a lot about today’s Europe.
As fate would have it, this postcard, of the “institutionality” immobilizing the innocent, while the jackal freely dispatches the immobilizer and the immobilized, was captured a few days before the European elections were held. Elections marked by war tensions such as have not been seen in decades. Also crossed by enormous discontent among ordinary voters against their ruling class, a progressive economic and energy crisis, and an immigration crisis with so many edges that it is difficult to encompass it in the crude simplicity of a political campaign. In the conviction that they are saving the world, those who run Europe have sought to censor and reeducate its citizens while generating suicidal, dialectizing and crazy policies; of a very dubious democratic morality. It will not be easy to rebuild a society as disoriented as the one shown on the Mannheim postcard.
No matter where you look, the matches of the establishment, the old politics, the caste or whatever you want to call them, are seen as responsible, the cause and effect of all those painful crises together throughout Europe. They may still be in charge, and they may have secured institutional coping mechanisms to that end, but their appeal is dead and buried. That attractiveness, his superpower was social democratic protection system that guaranteed happiness and progress, and that they dreamed eternal. A group of lines within which to paint, drawn in the last century by the old bipartisan elite (by the way and in comparison, more prepared, cultured, upright and effective). This group of lines also consisted of a brief arc of political opening that allowed the alternation to not leave any bureaucrat outside, sharing untouchable flags and subjecting the growing power of the State as a guiding dogma. But unfortunately for the victors, politics is never a photo, but a film and it goes on and on.
One of the characteristics that describes The exhausted system is its ability to legislate against its own citizens. The legitimacy of its policies does not come from democratic support, but from its obsession with moralizing, from the top down, opposing demands and values that underlie public debate. When other politicians or leaders allude to these demands, traditional politics singles them out with the stigmatization of the term “populism”, as if the mob had no right to paint outside the rigid lines drawn. Within the framework of their twisted idea of what Europe should be like, this conglomerate of bureaucrats at the helm, which we call elites, feel it is ingratitude that the people no longer adhere to the convictions of the protective State. However, supporters of the system, as it was thought more than half a century ago, remain convinced that it is the only possible one, and it makes sense because in their daily lives it is a success. But the protection system is dilapidated and leaves many dead. Hence the use of populism to describe the betrayal of those fallen, who, for the most part, did not even enjoy the benefits of the welfare state.
The social democratic dream died, for many different reasons, but above all because it was exhausted. Things wear out with use and abuse. In parallel, political demonstrations reactive to this hegemon emerged with disorderly efforts, often contradictory, electorally ineffective in many cases, but which, despite the professional and well-equipped barrage against them, persist. Sometimes they regress and sometimes they grow. These are those accused of being populists, they have in common the denunciation of the distance between the fallen and their representatives, the denunciation of the kidnapping of freedoms such as that of expression, conscience or circulation and an uneven defense of private property and free trade. And above all, they have in common having supported the denunciation of an immigration program that, combined with the affirmative action typical of social democracy, radically distorted the benefits of diverse societies.
No matter how many insults they are lavished on them, the political movements reactive to the system continue their winding and steep path and in the face of the European elections they come together based on common discontent. They show basic contradictions that they cannot resolve, such as their positions regarding the very existence of the European Union, their position regarding the closest wars, their relationship with autocracies and their attachment or not to the United Nations agenda dogma. Thanks to them, the terrible contradictions are palpable. of an unusual democracy that uses “populism” as an insult, that is, that despises the feelings of its governed.
In this context, the Mannheim postcard is the crude metaphor of the suicidal way in which traditional European political parties, one politician after another, have sought to silence, condemn or cut off the feelings of their voters. Wokismoalarmism and soft totalitarianism are the operating system of the politics in command, which has managed to immobilize voters with unpopular policies that demonize and repress debate. For example, the debate over an immigration policy so poorly administered that it destroys the very idea of peaceful and prolific coexistence that gave rise to the European Union in the first place!
When this crumbling version of the European project stopped convincing, they could only monitor and punish, under the solid notion that their countries needed to be dragged by the hair into a sustainable and tolerant paradise. It does not matter what public policy we take or under what flag or supposed protection it is placed., the program has been degrowth. Cultural and economic decrease, yes, but above all in quality of life and relationship with neighbors. Degrowth that punishes the fallen first, from now on.
At this point, the crises self-inflicted by Western leaders lead more and more people to question the benefits of an obsolete consortium, a logical response to the disproportionate repression of feelings as valid as self-preservation. This feeling will have a greater impact as living conditions worsen, and traditional politics has only known how to take steps towards this direction. The current dominant paradigm no longer offers a happy, or even viable, future. There are many Europeans who instinctively begin to think that the current system of European unity does not work well for them. Sense should guide parties reactive to traditional politics to begin a process of reflection, without complexes or shame, about what Europe citizens want and what balance their elites are giving them. A diagnosis of the accumulated experience and the mechanisms that allowed the leadership to distance itself so much from the citizen.
In short, put on the table how to reverse the process of loss of independence. Return to the founding principle of liberal democracies, which is control over power, putting a stop to excessive interference and the transfer of powers that imply a strong democratic deficit, centralizing power and removing the individual from decision-making. Citizens are tired of being insulted for not sharing the code of correction imposed by a leadership devoid of charm, which designs policies from the top of the social pyramid and imposes itself downwards.
Although the feeling floats in the air, this does not mean that it is reflected in electoral results. The underlying sentiments against Europe’s current political elites are mainly anti-establishment because the predominant paradigm is social democratic, ongoing reactance favors those who challenge the paradigm, but this does not mean that the battle has been won. We cannot even speak of a new luminous paradigm. The underlying question is whether this discontent is enough to change the postcard of Mannheim, because when push comes to shove the majority prefer not to take risks and bet on it safe, not to stop the jackal in the hope that it will only attack a few.
The postcard from Mannheim is quite hopeless, it must be said. If Europeans do not engage in substantive debates, it is possible that most Europeans will not inherit to their grandchildren the civilizational pride that built the current West. But as one political leader after another shreds his authority with voters, we see how popular sentiment remains the only defense against European suicide, if only we can find the best way to channel it. If there is hope, it is in that feeling. Always.