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ACTS Post opinions with a wide range of perspectives to encourage constructive discussion.
The death of the USSR caused a crisis of the left parties. The belief in the “good” state, in the efficiency of planning and forced equality collapsed. They all came to the rescue individually: the Chinese chose capitalism without democracy, Syriza and Podemos tried democracy with less capitalism, Blair’s Labor Party, Schroeder’s Social Democrats and our Stanishev took the liberal “third way” and Ninova’s socialists and Fico surprised everyone by turning to far-right national populism. Add in the new politics of identity, ecology, anti / alter-globalisms and the cacophony turns out to be complete.
Will Trump’s defeat be the beginning of a similar crisis on the right? Trumpism, like all Americans, exaggerated bombastic tendencies that were already visible. The alt-right, as it is also called, combined support for big business and minimization of the state with far-right rhetoric of xenophobia, racism, sexism, and all other transgressions. The central moment is a theatrical stubbornness against globalization in the name of sovereignty, greatness, national pride and other nostalgia. Described in this way, the precursors of Trumpism could be, for example, Berlusconi, and why not our George Ganchev and Siderov.
Inclusion of the working class on the right
As the American journalist Nicholas Lehmann wrote, the problem with the Republican Party is that it expresses the interests of two completely different groups: on the one hand, the provincial, the uneducated, the “losers”, increasingly hostile to migration and technical progress. , threatening their jobs. Culture wars, hatred of enemies, tariffs on Chinese goods, and fundamentalist religious fantasies are meant for them.
Trump’s absurd neo-protectionism has saved some jobs; However, it turned out that one of them cost the taxpayer $ 250,000, and in the metal industry up to $ 900,000, amounts that the worker offended by globalization could easily live on into retirement by painting watercolors. Such a policy is not intended to save the economy, but to integrate the working class on the right. Which, by the way, the right is doing in Europe, where workers have long since started voting for Le Pen, and Sarkozy was referring to “that France that gets up early.”
On the other side are the billionaires, colleagues of Trump himself. They expect the usual: low taxes, deregulation. According to Bloomberg Welt, in the four years of his rule, the 200 richest Americans, who make up 0.00006% of the nation’s population, have increased their wealth from $ 1.8 trillion to $ 2.8 trillion. The price of this is irresponsible debt inflation: from 19 trillion in 2016 to 27 trillion at the end of the period. The future pays for the irresponsible present, and the world bears the burden of the American printing press for the money. Here, Trumpism crosses the red line of old conservatism, fiscal discipline, and thus goes further to the left than to the left, which until recently was criticized as outlandish. Note that the situation is very similar in Hungary: the role of the printing press for the money is played by European funds, which are cleverly managed by the alt-right Orban. And if the average person gets their dose of emotions, and billionaires, their billions, the middle class got hit, the one that depends on their job and education. And that he finally overthrew the populist.
The American example has shown something else: the unity of the two very different social groups represented by the Republicans, Main Street and Wall Street, as they say, has so far relied on the threat of communism. The end of the Cold War presented the opposite nature of their interests. It is no coincidence that Trump tried to start a new Cold War with China, but this work is different because China does not threaten US-centric globalization, on the contrary, it takes advantage of it. What is left to the right in a Republican Party that went against free trade and the global division of labor? And perhaps we are witnessing an exchange of seats (as has already happened with the attitude towards slavery): the Republican Business Party is becoming a party of the workers, as it was before the Democratic Party and vice versa.
In Europe, the roles of the right and the far right are played by different actors. In our country, for example, while the great partner directs the financial flows, the small one delights the people with various indignations and greatness; “Bread and glasses”, as the ancients said. We have seen a similar division of labor in the short-lived coalitions in Vienna and Helsinki, respectively, with the Freedom Party and the True Finns. The temptation will grow in parallel with the loss of real representation and political helplessness in the face of global processes characteristic of the modern world. In the old European democracies, there are still moral restraints on the coalition with the far right, but over time moral intransigence has weakened, and the far right is no longer completely fascist, it is adapting to the world of media entertainment.
The problems of the Bulgarian right
These questions, of course, are also faced by the Bulgarian right. The GERB populists decided to tremble, waiting for the nationalists to provide the show with their genres, history thieves, and Eurobureaucrats with the accompaniment of Peev’s media. It is even rumored that they can go to the polls together, as they did, cannibalizing the UDF.
Such commitments hardly worry GERB; it did not disturb their understandings of the right and the indiscriminate distribution of money. The main thing in the Trumpian format is the leader of the colorful people, who fills the television, enrages, creates urban legends, memes and even popular songs on the principle of “no bad publicity”. I don’t know how much Borissov will dare to oppose Europe and globalization, but his main resource is that he listens to the great Batkovs and Khakis. But everything else is there.
Today, “democratic Bulgaria” seems the furthest from Trumpism. These people never mastered the clutches of populism; call for sensible action, focus on complex issues like judicial reform. But the world of the media has its laws and a serious problem for them will be the lack of a leader, the protagonist of the political series. It is true that Hristo Ivanov was ahead, but for many he is not right and the polyphony continues. The DB gradually realized that communism was gone and that, like the American Republicans, they had to choose between Main Street and Wall Street. Listening to them, I have the feeling that they dislike big business, which is strange for a right-wing party. We don’t see them often among the “people”. Your choice of commitment is to represent the small business owner, who is private and not traitorous. This leads some to insult liberals (yes, this word is an insult in our country!) And a right-wing liberal identity would probably do them well, except that centrist parties are generally ready to enter different coalition formats, and the DB has chosen the impossible goal to do so. politics without getting your hands dirty. His ideological allegiance to an idealized right that never existed may be his biggest problem.
Is it clear who is left and who is right?
Whether an anti-government constellation of the Trio, Manolova and Trifonov will seek some common ideology beyond the overthrow of GERB, whether they will be together at all, is unclear for now. The protest will reawaken if there is a compelling reason, for example, some intolerable scandal, which the government knows how to produce. But what will be the ideological effect of it, we cannot predict. Morality and normalcy come before politics, so I’m tempted to think that it was they, and not the ideology of the Democratic Party, who got the Americans out of Trump.
In our country, the ideological divide is suggested by the experts of the ruling party: Manolova was left-wing, Trifonov was a scoundrel. That is exactly what happened in the United States, where Trump turned his men against so-called socialists. The paradox is that some people without solid political convictions, such as Trump or Borissov, manage to divide their opponents on the basis of the demand for ideological purity. Who catches, catches! Let me also point out that the most clearly stated right-wing Republican orientation was Mr. Tsvetanov, who with this political brand may have bought a factory on September 8.
After the collapse of the USSR, after the crisis caused by Trump’s right, it will be increasingly difficult to draw stable ideological directions. Social strata have vague contours, politics is made in motion, with tweets. Is it clear who is right and who is left? We will see parties constituted à la carte on a specific issue. Right or left, only political scientists will argue; and we will follow the serial characters in series, favorite or hated, but always interesting. And we can learn to figure out faster when to change channels, huh?
Author: Prof. Ivaylo Dichev
Source: Deutsche Welle
Sofia, Bulgaria
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