On both sides of the Atlantic the regnant elites have launched a furious regime change campaign not all that different from the ones they started in the former Soviet republics. The formula seems to go like this: hold an election in which the full resources of the EU states and their upper classes are brought to bear on one side of the question. Vilify dissenters as more than likely agents of Vladimir Putin.
On the British side the government of Prime Minister Theresa May, which has been all along pretending to be in favor the people’s decision to leave the EU, has effectively sabotaged the process with so many exceptions, amendments, other concessions to Brussels that they might as well have stayed in.
Shocked by their defeat, the Remainers have been scheming and plotting and demand a new election – and are presumably willing to keep voting until they get the “right” result.
But events are overtaking them: the right-wing populist upsurge that threatens the very existence of the EU is not quite through making waves. The French “yellow vests” have arisen from the rural and poorer sections of the countryside. These are France’s forgotten as Macron raises the petroleum price by 15% – one third of that in the name of stopping global warming.
But there is more to Macron’s sudden descent into villainy – when only yesterday he was the hero of the anti-nationalists. He wears his arrogance like a cloak, held tightly around him. He refused to negotiate with the yellow vests, smearing them as “having a brown coloration,” meaning fascist inclinations. However, the main labor unions are meeting with the leaders of the movement and as many as 80% of the general populace saying they intend to join the movement.
A similar movement of French truckers disrupted the placid social democratic surface of French politics at the beginning of the decade. And before that there were the Poujadists, radicalized bourgeois protesting taxes and regulations.
This time, however, the protests are much more violent and widespread and there is a seriousness in the air. They mean to oust him if they can: his sort of arrogance invites this response.
Yes, disorder reigns everywhere, threatening to afflict the comfortable and upend the “experts” who have had things their way for so long – with little short of disaster to show for it.
Italy has taken the same road, throwing out all the old parties and politicians and starting over with fresh new populist parties from both sides of the the political spectrum.
Hungary has thrown down the Ideological gauntlet to the Euro-crats by ignoring immigration edicts and explicitly challenging and mocking their liberalism by holding up the banner of “ illiberalism.”
In short, we’ve only just begun to see the consolidation of the Deplorables International.
Meanwhile, the death of George H. W. Bush brought back memories. There I was at the California state Republican Party the day the bombing of Iraq started. There was Old George, in schoolmaster mode, explaining all about his “New World Order.”
Some of us younger guys were gathered around a literature table, and you could see by the looks on their faces that they weren’t having any of this New World Order business, not for one minute. I heard one kid laugh and say under his breath “ to hell with your New World Order!”
The Bush family represented a time when the particular virtues they exemplified described the ideal elites: discreet (secretive), globally-minded (distant from concerns of ordinary Americans), and of course quite rich. Their day is over, and nostalgia for it is akin to holding monarchist views
This sentiment is so widespread by now that the globalist politicians like Macron are going to pass from the scene very quickly. The Old aristocracy is discredited and dispersed – and a new age greets the new rulers.
All the old Cold War statues are coming down: the Korean DMZ, NATO, our defense commitments all over the world are being called into question, whether under pressure from budget cuts or geopolitical necessity.
And here on the American side of the Atlantic, the Deep States does its dirty work, hoping to nullify the democratic decision of the people by hook or by crook.
God help them if they ever succeeded.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
