President Macron visits s migrant center, Croisilles, with French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb (right),January 2018. Pool/Press Association. All rights reserved.
« Hello, dictator! » The president of the European commission thus welcomed the Hungarian Prime Minister to the Riga summit in 2015. If Senator John McCain had caused a diplomatic incident earlier when he called Viktor Orbán a “neo-fascist dictator”, this was just friendly banter for Jean-Claude Juncker. The contrast in tone of the diktats imposed upon Greece at the very same time by the Eurogroup was striking: austerity is no joking matter. Just before Syriza came to power, German Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schaüble warned that “new elections change nothing about the agreements that the Greek government has entered into.” For the EU, there is nothing funny about neoliberalism: economics is too important to be left to the people. Democracy, however, is worth a good laugh. The burlesque scene in Latvia recalls another instance of slapstick: in The Great Dictator, Mussolini slaps Charlie Chaplin’s Hitler on the back: “my brother dictator!” There is nothing funny about neoliberalism: economics is too important to be left to the people. Democracy, however, is worth a good laugh.
How can we make sense jointly of these two simultaneous phenomena – the rise of the far right, in Europe and elsewhere, and the authoritarian evolution of neoliberal regimes? On the one hand, we have white supremacy and political xenophobia, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán or Matteo Salvini. On the other, what can be called “democratic coups”. Remember Greece? #ThisIsACoup: the “democratic” variation of the coup requires “banks, not tanks.” The same applies to Brazil, from Dilma to Lula: a military coup was not needed; parliamentary votes and judicial decisions do the job. Of course, police violence can still play an important role in the repression of the social movements that resist neoliberal reforms: France is a case in point. On both sides, public liberties are thereby losing ground.
