Looking at the global trends in politics today, it is clear that two clear mainstreams have emerged. It is necessary to understand what is happening and get a clear sense of why there are certain developments in the global political world. There are not enough political scholars and writers around today who can give people a clear picture of why there are certain political trends at play. Global media is mostly captured by one of the mainstreams namely global liberalism driving a globalist society , so one can not expect a fair and balanced view from them at all . If people don’t understand why things are happening, it would be quite easy for misperceptions to abound. So lets try and get a real clear and easy to understand explanation.
I am basing this article on the words of Natan Sharansky, a famous Soviet intellectual and dissident against communism who immigrated to Israel. I am adding my own perspective into the mix.
His interview with the Jerusalem Post gives much needed understanding and explain the global trends in politics clearly. You can read the article for yourself by googling the following : “On liberalism and nationalism after the Pittsburgh synagogue attack by Natan Sharansky Jerusalem Post.”
To begin at the beginning, Europe has known devastating wars for centuries, especially the destructive World War 1 and 2. The wars pitted nation state against nation state and of course in World War 2 the rise of facism led to a genocide of around 6 million Jews. By any account World War 1 and 2 left deeply devastating scars on the human psyche.
The general consensus in Europe after the war was that after centuries of religious and national war the time had come to be above religion and nationalism.
Sharansky described it as a process of creating a new world where there was nothing to fight over and nothing to die for but it also created a world where there was nothing to live for.
Sharansky stresses the need all people have to belong. This sense of belonging is to preserve that which they grew up with, their culture and preserving that which they are.
In other words their sense of identity.
It basically means that Germans still want to be Germans, Italians want to still be Italians and Hungarians still want to remain Hungarians. In very much the same way Africans want to be Africans and Arabs want to maintain their culture. It is not really such a dividing factor because it is really something that you get everywhere.
The liberal political project that emerged after WW2 stresses exactly the opposite, it focused on integration of societies because its leaders believed that you have to erase identity in the world to prevent people from fighting.
This school of thought is false because democrasies were not well established in the decades of European wars and royal household and allegiances played the greatest part in the endless wars. The problem was not the people, the problem was that the people were manipulated by the well established royal establishment which in many cases co-opted the Church.
The liberal project gave rise to the European Union which endlessly developed more and more rules that took away national sovereignity and freedom of people to live their own lives.
It developed its own bureauratic machinery which became very autocratic and which ordinary people began to chafe under because an unelected bureacratic machinery began to take a basic human need away – people’s freedom to decide for themselves.
The manner in which European rulers recently threw open the borders of their countries to uncontrolled immigration from especially Muslim countries involved in turmoil also created much unhappiness.
It was one such a bureaucratic decision at an EU, rather than a national level , that put national interest aside in favour of the liberal project. The results of these decisions that went against the national interest were soon felt as crime started to soar in once safe European countries like Sweden.
The liberal project post WW2 also developed its own extremist elements and those extremists are very active in today’s global political world. One can basically see them in the left wing radical formations driving a project to create a borderless West, the so called open borders agenda, with their major financier the ex European and now American George Soros.
Sharansky argues that the liberal project after WW2 felt it had to erase all identities and in the process a decadent world began to develop with almost no values.
Sharansky believes the liberal forces post nationalism swung too far in the opposite direction like people who first go to one extreme, then on to another extreme and like a pendulum that swung too far to one side, a corrective swing in the opposite direction is quite natural to find a better balance.
He believes a correction is necessary and that a middleground can eventually be found.
The election of Donald Trump with his America First policies, the Brexist decision by the British people and the continued political popularity of Vladmir Putin of Russia and Victor Orban of Hungary has to be seen in the light of the 2 main political trends in the world today.
Those 2 trends are firstly the continued efforts of the hardline liberals, which have greatly eroded the values of classic liberalism as they became more extremist and fundamentalist, and secondly the efforts of leaders who realised the pendulum has swung too far and are working to realign politics to include national sovereignity and identity.
In other words leaders like Trump, Boris Johnson, Victor Orban and Vladmir Putin have become popular because they put their countries and people first. What these leaders are doing is essential and without them a better world wont be found because without them the political pendulum wont settle somewhere in the middle.
We also have to realise that all above leaders working to bring back a sense of identity and sovereignity basically subsribe to the principals of classic liberalism, but within their own borders, and that they believe it simply cant work if you enforce it on a borderless globalist world.
A piece by the writer known as Daniel S.
