Calling out the Quislings are, left to right, Dimitri Lascaris, Michael Hudson, Radhika Desai
It being Sunday I feel empowered – lovely word that, but where was it for most of my 70+ spins round the sun? – to offer a sixty-four minute video of host Dimitri Lascaris and two guests. One is Radhika Desai, Director of Manitoba University’s Geopolitical Economic Research Group; the other Michael Hudson, a man frequently featured on this site and described by former Reagan Treasury appointee Paul Craig Roberts as the world’s greatest living economist.
I share that assessment. 1
At 59:06, apropos the capture of Europe’s Centre-Left, Mr Lascaris puts a question to Professor Desai. Its context is one I’ve been trying to convey (here for instance, where I dazzled readers with a word, poltroon, I first encountered in Dennis Wheatley thrillers and had waited fifty-six years for an excuse to wheel out 2 ) since the September 2022 destruction by Washington of the two Nordstream pipelines in an act of economic terrorism and eco-vandalism with catastrophic consequences for Europe at large and its industrial powerhouse, Germany, in particular.
Here’s what Dimitri asks:
Have the nominally Social Democratic parties of Europe been completely co-opted by Washington, by the corporate sector? Is there anything left in the German Green Party that stands for the core values of that party?
As ever when presenting transcripts, especially of the auto-generated kind, I’ve edited her reply to shed the redundancies of speech while keeping faith with its essential meaning. You may in any case read the transcript yourself. 3
The entire Left in most Western countries – by ‘Left’ I mean the Social Democratic Left, the Green Parties and perhaps most of the entire political establishment – is now led by individuals who have been through the US ideological factories … the think tanks, the annual meetings etc. You know, the Leaders of Tomorrow type programs for which these people go to the USA on junkets, and become part of a network of leaders with a similar understanding of what is to be done, both domestically and internationally. People like Starmer, Macron, Von der Leyen and Annalena Baerbock … they belong to these circles. So in answer to the question – why are European governments acting so manifestly contrary to the interest of their economies, their people etc? – the only reason I can find is that at the present moment the United States is in this sweet spot where the people it has groomed have taken power in major European capitals.
However, the power of these leaders is very tenuous. The street does not actually belong to them and in the face of new types of politician like Sahra Wagenknecht, these leaders will lose credibility even more than they have already lost it.
I’d love to share the optimism of Radhika, whose erudition and articulacy I hugely admire, on that last point. Not sure I can though, given the very long record of those taking a stand against the US empire and for humanity being bought off, locked up, rubbed out or neutered by media ridicule.
What I do share – and offer as evidentially irrefutable – is her and Michael’s assessment that, other than that unhappy country itself, the biggest loser of the Ukraine war is Europe.
* * *
- For why I share Paul Craig Roberts’s view of Mr Hudson as our greatest living economist, see my three posts on Why read Michael Hudson?
- Ditto quisling, also encountered in Dennis Wheatley thrillers (though the q-word comes from their WW2 rather than Napoleonic subset) and also dusted off by me to describe leaders whose first loyalty is to Washington and not their own citizens. Moving beyond Europe, their treachery is mirrored across the ‘collective West’, as shown by Canberra’s economic acts of self sabotage vis a vis Australia’s most important trading partner, China. See in this respect my post of three years ago, Nuclear subs go down under.
- Choose “Watch on YouTube” … “more” … “Show transcript” …
I have long wondered why it is that so many Western leaders pursue policies that actively harm their own national interests and citizens but favour US elites and global corporates. How much is carrot, how much stick? How much personal, how much political? In. my adoptive home, Australia, I have over two decades seen strong and independent ministerial performers turn into craven sycophants when elevated to the level of Prime Minister. Today (perhaps since the establishment’s dismemberment of Jeremy Corbyn) I fear no one could become a candidate for the top job without kow-towing to Washington. In Europe, too, I can think of almost no national leader who has had the guts to say “no” to the US on matters of security or fundamental economic policy since Chirac refused to join the war on Iraq and de Villepin delivered his wonderful speech at the UN condemning it. Your thoughts would be most welcome.
Pretty much the same as yours, Martin, and accurately summed up by Radhika.
In posts on similar lines I use two terms – semi-colony and comprador – associated with critics of modern imperialism, which I define as the export from global north to south of monopoly capital, and repatriation from south to north of profits. The subordination to semi-colony status implied requires the collaboration of a local elite, a comprador class.
Applying such terms to Europe (ditto Australia, NZ and Canada) is unorthodox – the dissimilarities are not trivial either – but not to be dismissed for that. The world is fast changing. Yet one constant is the grooming of ‘distant friends’, even under the direct rule of old style colonialism. Didn’t the British know full well the wisdom of having its Nehrus and Gowans, future heads of their respective colonial and postcolonial states, educated on the playing fields of Eton and Oxbridge? Likewise the Americans of having Europe’s future leaders schooled at Harvard and Goldman Sachs …
The leaders groomed from an early age to be oart if the club I understand. But how do you suppose the US get progressives (feisty ones like Gillard or Rudd or invertebrates like Albanese) to roll over within days of becoming PM?
The day they assume office they are paid a visit by the grown-ups of the Deep State, who deliver a friendly primer on How The Real World Works.
It seems to be very effective, whatever they threaten or offer.