Do-Over

Back in the early months of 1998 I experienced a series of strange events, one of which was a persistent vision, if you will, saying we would have to repeat the thirties. I didn't know where it came from, but I've thought of it periodically since then. Maybe it really was a sneak peak into the future. And that future is here.

Yanis Varoufakis, ex-finance minister of Greece, offers this to us:

The establishment’s folly is causing its demise. Unable to come to terms with the economic crisis they created, they crushed the Greek Spring because they could. They pushed the majority of British families into austerity-induced hopelessness. They committed millions of Germans to mini-jobs. They conspired to keep Bernie Sanders at bay.

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A Great Deflation is now gripping both sides of the Atlantic, rekindling political forces that have been dormant since the 1930s.

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Donald Trump’s victory marks the end of an era when a self-confident establishment preached the end of history, the end of passion and the supremacy of a technocracy working on behalf of the 1%. But the era it ushers in is not new. It is a new variant of the 1930s, featuring deflationary economics, xenophobia and divide-and-rule politics.

Passion has returned to politics but not in a way that will help the 80% left behind since the 1970s. Passion is now fueling misanthropy. Passion is exploiting the anger of the 80% to rearrange power at the top, while leaving the 80% moribund, betrayed and divided. And it is our job to stop this. It is our job to harness passion in the cause of humanism.

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The spectre of a nationalist international that is upon us (from Trump and the Brexiteers to Poland’s and Hungary’s governments, the Alternative für Deutschland, Austria’s next president, Marine Le Pen) can only be defeated by the progressive international that the Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, is building in Europe.

But, clearly, Europe is not enough. Progressives in the United States, those who supported Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, must band together with progressives in Canada and Latin America, to build a Democracy in the Americas Movement. Progressives in the Middle East, those who are shedding their blood against ISIS, against tyranny as well as against the West’s puppet regimes, must band together with progressive Palestinians and Israelis to build a Democracy in the Middle East Movement.

In 1930, our ancestors failed to reach out to other democrats across borders and political party lines to stop the rot. We must succeed where the others failed [...] to form an effective progressive international and to press passion back into the service of humanism.

Carpe DiEM25.

  Yanis Varoufakis

In order to re-establish trust in the political system and bring back ‘sensible’ vote outcomes, a short-term fix would be to find political candidates who will work on behalf of the 99%, candidates like Bernie Sanders. However, given the corrupting effect of money and power, we should also explore solutions that rely less on a candidate’s good will: reforms that place more power into the hands of the people to understand and control what politicians do in the years between two electoral campaigns, so that our democracies may be ruled by the people.

  Judith Meyer @ DiEM25