The list, painfully long, continues to grow. It is the accumulation of illegal, outrageous, reprehensible or very dubious morality actions of the West. Washington, leader of that space and main world power, stands out in terms of responsibilities, but Europe is by no means exempt from them. Let’s look at a selection from the last three decades.
The Srebrenica genocide, a symbol of the terrible European inaction in the massacres in the Balkans.
Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the mass surveillance program without judicial authorization Stellar Wind and the CIA’s flights of shame, emblems of the US’s abdication to the rule of law and human rights, with the cooperation of some European countries that facilitated transit and operational centers for the US agency.
The invasion of Iraq, an outrage against international law based on blatant lies, led by the United States, but again with European connivance, such as those of the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal.
Libya first intervened and then abandoned to disaster.
Syria directly abandoned to disaster.
Selfishness in the distribution of vaccines in the pandemic: the US, without exporting them; the Europeans, exporting them, but boycotting the release of patents.
The consent, for decades, to the illegal and unjustified Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories with all the abuses linked to it. And, in the case of the United States, the continued supply of ammunition to a war response that is most likely criminal, and undoubtedly inhumane.
The increasingly complex rebound of asylum seekers. The infamous separation of children from their families practiced by the Trump Administration. The doors open to refugees from Ukraine, those closed to Syrians. The subcontracting of the task of stopping immigrants to authoritarian regimes, knowing that the methods are those expected from authoritarian regimes of that ilk, and being comfortable with the mere fact of having demanded that everything be done neatly.
These last two sections – the war in Gaza and immigration – are the ones that concern us most now. In the first, there are still too many Western governments that, by doing nothing more than uttering useless criticism, de facto facilitate the continuation of the inhuman war action that Netanyahu carries out and will continue to carry out if no one stops him, because that is what suits them. him and because the cost is very limited. The order to immediately halt Israel’s offensive on Rafah issued by the International Court of Justice—as well as the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and the Israeli Defense Minister as well as three Hamas leaders— It is at the same time a reminder of the height of a rules-based international system as well as its limits of effectiveness and the baseness of Western powers that, with limited exceptions, do not stand up to all this. Biden had outlined a red line for Israel in a substantial operation in Rafah. At the moment, he has not reacted. Perhaps the same thing happens with the red line that – in different circumstances – Obama pointed out to Assad regarding the use of chemical weapons: nothing.
In the second section, migration, we now have, among other movements, 15 EU countries that demand that Brussels advance schemes that seek to consolidate Fortress Europe, the one that bounces off everyone without asking, and that occupy third countries, without much consideration. The conceptual framework of the extreme right has won for years now.
We Westerners do not live up to the great values that we profess but often do not practice: democracy, the rule of law, a universalist conception of human rights, a world order based on rules and an idea that stands out from the legal framework, that of human dignity.
The abuses listed in this article have parents of different political affiliations. It is a Democratic White House that continues to feed Netanyahu. It was a Labor Downing Street that embarked on the horror of Iraq. It is social democratic Denmark that is leading the request to advance at EU level along the path of Sunak’s Rwanda model or Meloni’s Albania model. It would be a mistake to encapsulate responsibilities on a single side.
But you have to be blind or have bad faith not to see to what extent the rise of the extreme right threatens to sink this history of baseness of the West to unknown levels. Incontrovertible facts show the democratic threat that the leaderships of Orbán, Kaczyinski or Trump have posed. Meloni, with whom the European People’s Party is now opening an agreement, is more subtle. This is not the same as Orbán, who openly talks about illiberal democracy, or Trump, who encouraged an assault on Parliament. But his maneuvers to colonize the media space, build a hegemonic cultural narrative and pressure intellectuals, opponents or journalists give off a bad stench.
With different nuances, the far-right galaxy shares a disturbing denominator, which is that of nationalism and identity politics. It is dangerous because behind nationalism there always lies a latent idea with the potential to turn into horrors: that the higher national interest ends up justifying crossing certain lines compared to others. Justifying discriminations, exceptions. Us and our interests, first; the others, and the values, later. The height lies in the universalism of democracy, human rights, rules-based world order. Baseness lurks in relativization. This is where the most toxic plants grow.
The authoritarian regimes of the world openly preach this relativization, of the idea according to which human rights and democracy must be interpreted according to the circumstances of each country. That is the explicit approach of China and Russia. If any of its supporters have rejoiced in this catalog of criticism of the West, they have little reason for it: in those countries human dignity is trampled to the extreme point of preventing the free expression of ideas, among other things.
The far-right of democracies are not comparable to them and have differences between them, but they tend to flirt, wander around that relativization, be it with Orbán’s illiberal democracy, the thinly veiled supremacism, the annoyance with the rigidity of a right that insists in considering us all equal. That old idea so annoying to some.
The West must strive to remain loyal to its values. First because it is fair. Then, because it suits him in the great competition with the authoritarian powers. Certain baseness only spurs contempt and resentment.
Maintaining height is not easy. Leaders of all political stripes have lost it. But there is little doubt that nationalism and identity politics are a dark mass with a downward force of attraction much greater than universalism. It is the composition of that mass for the EU for the next five years that is at stake in the European elections whose campaign has just opened, through citizen voting and subsequent pacts.
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