Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The discreet charm of latent fascism

When UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) chairman Marcel Ospel, in a discussion with economists in Basel last week declared that he considered the Swiss People's Party as the most competent and trustworthy political party in Switzerland in terms of economic policies, his remark earned mixed applause. One of the leading figures of that party, Christoph Blocher, now Minister of Justice of the Swiss Confederation, has been known for years for his inflammatory rhetoric style mixing talk of economic liberalism and xenophoby with the intention to bring elements of the extreme right onto his bandwagon. The recent success of Nicolas Sarcozy in the French presidential elections has been built on a similar rhetoric: praise of the nation's "grandeur", mixed with a more ot less subtle xenophobia and a call for economic reforms under a strong central government.
A heated discussion on Marcel Ospel's stance was launched on the Swiss Blog http://www.arlesheimreloaded.ch, and it came to an abrupt stop decided by the blog master when on some posts the term "national socialism" was used to define certain emerging trends in Swiss politics.
In recent years, there have been reciprocal accusations between the Swiss Social Democrativ Party (SP) and the SVP of "national socialist" behaviour, without arousing much interest by the electorate until recently.
But by the fact that radical nationalist and xenophobic movements are en vogue again in post-communist Eastern Europe and that the rhetoric of the Western European Right is getting tougher in terms of discimination against foreigners, the interest in the origins of national socialism (Germany) and fascism (Italy) has been awakened once again.
The National Socialist Movement, as ist existed in Germany between 1933 and 1945, used for it's image a specific blend of promises of economic growth, an exaggerated role for the nation (built on racial criteria) and social justice based on the exlusion and eventually extermination of those who did not comply with he rules or where considered as unworthy by racial criteria. The Soviet system, on the other hand, used social class as central criterion for the exclusion from economic and political life, and for eventual liquidation of persons of bourgeois origin.
After the downfall of the Third Reich, race was no longer a criterion for exclusion, liquidation, annihilation, but the struggle of the classes according to Marx and Engels continued to be considered as the single most important motor for progress of society on the road towards socialism.

After the downfall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was at first a period of complete desorientation. From the chaos that followed the collapse, a new class of entrepreneurs emerged in the Russian Federation, the so-called oligarchs, who took control of the economy and tried to do the same in politics.
President Boris Yeltsin, uncapable of controlling a systen that had rund wild, passed his power to a brilliant, healthy (and tough) young lawyer, Vladimit Putin, brought up within the Soviet System, and who had made his carreer in the KGB.
Since his arrival to power, Putin systematically has reverted the chaotic and unstructured political and economic freedom that Russia had known for less than ten years by what he called "the Dictatorship of the Law". The oligarchs were driven into exile or jailed and the central government succeeded brilliantly in bringing economic decision power back again under it's control.
To regain the confidence of the estranged population, the colours of Putin's rethoric have turned more and more nationalistic, culminating in the restoration of the national anthem of the former Soviet Union created in 1944.
The objectives of this nationalistic trend are evident: to strengthen the defenses of the population against globalisation, in the interest of economic elites that actively participate in the process of gobalization while instrumentalizing the xenophobic reflexes of the masses for their own interests. The "Dictatorship of the Law" is the mechanism by which the new ruling class finds it's legitimation in the confrontation with the classical left. By actively supporting the xenophobic tendencies within society, the ruling elite successfully reduces the risk of an active participation of "foreigners" in the national economy.
The result is a new form of National Socialism in the mask of what might be called "patriotic free market economy". No wonder that those who consider liberalism as a philosophical and political struggle for freedom in terms of market economy, but siumultaneously an attitude that does not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, religion of gender, are the natural enemies of the new "patriotic" movements that call themselves "liberal".
The leaders of the Swiss People's Party know exactly what they do when selling their perfect mixture of talk on free market economy and a monopoly over the most important national symbols: the flag, the folks sports such as "Schwingen" and "Hornussen" and last but not least Swiss country music.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Eco-Socialist Conservatism - The Cultural Conundrum of Basel



The Basel City Music Hall as it looks today and will look for another 20 years







The City Music Hall Project by Zaha HADID that the voters of Basel rejected on June 17, 2007






The city of Basel is proud of it's international image as a strongpoint of art and it is home to an internationally reknowned Music Academy. At the same time, this city, where two of the most important global players of the pharmaceutical industry, ROCHE and NOVARTIS, have their headquarters, is victim of a permanent loss of permanent residents which are able and/or willing to influence it's political fortunes. More to this, the city is the capital of one of the most tiny Cantons of Switzerland, Basel-Stadt, with a population of under 200,000 and it's socio-demographic structures shows a continuous trend towards old age and migrants.
Less than half of the inhabitants are active citizen, and the have clearly shown their political orientation toward socialism and ecology by electing parliament and a government which is dominated by the left and the (left-leaning) greens.
It is no wonder therefore that a project to replace the city music hall by a new building conceived by Zara Hadid has lost popular support in a vote on state subsidies for the construction site, with a more than 60 percent majority.
The people of Basel are used to be well served by their industry's corporate taxes but are not ready to invest in projects of cultural infrastructure.
The most intriguing feature of the phenomenon is the counterproductive behaviour of the representatives of the arts: there is no such thing as solidarity between art,
theater and music. The fatal blow was dealt to the project from within the art scene from a famous sculptor: Bettina Eichin, the author of the sitting statue of Helvetia on the Mittlere Rheinbrücke



Eichin, a fervent environmental activist, stated in a letter to the editor of the local newspaper "Basler Zeitung" that HADID's Casino would contribute to the warming of 3° Centigrade of the city atmosphere because of it's aluminium façade.

Those Basel citizen who did not like the architectural aspect of the project were pleased: finally somebody had explained to them that city concert halls contribute to gobal warming.