Keith Hart on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 13:26:37 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> notes from the DIEM25 launch


Hi Felix,

I agree with your analysis completely. The European problem is democracy
not money. But where is the democratic push going to come from? I am a
europhile, I have lived in Paris for almost two decades. In recent years I
have begun to see that I may have backed the wrong horse.

In 1900 Europe accounted , 25% of the world's population, Europeans
controlled 80% of the land surface, for several centuries they lived off
unearned income extracted from the rest of the world. In 2100, 6% of the
world's population will live in Europe. The old predominate in every sense,
the young have higher education and no future. The people recruited from
Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe to do the work that pays for the
residents' pensions are harrassed and vilified. Most Europeans still hanker
for their own imperial dominance and despise non-Europeans. Europe has no
credible means of self-defence. A corporate logic of governance generates
as its only counterweight right-wing populism. The political trend is
inexorably towards fascism. And this is built on resolute denial of reality
at every turn.

If you read about such a society in first millennium Mesopotamia, you would
be thinking of the causes of collapse. Europe is the main and permanent
loser in the current world crisis. No wonder there is no serious attempt to
do something to reverse existing trends. The energy goes into denial and
social fragmentation is an excuse for doing nothing.

Keith



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