Rigor mortis on the Western front: a brief comment on the EU Parliament elections

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Rigor mortis on the Western front: a brief comment on the EU Parliament elections

The results of the parliamentary elections across the 27 member states of the European Union have been published this morning. They are not complete and final, but they are highly indicative of how it all ends.

The front-page diagram of The Financial Times comparing the outgoing and incoming party affiliations of the deputies tells it all.  Though the deck chairs on the Titanic have been rearranged, though the Greens have had losses, the Renew grouping of Macron and Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt have had losses, the EPP had gains and the net result appears to be that the Center Right-Left coalition that held the European Parliament in its firm grip these past 5 years will continue to have a voting majority of more than 400 seats. This means that barring some accident, Ursula von der Leyen will be reelected and the awful, self-destructive, even suicidal policies of the EU with respect to Russia will continue for the coming 5 years, if there is no Continent-wide war as a result that wipes Europe off the face of the earth.

Here in Belgium, the good news comes from the north of the country. The anti-status quo Flemish parties N-VA and Vlaams Belang came in first and second, garnering almost a third of the seats in the Chamber of Representatives. My estimation of the results comes from applying the old Russian Marxist analytic tool:  the worse, the better. The comfy life of our most prominent politicians is coming to an end. Prime Minister De Croo was compelled to resign when his party took a beating. Now he can resume the search for his next sinecure that began one week ago when he called upon Joe Biden in the White House. If only this discomfiture extends to the other incompetent lackeys of Washington that the MR Party has sent to the European Institutions, Didier Reynders on the Commission and Charles Michel at the Council, then I will break out the champagne.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Rigor mortis an der Westfront: ein kurzer Kommentar zu den Wahlen zum EU-Parlament

Die Ergebnisse der EU-Parlamentswahlen in den 27 Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union sind heute Morgen veröffentlicht worden. Sie sind noch nicht vollständig und endgültig, aber sie sind sehr aussagekräftig, wie das Ganze ausgeht.

Das Diagramm auf der Titelseite der Financial Times, in dem die Parteizugehörigkeit der Abgeordneten verglichen wird, die aus dem Parlament ausscheiden und in das Parlament eintreten, sagt alles. Obwohl die Stühle auf der Titanic umgestellt wurden, die Grünen Verluste hinnehmen mussten, die erneuerte Gruppierung um Macron und den Belgier Guy Verhofstadt Verluste hinnehmen musste und die EVP Zugewinne verzeichnete, scheint das Nettoergebnis zu sein, dass die Mitte-Rechts-Links-Koalition, die das Europäische Parlament in den letzten fünf Jahren fest im Griff hatte, weiterhin eine Stimmenmehrheit von mehr als 400 Sitzen haben wird. Das bedeutet, dass Ursula von der Leyen wiedergewählt wird und die schreckliche, selbstzerstörerische, ja selbstmörderische Politik der EU gegenüber Russland in den kommenden fünf Jahren fortgesetzt wird, wenn es nicht zu einem kontinentweiten Krieg kommt, der Europa vom Angesicht der Erde tilgt.

Hier in Belgien kommen die guten Nachrichten aus dem Norden des Landes. Die gegen den Status quo gerichteten flämischen Parteien N-VA und Vlaams Belang belegten den ersten und zweiten Platz und erhielten fast ein Drittel der Sitze in der Abgeordnetenkammer. Meine Einschätzung der Ergebnisse beruht auf der Anwendung des alten russisch-marxistischen Analyseinstruments: je schlechter, desto besser. Das bequeme Leben unserer prominentesten Politiker neigt sich dem Ende zu. Premierminister De Croo war gezwungen zurückzutreten, als seine Partei eine Niederlage einstecken musste. Jetzt kann er sich wieder auf die Suche nach seinem nächsten Pfründenplatz machen, die vor einer Woche begann, als er Joe Biden im Weißen Haus aufsuchte. Wenn sich dieses Unbehagen auch auf die anderen inkompetenten Lakaien Washingtons erstreckt, die die MR-Partei in die europäischen Institutionen entsandt hat, Didier Reynders aus der Kommission und Charles Michel aus dem Rat, dann werde ich den Champagner aufmachen.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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9 thoughts on “Rigor mortis on the Western front: a brief comment on the EU Parliament elections”

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  5. From the NY times: “France would then be confronted with the consecration through high political office of the extreme right, an idea held unthinkable ever since the Vichy government ruled France in collaboration with the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.”

    You see how upside down that is.

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  8. Unfortunately N-VA is not anti-status quo, on the contrary. On the vaccines for example their rhetoric was always anti but there policies were always pro when you saw their voting behavior, both in the Belgian parliament as well as the Flemish parliament where they were leading the Flemish government. It is best exemplified by N-VA big wig Peter De Rover with his anti-Covid rhetoric married to Els van Doesburg who ran a campaign to jab kids by luring them to the Antwerp Zoo.

    Vlaams Belang, a far right party is indeed very anti-status quo. PVDA on the far left also made significant gains and is as well very anti-status quo.

    In my view there’s no good news when it comes to suicidal policies with respect to Russia. N-VA already made it clear they want to re-introduce military draft. In southern Belgium winners MR (Liberal democrats) is fully establishment as well as Les Engagés (Christian democrats) so both would support that and my perception is that Vlaams Belang would also support military draft be it for other reasons.

    Military draft is of course a per-cursor to have cannon fodder to send to the Eastern Front fighting the same “enemy” that was fought 84 years ago.

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    1. You are right about N-VA, which under Bart De Wever was always a Thatcherite party, Vlaams Belang is more working class friendly with social programs. How VB will come out on war and peace is a conundrum. However, this is to miss my point: Brusselers voting for these parties – and there certainly were such folks – were making a protest vote that is much more effective than Blanco. The point is to make the Liberal and centrist elites sweat a bit.

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