No Immigration Controversy without Antifascist Witch Hunt

New York Times readers are paying money for smear campaigns rather than for real information. One example is the portrayal of Matteo Salvini, president of the “populist” Italian “League” party. In the article, Jason Horowitz collects all the smear elements he can find in order to create an association of the League to if not fascism then at least a slippery slope toward it. As in most such articles, of which Horowitz has published a lot in the NYT, we also find proximity to Vladimir Putin as one of the gratuitous charges, and the article starts out with the fact that a recent killer of a nigerian killer was a Lega member. What we don’t find is a realistic portrayal of Salvini’s campaign, and even less so any mention of eurocritical intellectuals like Prof. Alberto Bagnai who have recently joined his bandwagon.

Humanitarian Attack on Israel

Basically the NYT seems to favor partisanship over information even more nowadays than a decade ago. I have occasionally been reading it since some hotels even here in Munich have free copies in a leisure space near the reception. In the same edition of 5th of February, I also found a humanitarian propaganda attack against the Israeli policy of expelling African migrants, written from a jewish religious viewpoint. The migrants were of course called “refugees”, although it should be clear that (1) they are mostly not real refugees in the legal sense of the word (2) Israel can not accomodate any meaningful share of the huge number of real refugees that the numerous failed states of Greater Africa inevitably produce, and (3) the NYT would be among the first to protest if these “refugees” were to be settled on the West Bank. The overall line of the NYT seems to be one of favoring feel-good ethics of responsibility ethics, at least where the welfare and integrity of nations is concerned.

Krugman Editorial points to a truth

The editorial piece of nobel prize laureate Paul Krugman, which vociferously argues against President Trump and Republican tax cuts, made reasonable observations. It is obvious that, as Krugman points out, the Republicans are not standing on the side of fiscal sanity. Instead they may be part of a civil war, where Democrats help monetization of the suffrage, delivering welfare in return for votes, whereas Republicans sabotage this “redistributive democracy” as far as they can. This is probably just what you end up with when your population is split between too unequal and unsolidarious groups. If you want to avoid this kind of social division, then do not import it, neither into Italy nor into Israel. Samuel Huntington warned against this outcome in his last book “Who are we”, which was of course smeared by the New York Times. The division behind the Trump victory is, as Japanese correspondent ITO Kan has been pointing out, precisely what Huntington saw coming.

Decline of Intermediaries?

The NYT seems to be embracing its demise like Süddeutsche Zeitung and others in Germany. Rather than accepting the challenge of the Internet competition and striving to provide its readers the very best information, they are cultivating their echo chamber ever more resolutely. Such echo chambers have a value for Mexican tycoons with a stake in humanitarian mass migration and other third parties, who may be paying more than the remaining readers. There is of course also a demand from some readers to be fed pious arguments for their saloon or echo chamber, and this is true for a hotel operator as much as for Google and Facebook, who have been censoring a lot of information because it doesn’t match the harmonious image that is conducive to their brand and business. Maintenance of an atmosphere of harmony and conformity continues to be a strong market force, and perhaps even more so in the New Economy, where few pay for reading and instead the content needs to be connectable to commercial advertisers. Thus the Net appears to have strengthend both non-conformity and conformism at the same time.

Economist Alberto Bagnai can do without NYT

Italy is conducting elections on March 4th. Lega president Matteo Salvini is feeling carried by a groundswell of public opinion. In one of Salvini’s most notorious, memorable and emblematic speeches he tells his fellow members of the European Parliament to consult a good medical doctor. Rather than dealing with the unpleasant realities caused by their failed policies they were getting obsessed with defining and chasing “hate speech”, Salvini stated, concluding “you are no longer normal” and presenting himself as a man who knows little, is eager to learn from everybody and trying to restore normalcy, a part of which are the nation state and national economy. Especially the latter idea finds vocal support of the famous economist Alberto Bagnai, who sees the distortions cause by the euro and by excessive deference to global investors (as a replacement of the former “national economy” paradigm) from a “left wing” perspective similar to that of Krugman. However, straightforward (normal) thinking is, according to Bagnai, today possible only on the right side of the political spectre. That is why he is seeking his new political base in the Lega community. He declares that he is willing to do without certain friends who have been calling him “racist” and “nazi” since he took his decision. The New York Times seems to be one of these narrow-minded conformist nanny platforms that more and more people can do without. Mr. Bagnai is one of several intellectuals who are attracted to Salvini’s Lega by its fresh spirit of inquiry and capability of listening and learning which they say sets Salvini apart.

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No rejection of Non-Refoulement Principle yet

As a part of his normalcy rhetoric, Salvini also states that his imagined Italy remains wide open to real refugees of war. He does not name and criticize the rules that have caused the influx, mainly the non-refoulement principle in its extensive application by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In fact this judicial development began at a time where Lega was in the government and its interior minister Roberto Maroni in charge. Apart from moaning and trying to appeal the court verdict, they did nothing to change Italy’s fate. Rather, they steered Italy onto its course of obedient suicide and whining accusations against fellow Europeans who don’t want to join (Misery loves Company). While Lega has, unlike Forza Italia, not been joining this choir of whining for solidarious suicide, they still shun the question. And journalists like those of NYT don’t even seem capable of asking the question.

Hopes in Italian Political Ingenuity

Eric Zemmour, author of famous books like “The French Suicide”, sees Italy as the political laboratory of Europe, where all new trends first emerge and find expression. Italians continue to be fairly independent, innovative and somewhat superficial in evolving their political approaches. Italians can be expected to fall on their feet and find some way to muddle through and survive where others tend to be tied town by deeply held beliefs. They have been confronted with real migratory pressure for only a short time and can be expected to figure something out. Zemmour hopes that they will join the Eastern Europeans on a pioneering quest for European survival.