Goulash capitalism
17/9/18 16:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsEvery regime brought through democratic elections that stays for too long, sooner or later gets perverted into authoritarianism. The lack of competition, and the cementing of the political elites, almost always brings forth the need for a doctrine that would excuse the erosion of the basic tenets of democracy and human rights.
EU Parliament votes to trigger Article 7 sanctions procedure against Hungary
No doubt, this decision will provoke lots of passions and divisions: for and against self-determination, for and against Orban himself. The petty attempts to frame the debate as ideological, especially the effort to paint the Hungarian PM into some sort of ideological image (conservative, nationalist, versus basic EU "liberal" values) sticks out over the ideological desert that has engulfed the EU, concealing (for now) the true danger that the so-called "Orbanism" poses. We've come to the point where people and entire societies who've just made their first steps into the labyrinth of democracy, and who lack the basic instincts and DNA of democracy, have now started lecturing established democracies about what democracy is. And I'm saying this as a citizen of one of the least advanced democracies on the continent!
The very notion that the political elites in Budapest, or Warsaw, or Sofia to that matter, know better than those in Paris, Brussels, Stockholm or Berlin how an open market economy is built and maintained, how democratic values and human rights are ensured, given the systematic rape of common sense they practice on a daily basis, and the obvious authoritarian inclination and lack of inclusiveness in their politics, is just as absurd as the counter-notion that London, Paris or Brussels or Berlin knows what's best for the countries of East Europe, particularly regarding their relations with Russia. Both ideas are plain stupid.
The lack of a single understandable criterion around which Orban's policies could establish some semblance of coherency (Orban, who started as a democrat, but whose long sojourn in power has built him a sustained authoritarian reflex, while maintaining covert behind-the-scenes relation to authoritarian Putin), has pushed him into turning his own shortcomings into a pretense for ideological leadership at a stage much larger than he could possibly handle. Namely, that of the entire EU, and the rest of the world by extension.
In addition, there's his attempt to add some ideological flavor and a doctrinal format to his surrogate nationalism (Putin has been known for sponsoring various fringe neo-nationalist groups across Europe, with the purpose of destabilizing its democracies). Supported by his eastern mentor, Orban has declared himself a savior and protector of Europe from its external threats, real or perceived. He believes himself a guru in the battle against the rotting "Gayrope" and liberalism, a sort of ultra-macho amongst all East European leaders. And some of his geopolitical allies (the Visegrad Group in particular) have joined his chorus as well.
It's natural that this shallow dramaturgy would find support in East Europe, but that still doesn't remove the fact that the majority of Orban's ideological family at the EU (the National Party of Europe, which is the largest political power in the EU) has voted against Orbanism.
In case you haven't noticed, rather often leaders who have usurped power, and whose anti-democratic and totalitarian character has started to become too obvious, would tend to compose some kind of doctrine, which they then gradually shape into a political religion of some sorts, designed to replace their lack of real political alternative, and conceal the absence of real political competition in their societies.
There isn't much difference between Erdogan, Putin and Orban, when you come down to the core. They all have a similar genotype: an antithesis to everything that we call democracy, human rights, and free economy. Formally, they do allow elections, but there's no real equality between the competitors. There is a market, but not all participants have equal access to commissions and loans. Citizens do have some rights, but they're constantly subordinate to some external authority, be it national security, national pride, or a special historic mission. All in all, while the facade does look kind of democracy-ish, there are visible signs of a brutal, aggressive authoritarianism behind it, posing as a national necessity and a sort of high patriotic achievement.
It's rather superficial a pretense to present the Hungarian PM as a fighter against liberalism and a protector of Europe. Without democratic values, without taming the nationalist passions, Europe would've never become what it is now, including an example towards which the societies of East Europe were striving at the time they were struggling to shed the shackles of communism.
There are many flaws in European policy of course, including ones that are unforgivable - but the pretense that their solution is through the imposition of the only true truth, the one professed by the God-anointed messiah Orban, is a rejection of everything and anything European.
Here the enthusiastic supporters of the Hungarian Dear Leader would normally apply the ideological cliches of totalitarianism, citing his contributions to improving the living standard of his people, raising the average income and birth rate of Hungary, and turning his country into Paradise on Earth. There's little surprise in these fanfares, so familiar in tone to the plenty of communist-nostalgia folks, who've never stopped hoping that Dear Leader would "raise" their salaries and "pay" for their kids' education, and "provide" their health care, and give a solution to all their problems in life. We've all seen this before here in East Europe, and we're seeing it even now in our societies: our very own PM Borisov has adopted a friendly stance towards Orban for a reason. Old instincts die hard indeed.
However, I'd venture further and say that Orban is not the real problem here. He's just too small and insignificant to determine the fate of the entire EU. The problem is the ideology and the tendencies that go together with the indoctrination into Orbanism-style populist nationalism: getting used to authoritarianism and accepting it as the norm; undermining democracy and its inherent institutions; the degradation of the democratic process; the assault on the civic society; the collapse of the primacy of law - all of this is being presented as a new set of values, and a sign of national dignity.
What he's doing in Hungary is a complete dismantling of European values (while fully benefiting from EU membership), and a reversion to the norms and values of an epoch that existed before the EU, the Weimar system, the trading of borders and sovereignty - all things that Europe has worked hard to leave behind. He's selling his people the idea of a great nation, and the primacy of national ideas over European solidarity. He's playing the nationalist card of the Hungarian ethnic minorities in neighboring countries, and flirting with the idea of granting Hungarian citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in those countries. He's promising to give all Hungarians what Putin gave the Russians in Crimea - and all of this is just part of a greater pattern, the same pattern we've seen further east.
Orban has consistently worked to destroy political competition, or at least formalize it to an extent where viable opposition and other-thinkers are completely marginalized. And here we're not talking about some abstract things, this is about depriving the institutions of power of a key resource and of guarantees for efficient governing. There's complete and utter totalitarianism at the end of that side of the spectrum, new nationalist megalomaniac projects starting with "Great~", and a complete dismantling of the EU project being somewhere along the line. Just to remind: fascism did not exhibit its characteristics openly in the early 20s, it wasn't until it went through genuine victory on open elections that it gained the legitimacy it needed to finally shut down the page of freedom and democracy in the 30s.
In Hungary, almost all media and the whole press are under Dear Leader's control. The local oligarchy are his creation and his projection: the established system has nothing to do with the standards of political and market competition, there's no equal opportunity for non-establishment, non-conformist newcomers. There are no real alternatives. You're either part of the Orban model, or you get tossed out of it. Sound familiar?
In order to enforce his worldview and his model, Orban has crafted a virtual political reality, and invented political problems where none existed. A similar thing has been happening in Poland as well. There's no pressing problem with refugee migration in those countries, yet we're constantly seeing propaganda about evil foreigners doing things happening thousands of miles away to the west, designed to frighten us into accepting the curbing of human rights here and now. By bringing this hysteria to a crescendo, people are brought out of balance, and are deprived of a rational and sober assessment - their common sense gets muted, so they could readily accept the replacement of real interests and problems with imaginary threats.
Really, how realistic does it seem to you that you'd see Middle Eastern migrants beating a cop on the street just in front of you? It's much more likely to see cops beating and arresting not foreign refugees (because there are almost none of those here), but protesting local people - and that's a reality, not some invented threat, one that Orban and people like him don't want us to notice and discuss.
The real problems of Hungary, Poland, and yes, Bulgaria too, are not due to uncontrolled migration. Migrants are doing their best to avoid these countries because of the poor living conditions and the poor attitude of the locals. Seeing brown people on the street is extremely rare in Budapest, Warsaw or Sofia. If the safety and prosperity of a nation is measured by the low share of migrants, then countries like Singapore, the US, Luxembourg, Australia and Canada shouldn't have been among the most developed ones in the world! And remember the fate of all leaders of ethnically "clean" nations. Right? It's even more absurd that these ideas are being embraced in countries that are on geographical crossroads, like mine - where the mixing of cultures has always been a factor, and cannot be avoided.
It's one thing to protect your nation through economic growth, encouraging prosperity and maintaining demographic balance, fostering more competitive and innovative policies that would naturally generate national pride and confidence - it's quite another to seek salvation in stirring distrust and turning your neighbor into foe. Because it's doubtless that Orban and his followers both at home and abroad would gladly sell the image of Brussels the enemy, Washington the evil, and more generally Africa, Asia and All Those Shitholes as the reason for all problems, and Dear Leader's decisions as the only possible solution.
It's normal that in the process of removing boundaries, and the free movement of people, which brings a free movement of goods, services and capitals, which millions of people in this part of the world have benefited from, the number of migrants to and within the EU would increase (hell, how many East Europeans have moved to West Europe in recent decades?) What we could reasonably determine as migration of critical proportions that could potentially threaten social cohesion, religious and ethnic balance, is far even from the most pessimistic scenarios right now.
Even the worst-case scenarios for refugee crises show that the number of migrants who'd remain in these countries long-term is negligible. Since there are no indications that this situation would change any time soon, guys like Orban have to resort to blatant propaganda cliches and manipulations. His ideological comrades from our own domestic ultra-conservative nationalist spectrum are crafting a virtual reality that they're using to excuse a real authoritiarian policy, and the state repression against political and ideological opponents. Our domestic so called "conservatives" have "evolved" through their passionate hostility to any different opinion into reliable useful idiots of the neo-nationalist tide that's sweeping across Europe.
Let's not fool ourselves. Orbanism and its related neo-totalitarian tendencies are nothing new. They fit perfectly into Kremlin's new type of hybrid warfare, they draw power and inspiration, and often funds from there. The same way that Moscow has managed to mobilize its allies and a whole network of useful idiots to halt the advance of democracy in their adjacent geopolitical zones, it's now employing the same networks to create the narrative that Western democracy is the enemy, the EU is "failing", and guys like Orban are the new saviors.
It's no surprise that the bulk of those videos and reports of migrant misbehavior is being amped up and heralded far and wide by RT-like Kremlin-sponsored propaganda centers. And people in countries like mine are being constantly scared by these terrible stories, even though we can never have the ethnic problems that the ghettos of France, Belgium or Britain have had. We've never been huge colonial empires where huge masses of weird-looking people who talk funny have flocked into. We're not "obligated" or indeed, pressed, to accept any hordes of newcomers from the east - they themselves don't want to stay here in the first place. We'll never be an immigration melting pot. So, threatening Hungarians, Bulgarians or Polish with imminent migrant catastrophe is akin to claiming they'd automatically get as rich as the Germans through the mere fact of joining the EU, without moving a finger. It just doesn't work that way, folks! Let's get real here, shall we?
There's no rational reason that any of the "bad" migrants would want to stay here. We don't have the welfare state of France, or the living standard of Denmark, or the basic ethnic or religious tolerance of Germany. No sane person would want to move to a place where everyone and everything is hostile to them. And yet, we're constantly being bombarded with apocalyptic scenarios, while we're completely being spared the upsides of migration. No one mentions that roughly 1/4 of Turkey's remarkable economic growth has been due to migration, including increased labor productivity, and competitiveness, and living standard along with it.
Let's face it. The biggest problem of East Europe is the opposite to immigration: it's emigration. We've lost the cream of our national capital in terms of people, who've left in swaths to countries that we're now spitting against. They're highly educated, highly qualified, working people with families and kids, with great work potential, with consumer potential, personal savings, significant income, own business, and ideas for innovation. We've lost all that to the West - and it's not the Middle Eastern refugees who is to blame for all this.
Only a hopeless optimist would claim that most of these emigrants would ever return. The time of such illusions has passed. The bitter truth is that the next generation of Bulgarians has been born abroad, and they have no connection to the motherland.
Our problem is the demographic catastrophe that we've inflicted upon ourselves (don't listen to those conspiracy theorists who claim it's a result of an elaborate Western conspiracy to destroy our precious society - that's yet another attempt to avoid responsibility). It's not that many of our people are leaving now - the best part of them has already left, never to return. And no one wants to come in their place, not even Middle Eastern brown people who talk funny. Sure, some pro-government optimists would cite the fact that wealthy pensioners from North Europe are moving here to buy a rural house and live out their last years in serenity in some remote depopulated corner of our dear Fatherland. But would those elderly folks re-populate the Fatherland with children? Not really. If anything, those kids would need need good health-care, and education, and infrastructure, proper administration and other adequate services - and we need labor force and resources, and proper governing for those. And we can't provide them at this point.
Compare the energy that Orbanists employ in selling the crafted problem with migration to the rest of society, with the efforts that his government puts into solving real-life problems, and be amazed.
Every year the EU needs about 2 million new migrants if it were to sustain growth. For a continent of 500 million people, that's hardly a problem. Even less so for East Europe, where the share of migrants is minute. And yet, political manipulators like Orban don't allow their societies to see the real problem: there's hardly enough people left there, willing to work and provide for the pensions of the older generations; there's no one to populate the desolate rural regions, and this is dragging the whole economy down.
That said, it's hardly a surprise that Poland is quietly importing migrants. Orban has started doing that too, through the back door. But he's not talking about it much, because he'd look ridiculous if he was blasting migration with his mouth while importing them through the back door. At first he was throwing dust in the eyes of his people, saying there was a problem with Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, and promising Hungarian citizenship for them. But it turned out that after the issue of over a million Hungarian passports, only a small fraction of those people decided to move to Hungary. In 2018 alone, Hungary has been in shortage of 100 thousand workers, mostly of low qualification. There's no way this gap could be filled without importing migrants.
Of course, the useful idiots among the Orbanists would go to tremendous lengths to convince you that robotization of labor would solve the problem with the workforce shortage, and that there are other solutions that don't involve migrants. It's pointless to try to reason with these people, and with Orban himself. He's a historical aberration that could only appear in a society with a fledgling democracy and a Weimar complex that's still alive. We could argue all we want about the future of my country as well, or EU's future, or what the solutions of the real-life problems are, but the one thing we shouldn't forget is that the biggest problem as well as the biggest solution is with the people. Our people. They're to blame for their own problems, and it's them and only them who can solve those problems. And yes, it's fear alone that we should fear.
EU Parliament votes to trigger Article 7 sanctions procedure against Hungary
No doubt, this decision will provoke lots of passions and divisions: for and against self-determination, for and against Orban himself. The petty attempts to frame the debate as ideological, especially the effort to paint the Hungarian PM into some sort of ideological image (conservative, nationalist, versus basic EU "liberal" values) sticks out over the ideological desert that has engulfed the EU, concealing (for now) the true danger that the so-called "Orbanism" poses. We've come to the point where people and entire societies who've just made their first steps into the labyrinth of democracy, and who lack the basic instincts and DNA of democracy, have now started lecturing established democracies about what democracy is. And I'm saying this as a citizen of one of the least advanced democracies on the continent!
The very notion that the political elites in Budapest, or Warsaw, or Sofia to that matter, know better than those in Paris, Brussels, Stockholm or Berlin how an open market economy is built and maintained, how democratic values and human rights are ensured, given the systematic rape of common sense they practice on a daily basis, and the obvious authoritarian inclination and lack of inclusiveness in their politics, is just as absurd as the counter-notion that London, Paris or Brussels or Berlin knows what's best for the countries of East Europe, particularly regarding their relations with Russia. Both ideas are plain stupid.
The lack of a single understandable criterion around which Orban's policies could establish some semblance of coherency (Orban, who started as a democrat, but whose long sojourn in power has built him a sustained authoritarian reflex, while maintaining covert behind-the-scenes relation to authoritarian Putin), has pushed him into turning his own shortcomings into a pretense for ideological leadership at a stage much larger than he could possibly handle. Namely, that of the entire EU, and the rest of the world by extension.
In addition, there's his attempt to add some ideological flavor and a doctrinal format to his surrogate nationalism (Putin has been known for sponsoring various fringe neo-nationalist groups across Europe, with the purpose of destabilizing its democracies). Supported by his eastern mentor, Orban has declared himself a savior and protector of Europe from its external threats, real or perceived. He believes himself a guru in the battle against the rotting "Gayrope" and liberalism, a sort of ultra-macho amongst all East European leaders. And some of his geopolitical allies (the Visegrad Group in particular) have joined his chorus as well.
It's natural that this shallow dramaturgy would find support in East Europe, but that still doesn't remove the fact that the majority of Orban's ideological family at the EU (the National Party of Europe, which is the largest political power in the EU) has voted against Orbanism.
In case you haven't noticed, rather often leaders who have usurped power, and whose anti-democratic and totalitarian character has started to become too obvious, would tend to compose some kind of doctrine, which they then gradually shape into a political religion of some sorts, designed to replace their lack of real political alternative, and conceal the absence of real political competition in their societies.
There isn't much difference between Erdogan, Putin and Orban, when you come down to the core. They all have a similar genotype: an antithesis to everything that we call democracy, human rights, and free economy. Formally, they do allow elections, but there's no real equality between the competitors. There is a market, but not all participants have equal access to commissions and loans. Citizens do have some rights, but they're constantly subordinate to some external authority, be it national security, national pride, or a special historic mission. All in all, while the facade does look kind of democracy-ish, there are visible signs of a brutal, aggressive authoritarianism behind it, posing as a national necessity and a sort of high patriotic achievement.
It's rather superficial a pretense to present the Hungarian PM as a fighter against liberalism and a protector of Europe. Without democratic values, without taming the nationalist passions, Europe would've never become what it is now, including an example towards which the societies of East Europe were striving at the time they were struggling to shed the shackles of communism.
There are many flaws in European policy of course, including ones that are unforgivable - but the pretense that their solution is through the imposition of the only true truth, the one professed by the God-anointed messiah Orban, is a rejection of everything and anything European.
Here the enthusiastic supporters of the Hungarian Dear Leader would normally apply the ideological cliches of totalitarianism, citing his contributions to improving the living standard of his people, raising the average income and birth rate of Hungary, and turning his country into Paradise on Earth. There's little surprise in these fanfares, so familiar in tone to the plenty of communist-nostalgia folks, who've never stopped hoping that Dear Leader would "raise" their salaries and "pay" for their kids' education, and "provide" their health care, and give a solution to all their problems in life. We've all seen this before here in East Europe, and we're seeing it even now in our societies: our very own PM Borisov has adopted a friendly stance towards Orban for a reason. Old instincts die hard indeed.
However, I'd venture further and say that Orban is not the real problem here. He's just too small and insignificant to determine the fate of the entire EU. The problem is the ideology and the tendencies that go together with the indoctrination into Orbanism-style populist nationalism: getting used to authoritarianism and accepting it as the norm; undermining democracy and its inherent institutions; the degradation of the democratic process; the assault on the civic society; the collapse of the primacy of law - all of this is being presented as a new set of values, and a sign of national dignity.
What he's doing in Hungary is a complete dismantling of European values (while fully benefiting from EU membership), and a reversion to the norms and values of an epoch that existed before the EU, the Weimar system, the trading of borders and sovereignty - all things that Europe has worked hard to leave behind. He's selling his people the idea of a great nation, and the primacy of national ideas over European solidarity. He's playing the nationalist card of the Hungarian ethnic minorities in neighboring countries, and flirting with the idea of granting Hungarian citizenship to ethnic Hungarians in those countries. He's promising to give all Hungarians what Putin gave the Russians in Crimea - and all of this is just part of a greater pattern, the same pattern we've seen further east.
Orban has consistently worked to destroy political competition, or at least formalize it to an extent where viable opposition and other-thinkers are completely marginalized. And here we're not talking about some abstract things, this is about depriving the institutions of power of a key resource and of guarantees for efficient governing. There's complete and utter totalitarianism at the end of that side of the spectrum, new nationalist megalomaniac projects starting with "Great~", and a complete dismantling of the EU project being somewhere along the line. Just to remind: fascism did not exhibit its characteristics openly in the early 20s, it wasn't until it went through genuine victory on open elections that it gained the legitimacy it needed to finally shut down the page of freedom and democracy in the 30s.
In Hungary, almost all media and the whole press are under Dear Leader's control. The local oligarchy are his creation and his projection: the established system has nothing to do with the standards of political and market competition, there's no equal opportunity for non-establishment, non-conformist newcomers. There are no real alternatives. You're either part of the Orban model, or you get tossed out of it. Sound familiar?
In order to enforce his worldview and his model, Orban has crafted a virtual political reality, and invented political problems where none existed. A similar thing has been happening in Poland as well. There's no pressing problem with refugee migration in those countries, yet we're constantly seeing propaganda about evil foreigners doing things happening thousands of miles away to the west, designed to frighten us into accepting the curbing of human rights here and now. By bringing this hysteria to a crescendo, people are brought out of balance, and are deprived of a rational and sober assessment - their common sense gets muted, so they could readily accept the replacement of real interests and problems with imaginary threats.
Really, how realistic does it seem to you that you'd see Middle Eastern migrants beating a cop on the street just in front of you? It's much more likely to see cops beating and arresting not foreign refugees (because there are almost none of those here), but protesting local people - and that's a reality, not some invented threat, one that Orban and people like him don't want us to notice and discuss.
The real problems of Hungary, Poland, and yes, Bulgaria too, are not due to uncontrolled migration. Migrants are doing their best to avoid these countries because of the poor living conditions and the poor attitude of the locals. Seeing brown people on the street is extremely rare in Budapest, Warsaw or Sofia. If the safety and prosperity of a nation is measured by the low share of migrants, then countries like Singapore, the US, Luxembourg, Australia and Canada shouldn't have been among the most developed ones in the world! And remember the fate of all leaders of ethnically "clean" nations. Right? It's even more absurd that these ideas are being embraced in countries that are on geographical crossroads, like mine - where the mixing of cultures has always been a factor, and cannot be avoided.
It's one thing to protect your nation through economic growth, encouraging prosperity and maintaining demographic balance, fostering more competitive and innovative policies that would naturally generate national pride and confidence - it's quite another to seek salvation in stirring distrust and turning your neighbor into foe. Because it's doubtless that Orban and his followers both at home and abroad would gladly sell the image of Brussels the enemy, Washington the evil, and more generally Africa, Asia and All Those Shitholes as the reason for all problems, and Dear Leader's decisions as the only possible solution.
It's normal that in the process of removing boundaries, and the free movement of people, which brings a free movement of goods, services and capitals, which millions of people in this part of the world have benefited from, the number of migrants to and within the EU would increase (hell, how many East Europeans have moved to West Europe in recent decades?) What we could reasonably determine as migration of critical proportions that could potentially threaten social cohesion, religious and ethnic balance, is far even from the most pessimistic scenarios right now.
Even the worst-case scenarios for refugee crises show that the number of migrants who'd remain in these countries long-term is negligible. Since there are no indications that this situation would change any time soon, guys like Orban have to resort to blatant propaganda cliches and manipulations. His ideological comrades from our own domestic ultra-conservative nationalist spectrum are crafting a virtual reality that they're using to excuse a real authoritiarian policy, and the state repression against political and ideological opponents. Our domestic so called "conservatives" have "evolved" through their passionate hostility to any different opinion into reliable useful idiots of the neo-nationalist tide that's sweeping across Europe.
Let's not fool ourselves. Orbanism and its related neo-totalitarian tendencies are nothing new. They fit perfectly into Kremlin's new type of hybrid warfare, they draw power and inspiration, and often funds from there. The same way that Moscow has managed to mobilize its allies and a whole network of useful idiots to halt the advance of democracy in their adjacent geopolitical zones, it's now employing the same networks to create the narrative that Western democracy is the enemy, the EU is "failing", and guys like Orban are the new saviors.
It's no surprise that the bulk of those videos and reports of migrant misbehavior is being amped up and heralded far and wide by RT-like Kremlin-sponsored propaganda centers. And people in countries like mine are being constantly scared by these terrible stories, even though we can never have the ethnic problems that the ghettos of France, Belgium or Britain have had. We've never been huge colonial empires where huge masses of weird-looking people who talk funny have flocked into. We're not "obligated" or indeed, pressed, to accept any hordes of newcomers from the east - they themselves don't want to stay here in the first place. We'll never be an immigration melting pot. So, threatening Hungarians, Bulgarians or Polish with imminent migrant catastrophe is akin to claiming they'd automatically get as rich as the Germans through the mere fact of joining the EU, without moving a finger. It just doesn't work that way, folks! Let's get real here, shall we?
There's no rational reason that any of the "bad" migrants would want to stay here. We don't have the welfare state of France, or the living standard of Denmark, or the basic ethnic or religious tolerance of Germany. No sane person would want to move to a place where everyone and everything is hostile to them. And yet, we're constantly being bombarded with apocalyptic scenarios, while we're completely being spared the upsides of migration. No one mentions that roughly 1/4 of Turkey's remarkable economic growth has been due to migration, including increased labor productivity, and competitiveness, and living standard along with it.
Let's face it. The biggest problem of East Europe is the opposite to immigration: it's emigration. We've lost the cream of our national capital in terms of people, who've left in swaths to countries that we're now spitting against. They're highly educated, highly qualified, working people with families and kids, with great work potential, with consumer potential, personal savings, significant income, own business, and ideas for innovation. We've lost all that to the West - and it's not the Middle Eastern refugees who is to blame for all this.
Only a hopeless optimist would claim that most of these emigrants would ever return. The time of such illusions has passed. The bitter truth is that the next generation of Bulgarians has been born abroad, and they have no connection to the motherland.
Our problem is the demographic catastrophe that we've inflicted upon ourselves (don't listen to those conspiracy theorists who claim it's a result of an elaborate Western conspiracy to destroy our precious society - that's yet another attempt to avoid responsibility). It's not that many of our people are leaving now - the best part of them has already left, never to return. And no one wants to come in their place, not even Middle Eastern brown people who talk funny. Sure, some pro-government optimists would cite the fact that wealthy pensioners from North Europe are moving here to buy a rural house and live out their last years in serenity in some remote depopulated corner of our dear Fatherland. But would those elderly folks re-populate the Fatherland with children? Not really. If anything, those kids would need need good health-care, and education, and infrastructure, proper administration and other adequate services - and we need labor force and resources, and proper governing for those. And we can't provide them at this point.
Compare the energy that Orbanists employ in selling the crafted problem with migration to the rest of society, with the efforts that his government puts into solving real-life problems, and be amazed.
Every year the EU needs about 2 million new migrants if it were to sustain growth. For a continent of 500 million people, that's hardly a problem. Even less so for East Europe, where the share of migrants is minute. And yet, political manipulators like Orban don't allow their societies to see the real problem: there's hardly enough people left there, willing to work and provide for the pensions of the older generations; there's no one to populate the desolate rural regions, and this is dragging the whole economy down.
That said, it's hardly a surprise that Poland is quietly importing migrants. Orban has started doing that too, through the back door. But he's not talking about it much, because he'd look ridiculous if he was blasting migration with his mouth while importing them through the back door. At first he was throwing dust in the eyes of his people, saying there was a problem with Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, and promising Hungarian citizenship for them. But it turned out that after the issue of over a million Hungarian passports, only a small fraction of those people decided to move to Hungary. In 2018 alone, Hungary has been in shortage of 100 thousand workers, mostly of low qualification. There's no way this gap could be filled without importing migrants.
Of course, the useful idiots among the Orbanists would go to tremendous lengths to convince you that robotization of labor would solve the problem with the workforce shortage, and that there are other solutions that don't involve migrants. It's pointless to try to reason with these people, and with Orban himself. He's a historical aberration that could only appear in a society with a fledgling democracy and a Weimar complex that's still alive. We could argue all we want about the future of my country as well, or EU's future, or what the solutions of the real-life problems are, but the one thing we shouldn't forget is that the biggest problem as well as the biggest solution is with the people. Our people. They're to blame for their own problems, and it's them and only them who can solve those problems. And yes, it's fear alone that we should fear.
(no subject)
Date: 17/9/18 14:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/9/18 18:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/9/18 20:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/18 05:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/18 05:46 (UTC)Highly recommended, by the way. This post should go into the hall of fame, imo. Not just for the effort, detail and structure, but more because the subject is probably the most important political problem of our time.
(no subject)
Date: 18/9/18 06:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/9/18 14:26 (UTC)None of this looks as if it will end well unless folk actually take some responsibility for their actions; and also, in this time of extreme job turmoil not seen since the days of the introduction of the spinning jenny, we need a proper safety net and/or good retraining resources on top of needing greater skilled and unskilled immigration.
But once any culture veers towards the enthno-nationalist end of the spectrum, and that starts getting political traction, you know problems are just around the corner.
And it's on our watch, dammit. Doing the right thing takes courage sometimes.
(no subject)
Date: 21/9/18 16:56 (UTC)The Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe never really changed that much from the end of the Soviet bloc, and how hollow those changes actually proved well west of Russia are easily proven by the Yugoslav Wars, Orban, and the rise of the new tinpot dictators to succeed the older ones of the 1920s.