RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/narendra-modi-victory

As Western media focus on China’s rise, India remains a geopolitical enigma. While America’s trade wars with Beijing dominate headlines, news outlets relegate India to buried stories of intrigue—a destructive monsoon, a derailed train, a guru in saffron robes with sacred cows.

Why the difference in treatment? Fault may lie with the Jesuits who, beginning in the seventeenth century, evangelized the Chinese instead of the polytheistic Hindus. Modern China also figures prominently in our daily lives. Look at your shoes or your telephone—they probably come from China, not India. India’s economy focuses on its internal market and on exports to poor countries, rather than on trade with the West. Yet India’s population now equals China’s, with its rate of growth projected to surpass the Communist country. And the Indian middle class, with a standard of living comparable with its counterparts in Europe and America, hovers around 200 million people—equivalent in size to the Chinese middle class. India, nonetheless, remains poorer than China, in part because it was late to reform its economy.

In 1979, Chairman Deng Xiaoping renounced collectivism and opened his nation’s economy to market reforms, permitting the Chinese to accumulate personal wealth. It wasn’t until 2004 that India embraced the free market, with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh renouncing the state socialism that dated to the country’s independence in 1949. Under the long reign of India’s Congress Party, which claimed the mantle of Mahatma Gandhi, the country’s economy grew 1 percent annually. Without irony, economists, called this the “Indian rate,” as if it were a cultural sentence.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/strange-claims-about-britains-european-elections/

After the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, an awful lot of bad articles and books poured forth. Among the worst were those that claimed we had entered a “post truth” era. Oxford Dictionaries — never missing an opportunity to look like the cheapest publicity hounds — declared “post truth” to be their Word of the Year for 2016.

In fact, as I have pointed out here before, it is more true to say that we have entered an era in which (to borrow a phrase from the Irish writer Kevin Myers) the truth becomes “whatever you’re having yourself.”

The aftermath of the European Elections in Britain has provided a fine example of this. Of course the fact that Britain had European Elections this year is in itself something to marvel at. Three years ago the British people voted to leave the European Union. But thanks to the ineptitude and malfeasance of nearly an entire political class there we were again last week, invited to the polls to vote on who we would like to represent us at a body the majority of the public voted three years ago to leave.

But what a response. By any honest analysis the night belonged to Nigel Farage’s newly formed Brexit party, which won 31.6 percent of the overall vote, winning 29 seats. The next-largest party was the Liberal Democrats, just over 20 percent of the vote and 16 seats, which is quite a lead for Farage. The runners-up of Labour (ten seats), the Greens (seven seats), and the Conservatives (four seats) struggled to make their performance look like a success. But the most striking thing about the reaction to the results was the effort to claim them as evidence that Britain wants to remain in the EU.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273873/eu-elections-usher-new-era-bruce-bawer

Not only was the turnout in last week’s European Parliament elections the highest in at least 20 years; the results themselves were nothing less than spectacular. In Italy, Matteo Salvini pronounced: “A new Europe is born.” Writing in De Volkskrant, Dutch journalist Marc Peeperkorn declared that the vote tallies marked the end of the “omnipotence” in Brussels of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, a significant step forward for Green parties, and a “modest” advance for “Euroskeptic populists.”

“Modest” strikes me as a classic example of calculated mass-media understatement. In fact, to judge by the results, the main reason that millions of Europeans flocked to the polls was to tell Brussels that they’re sick of being ruled by Brussels. Almost everywhere on the continent, results for Euroskeptic parties were, at the very least, encouraging, and at most downright stunning: in France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally came in first; ditto Salvini’s Northern League in Italy and the Freedom Party in Austria (whose leader, chancellor Sebastian Kurz, has just been ousted as a result of a scandal); in Germany, Alternative for Germany finished a strong fourth place; in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats almost tied for third with the Moderates; in the Netherlands, Thierry Baudet’s fledgling Forum for Democracy secured a promising fourth. (Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party came in eighth.)  

But the biggest news of all was in Britain, where the ruling Tories dropped to fifth place and Nigel Farage’s just-founded Brexit Party topped them all, securing 28 MEPs to the Liberal Democrats’ 15, Labour’s 10, the Greens’ 7, and the Conservatives’ 3. It was the first time in British history that so new a party had won such a sensational victory. Brexit will now have the largest delegation of any party in the European Parliament. It triumphed even in cities that had voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, suggesting that former Remainers, perhaps in reaction to Brussels’ arrogant response to Brexit, have changed their mind about the EU – and/or that Remainers, despite their views on EU membership, resent their Tory-led Parliament’s failure to carry out the electorate’s clearly stated will.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/understanding-the-results-of-the-european-parliamentary-elections/

The legacy parties continued to decline and the populist right advanced only so far. Now, the pro-EU left, which gained ground, may grow more assertive.

Sunday’s results in the European Parliament elections are like a clever modernist painting, apparently formal, abstract, and meaningless, which as you move back from it, looks increasingly like a busy city street with cars, taxis, buses, and people going quite clearly in their different directions. You can even guess where some of the drivers will end up. Similarly, if you step back and glance at the election returns with, as yet, not a great deal of exit-polling data on which to base deeper judgments, you will probably reach these preliminary conclusions:

1) The mainstream parties of the center-Left and center-Right (or so-called legacy parties) continue a decline that has now been going on, at different speeds in different countries, for several decades. Italy’s Christian Democrats fell apart in the 1990s; its post-Communist socialists more recently; Berlusconi’s once-dominant Forza Italia fell into single figures this time; and the socialists are still struggling, at 22 percent. In this election, Italy’s insurgent populist partners — the League and the Five Star Movement — got 51 percent of the total vote between them, and they’re not getting a divorce. It was a less happy story in Germany where the two main parties in the “Grand Coalition” — Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU and the Social Democrats — both lost ground compared with their performance in 2014, scoring only 45 percent jointly when they would once have been in the high seventies. France’s traditional parties of government almost disappeared from the results, all scoring in single figures. And so on. The most dramatic collapse of the centrist parties was in Britain, where the governing Tories fell to below 10 percent. But that story will get fuller treatment elsewhere.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/germanys-bare-headed-brouhaha/

The outcry over remarks made on Saturday by the German government’s first-ever anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, is peculiar. If Klein were not truthful about his assessment that Jews who wear their kippot [skullcaps] in public in Germany these days are at risk, he would be doing a disservice to his post.

Nor did his comment about anti-Semitism in Germany “showing its ugly face more openly” emerge in a vacuum. No, his mentioning that calling someone a Jew is once again being used as an insult—even in schools with no Jewish students—followed and was reflective of a worrisome report released last Tuesday by the German Interior Ministry. According to the report, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose by nearly 20 percent in 2018 from the previous year, and the number of physical attacks against Jews in 2018 had increased to 69 from 37 in 2017.

Admitting that his opinion on the matter had “unfortunately changed compared with what it used to be,” Klein also acknowledged that strategies for combating the phenomenon would have to be forged.

Klein was immediately called to task by Jewish leaders at home and abroad. In a Facebook post on Sunday—in German, English and Hebrew—Berlin’s chief rabbi, Yehuda Teichtal, wrote: “The combating of anti-Semitism is a top priority so it is appreciated that this is being addressed by top representatives of the government. At the same time, the KIPA [sic] is a clear symbol of Jewish identity and should be worn with PRIDE. Of course all the necessary security precautions need to be taken, at the same time, hiding our identity was never the solution, we should be always be PROUD of who we are. AM ISRAEL CHAI [the people of Israel live].”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-promise-and-peril-of-modis-triumph-11558989753

Narendra Modi’s triumphant re-election as India’s prime minister may not have been a shock—ever since Indian forces retaliated in February against Pakistan-based attacks in Kashmir, the contest had been moving in his direction—but it does represent an important tipping point in Indian history, and therefore in world history.

As Tunku Varadarajan wrote in these pages last week, India is turning decisively away from the Western ideological foundations of its founding fathers. The secularist and liberal beliefs that grounded Indian politics during the long era of Congress Party domination have lost majority support. Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism can do what the Congress vision no longer can: assemble a consensus that makes India governable.

A dedication to secular liberal values imported from abroad is weak tea for holding large political agglomerations together, and the Congress vision of India was dying long before Mr. Modi administered the coup de grâce. Before the new era of majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party governments, India was turning into a country without a majority. Regional- and caste-based parties had eaten away at the Congress consensus. The complicated coalition building necessary to form a majority was frustrating effective governance. Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism for now offers a collective identity that can mobilize Indians across the subcontinent, defeating both the dying secularism of the Congress Party and the more parochial visions of the regional and caste parties.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sick-man-of-europe-is-europe-11558989783

Two takeaways from Sunday’s European Union elections: First, the centrists—the moderate right and left—were decimated. For the first time since 1979, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the reliably pro-European bloc, no longer hold the majority in the 751-member European Parliament. Second, the far right—the Europe bashers and nationalists—scored big, increasing their take to about 170 seats. In Britain, the Brexit Party trounced both Labour and the Tories. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally outpolled President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies.

The numbers mirror the shifting tectonics of European politics, which are pushing against the “ever-closer union” enshrined in the European Community’s founding treaties. It was a noble and not wild-eyed dream. Relentlessly expanding from the original six member states to 28, the EU boasted everything that could go into the making of a superpower. Its gross domestic product is only $2 trillion behind America’s and $5 trillion ahead of China’s. The EU fields as many soldiers as the U.S. does, and its population outstrips America’s by nearly 200 million. Yet in global clout, the EU is a waif in a world dominated by Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

Nor will the fates favor the EU anytime soon. For all its splendor, Europe has not been able to transmute its magnificent riches into strategic muscle, and this for three reasons.

First, as the rise of the nationalist right shows, the EU suffers from deepening ideological divisions. In the east, Poland, Hungary and the rest are jealously defending the sovereignty they had lost first to Hitler, then to Stalin. They cherish subsidies from Brussels but will not yield to what they see as diktats of liberal goodness.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14297/iran-deal-negotiations

As Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

“I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal… I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership.” — US President Donald J. Trump, press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, May 27.

Mr Pompeo told me that that Washington was not pushing for regime change in Tehran, but was instead seeking a revised agreement that satisfied all of Washington’s concerns about Iran’s conduct, and not just the narrow issue of uranium enrichment.

To date, the Iranians have responded to the Trump administration’s actions by threatening to intensify their policy of destabilization in the region.

There is one simple way for Iran to defuse the mounting tensions with the US and its allies in the Gulf: return to the negotiating table and agree to a new deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Amid mounting concern that Washington’s recent military build-up in the Gulf region will lead to renewed conflict, many commentators appear to have lost sight of the Trump administration’s key objective when it withdrew from the 2015 deal negotiated, in large part, by former US President Barack Obama.

The aim of US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement was not, as his Democrat critics have alleged, to provoke a military confrontation with Tehran. On the contrary, as Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-elections-deepen-divisions-in-national-capitals-11558960543

The outcome of the weekend’s European Union elections threatened a fresh period of instability in the bloc, with some countries set for early elections and coalition governments in Italy and Germany facing deeper strains.

As final results trickled in Monday, there was relief in Brussels that the vote didn’t yield a broad anti-EU nationalist surge. The Greens performed particularly strongly and pro-European lawmakers are set to form a clear majority in the new European Parliament.

Still, the EU faces continued political volatility and the results in many countries—including the departing Britain—suggested voters remain disillusioned and divided.

“The electorate is crying out for change and is therefore volatile—preferring to back new insurgents rather than the status quo parties that have been around for decades,” said Mark Leonard, founding director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party was firmly defeated in the EU vote, called snap elections before summer. Austria was already headed for the polls after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on May 18 dissolved his coalition. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Kurz was toppled by a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Belgium, which held national elections on Sunday, looks set for another protracted period of coalition building, with ethnic nationalist parties surging in Dutch-speaking Flanders, while the left performed strongly in French-speaking Wallonia.

In Germany, the election was a blistering indictment of the two ruling parties. Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and her left-leaning coalition partner Social Democratic Party both suffered large drops in votes compared with the last European elections in 2014 and the general election of 2017.

The main winner from this erosion wasn’t the stridently nationalist Alternative for Germany—whose share of the vote fell almost 2 percentage points below that of 2017—but the centrist Greens.

The SPD’s dire showing poses the biggest risk to the stability of Ms. Merkel’s government. The party’s relentless shrinkage puts chairwoman Andrea Nahles under growing pressure from grass-roots activists who want her to leave Ms. Merkel’s coalition and reposition the party in opposition.

The absence of a leader-in-waiting with sufficiently broad support, however, could postpone a reckoning for Ms. Nahles—and for the coalition—until after regional elections in Germany’s east in September and October.

In Italy, the elections handed a resounding victory to the nationalist League that reversed a balance of power from last year’s national elections with its coalition partner, the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement.

During campaigning, League leader Matteo Salvini, who is Italy’s interior minister, and members of his party clashed frequently with their 5 Star allies.

Mr. Salvini on Monday discounted, for now, speculation that his strong showing could tempt him to trigger a government crisis leading to fresh national elections.

“We won’t use this [electoral] support to settle accounts internally,” he said. “Our government allies are friends with whom from tomorrow we go back to work serenely.”

Observers say the results will likely help Mr. Salvini dominate the government. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/27/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-ousted-no-confidence-vote/

Sebastian Kurz was voted out of office as Austrian chancellor on Monday, less than 24 hours after his party won a resounding victory in the European elections.

Mr Kurz’s government lost a confidence vote in the Austrian parliament following the collapse of his coalition with the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ).

President Alexander Van der Bellen will now appoint a caretaker government until elections scheduled for September.

Mr Kurz is the first postwar Austrian chancellor to lose a confidence vote, but he is unlikely to be out of power for long.

His Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) will be strong favourites in September, after coming first with a projected 35 per cent in the European elections, more than 10 per cent clear of their closest rivals.

Hailed as the future of European conservatism when he became the world’s youngest leader in 2017 at the age of 31, Mr Kurz was always going to be vulnerable after ending his coalition with the Freedom Party over a corruption scandal just over a week ago.

He attempted to continue at the head of a minority government, but his former coalition partners joined forces with the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPÖ) to vote him out of power.

Mr Kurz accused his opponents of “playing revenge games” ahead of the vote, and warned: “At the end of the day the people will decide”.