Transatlanticism: Swinging to the right, swinging to the left

Tony Judt, possibly one of the best political historians of our time, likes to remind us that Austria never exorcized its Nazi past. As Hitler's first 'victim,' it never intoned the kind of national mea culpa that Germany, grudgingly and painfully, let out over time. But Austria was not only Adolf Hitler's birthplace; it provided a disproportionate amount of SS agents, concentration camp administrators, and Nazi sympathizers, on a higher per capita basis than Germany itself. In the absence of accountability and collective soul-searching, the echoes of Austria's post-war deafening silence reverberate today.

Austria's 2008 general elections have just yielded the strongest electoral result of the far-right in Europe since the end of World War II. Surpassing Jörg Haider in 1999 and Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, the new poster boy of xenophobic, anti-Brussels Europe, Heinz-Christian Strache is the rising star in a country that embodies European civilization and is one of the highest contributors to the EU coffers. The young Strache and his former mentor, Haider, combined for one-third of the vote, holding a key to the success of any governing coalition emerging from the elections. A former dentist (am I the only one who finds that extremely appropriate?), Strache has been filmed in military fatigues training alongside known neo-nazis; wants to repeal a ban on swastikas and other Nazi symbols but prohibit the construction of minarets; enjoys calling headscarved women "female ninjas" and seems distressed that many Austrians prefer falafels, kebabs, and couscous over Wiener schnitzels and sausages; and his rhetoric and programs are unashamedly anti-gay rights, anti-immigration, anti-Islam and, perhaps most importantly, anti-EU. All of the above brings him close and tight with extreme right-wingers in France, Flanders, Bulgaria, Serbia, and elsewhere.

And it is not just Austria. A former fascist party, Alleanza Nationale, is part of Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition. Alessandra Mussolini, Benito's granddaughter, is growing more outspoken every day. While her cohorts harass Gypsies and immigrants, Berlusconi wants to make illegal immigration a punishable criminal offense and fingerprint the Roma minority. Similar anti-Islam and anti-immigration sentiment is growing in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Poland.

More mainstream conservatism is also on the rise. The Labour Party is crumbling in the United Kingdom, Sarkozy is winning his battle against the unions in France, and at least one of the Polish twins keeps quarrelling with Brussels over the death penalty. Not even Sweden is a social-democratic paradise anymore.

Meanwhile, the United States, a country whose political center is supposed to be markedly to the right from Europe, is in the midst of the biggest government intervention in its economy since the New Deal. American leaders are embracing words like 'bailout' and 'nationalization,' and railing against 'the unfettered free market' and 'deregulation' -although one could equally argue that "socialism for the rich," the only acceptable socialism in America according to John Kenneth Galbraith, has always been part of the conservative agenda. While stocks plunge in Wall Street, the political capital of atheism, universal health care, same-sex marriage, and taxes for the rich is steadily increasing. And unless something dramatic happens, Americans are about to elect a young, black, progressive man from the South Side of Chicago called Barack Hussein Obama to the highest office of the land.

It's almost as if a law of opposites informs the variable distance between the political centers of America and Europe, or as if the pendular swing of politics moves too fast to give all those books that came out at the beginning of the decade any respectable shelf life. Robert Kagan, who famously declared that Americans hail from Mars and Europeans hail from Venus, should look for new planets to explain the transatlantic gap. Jeremy Rifkin and others should wake up from their European Dream. Congressman Tom Tancredo, known for his hardline anti-immigration positions, is about to retire from his seat in the House of Representatives after failing to get Americans to embrace massive deportation. Well, maybe he should just move to Europe!

Political Dynasties

After tipping the scale in primaries and caucuses in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, and others, it is now commonly known that Latinos support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by an overwhelming margin. No one really knows why. After all, the brown-skinned candidate with an immigrant story and a different-sounding name is Barack Obama, and his campaign has poured untold sums of money into courting the Latino vote. Senator Clinton is not Latina, does not speak Spanish, and never fails to mispronounce the names of her Latino endorsers. Her biggest connections with the Latino community were her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, and her husband's appointment of Bill Richardson for two cabinet posts. Solis Doyle resigned early in the race after being singled out as main culprit of Clinton's campaign woes, and Richardson has all but endorsed Senator Obama.

Among those that flat-out reject the idea of a rift between the Latino and the African-American communities, some maintain that Latinos are much more comfortable with political dynasties, and this explains their support for the Clintons. This is always backed by a handful of examples that includes the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Pastranas in Colombia, and the Perón and Kirchner families in Argentina. However, this alleged Latino affinity with political dynasties is nothing but another example in a long list of unsubstantiated myths involving anything south of the Río Grande.

It has been a centuries-old game in the United States to depict Latin America as a disorderly riotocracy where lazy drunk men and receptive women indulge their childlike impulses; a sort of Roger Rabbit’s Toontown to be entered at one’s peril and that stands in stark contrast with the order and reason that prevail in the north; a chaotic amalgam of banana republics ruled by populist ideologues or iron-fisted caudillos. These stereotypes can be more or less fair, but the assertion that Latinos are favorably predisposed towards political families does not stand scrutiny. Comparatively speaking, dynasties in Latin America are a rare exception, rather than the norm. In fact, Latin America’s tumultuous history has worked against political dynasties. That Juán Perón or Néstor Kirchner were followed by their wives surely has little to do with the political culture of a Latino community that has few and thin ties to Argentina.

Latin America is not like the Middle East, where monarchies still prevail. Ruhollah Khomeini, after bringing down one of the world’s most famous dynasties, the Pahlavis, used to speak derisively of Saudi Arabia for being founded by, ruled by, and named after one single family. It is also clearly different from South Asia, where the Gandhis and the Bhuttos are only better known than a string of political families in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Malaysia. If there is one country in the American continent that has proved, again and again, that it is perfectly comfortable, if not enthusiastic, with dynasties, that is the United States. Everyone is familiar with the Clintons, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Daleys, the Bakers, the Cuomos, the Doles, the Gores, the Tafts, the Rockefellers, the Jacksons, the Fords, the Romneys, and other dynasties in the making, such as the Bidens and the Carters. That is in the last century alone, leaving out the time of John and John Quincy Adams, when a cluster of political families controlled politics and wealth. According to Stephen Hess, there have been 700 families with two or more members of Congress. Currently, ten percent of Congress has a close relative who has also served in the House or Senate. The Frelinghuysens of New Jersey, for example, have put four senators and two representatives in Congress. Name recognition surely counts for something.

Latinos are not bringing their love for dynasties across the border. If anything, their desire to assimilate to the new environment is overriding their natural impulse to be wary of families that hold on to power for too long.