«A Spectre is Haunting Europe»

With the protests of France, the allegation collapse, in practice, about an "Arab spring" restricted to our region and its circumstances and problems, without linking these problems to their fundamental root. They are collapsed, in particular, those theoretical propositions of some of the forces that have climbed on the peoples' uprisings in our countries, that the goal and motif of the popular movement is to reach the Western model. In France, we can see an example of the "Western model" and "liberal democracy" which was considered as "the end of history", proves that history is not over, and that the problem is deeper, thus it requires deeper and more radical solutions.

For at least three centuries, France has been the starting point for major transformations in Europe – if we take the 1789 French Revolution as a fundamental hallmark. But if we go back further, we can see that France has also contributed to the production of enlightenment thinkers such as Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

If the French masses had occupied the Bastille at the beginning of the French Revolution, without being headed by a clear party or leadership, the Yellow Vests, in their turn, in Champs-Elysées, did not come out under specific party leadership. Both of these incidents confirm the hypothesis of periodic rotting of the old political space when it loses its connection with the masses, the masses whose problems accumulate to the point of urging them again to go down to the street after some short or long slumber, thus meeting the third condition of the revolutionary situation: the high political activity of the masses. This activity continues to create a new political space that actually and correspondingly expresses the activity which continues, after the creation of such a space, in supervising the entitled historical changes, which are due and cannot be skipped or delayed.

The slogans of the Yellow Vests so far, as well as the movement itself and the breadth of its range, confirm two fundamental issues:

First, all the alliances and assemblies formed during the second half of the twentieth century, during the decline of the global revolutionary movement and the slumber period of the masses, are now in the process of disintegration and dissolution, namely NATO, the World Trade Organisation, the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Union itself.

Second, the US political dominance over the European countries, which has been completely consolidated by the changes that followed De Gaulle and then with Thatcherism and Neoliberalism, is now living its last days. If the first blow in this century is the launch of the euro, the isolation of USA will not last, and will reach to the global financial system and its cornerstone, i.e. the dollar, starting with the remittance system, and not ending in the way the global reserve currency is adopted.

The spectre, who haunted Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century has returned, not to Europe alone but to the whole world!

Kassioun Editorial, Issue No 891, December 10, 2018