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Entry: Europe's Fascist Future? Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/europes_fascist_future#2615 Post contents: Fine article, even if the title might violate some “truth in advertizing” requirements. I thought I was going to read about a new beer hall putsch. 1. Paul Gottfried is correct. European parties (most of them) are collections of bureaucratic and think-tank elites, not popular movements. Indeed, these elites greatly fear any popular movement whatsoever because of their memory of the 30s, when Red and Brown popular movements carried the day. Indeed, they can’t conceive of any popular movement that isn’t Red or Brown. The Browns (more nationalist than Fascist) are re-enforcing this prejudice. Liberal democracy (and I mean what Europeans mean by “liberal”) was never a mass movement, Gladstone's England excepted. Social democracy once was, at least for a certain social class. It’s a pity that Christian democracy no longer is. 2. In 1957, the Euro-elite’s model for Europe was the Hanseatic League. Now it is Richelieu’s model of France: natural frontiers, everything centralized grossly in a national capital, the monopolization of finance and force, weapons and fortification to intimidate eastern neighbors, bureaucratic absolutism, telling the pope to get lost, even confessional conformity retreaded as Cultural Marxist PC. For an alternative, the Federal US model is a poor one, at least the version of Hamilton/Clay/Lincoln/TR/FDR – ever worse than modeling oneself on the Ottoman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire and even Hapsburg Austria would be better choices. Sent at: 2008 11 20