Ultranationalism and the Art of the Stateless State
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Ultranationalism and the “Deep State” There doesn’t seem to be a worse moment than the present to defend the project of stateless internationalism. The recent European elections of May 2014 showed the growing influence of ultranationalist parties on the political establishment; in terms of representation in the 01/12 European Parliament, ultranationalist parties became the largest parties in France (National Front), Denmark (Danish People’s Party), and the United Kingdom (United Kingdom Independence Party), while gaining substantial ground in Austria (Freedom Party of Austria) and Sweden (Swedish Democrats), and remaining relatively stable in the Netherlands (Freedom Party). They Jonas Staal suffered heavy losses in Belgium (Flemish Interest), but this was due to the success of a slightly more moderate and competing To Make a nationalist party (New Flemish Alliance).1 The next step for these ultranationalist parties has World, Part I: been to seek alliances and prepare to deliver the final blow to the supra-nationalist managerial Ultranationalism project of the European Union. Their challenge is to convince EU parliamentarians from seven or more different countries to unite in order to, as and the Art of Le Pen has said, make the EU “disappear and be replaced by a Europe of nations that are free and the Stateless sovereign.”2 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe leaders of the ultranationalist parties e t a t seem to be in permanent competition to S State s radicalize the discourse concerning immigration s e l and failing economies, with the hope that their e t a arguments will help reclaim national sovereignty t S e from the EU. These arguments range from Marine h t Le Pen in France claiming that the Muslim f o t community is the new anti-Semitic danger of the r l A a e twenty-first century, to the Danish People’s Party a t h t S declaring that Denmark should be kept “Danish d s n a a n for the Danish,” culturally as well as o m J Ê s economically. Their main obstacle does not seem i l 4 a 1 to be a strong international progressive n 0 o 2 i t r counterforce, but rather their own incapacity to a e n b deal with each other’s extremisms, leading to a m r t e l t two prominent, competing right-wing blocks. U p : e I One block organized itself into a coalition called s t r a — Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (which P 7 , 5 d includes the UK Independence Party, the l # r l o Swedish Democrats, and, to the surprise of a W n r a many, the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five u e o j k Star Movement), while the other block organized x a u l M f itself into the European Alliance for Freedom o - e T (which includes the National Front, the Freedom Party, and Lega Nord). The parties from both blocks attempted to collaborate, as this is the only way they could gain enough subsidies from the EU, but for now were unable to reach an agreement due to opposition against the anti- Semitic rhetoric of the National Front. This means that for now, the strength of the ultranationalists is limited to the UK 11.20.14 / 17:53:55 EST 02/12 Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front (FN), delivers a speech in front of a poster depicting Joan of Arc and the slogan “No to Brussels, Yes to France” during a rally in Paris on May 1, 2014. Photo: AFP PHOTO / Pierre Andrieu. 11.20.14 / 17:53:55 EST Independence Party’s group. that Muslims in Europe have become a “fifth ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is important to observe that at the very column” (a term used to describe a clandestine time that we are confronted with the rise of military unit). Wilders claims that these Muslim ultranationalism, we also face the growing “sleeper cells” are seemingly moderate, but in influence of a set of structures which have fact can strike against democracy at any emerged alongside and parallel to moment.5 It is no coincidence that Wilders, ultranationalist movements. Whereas during one of his many fundraising visits to the ultranationalism uses fundamental democratic 03/12 US, took the opportunity to visit its military rights to spread a thoroughly antidemocratic prison in Guantnamo Bay. Immediately rhetoric steeped in racism, anti-Semitism, afterwards, he stated: discrimination, and so on, these other structures develop out of democratic decision-making but I ask the government to build a Dutch turn against the fundamentals of democratic detention center for potential terrorists, politics, such as accountability, legality, and modeled after Guantnamo Bay, in order to transparency. The development of these imprison the potential terrorists known to structures follows naturally from neoliberal the AIVD [Dutch Secret Service] as a ideology, which incessantly argues for the precaution É I would gladly lay the first abolition of the state altogether (while stone.6 depending on the state to be “bailed out”). These structures are what former diplomat and Just like his colleagues from the anti-EU block, Vietnam-War-critic-turned-professor Peter Dale Wilders propounds a phantasmatic, conservative Scott has called the “Deep State,” a term he utopia of the “homeland” as it once was and borrowed from Turkish analysts. The Deep State should become once more. Needless to say, becomes apparent through, for example, these presumed origins of the Netherlands that assignments “handed off by an established are allegedly being lost never existed in the first agency to organized groups outside the law.”3 In place. Wilders’s homeland that would close its the context of the War on Terror, writer and borders, build its own Guantnamo Bay, ban the journalist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed describes Quran, and prohibit the wearing of headscarves these practices that outsource decision-making in public buildings may seem to limit itself to the e t a to entities that are not accountable to the public t territorial space where the “authentic” Dutch S 7 as s citizen supposedly dwells. But it serves that s e l other homeland just as well: political e t a novel but under-theorized conception of a substructures that consist of the homeland t S the modern liberal state as a complex e securities of this world, which are increasingly h t dialectical structure composed of a public gaining leverage over their own governments. f o democratic face which could however be t ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊRecently, the European organization r l A a routinely subverted by an unaccountable e Statewatch published reports exposing the fact a t h 4 t S security structure. that the EU has invested large amounts of tax d s n a a n money into corporate research for the o m J Ê In simpler terms, our age of mass surveillance by s development of unmanned aerial vehicles, i l 4 a secret agencies in “democratic” countries, 1 otherwise known as “drones”: n 0 o 2 i t assisted by the massive amounts of data handed r a e n over by corporate entities such as internet b Û300 million of taxpayers’ money [was a m r t e l service providers and social media companies to t invested] in projects centered on or U p : e I organizations such as the National Security prominently featuring drone technology É s t r a Agency (NSA), has led to the rise of new political — [D]rones are being adapted for security P 7 , 5 structures that fall outside the democratic d purposes through research and l # r l control of people, and often even of politicians o development projects, all of which are a W n r themselves. The rise of these political structures a dominated by European (and Israeli) u e o j may at first glance seem opposed to the rise of k defense multinationals seeking further x a u l 8 M ultranationalism, though in fact, they are f diversification into “civil” markets. o - mutually supportive. e T ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFor example, in the Netherlands, Geert This investment, which the EU legitimizes as Wilders’s Freedom Party – which, together with “research” (even though this is an obvious case Le Pen’s National Front, has been one of the of a supra-national structure subsidizing the strongest voices in the anti-EU and anti-Islam security industry), encompasses all aspects of movement in Europe – was a product of the post- drone manufacturing: 9/11 era. Wilders’s argument for closing borders and forcing the return of Dutch-born Muslims to The European Commission has long their “country of origin” comes from his belief subsidized research, development and 11.20.14 / 17:53:55 EST international cooperation among drone criminalization of civilians worldwide. manufacturers. The European Defense ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMost importantly, there is a direct Agency is sponsoring pan-European relationship between ultranationalism and the research and development for both military EU’s unaccountable investments into drone and civilian drones. The European Space technology. For citizens to outsource their Agency is funding and undertaking research agency to the structures of the Deep State, they into the satellites and communications need to have the will to do so; the fears stoked by infrastructure used to fly drones. Frontex, 04/12 ultranationalism create this will. These fears fuel the EU’s border agency, is keen to deploy the global extralegal structures that we are surveillance drones along and beyond the confronted with nowadays, and which undermine EU’s borders to hunt for migrants and the celebrated sovereignty of the very states that refugees.9 ultranationalism swears to protect.