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Nothing is more old fashioned than a future that has failed.
Gideon Rachman, who writes for the Financial Times, is an intelligent man who nowadays still thinks Brexit can be prevented.
I stumbled by chance across this article from 2008 by him, arguing for world government.
He quotes Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, who has written:
Back to Mr. Attali. He, in a fit metaphor for an age where tourism is the world's biggest industry, thinks
Gideon Rachman, who writes for the Financial Times, is an intelligent man who nowadays still thinks Brexit can be prevented.
I stumbled by chance across this article from 2008 by him, arguing for world government.
He quotes Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, who has written:
“For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible”and Jacques Attali, who founded EBRD and advised President Sarkozy:
“Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.”Gideon Rachman goes on:
"As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”. So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government."
In 2008 Gideon Rachman saw the EU as a paradigm for a future world government and presumably still does.
Many academics and opinion formers do.
I used to think world government was just a bugbear of elderly, nutty, right-wing Americans but if it was it no longer is.
Hopes for world government seem very out of date now and in ten or twenty years' time they may seem even more absurd, but ideas never die and these are backed by a lot of very important people.
The Clintons for example. Bill Clinton was talking about his dream of a borderless world on September 10, 2011 but he was out of office and the events of the next day meant nobody noticed.
The Clintons for example. Bill Clinton was talking about his dream of a borderless world on September 10, 2011 but he was out of office and the events of the next day meant nobody noticed.
The desirability of a borderless world is the ideal that informs the views of the Financial Times, the Economist and a lot of people who work in finance and big multinationals.
The fears about climate change (unfounded in my opinion), global terrorism (itself the product of globalisation and mass migration), fake news on the internet, tax havens and so many other things we read about are part of a huge, inchoate, idealistic movement which points to world government.
This is part of the reason for the intense anger that Brexit provokes in a small but very vocal minority of people - ditto Donald Trump and Mr Salvini in Italy.
It is especially prevalent in academia in the West. Academics nowadays are ardent internationalists who, with a tiny number of exceptions, fail to see any positive feature whatever in nationalism. Nations are fictions. How nice it would be if there were no borders and their children could go to university anywhere in the world.
“Every country should think of itself as a hotel and of its people as hoteliers.”
Hoteliers... without the right to refuse service.
ReplyDeleteOh dear - that joke is all too true.
DeleteGideon Rachman....shocker. (snark) that figures
ReplyDeleteWell if I were Jewish I would probably support internationalism and global government as well. What make Jews different from everyone else is that they are globalist by natural instinct rather than argument.
DeleteIt depends what you mean by globalist. Of the four British people I have known who were consistently and passionately in favour, from at least the early 1980s onward, of our leaving the EEC/EC/EU three are Jewish. Nigel Lawson and Michael Howard were in favour of Leave.
DeleteJews do have a sense of being citizens of the world but they proved exceptionally brave and collected a disproportionate number of medals in the British, French and German armies in the 1914-18 War.
On the one hand I accept that there are nowadays a lot of Jews who are on the left, pro-immigration, etc and like all people on the left annoying. But on the other hand there are good people like Paul Gottfried, Melanie Phillips, Lord Sachs, Lord Lawson, Lord Howard. About a third of one of Mrs Thatcher's early cabinets was said to be Jewish but they were not 'globalists'.
"Not Everyone Thinks Exactly the Same As You Do"
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=100&v=kkUOwBCt_0g
via THE GRØNMARK BLOG
So, the Clintons want a borderless world. Well, that explains why Hillary Clinton said the other day that Vladimir Putin is leading a "white supremacist" movement to break up the EU. If you're convinced that a borderless world is the way to go (as Hillary is, per revelations from Wikileaks), then nations and any sense of national identity must be eradicated at all costs. And anybody who resists the erosion of their nation — the arduous, costly, centuries-long labor of of one's ancestors — must be a "deplorable white supremacist."
ReplyDelete“Every country should think of itself as a hotel and of its people as hoteliers.”
This aptly explains the globalist mindset. And, when you think about it, what better to make this dream a reality than by spurring mass migration... to a place where the concept of borders is already severely attenuated? Hmm... what if the Arab Spring was not a failure from Clinton's perspective (and that of globalists more generally), but rather a success? What if creating a migration crisis in Europe was *the point* of toppling Gaddafi, backing anti-Assad rebels, etc.?
Having said that, I do believe that a world government would be a very good thing. A UN with the power to keep the peace among the nations? I like that idea very much, frankly.
But I don't want nations to disappear, and peoples to converge into a single amorphous blob either.
I think Ted Turner's metaphor for what the UN can and ought to be is useful. Years ago, he said that "We have states here in the US, yet nobody thinks we should do away with the federal government." The UN should be something like a federal government, keeping the peace among nations. But nations and their cultures and their borders should continue to exist as well. (Also, "federal government" is too strong an analogy; that implies imposing "progressive" ideologies such as gender ideology on traditional societies, and I wholeheartedly reject that idea).
I agree with your first paragraph and rejoice that that old woman is not in the White House - but not with the rest of what you said. World government would be the worst possible thing. It worked in Roman times because the emperors were dictators.
DeleteA UN with the power to keep the peace among the nations? I like that idea very much, frankly.
DeleteA UN with the power to keep the peace among the nations would be an empire.
And it certainly could not be democratic. A democratic UN would be entirely controlled by China and India - they have the numbers. The US would never accept that.
The only world government that would ever be acceptable to the US is one run by the US. It would be an American Empire. It would be like the Roman Empire but more corrupt and more vicious.
Would it not resemble the EU except much, much worse?
Delete