Ridiculous Western hysteria over “fascism” in Poland and Bulgaria

“On the Barricades” s06e50Show more

On this second release of the weekend, the hosts of “On the Barricades”, Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski, turn to the political systems of Poland and Bulgaria. There is a major theme in Western coverage of the political process in these countries that operates on the premise that, yes, liberal democracy is not working as it’s supposed to here— take that Bulgaria just had its 5th round of parliamentary elections in 2 years in attempt to form an elected government — but also that somehow, the electorate of the countries is the problem in that they somehow consent to “authoritarian” or non-democratic rule. The threat of fascism is often brought up to depict the process taking place when the pro-capitalist liberal elites can’t keep their grasp on power or provide stable governance.

The question is why the so-called “democracy” fails in these countries— due to underlying historical and systemic economic, institutional failure. Why does this convince many people that there’s no point in voting? And, how do authoritarian-branded political entities— like Borisov’s GERB regime in Bulgaria or Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party in Poland, or even the unelected technocratic governments Bulgaria has seen in the last years— enjoy the popular support they do? We can make sense of these questions given a party system where parties represent competing oligarchic interests completely divorced from the people they’re supposed to serve, where the opposition is in the hands of petty elites who seem to hate the majority of the voting base, and the so-called Left sells out time and time again. From this perspective, democracy in these countries looks like a rivalry between bad and worse imposed rule— and the attitude of the voter base reflects just this.