{"id":394802,"date":"2019-02-01T00:39:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T23:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/liberal-elite-still-luring-us-towards-the-abyss-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2019-02-01T00:39:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T23:39:06","slug":"liberal-elite-still-luring-us-towards-the-abyss-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/liberal-elite-still-luring-us-towards-the-abyss-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Elite Still Luring Us Towards the Abyss \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">We have so little time, but still the old guard wants to block any possible path to salvation, writes Jonathan Cook<strong>.<\/strong><span id=\"more-32890\"\/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/tag\/jonathan-cook\/\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">By JonathanCook<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\"><em><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/\">Jonathan-Cook.net<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Jonathan-Cook.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Jonathan-Cook-130x130.jpeg\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-28879\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-28879\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Jonathan-Cook-130x130.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><strong><span style=\"font-size: 18pt;\">A<\/span><\/strong> group of 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians has published a manifesto bewailing the imminent collapse of Europe and its supposed Enlightenment values of liberalism and rationalism. The idea of Europe, they warn, \u201cis falling apart before our eyes,\u201d as Britain prepares for Brexit and \u201cpopulist and nationalist\u201d parties look poised to make sweeping gains in elections across the continent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">The\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/jan\/25\/fight-europe-wreckers-patriots-nationalist\">short manifesto<\/a><\/span>\u00a0has been published in the liberal elite\u2019s European house journals, newspapers such as the <em>Guardian<\/em>. \u201cWe must now fight for the idea of Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism,\u201d their document reads. Failure means \u201cresentment, hatred and their cortege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">Unless the tide can be turned, elections across the European Union will be \u201cthe most calamitous that we have ever known: victory for the wreckers; disgrace for those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius; disdain for intelligence and culture; explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism; disaster.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_32891\" style=\"width: 509px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Bernard-Henri_L\u00e9vy-tau-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Bernard-Henri_L\u00e9vy-tau-2-700x467.jpg\" class=\" wp-image-32891\" alt=\"Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy. (Wikimedia)\" width=\"499\" height=\"333\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-32891\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Bernard-Henri_L\u00e9vy-tau-2-700x467.jpg\" alt=\"Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy. (Wikimedia)\" width=\"499\" height=\"333\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000;\">Bernard-Henri L\u00e9vy. <span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">(Wikimedia)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">The manifesto was penned by Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher and devotee of Alexis de Tocqueville, a theorist of classical liberalism. Its signatories include novelists Ian McEwan, Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie; the historian Simon Shama; and Nobel prize laureates Svetlana Alexievitch, Herta M\u00fcller, Orhan Pamuk and Elfriede Jelinek.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">Though unnamed, their European political heroes appear to be Emmanuel Macron of France, currently trying to crush the popular, anti-austerity protests of the Yellow Vests, and German chancellor Angela Merkel, manning the barricades for the liberal elite against a resurgence of the nationalist right in Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt; color: #000000;\">Let us set aside, on this occasion, the strange irony that several of the manifesto\u2019s signatories \u2013 not least Henri-Levy himself \u2013 have a\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/1.5127044\">well-<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">known passion<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for Israel, a state that has always rejected the universal principles ostensibly embodied in&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2019\/01\/31\/liberal-elite-still-luring-us-towards-the-abyss\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have so little time, but still the old guard wants to block any possible path to salvation, writes Jonathan Cook. By JonathanCookJonathan-Cook.net A group of 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians has published a manifesto bewailing the imminent collapse of Europe and its supposed Enlightenment values of liberalism and rationalism. The idea of Europe, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-394802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}