It has been obvious to most media from the beginning that Giuseppe
Conte, no matter how many handshakes he makes with Trump or summit meetings he
attends, is not the true boss of Italy: that designation belongs to arch-racist
and Mussolini-quoting Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. The focus on the reason
behind this – the leaders of Lega and 5 Star both wanted to be Premier and couldn’t
agree on who deserved the title – misses an important and worrying shift in
European politics: Increasingly, interior ministers are becoming the political
figures with the most popularity, and often, the most power.
Take Germany. Angela Merkel, who has been Chancellor of
Germany for thirteen years, is increasingly looking like a lame duck, whose mandate
could be cut short at any time by Horst Seehofer, a virulently anti-Muslim and
anti-refugee figure with a penchant for hostility towards left-wing street
activists combined with tolerance for legitimate fascists in his police work.
Herbert Kickl of Austria, meanwhile, has performed a
sinister bit of international diplomacy, linking Salvini and Seehofer into an ominously-titled
“axis” on migration. Typically, it would be prime ministers or the EU itself that
would make such big pronouncements over policies affecting the lives of
millions of Europeans (let alone, of course, hundreds of thousands of refugees).
In Britain, Thatcherite Ayn Rand-lover Sajid Javid has been frequently
touted as a potential future prime minister. Last month, he almost overturned
decades worth of national human rights precedent by considering the extradition
of ex-ISIS terrorists to the US where the death penalty might have been used. A
June poll showed that 69 percent of Tory members considered him “competent” and
ready to lead the country. And let’s not forget which ministry Theresa May herself
comes from.
The political advantages to being an interior minister are
in many cases obvious. While prime ministers are blamed on all sides for every
single failed government policy – economic, military, foreign, domestic –
Interior ministers have their fingers in only a single pot – combating “crime”
and “illegality.”
In a time when neoliberal politicians and proto-fascists
alike increasingly stoke popular anger over refugees to maintain support, the
ability to hunt down “illegal,” pursue a “hostile environment” and open up “controlled
centres” is catnip for any up-and-coming corporate suit, or outright sadist. Even
before Salvini, Marco Minniti, the Interior Minister under the so-called “left
wing” government of Democrat Matteo Renzi, was the most popular politician in power
as he cracked down on NGOs like MSF and Sea Watch.
The growing stature of interior ministers is not just
dangerous for refugees and foreigners. The position, based on concepts of “law
and order” and police power, is necessarily the one most venomous towards activists
and left-wing people of all stripes, from squatters to protestors to graffiti
artists to “black bloc” antifascists, and even ordinary voters.
Under May and Amber Rudd, and continuing under Javid, the British
government has ramped up the “Prevent” program, which extended reasonable
concerns over potential terror attacks into a full-blown authoritarian wet
dream, with anti-fracking activists, Kurdish leftists, ecologists, and more
targeted by the state.
Semi-fascist proposals, such as the censorship of social
media and jail terms for those who watch certain videos, were repeatedly
considered by the Tory interior ministers, after the 2011 riots and the 2017 terror
attacks, and will almost certainly be considered again as part of the so-called
“Fusion Doctrine.”
The left’s response to the escalating power of the
repression apparatus should be simple and firm – no compromise with the rhetoric
and trappings of the legal system or the police. Calls by Jeremy Corbyn to increase
the number of officers and France’s Jean-Luc Melenchon’s defence of the CRS in the
face of the Benalla Affair are not just misguided but dangerous. Socialists,
communists, and anarchists should work aggressively towards the dismantling of
these ministries as a primary and essential goal. A left-wing government not
dedicated towards these aims is little different from an alt-right
administration.
Finally, as a cautionary tale, Europeans should look at the
dreadful state of the political opposition in the United States, currently
rallying around two ex-FBI heads as the supposed saviors of American
democracy, to understand the political and philosophical cul-de-sac of any position
that involves law and order.