Europe – back to the 30s?

 (The return of populism to the old continent)

Europe in the 30s was under the fever of the severe world economic crisis or as it is known in modern historiography, the Great Depression". This severe crisis was reflected in a major decline in industrial production, world trade, international financial flows, a deflationary spiral, debt deflation, banking crises. It was also reflected in the inability of many companies to pay their workforce. And this led to mass unemployment in most countries, which caused social misery, mass insecurity and political crisis. Popular dissatisfaction with governments and states in general increased greatly. They pointed the finger at the ruling elites, who were showing incompetence in managing the situations. This depression had different intensities in different countries. This meant, that the global economic crisis lasted for different periods of time in particular countries. This great crisis even continued until the beginning of World War II. On the old continent, National Socialist Germany (the National Socialist German Workers' Party, an extreme right-wing party or Nazi Party had come to power) surprisingly had overcome the global economic crisis in 1936, earlier than other countries. European. And it achieved this thanks to the full employment of the workforce. But what emerged was the fact that the working conditions were too bad and the wages too low to survive. There were subsequent wage increases and this was achieved through the austerity programs of the Nazi government. The then German government made a massive allocation of resources. Then what happened, what happened, the outbreak of World War II. One of the biggest world disasters. According to economic experts, there would have been no Great Depression if domestic central banks had prevented the contraction (ie reduction) of the money supply and alleviated banking crises by providing liquidity. Among the main factors that contributed to the global spread of the economic crisis, according to these experts, were the international export of crises through the gold standard currency regime that existed at that time and the protectionism that began during the global economic crisis. As is well known, protectionism is a form of trade policy pursued by a country to protect domestic suppliers from foreign competition by imposing additional taxes and excise duties on foreign suppliers. But what should be emphasized for this difficult period, it is a fact that this was exploited by extreme right-wing movements and parties. Let's go back to today's Europe overwhelmed with very sensitive problems and issues. The question for discussion is: What do we mean by populism? There are several definitions related to this phenomenon. First, populism is a political current, "close" to the people, often demagogic, which aims for a certain populist group through the dramatization of political, social and social situations to lie and "win" the popular masses, especially during periods of political elections. Second, populism can be defined as a particular political logic, the central idea of ??which is that power belongs to the people and that politics should be an expression of the will of the people. Populism idealizes the people and creates hostility towards the elite. The populists tell the stories of people betrayed by the elite and the people think that they are oppressed by the corrupt elite and are on the way to their liberation, which means the return of power to the people!!!! (A beautiful tale to believe.) According to social scientists, populism consists of two sides: one is the creation of certain political and social attitudes and the second side is the use and strengthening of these attitudes for one's own political goals. So, populism is seen as a very specific political style and it is used as a tool, as a strategy to gain power, i.e. taking power and not to solve the people's problems. According to Prof. Frank Decker of the Institute for Political Science and Sociology at the University of Bonn, populism in itself is not anti-democratic, but it contradicts the principles of democracy. (to be continued in the next issue)