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Europe Where the Right and Left Converge
Historian Perry Anderson is one of the luminaries of the so-called Western Marxists, that is, Marxist theoreticians who were based in Western and Central Europe, rather than the Soviet Union. He’s now a professor of history and sociology at UCLA. He used to be the editor of the New Left Review. This pedigree, I should think, would be sufficient for most on Ricochet to consider calling in an exorcist.
But I’m going to ask you to read him anyway. Just one essay, actually. It’s a piece about the EU in Le Monde Diplomatique, titled “Why the System Will Still Win,” in which he predicts that the European center will hold and the EU will survive. This is an outcome that as a revolutionary he deplores, of course.
What struck me reading it was how similar his arguments against the EU, and against Europe’s center-right and center-left parties and coalitions, are to those I’ve heard here on Ricochet — another forum where many (not all) of our members seem devoutly to hope “the system” will lose, too.
In some places, he uses a different vocabulary than Americans on the right would use. But I’m not sure he’s meaningfully describing different concepts. For example, he relies heavily on the word “neoliberalism,” which he defines this as “deregulated financial flows, privatised services and escalating social inequality.” But I don’t think this definition succeeds in distinguishing “neoliberalism” from “capitalism.” The word, it seems to me, has simply taken the place of “capitalism” in the Left’s vocabulary because after the fall of the Soviet Union, it sounded antiquated — and clueless — to say that one was “against capitalism.”
When you read what he’s written, mentally replace the word “neoliberalism” in every case with “capitalism.” I’m curious to know where, and how, his analysis substantively differs from yours. I stress that I’m asking in good faith, and I hope you’ll read his article in the same spirit, with an open mind.
The whole article won’t take long to read, but I’ll point out some of the passages that struck me:
The term ‘anti-systemic movements’ was commonly used 25 years ago to characterise forces on the left in revolt against capitalism. Today, it has not lost relevance in the West, but its meaning has changed. The movements of revolt that have multiplied over the past decade no longer rebel against capitalism, but neoliberalism — deregulated financial flows, privatised services and escalating social inequality, that specific variant of the reign of capital set in place in Europe and America since the 1980s. The resultant economic and political order has been accepted all but indistinguishably by governments of the centre-right and centre-left, in accordance with the central tenet of la pensée unique, Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that ‘there is no alternative’. Two kinds of movement are now arrayed against this system; the established order stigmatises them, whether from the right or left, as the menace of populism.
These “movements of revolt” in Europe, I’ll add parenthetically, now receive financial and political support from both Russia and the United States. For example, the largest donors to Geert Wilders’ campaign, by far, were Americans.
Also parenthetically, while he’s right to say that financial deregulation and privatisation were policies championed by Margaret Thatcher, many people overestimate the extent of financial deregulation she championed, wrongly associating the kind of reforms she advocated with those that led to the 2007 financial crisis. As I argued in this piece for the Washington Post, that’s a myth.
Like many on Ricochet, Anderson holds the European Union to be an unaccountable, massive bureaucracy that robs national parliaments of their sovereignty and subordinates them to Germany’s will.
From monetary union (1990) to the Stability Pact (1997), then the Single Market Act (2011), the powers of national parliaments were voided in a supranational structure of bureaucratic authority shielded from popular will, just as the ultraliberal economist Friedrich Hayek had prophesied. With this machinery in place, draconian austerity could be imposed on helpless electorates, under the joint direction of the Commission and a reunified Germany, now the most powerful state in the union, where leading thinkers candidly announce its vocation as continental hegemon. Externally, over the same period, the EU and its members ceased to play any significant role in the world at variance with US directives, becoming the advance guard of neo-cold war policies towards Russia set by the US and paid for by Europe.
So it is no surprise that the ever more oligarchic cast of the EU, defying popular will in successive referendums and embedding budgetary diktats in constitutional law, should have generated so many movements of protest against it.
He reviews these forces in broad outline: In pre-enlargement Western Europe, protest movements of the far-right predominate. In post-enlargement Western Europe — Spain, Greece, and Ireland — protest movements of the far-left predominate. Italy has both.
He takes it as given that pooled sovereignty and the Continent’s domination by a peaceful, democratic Germany are undesirable. These are both points that I think need to be argued, not assumed; and I think they’re both wrong. But it’s his article, not mine, and I know many on Ricochet take his side of this argument.
All the significant movements of the far-right, he correctly notes, save Germany’s AfD, predate the economic crisis. Some have roots that date to the 1970s or earlier. But they grew in influence, he argues — and Syriza, M5S, Podemos and Momentum were born — as a direct result of the global financial crisis. This, in his view, is a reaction to “the structure of the neoliberal system,” which finds “its starkest, most concentrated expression in today’s EU,”
with its order founded on the reduction and privatisation of public services; the abrogation of democratic control and representation; and deregulation of the factors of production. All three are present at national level in Europe, as elsewhere, but they are of a higher degree of intensity at EU level, as the torture of Greece, trampling of referendums and scale of human trafficking attest. In the political arena, they are the overriding issues of popular concern, driving protests against the system over austerity, sovereignty and immigration. Anti-systemic movements are differentiated by the weight they attach to each — to which colour in the neoliberal palette they direct most hostility.
Movements of the far-right, he argues, now predominate because if their focus on immigration. But as he notes, and I agree, “this is typically linked (in France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland) not to denunciation but to defence of the welfare state; it is claimed the arrival of immigrants undermines this.”
In some countries, he argues, particularly France, the far-right has another advantage over the far-left:
The single currency and central bank, designed at Maastricht, have made the imposition of austerity and denial of popular sovereignty into a single system. Movements of the left may attack these as vehemently as any movement of the right, if not more so. But the solutions they propose are less radical. On the right, the FN and the Lega have clear remedies to the strains of the single currency and immigration: exit the euro and stop the influx. On the left, with isolated exceptions, no such unambiguous demands have ever been made. At best, the substitutes are technical adjustments to the single currency, too complicated to have much popular purchase, and vague, embarrassed allusions to quotas; neither is as readily intelligible to voters as the straightforward propositions of the right.
Now, what I think I detect in his tone is a reluctant admiration of the far-right: They’re the only ones, he seems to be saying, who are really willing to tear the whole system down and to use whatever levers need to be used to do it. We’ve seen a lot of this, historically: the far-left has always been vulnerable to co-option by the far-right; the segment of the population that for temperamental or socioeconomic reasons is drawn to revolution tends to be drawn by the group that promises it more convincingly, rather than the one that’s ideologically most pure. Modern nationalism was one of the earliest leftist ideologies; it emerged in the French Revolution. National Socialism was called National Socialism because that’s what it was. And so forth.
But to Anderson’s dismay — and to my relief — he concludes that anti-systemic parties have no hope of succeeding in Europe:
Polls now post record levels of voter disaffection with the EU. But, right or left, the electoral weight of anti-systemic movements remains limited. In the last European elections, the three most successful results for the right — UKIP, the FN and the Danish People’s Party — were around 25% of the vote. In national elections, the average figure across western Europe for all such right and left forces combined is about 15%. That percentage of the electorate poses little threat to the system; 25% can represent a headache, but the ‘populist danger’ of media alarm remains to date very modest.
I hope so, although I worry he may be wrong.
Now, he attributes the lack of enthusiasm for anti-systemic movements (or in more traditional vocabulary, the Revolution), to the widespread fear (justified, in my view) that it would make things much worse, economically:
The socio-economic status quo is widely detested. But it is regularly ratified at the polls with the re-election of parties responsible for it, because of fears that to upset the status, alarming markets, would bring worse misery.
He seems to dismiss this fear of “alarming markets” as a form of cowardice, whereas I see it as common sense. His seem to be standard far-left assumptions: the capitalist (or neoliberal) system should be destroyed; “the markets” and their judgments are bad things, rather than the only tool humanity’s ever successfully employed, ever, anywhere, to achieve First World standards of living; and the preference of most Europeans for “less misery” is somehow vaguely contemptible, given that it’s at odds with Revolution.
I’ll let you read his explanation for Brexit, which he believes will be the last success of the anti-systemic movement in Europe.
He then proceeds to write a paragraph that might have been written by a member of Ricochet:
Trump’s victory has thrown the European political class, centre-right and centre-left united, into outraged dismay. Breaking established conventions on immigration is bad enough. … [But] Trump’s lack of inhibition in these matters does not directly affect the union. What does, and is cause for far more serious concern, is his rejection of the ideology of free movement of the factors of production, and, even more so, his apparently cavalier disregard for NATO and his comments about a less belligerent attitude to Russia.
Whether Brexit or Trump succeed in tearing down the capitalist system that he so deplores, he writes, remains to be seen. But he concludes there’s little hope of revolution in the rest of Europe:
The established order is far from beaten … and, as Greece has shown, is capable of absorbing and neutralising revolts from whatever direction with impressive speed. Among the antibodies it has already generated are yuppie simulacra of populist breakthroughs (Albert Rivera in Spain, Emmanuel Macron in France), inveighing against the deadlocks and corruptions of the present, and promising a cleaner and more dynamic politics of the future, beyond the decaying parties.
There are some obvious differences between his view of Europe and those I’ve seen here. He views Europe as the hellish apotheosis of capitalism, whereas many on Ricochet seem persuaded it’s an exemplar of a socialism no less horrifying than the Soviet Union.
It’s a lot closer to the first than the second. I saw the Soviet Union with my own eyes, and I live in Europe: Europe is nothing like the Soviet Union. Europe is tremendously capitalist and prosperous by comparison with most of the rest of the world. I think this is a good thing. There’s a lot of room for reform, but a revolution, anywhere in Europe, would be insane.
This, I’d say, is the difference between the conservative view and the populist or far-right view. My view: Revolutions never deliver on their promises and result in something far worse than what preceded them. (And if I thought that before, I think it twice as much since the Arab Spring.) Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built in the first place. In other words: It’s insane to dismiss as irrelevant the reasons the EU was built, and particularly to dismiss as irrelevant Europe’s history as the most bloodthirsty, aggressive and violent continent in human history. Changes to any political system, especially in an ecosystem as prone to war as Europe’s, should be made gradually and incrementally. If the EU is to be dismantled, it should be done as slowly as it was assembled.
Anderson concludes that the Left must become more radical if it’s to have any hope of destroying the system in Europe:
For anti-systemic movements of the left in Europe, the lesson of recent years is clear. If they are not to go on being outpaced by movements of the right, they cannot afford to be less radical in attacking the system, and must be more coherent in their opposition to it. That means facing the probability the EU is now so path-dependent as a neoliberal construction that reform of it is no longer seriously conceivable. It would have to be undone before anything better could be built, either by breaking out of the current EU, or by reconstructing Europe on another foundation, committing Maastricht to the flames. Unless there is a further, deeper economic crisis, there is little likelihood of either.
I don’t believe committing Maastricht (or anything, for that matter) “to the flames” is apt to result in “something better” being built. Ever.
I’d like to know — and again, I’m asking this in good faith, I’m genuinely curious: If you believe the destruction of the EU and the far-right have something to offer Europe, why? Have you lost faith in the kind of conservatism I describe, and if so, why? If you’ve lost confidence in capitalism, why? (I think many have, in the wake of the financial crisis, and not without cause.) Are the steps in your argument very different from Anderson’s? If so, where?
Published in General
You would have a very good point if you had left out the period.
I didn’t even realize Trump/fascism was part of the conversation. That claim, I think, comes from people who extrapolate from what they perceive to be Trump’s instincts. Extrapolation is, of course, always dangerous, and their perception of Trump’s instincts may or may not be accurate. But clearly no claim that Trump’s extant America is fascist is anything other than nonsense. Even the most corrupt and power hungry of presidents in the US must run up against systemic checks on his power, at least so far.
Beyond that, I’d say the USSR/Animal Farm comparison contains far less hyperbole and far more veracity than the other two. Stalin really was a monster with only a few rivals in human history. Nothing in the post-war US or EU experience comes anywhere close.
Animal Farm was an allegory, so the parallels between it and the Soviet Union were intentional. The two pigs (whose names I forget) were direct expies of Stalin and Trotsky.
EU officials seem to be of a different opinion.
Are you sure about that, Sabr? My understanding was that he supported appeals and even some genuinely awful behavior in protest against impositions, but that he did not once express support for the sin of revolution in America.
You suggest above that Burke believed that the Crown and Parliament became tyrannical in their demands of America. Do you think for a moment that he’d have favored burning them to the ground? The American revolution did not burn much to the ground; before and after, the leading authorities were the state governments, which retained their colonial constitutions (this was particularly true under the Articles of Confederation, which governed America for most of its overlap with Burke’s life). Burke believed in partial revolutions, in reforms that kept as much of the good as was possible. The French government was far more abusive than the British, but if you’re under the impression that he thought it should be burned to the ground, we’ve gained very different impressions of his thought.
Do you really favor all independence movements? Was Lincoln wrong to oppose secession? Would the world, the US, or New England have been better off if Pickering had been able to separate New England from the rest of the Union? Was the Mexican American War a terrible thing, or the Louisiana Purchase?
Is it not more plausible that sometimes political reorganizations are a positive thing, and that sometimes they are not?
If you go back and read Claire again, you will see that she was not favoring stability, but change; she likes the movement of ex-SSRs to the West. Integration with civilization through democratic means is a positive thing. Integration through conquest with dictatorship, as seen in Crimea and Donbass, is a less positive thing. Change towards decency, the rule of law, property rights, and such are generally good. Change away is generally bad.
Did you not watch the horrors of the Ukrainian experience? If Latvia were independent, every friendly gesture toward Latvia would be treated by Putin as a personal insult, and Putin spends enough money influencing politics in just about every corner of the world that this would matter. Since Putin doesn’t have particularly strong feelings about Singapore, there isn’t that sort of a compelling reason to avoid dealing with it.
Hong Kong and Macao have access to FTAs because, in part, they’re kind of China; the superpower pressure on their partner nations is in favor of their getting those agreements.
By far the largest paper by circulation in Ukraine is a free Russian owned propaganda organ. That sort of relatively direct assault on the functioning of the state, let alone the anschluss, doesn’t happen in Latvia. There’s propaganda, to be sure, but the EU helps Europe to maintain a surprisingly effective and united front against Russian barbarism; despite the enormous political advantage to parties that endorse the Russian line (massive amounts of free support on twitter, blogs, etc., in Russia owned or Russian suborned newspapers and television channels, and sometimes in outright cash payments), reasonably effective sanctions have been put in place. It is only the parties that Anderson admires that are fully in the Russian grip (this is not likely to be a new phenomenon for Anderson). It is not that different in the US, where the fringe parties are fully signed up speakers of pravda, while in the genuine parties principle dominates, albeit with a substantial fringe of pravda speakers.
I suspect that this is because you’re mostly exposed to UK-centric views of the EU. The EU is a good deal more democratic than its detractors give it credit for. The Commission, the executive and initiator of most legislation, which is the part most frequently derided as undemocratic, is essentially similar to the original US Senate in the way that it is elected. Most conservatives admire this if it’s not placed in an EU context. The Parliament is elected and is less trivial than is often suggested. The European Council and Council of Europe (yes, they’re two separate things) are composed of, respectively, the heads of state of the member states and of cabinet secretaries of those states.
It doesn’t work as well as the US system, for a variety of reasons, and it’s to the left of the UK, which means that the UK opposition mostly comes from the right. It’s to the right of most of Europe, though, which is why so much of the opposition is from the left (I’d classify Le Pen’s opposition as being to the left, meaning that my taxonomy is more heavily tilted that way than Anderson’s). This is much like in the US, where either Texans or Californians talk about secession when the Federal government is perceived to move the country either too far to the left or to the right. Because federal governments are compromises, they will be, almost by definition, to the left of some of the governments and to the right of others.
From a UK perspective, this is a pretty lousy deal. I voted for Brexit because the EU/ federal legislature has self-labeled communists and fascists and the national government does not. It’s a significant loss to Europe, but I felt that the lack of a British civilizing impact on them was of less importance than the lack of a barbarizing impact on the UK. If you’re one of the member states where the basket cases have real control, though, the EU becomes a much more obviously conservative institution.
Even in a UK context, there have always been plenty of conservatives who supported the EU. Thatcher signed the Single European Act and Maastricht was the central wedge issue on the right for most of the decade that followed her. In countless contexts, the EU really has brought down regulatory burdens, freed up trade with the rest of the world, and kept countries that are not inclined to be civilized within the boundaries of decent norms.
Claire,
One last parting comment. My objections to E.U. are its systemic lack of the normal democratic checks and balances. However, you have cast most every action by E.U. as either benign or the fault of the individual nations inaction. Here is an example just posted today of the E.U. creeping strangulation of the individual decision-making capacity of its member nations. The normally veiled threat is here made right out in the open. Wilders loss must have inflated the E.U. ego. They must think that they will ram it all down everyone’s throat now.
EU OFFICIAL: WE CAN MAKE MEMBERS ACCEPT REFUGEES
This is not benign nor is it Poland’s fault. This is tyranny very well dressed.
Regards,
Jim
I can understand not thinking much of Stalin even absent the killings and poverty. I have no idea how anyone could think that they were not relevant to their view of his government. The Soviets without killings or poverty seems somewhat similar to Western European governments of the mid-twentieth century, and those seem inestimably superior to me. Do you believe that the government of West Germany was superior to the Nazi government?
I do when we’re talking about states that have been independent for over a thousand years and are now being told that they can’t be trusted to manage their own affairs. But even if I concede that there are exceptions, that doesn’t disprove the rule. Independence is preferable to vassalhood unless the people in question have proven they can’t be trusted (and by that I mean extreme cases like Palestine and North Korea.)
And, no, World War II does not prove that Europe can’t be trusted. If the various European states are really so dysfunctional that they can’t be allowed to rule themselves, then why would centralizing that dysfunction make a difference? If Europe is really that bad, then they should put us in charge. Of course nobody wants that because it would be a denial of their basic right to self-determination, but this is the rhetoric used to defend the EU.
Which raises another question: Why Europe? Japan was just as bad as Germany in WWII, but nobody argues that their continued independence is an intolerable threat to stability. Why are the British and the Poles less capable of self rule than the Japanese?
This wouldn’t apply to say the 13 colonies.
Most conservatives, but not all. I thought I mentioned a few days ago that I can’t think of any examples where it has worked well to have the people elect representatives who in turn elect representatives. Our Electoral College is a good thing for the way it apportions the presidential vote, but I suspect it wouldn’t be a good thing if it operated as originally intended (which was intended to be undemocratic).
Somebody might ask what’s so different about a system of representatives electing representatives and the way our elected officials appoint court justices. That’s a good question, even if I have to ask it myself. Maybe one difference is in the way (at the national level) senators act as a check on the presidential appointment power. And at other levels, some judges are elected directly. I don’t think that’s an entirely good thing, either, but having some judges elected and others appointed tends to provide a way of checking one set against the other.
Another point: Why is it that the same people who think our president should be elected by a direct popular vote also think so much power should be put in the hands of unelected members of administrative agencies? Once upon a time these types of jobs were patronage appointments. This was a corrupt process, but at least it provided for some turnover. It hasn’t worked out any better for these to be civil services jobs in which the job-holders are insulated from outside political pressures. It has made them a political force unto themselves, under which the job-holders can cook the books and root out class enemies without fear of reprisal so long as these things are done on behalf of the governing class.
There are two arguments I’m responding to. One is the specific notion that Europeans can’t be trusted with self rule. The other is the broader argument that if there’s no immediate, material benefit to independence then it’s not worth pursuing. The example of the US is a response to the latter.
What both arguments have in common is the very Progressive idea that freedom should be evaluated based on its outcomes rather than being considered a good in its own right.
Of course, and I have no issue with that, the obvious counter is that revolutions do not always lead to freedom: see French and Russian.
What about the freedom of individuals to own human property? Should that be evaluated based on its outcomes? Or should it be considered a good in its own right?
There is clearly a superseding property right there.
I submit that evaluating freedom based on its outcomes is a very conservative, Burkean thing to do. And evaluating freedom based solely on an ideology of freedom is more like the things that totalitarian ideologues do.
Which state has been independent for a thousand years? I can see the argument for Iceland and for a portion of France, although obviously they used to be independent from the rest of France (aside from a short period under Henry V). I can’t think of a third example.
Vassalhood would be lousy. It’s partly because of that that I believe that it is helpful to have the West unite to avoid it.
Well, obviously. It wasn’t Europe’s finest moment, but the Kaiser was also pretty awful. Likewise, Napoleon, Robespierre, and pals.
There’s plenty of European states that struggle with competent rule (Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy), and centralizing power helps a little with that. Self determination for France and Germany, though, means being part of the EU; the hardline euroskeptics are pretty far from a majority in those countries. It might help to think of the question in a US or Canadian context; no one thinks that South Carolina or Alberta is too dysfunctional to govern themselves, but that doesn’t mean that it’s obvious that they should secede.
No one that I know of thinks that the British or Poles are not capable of self rule, but the Poles have certainly benefitted from being in the EU. I don’t think that a similar opportunity is available to Japan.
I accept that there are plenty of conservatives who hold minority positions on essentially all issues. My point was just that if you defend a principle in one country and deride it in another country, you should probably do more to explain your condemnations than simply asserting them. If you oppose the early form of the Senate, rock on with your consistent self. Obviously, that applies only to the Commission, not to the Councils or the Parliament. Do you have an argument that they are not democratic?
Er… Freedom for freedom’s sake is the polar opposite of totalitarianism.
So you’re in favor of hate speech laws, then? How about the EPA? Is your only objection to socialized health care that it doesn’t work?
That you’re seriously comparing Canadian provinces and American states to sovereign nations speaks volumes. The United Kingdom is not and never has been a mere province of Europe. The same applies to Germany, France, Italy, etc. That those running the EU think otherwise is the reason Brexit happened in the first place.
You mean like saying Lithuania asserting its right to self-rule is a victory for freedom, but the UK doing the same thing is a catastrophic mistake?
Wrong. The assertion that Europe needs a supra-national body to keep it in check or else World War III becomes inevitable is a frequently advanced argument in favor of increasing EU authority.
No, I’m not in favor of hate speech laws, cuz I believe in the maximum possible free speech.
I’m in favor of the EPA, but not the abusive agency it has become.
And my main objection to socialized health care is that it has been shown to curtail freedom.
In all of these cases my ideology is tempered by actual results, and my evaluation of actual results is tempered by ideology.
Well, that’s kind of what they did. For a time the United States was in charge literally, in Germany, as an occupier; then unofficially; it then became one of the architects of the EU and the unspoken offshore balancer, reducing fears of German domination among other member states, especially after unification. And we became de facto the leader of the EU. US diplomacy encouraged integration and offered incentives to countries to conform to the Copenhagen criteria and disincentives to those who didn’t; we smoothed over conflicts among members and candidate states. The EU was designed with a strong, involved US in mind; had it not been for that, it couldn’t have happened; the enmity among states was too strong. Our diplomacy was certainly key to persuading France and the UK to accept a united Germany, fo example. (Fear of a united Germany was one of the reasons France was so keen to adopt the euro, even though it was premature.)
Yes, it does, and thanks for reading it carefully and answering the question I asked, I was genuinely curious to see answers like yours.
In the time since I posted this, in fact, over the period of time it took to watch the Comey hearings, an active land war in Europe, fomented by Russia, took three more Ukrainian troops’ lives and wounded eight. I agree this does not rise to the level of the Somme, but this is a daily routine in Donetsk:
And while I agree with you that there’s cause for reassurance (a lot of cause) in Europe’s demography, this hasn’t stopped Russia from intervening massively, both through traditional and untraditional means, in European politics. I believe this could get out of hand very quickly, particularly because Russian doctrine in the event of a European war relies on the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The Balkans are another potential flashpoint, as always:
By any reasonable statistical measure, the member countries of the EU are safer than the United States. For example, try this to compare crime rates of all kinds in any EU country versus the United States. Deaths from terrorism are included in “homicide.” Even if we take the deaths on 9/11 out of the analysis, we repeatedly come up with US homicide rates that are 4-5 times higher than any country in the EU. I’ve written repeatedly here about the so-called no-go zones; I can’t authoritatively say that there are no such things in Sweden (I’ve never been there), but there are no such zones in France: I’ve been to every so-called no-go zone around Paris, and while some of them are slums, yes, they’re very tame compared to American slums. “Mass rape” indeed happened on New Year’s Eve in Germany two years ago. But it didn’t happen again. Indeed, some stories of migrant rape do indeed have their provenance in Russian propaganda, e.g. the “Lisa” story.
I feel very safe here, as safe as I feel in the United States, certainly, perhaps safer depending on the neighborhood and time of day. Europeans often express fear to me about travelling to the US and ask me whether it’s safe: They hear all the time about mass shootings and “gun violence,” in much the way Americans hear all the time about no-go zones and mass rapes in Europe. I tell them that they’ll be absolutely fine in the US so long as they use their judgment, and that the reason these stories make the news is that they’re rare. Things that happen every day don’t make the news.
So I think if the argument is, “Europe is unsafe; any entity that can’t provide safety to its citizens is illegitimate, therefore the EU is illegitimate” doesn’t work, unless you’d agree the US is also illegitimate. But more importantly, the safety or lack thereof in the EU member countries is not the EU’s failing; the EU doesn’t (yet) have responsibility for policing or defending its member states. If you’re trying to explain crime and safety in France, you’ve got to look at the successes or failures of the French intelligence, police, judicial, and prison systems. Same for every other EU country.