maandag 13 juli 2026

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism backfiring spectacularly, instead of what Zionists wanted, it’s producing more Jews publicly backing the Palestinian movement.

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8:03 p.m. · 13 jul. 2026

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https://x.com/abierkhatib/status/2076729184370458749

Thomass Fazi: "No way back — but onwards"

No way back — but onwards

“I find myself longing for the pre-Covid era and, above all, unwilling to accept that this world is a thing of the past; but there is no way back — the only way is forward”

THOMAS FAZI

JUL 13

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Guest post by Maike Gosch, originally published in NachDenkSeiten, an independent German political news and commentary website.

I recently heard an activist say the following in an Instagram video: “We will never get our pre-Covid society back”. That sentence has stayed with me ever since, because it made me realise that I do in fact — somewhere in my heart — still harbour an unspoken hope that there is a “way back”; that we can undo, can erase from the world, the harm (inflicted on people) and the deterioration (to democratic culture) that have occurred in the Covid years and in the years since. But there is no way back. Or, as the beautiful title of a 1940 novel by Thomas Wolfe put it: You Can’t Go Home Again. But how to deal with this situation with resilience and steadfastness?

First, to clarify: this is a different question from that of a possible political and legal reckoning with the Covid era, or of apologies and social reconciliation. We are still waiting for both, even if we may no longer be hoping for them.

First and foremost, it’s about coming to terms with what has been lost. And there I find myself longing for the pre-Covid era and, above all, unwilling to accept that this world is a thing of the past; that we cannot return to it, but now find ourselves in a completely different reality. I believe that this, psychologically speaking, is known as an adjustment disorder.

And I’m experiencing this not only in relation to the negative developments during and since the Covid era — in terms of the social climate, division, the shrinking freedom of expression, the lack of respect for fundamental rights and other aspects — but also in relation to many other issues. I find myself unwilling to accept what the European Union has become, some of the decisions made by the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice in Germany, what our leading politicians say and decide, what has become of once-beloved German media outlets such as the Süddeutsche Zeitung or DIE ZEIT, what has become of my image of Germany, of my idea (perhaps always mistaken) that we as a nation had learnt from our recent past.

It is hard to let go of these images, these memories. Perhaps it is down to age; perhaps to a sluggishness of the soul that is not made for the massively accelerated changes and developments of our modern world. Intellectually, all this is just about manageable (albeit with compromises). Emotionally, it sometimes seems almost impossible to cope with.

Of course, there is also something good in holding on to these memories of times, principles and rules, so that they can serve as a template and, by comparison, reveal just how much things have changed for the worse. Many younger people do not have such points of comparison at their disposal, and so they are all the more easily led astray. But this focus on the past and what has been lost — on how things “used to be” — does have something of a battle against windmills about it. It is nostalgia, a refusal to accept reality, and this often paralyses and wears one down.

On NachDenkSeiten, the independent German political news and commentary website that I work for, we write a great deal about topics, facts and arguments. But today I’d like to write about how we deal emotionally with the many changes and the massive deterioration in our political culture that we have witnessed in recent years.

My colleagues and I have lately received numerous letters from readers who write, in essence: “I really appreciate your journalism and your work, but sometimes I just can’t bring myself to read it all any more”. We, as editors and authors, sometimes feel the same way. It is depressing to document developments that seem to be heading in only one direction: everything is getting worse and worse. One is exhausted by the constant agitation, the constant annoyance, the constant outrage. And that is why nostalgia is so powerful, along with the desire for everything to simply go back to the way it used to be.

But acceptance comes before improvement. We won’t be able to go back; the only way is forward. But where do we find the strength to let go and carry on despite everything?

We must refuse to become as bitter as the times in which we live. For the political struggle takes place not only externally — through demonstrations, petitions, letters to the editor and articles — but also internally. If we become inwardly exhausted and give up, we have already lost.

A first and important step is to radically filter the news flow when we realise that the reports are driving us into a state of powerlessness and despondency. Then it is time for mental self-protection, for breaks, for nature, joy and beautiful things — for everything that restores our strength.

Another method of self-protection can be to depersonalise the “enemy”. In other words, not to hate the people who, from our point of view, are currently doing “evil” things, but rather to oppose what they are doing, the energy that takes hold of them at that moment, the propaganda to which they seem to succumb, the weakness to which they yield. If we start to hate the people on the “other side”, we have already lost the battle, because we are sinking to the same level as those we wish to fight. The way out of this is always empathy.

And we must focus our attention on the positive. After all, so much good is happening despite everything. The current times lay bare a great deal of human weakness and malice, but they also show us people who display incredible strength, resilience and integrity, who make great professional and personal sacrifices to stand up against injustice and war crimes, to rebel against their governments. Admiration for these people and support for them — even if it’s just a few words of encouragement and appreciation — can be valuable for them and for us.

One can also choose to focus on one’s private life from time to time — for a while — on one’s circle of friends, family and one’s own (hopefully pleasant) immediate surroundings. This is naturally difficult for someone who is politically engaged, but in these times it is nonetheless an effective survival strategy. Here in Germany, we find ourselves in the peculiar situation where, for politically critical and observant people, the suffering in the world and the very negative political developments in our own country coexist alongside a world that remains very secure and, in many ways, beautiful on a small scale — such as at the level of our own neighbourhoods, local authorities, villages and towns.

We live in an age in which the West’s global dominance is steadily waning, yet in its struggle against decline, all its most negative aspects are washed up to the surface and intensified once again (colonialism, exploitation, totalitarianism, wars, injustice, destruction, hypocrisy). And we are experiencing all of this from within the heart of the empire itself. And although many of us disagree with our governments and elites, we feel powerless and complicit, and are, of course, increasingly restricted and subjected to repression in our criticism and our expressions of dissent. This is a situation in which it is difficult to maintain one’s bearings. Looking out of the West’s echo chambers towards perspectives and analyses from the Global South and the BRICS states, and from resistance movements in the West can be a great help in resolving the recurring cognitive dissonance.

Another important decision is who we choose to direct our energy towards. For attention is energy. And whatever we focus our attention on gains energy and significance as a result. We live in a time when many familiar institutions are crumbling and delegitimising themselves, and elites are exposing their weakness and corruption. Amidst this destruction and self-destruction of familiar power structures, we can focus our energy more strongly on what is to come — on what we wish to strengthen and rebuild. This is uplifting, because we are engaging with things that are good in our eyes, and this strengthens the ideas, people and structures that we want to be part of a more positive future.

This is how we build resilience and steadfastness: by accepting the present without losing heart or giving up; by not allowing ourselves to become cynical — nor to lose ourselves in hatred. Instead, by showing compassion —towards ourselves and our opponents. And by preserving our softness in these hard times, allowing ourselves to mourn what has been lost, and then focussing our energy on continuing on our path amidst all the tottering and collapsing structures.

Thanks for reading. Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid, so if you appreciate my writing please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven’t already. Aside from a fuzzy feeling inside of you, you’ll get access to exclusive articles and commentary.

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)

Thomas Fazi: "The EU’s budgetary coup"

The EU’s budgetary coup

The Commission is using the bloc’s new multiannual budget for yet another power grab

THOMAS FAZI

JUN 11

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The Multiannual Financial Framework. Even for a body as jargon-prone as the European Union, the phrase feels almost bewilderingly dull. Perhaps that’s the point. For hidden amid the technical language of the EU’s new budget is a kind of technocratic coup — one that promises more power for the Commission, less for member states, and which would ultimately make Brussels even less accountable than it already is today.

Over the past decade, the EU’s institutional balance has already tilted heavily towards the Commission, which has extended its reach into areas once considered the preserve of national governments — from fiscal policy and public health to foreign affairs and defence. The mechanism has been consistent: each crisis — the sovereign debt crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war — has served as a pretext for the Commission to assume more authority, make “emergency” decisions and lock in permanent changes to the exercise of EU power. None of this has required formal treaty changes. It has occurred surreptitiously, outside the arena of democratic debate, through what scholars have called “integration by stealth”. The result has been a creeping “Commissionisation” and supranationalisation of European decision-making, with a corresponding erosion of national sovereignty and democratic accountability.

Now the Commission is using negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget — the aforementioned Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) for 2028-2034 — to push this process further still. And precisely for this reason it is keen to wrap up a deal by the end of the year. Brussels insiders are acutely aware that the French presidential election of April 2027 could produce a government led by Jordan Bardella of the National Rally — a party hostile to the integrationist agenda underpinning the new MFF. Since the framework requires unanimous approval in the Council, a Eurosceptic France could strangle the budget at birth. The unstated but operative goal is to seal the deal before that risk appears. That this is never said openly only underscores the contempt for democratic deliberation that now pervades the process.

What, then, is the package that the Commission is so keen to sign into law? It is a framework totalling almost €2 trillion, equivalent to around 1.26% of EU gross national income (GNI) over the seven-year period. The European Parliament, never shy about spending other people’s money, wants to push that to 1.38% of GNI. But neither institution really admits the structural tensions buried in the figures. The EU must service roughly €750 billion in bloc pandemic debt, the repayment of which is now being permanently integrated into the regular EU budget. The Commission’s own proposal earmarks €149.3 billion for repaying the so-called “NextGenerationEU Recovery” and “Resilience Facility” funds — a sum that amounts to nearly 10% of total MFF commitments.

This matters because of what it reveals about the true nature of NextGenerationEU (NGEU). What was sold to European publics as an exceptional, one-off response to the Covid crisis is now the fiscal template for the Union’s future. The pandemic fund set the precedent: the EU can borrow on capital markets, distribute grants to member states, and then embed the repayment into the general budget for decades to come — all without anything resembling a proper democratic mandate. This is arguably what the “unprecedented” EU fiscal response to the pandemic was always about: normalising common debt as a mechanism for tilting the institutional balance of power decisively in favour of the Commission, downgrading member states and locking in a structural shift in European integration. Indeed, the EU has since repeated the trick with a €90 billion package for Ukraine, again funded through joint debt backed by the common budget. The “historical exception” has quietly become the norm.

To repay its vast debts, the Commission has proposed a package of new levies on companies. But if the new taxes fall short, as is likely, the fallback is a compulsory levy on member states. The existing “Own Resources Decision” — another wonderful piece of EU lexicon — already empowers the Commission to call on national governments for additional GNI-based contributions to cover NGEU repayments, on top of regular programme spending. In other words, if the new revenue streams underperform, the bill lands automatically on national treasuries, decided not by sovereign parliaments, but by the remorseless logic of the EU’s debt repayment. At any rate, EU debt now functions as a de facto tax on member states, bypassing the normal channels of democratic budgetary control.

Read the article here. If you’re a paid subscriber and you can’t access the article write to me at thomasfazi82@gmail.com.