Commentary on the Group Process. German Chancellor Merkel: Multilateralism «under pressure»
Florian Galler
After the election of Trump and before his inauguration, President Obama «appointed» Merkel as keeper of Democracy, since Trump was not expected to take over this traditional American task:
AFP news agency
November 17, 2016
Obama passes torch to Merkel on farewell visit
US President Barack Obama pays a farewell visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seen by some as the new standard bearer of liberal democracy since the election of Donald Trump.
Fittingly she took the opposite position after Trump’s nationalistic UN speech on Sep 25, 2018 and complained on Sep 27, 2018 that « multilateralism has come under such pressure» :
Via msn
September 27, 2018
European cohesion, multilateral order under threat: Merkel
BERLIN (Reuters) - Nationalism and a winner-take-all attitude are undermining the cohesion of Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, two days after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected globalism and touted “America First” in a United Nations speech.
…
“Perhaps the most threatening development for me is that multilateralism has come under such pressure,” Merkel said...
Why has multilateralism come under pressure ?
According to the psychogenic Theory of History of Lloyd DeMause (DeMause, Lloyd: Foundations of Psychohistory. New York 1982) traumatic feelings stemming from our prenatal existence and birth are warded off by acting them out in a national, unconscious group process.
The capacitiy of acting out these traumatic feelings by the Western Democracies diminished since the end of World War 2 because these countries became more reasonable and less inclined to engage in destructive acting out policies. A process of social emancipation (for example black people, women and homosexual people) had the same effect. In addition the acting out capacity of Western Democracies is impaired by multilateralism or international cooperation. International agreements, designed to support peace and prosperity impair the capability to act out traumatic experiences of the people by destructive national policies.
Because the traumatic feelings can be acted out always less by the nations they are directed spontaneously toward multilateralism and the reasonable nations, like the ones within the European Union, which Paul Krugman had called in 2011 the most decent in human history»[1]. Deep feelings of contempt are directed precisely on these nations and not only by radical conservatives like Trump but also by left-liberals. This became clear to me in 2017 when many left-liberals have been unable to distance themselves from the violent G20 protests in Hamburg in 2017.
Allan Hytowitz
