Political tides are turning against the empire

Key Markets update for Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Croatia held presidential elections over the weekend. The incumbent President Zoran Milanović won the first round in a landslide against the pro-globalist challenger Dragan Primorac. Primorac was heavily backed by the ruling party, the Croatian Democratic Union led by the Prime Minister Andrej Plenković who has been a loyal supporter of NATO, US, UK and EU policies. In winning the Presidency, the ruling party would have captured all of Croatia's key institutions of government.

(Another) Putin’s stooge wins

To push their candidate over the line the ruling establishment and the media consistently demonized President Milanović as Putin's stooge and a pro-Russian player on account of his unwillingness to engage Croatian troops in NATO's excellent adventures in Ukraine. Well, their cunning plan backfired spectacularly and Putin's stooge won nearly 50% of the popular vote vs. less than 20% for the pro-democracy and freedom challenger. That's about as close as it gets to a landslide in Croatian politics.

It would seem that, not only is there no appetite for the Empire and its military misadventures, below the surface, the mood toward Russia is increasingly changing.

Twerking or ballet?

On Christmas eve, Milan's La Scala theater gave the performance of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet. This wouldn't seem exceptional: the ballet is a masterpiece and the music is among the most famous and most beautiful in our cultural heritage.

But barely three years ago, everyone was falling over themselves to cancel all things Russian including the performances of Tchaikovsky's music and university courses in Russian literature. Last week La Scala not only presented Tchaikovsky's ballet, it did so based on Rudolf Nureyev's choreography, invited a Russian conductor, Valery Ovsyanikov of St Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre and Italian national TV carried the whole show.

I am not a ballet fan, but La Scala's production was so beautifully done that I ended up watching a good chunk of it. It was a wholesome contrast to twerking and the lewd spectacles like the opening and closing ceremonies of Paris Olympics - the kind of cultural poison we've come to expect in the West.

Are the countercurrents becoming a tsunami?

I couldn't help wondering if there wasn't something purposeful and deliberate in La Scala's choice of production and artists this Christmas: an explicit rejection of the Western cultural trends and a rejection of the forced, unreasoned hostility against Russia. The same cultural countercurrents seem to be gripping many nations as the recent elections in the United States, Slovakia, Romania, Georgia, Hungary, France, Germany and Croatia have shown.

It may be that in spite of the loud banging of the war-drums in mainstream media, very different currents are gathering below the surface. These currents might continue to gain strength. The ruling establishments in the West might like to label all this as Russia's malign influence, disinformation, misinformation or malinformation, but it may be that ordinary people have little appetite for lies, hatred, hostility and war, the intellectual and cultural junk food that's become pervasive in the West. Escalating the wars could prove a tough act for the imperial establishment in 2025.

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Trading signals for Key Markets, 31 Dec. 2024

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following signals: