2013-11-09

Europe's Left In Deep Trouble

The NYTimes is covering the rise of the right in Europe (Right Wing’s Surge in Europe Has the Establishment Rattled) and it starts off with an account of a local issue: pork meatballs. A few kindergartens in Hvidovre, Denmark have removed them from the menu because there are a small number of Muslim students, and the right is using this issue to attract voters. What is the response of the left-wing mayor:
The issue has become a headache for Mayor Helle Adelborg, whose center-left Social Democratic Party has controlled the town council since the 1920s but now faces an uphill struggle before municipal elections on Nov. 19. “It is very easy to exploit such themes to get votes,” she said. “They take a lot of votes from my party. It is unfair.”
If there's a betting line, I will put my money on the challenger.

Credit to the NYTimes reporter Andrew Higgins though, he notes what I've said repeatedly on this blog:
The trend in Europe does not signal the return of fascist demons from the 1930s, except in Greece, where the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn has promoted openly racist beliefs, and perhaps in Hungary, where the far-right Jobbik party backs a brand of ethnic nationalism suffused with anti-Semitism.
In Hungary, that party remains a small part of the ruling coalition and a path to power for them is hard to see from here.

But the soaring fortunes of groups like the Danish People’s Party, which some popularity polls now rank ahead of the Social Democrats, point to a fundamental political shift toward nativist forces fed by a curious mix of right-wing identity politics and left-wing anxieties about the future of the welfare state.

“This is the new normal,” said Flemming Rose, the foreign editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. “It is a nightmare for traditional political elites and also for Brussels.”
The rise of Tea Party in America has obscured the left's unease with Washington, but there is similar crossover sentiment. The difference in Europe though, is that they have nation states. France is filled with Frenchmen, Germany filled with Germans. People with linguisitc and cultural ties going back centuries. America is more of an empire, and the multicultural/salad bowl policy of the past 50 years means there no longer are Americans. Or, if we go by self-identification, the "Americans" are the people in the old Confederacy. One of the nascent movements in America that may or may not take off during this period of negative mood, is for Americans to see themselves as a people first, and part of a state second. This already happens with many minority groups, but it has yet to happen for larger populations such as Southerners or white Americans. There is more similarities than differences between the shifts in Europe and America the deeper one goes because at root these changes are based on shifts in social mood.

Built on the ruins of a chaotic antitax movement, the Danish People’s Party has evolved into a defender of the welfare state, at least for native Danes. It pioneered “welfare chauvinism,” a cause now embraced by many of Europe’s surging populists, who play on fears that freeloading foreigners are draining pensions and other benefits.
Lots of Americans hold these views, but there is no nationalist/populist party yet. It may never emerge given American demographics, or maybe it will if someone starts pushing it.

Overall, the piece is interesting in how favorable it makes the right-wing in Europe sound, and this appeared on the front page of Saturday's NYTimes.

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