Shift to Right in Europe Bodes Ill for US Dems

By Harry Kimball, Newser Staff

Posted Jun 9, 2009 4:12 PM CDT

(Newser) – The global recession has sparked a conservative, anti-immigrant impulse in Europe—see the right’s victory in European Parliament elections—and US liberals should take notice, Michael Lind writes for Salon. Though “it would be a mistake to read too much into the elections” as the “European Parliament has more symbolism than power,” Lind writes, the tide is turning. “Symbolism counts for something.”

Lind thinks “there is no reason to fear the replacement of democracy by dictatorship in today’s Europe,” as happened during the Great Depression. But voters are clearly rejecting the liberal internationalism that has supplanted Marxist dogma in leftist circles. Anti-immigrant rhetoric may come from racism, but it is “likely to seem commonsensical to many non-racist voters.” In the US, the Dems should take notice.

[Images (3)]

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People walk through a gangway at the European Parliament building in Brussels. (AP Photo)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy. (AP Photo)

Continental employees from France, whose jobs are under threat, protest in Hanover, Germany. (AP Photo)

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If Larry Summers and Tim Geithner succeed in identifying the Democrats too closely with Wall Street, then the moribund Republicans might be revitalized as a vehicle for anti-establishment populism—not Hitlerian, but Jacksonian. -

American progressives may reconsider their flirtation with an idealized social democratic EU and try to connect with older American center-left traditions. - Michael Lind

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COMMENTS

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Showing 3 of 18 comments

MarkFL

Jun 10, 2009 12:50 PM CDT

Can we all make a pact right here and now to stop listing the people we disagree with as an argument when that list has nothing to do with the story. I have seen one too many "W, Cheney, Rush" or "Frank, Pelosi, Reid" as though naming them gets your point across. A list like that just labels you as a blind partisan rather than a principled thinker.

MarkFL

Jun 10, 2009 12:46 PM CDT

That is right. Right in Europe means Nationalism and anti-immigrant. It does not mean religious fundamentalism and free market libertarianism as it does hear in the US. It is funny because nationalism is an anti globalization sentiment which is often associated with the left (anti corporate, buy local protectionism). However in the US there is no denying the nationalism and anti immigrant nature of the Republicans. Europe is just a whole different animal.

SBS

Jun 10, 2009 11:38 AM CDT

Agreed.

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Politics • US • World

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