A recent YouGov poll for Sweden suggests that the populist right-wing party the Sweden Democrats might get about 26.7% of the vote in Sweden if an election were held now. That makes it the most popular party in Sweden today. The once great Swedish Social Democratic Party got just 21.4%. If one looks carefully at the figures here and compares them with the 2014 election (available in that same link), it would appear that many voters are abandoning the Social Democratic Party for the Sweden Democrats. Why is that happening?
Geez, it’s like everything I’ve been warning about is coming true. As I have said, the populist right is rising all over Europe, e.g., the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the Freedom Party in Austria, the French National Front, and UKIP. The Danish People’s Party is already in coalition government in Denmark and the Swiss just elected a populist right-wing party.
Could it be that the left is in crisis and a massive rethinking of what the mainstream left should stand for is in order?
We all know the mainstream left sold out its constituency and has adopted a rotten neoliberalism for decades now. The left’s intellectual life has been poisoned by Postmodernism and truth relativism. Extreme identity politics and extreme political correctness make the left a laughing stock (even though there are clearly very important core issues like gay rights, women’s rights, or minority issues). The European left fails to see the European Union as the threat to democracy, Keynesianism, and economic sovereignty that it clearly is.
And as I have said in the last few posts, is it time that the European left seriously rethink whether open borders and mass immigration is a good thing on economic and social grounds?
Could it be that open borders and endless mass immigration are another part of the fraud of neoliberalism?
Some careful self-reflection and criticism is in order if you want to understand why the European populist right is soaring in the opinion polls.
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Note that the fairly radical "The Left" party in Germany is also rising in the polls, which also has a hostility to globalization and the "neoliberal" EU much like the radical right parties do. I really hope that the populist right is only popular on a couple issues which it's beating everyone else over the head with, because that means that if the left reforms then the populist right (and actual far-left) can still be knee-capped. Otherwise the damage is already done and it may be too late for the next few years.
ReplyDeleteMy 2 cents. The radical right has risen because all the mainstream parties, left, right, middle, have all abdicated on a few issues that can be described as cultural disruption. Immigration is the biggest of these, but there are a few others, such as the erosion of national sovereignty and identity.
DeleteI suspect that no party of the mainstream will reform until it pays a severe price at the polls. It will take the victory of at least one extremist party. Wilders and le Pen look like the most likely.
Just to be clear, you feel the problem of European immigration is:
ReplyDelete1) All migration, including intra-European migration
2) All non-European migration, including from rich countries such as US and Japan
3) All non-European migration from Third World countries which generally occur on economic grounds
?
Open doors intra-EU immigration is a problem, yes, especially once the EU expanded to Eastern European countries with much lower economic development and poverty rates.
ReplyDeleteMy full position is here:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2015/11/two-problems-about-europes-migrant.html?showComment=1447860862275#c1221906957131219372
E.g., if you can't even control how many people come into your country in one year, the government cannot engage in effective short-run or long-run planning and funding of public services and infrastructure.
DeleteMass immigration is putting terrible strain on EU public services and may well give the right the excuse to dismantle what is left of it.
And let me tell you something else: the view I am advocating is compassionate, humane, sensible and intelligent, and doesn't reject all immigration at all, nor taking in a fair share of refugees.
DeleteMy view is how a decent and compassionate left-wing government would look after its citizens, no matter what their race or ethnic origin.
Open borders, welfare state, democracy. Pick two.
Delete(Caplan and Murphy pick one.)
In order to make your position more palpable to other left-wingers (not that you owe them anything) is to argue for economic reform that would benefit third-world countries at the expense of the super wealthy instead of the worker. For instance exempting third-world countries from Intellectual property claims which would allow them to develop or buy generic drugs and computer software at a far lower cost. I think I've posted before that Dean Baker, a post-keynesian, has written a lot about this.
DeleteMost intellectual property is theft. I support copyright. But if I invest a character Mob Burphy who wanders around the world causing comical destruction I don't think I should have exclusive rights to write about this clownish being. Much ip is like that. As for drugs etc, many makers do offer vastly reduced prices, but then you do need to curb reimportation. Which leftists campaign against.
DeleteLK, please note that almost all that is wrong in the "Left" comes from the soviet union. The truth relativism comes from the "need" to deny the failures there. The extreme identity politics comes from the "need" to justify the totally unreasonable treatment of those who dared to criticize. The abolition of the border is basically equivalent to the abolition of the nation state and it fits perfectly into this pattern of destruction of what we have now for the sake of making space for the bloody utopia.
ReplyDeleteI generally agree with you here LK, as I am sure you know.
ReplyDeleteAs for the left no seeing how anti-democratic the EU is, I would have thought the recent crisis in Portugal would have made it plain enough. What was the president's rationale after all.
Just to head off confusion. I don't agree with you on a lot of economics, and if I had my way you might eat your own head in frustration and rage, but one simply cannot dismiss the results of an election because one disagrees on what the level of debt should be. You make your case, sometimes you lose.
Hey Lk, I think the recent crisis n weak response to it is the reason for rightward trend in politics. Look at UK were ill founded ideas of austerity were adopted by Cameron n Osborne, based on concerns about confidence (What about the confidence fairy, did consumer and business become more confident after the turn to austerity? On the contrary the business confidence fell to the level not seen since worst of financial crisis and consumer confidence fell even below the levels of 2008-9. The result is an economy that remains deeply depressed. As the National Institute for Economic And Social Research a British think tank, pointed out in starling calculation,there is real sense that British economy is doing worse in this slump that in Great Depression: by forth year after the Depression began , the British GDP regained its previous peak, but this time around its still well below its level in early 2008.") Ref : Paul Krugman - End This Depression Now!. In history we can find many examples where bad economic times led to rightward shift in politics Eg As in 1970s. Immigration is certainly a important issue but think that the weak response to the crisis gave stimulus to such trend. What do u say ?
ReplyDeleteDo you mean do the populist right focus on some immigration issues unfairly and unreasonably and distract attention away from serious economic issues? Yes, certainly.
Delete