So what's the deal with the European parliamentary elections? Did teh stupid shift from us to them?

[JVS]

Xenophobic political parties are busting out all over. Or if not extremists, "center right" capitalist / Mammon worshipers. I can kind of understand the resurgence of the Xenophobes. Blaming "immigrants" (quotes because some of the people called this are citizens who have been born in Europe, but still are seen as outsiders by the dominant ethnicity of the country) is not rare in hard economic times, but that so many people have reacted to the destruction of the world economy by neo-liberal economic goons by reading Atlas Shrugged one more time and embracing the economically failed policies even harder is disconcerting in its failure to connect the dots.

Look at all the yellow (neoliberals), black (traditional conservatives), and light blue (Nationalists) in the results. Notice the paucity of red.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,628668,00.html#Europa-2009

[Captain Hilts]

1. Yes, it did. nt

[Iggo]

2. The Stupid is everywhere.

It knows no borders.

[Occam Bandage]

3. I'm at a loss also.

I understand the rise of anti-globalist, anti-immigrant groups like the BNP. I don't get the popularity of free-traders, except perhaps as a backlash against bailouts.

[BolivarianHero]

4. Simply put, the left failed.

The left embraced the failed ideology of neo-liberalism; the disenchanted either threw their hands and elected Christian Democrats or went with the far-right.

[redqueen]

12. That's ridiculous. There is no "the left"...

the Greens never embraced neo-liberalism.

[BolivarianHero]

16. I understand...

But a lot of people are binary thinkers...They think that if the social democratic left has failed them, the Christian Democrats will clean up the mess.

[redqueen]

18. Yes, I'm not so worried about parties like the Christian Democrats

as I am about parties like the BNP. The far-right, in other words.

Let's hope the increase in their numbers isn't the start of a trend.

[Hannah Bell]

28. but they enacted neo-lib policies.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5803852&mesg_id=5804855

[tocqueville]

19. the left failed because

they are not credible, not because they "embraced neo-liberalism". The European left has always mainly been social-democratic, except in France where it was communistic. Social-democracy has always embraced capitalism but want to regulate it. The problem is that the conservatives have recently embraced social-democratic policies, thus leaving the traditional left in a vaccuum. So as singing the "Internationale" doesn't create jobs, the traditional lefties have been screwed.

[redqueen]

20. Aha...

so the conservatives there took a lesson from the DLC, and triangulated their way back into power?

[tocqueville]

21. kind of, yes

but this has been going on for decades, it's nothing new and above all not "new" proposals in front of an election.

Remember this is not local national elections. The "Christian-Democrat-Social-Democrat" block (PPE) has always been the dominating block in the European Parliament (which cannot be compared to the US Congress). But it represents the majority mindset in Europe. You cannot compare with the opposition "Bush-Republican"/"Obama-Liberal" in the US. European conservatives stand to the left of mainstream US Democrats on central questions specially on the use of government to regulate the economy. If Merkel/Sarkozy/Brown had been in charge in the US they certainly had bailed out the banks (because there was no other option to avoid chaos) but they had decapitated Wall Street too, taking them under control until return to normalcy. They had probably bailed out all the foreclosed too, so nobody ended in a tent.
They had probably nationalized GM but guaranteed long plans of unemployment fees, paid for education to new jobs and guaranteed pensions. They had finally enforced a single-payer healthcare system and taxed the rich. That's the difference with Obama's policies.

[redqueen]

22. Really puts our extremist republican party in perspective,

when it's compared to conservatives in other countries.

Thanks.

[tocqueville]

24. I'm not inventing anything

the measures I name have been already existing here (healthcare), not applicable (we didn't have a foreclosure problem in Europe since the banks here were forbidden to use those methods), partly applied (some bank directors were fired and their parachutes "seized"), and similar measures for unemployment/pensions were enforced.

[Hannah Bell]

27. Schröder (social democrat) and Fischer (greens) took office in 1998 with the slogan

“Innovation and Justice.” After 17 years of CDU rule under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, social services and industry were to be modernised and the quality of life improved... Once he won control of the federal government, Schröder quickly proved himself to be the “comrade of the bosses.”

...While incomes and wage levels sank and the most sweeping cuts in social services since the 1930s were imposed, the promised business and industrial upturn failed to materialize. Employers, high-income individuals and big companies benefited considerably from the lower taxes introduced by the SPD-Green government, but unemployment kept climbing and social misery rapidly spread.

After seven years of the SPD-Green coalition, people in the lower half of the earnings scale control just over 4 percent of the total social wealth, while the richest 10 percent own and control 44 percent of all wealth. The SPD-Green coalition has presided over a redistribution of some 30 billion euros from the poor to the rich.


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/germ-j03.shtml


similar experience with other left regimes in europe.

[redqueen]

29. I guess there's just no hope at all, then... anywhere. (nt)

[Hannah Bell]

26. the left parties in europe have, in a number of cases, been the executives

of neo-lib actions,much as tony blair & the "labor" party were.

= disillusionment of their constituency. nothing to do with singing the internationale.

"Under these conditions, it now appears likely that the main losers in the European Union parliamentary elections to be completed this weekend will be Europe’s social democratic parties. This is bound up with the fact that the previous government in Germany, headed by Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Gerhard Schröder, the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Socialist Party government of José Zapatero in Spain have all been trailblazers for deregulation of financial markets and the destruction of social welfare programmes. They all claimed that such free market policies would ensure future economic prosperity.

Millions in Germany have suffered the consequences of the Hartz IV anti-welfare laws and other social democratic “reforms.” The results have been similar in the rest of Europe.

The French CP shared power in a series of Socialist Party-led governments since 1981 that implemented social welfare cuts, although the CP had promised to defend and expand social gains. The Italian PRC has supported right-wing governments in parliament since the early 1990s, and from 2006 to 2008 took part in the Romano Prodi government, whose programme of budget cuts prepared the way for the return to power of the right wing led by Silvio Berlusconi. In Germany, the Left Party is part of a coalition with the SPD in the Berlin Senate that has implemented drastic cuts to balance the city’s budget."


http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/euro-j06.shtml

[tocqueville]

30. in the european lefties la-la land

everytime you mention the word "market" you are a fascist. It's as ridiculous as calling Obama's policies socialism.

[hedgehog]

5. These people were brought in to fill a labor shortage, now it's time for them to

go back where they came from, don't you know...

:sarcasm:

[bikebloke]

6. Not that many turned out to vote.

I think they said it was the lowest turn out ever. Low turnouts are the advantage to the fringe parties.

[tocqueville]

10. but still as a US average turn out.

Nobody says that the US isn't a democracy because in average 40-50% of the people vote. Notice to that it's a single round proportional vote and not a single round majority vote.

[redqueen]

13. Why would that be the case, though?

With economic scandals, the global recession, climate change picking up speed (or at least us finding out it's happening much faster than we anticipated)... why would *fewer* people turn out?

I do see that green parties made gains, but not as many as I'd hoped.

[tocqueville]

23. because the EU-parliament is a peripheral institution

it can only propose laws that must be ratified at national level, which means that the power is relatively limited. It's not the US Congress. The EU isn't a federal state, it doesn't even have a President, only a President of a commission who can only express what 27 member states want, if there is "unanimity", not even majority. The frigging Irish blocked the proposal of 2/3 majority vote and now regret it bitterly since their country would be again living of potatoes if it wasn't for EU subsidies. So when you think of it, a 45% participation isn't that bad, but of course far from satisfactory by EU-standards.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Yes,

Aided by

(1) Anti-incumbent protest vote, with the economic crisis (and, in the case of Britain, scandals involving the major parties)

(2) Bad economy usually increases xenophobia

(3) Low turnout, meaning that the right-wingers and especially the fervent anti-EU types made up a disproportionate number of the actual voters

(4) Proportional representation gives more power to small right-wing parties

(5) Fuck!

(6) FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!

[LeftishBrit]

9. P.S. To all on the board who have ever argued...

that anyone who is against the establishment can't be all bad/ that the left-right distinction is artificial/ that temporary alliances between progressives and anti-war or anti-establishment right-wingers are acceptable in the cause of single-issue campaigns/ that 'even a stopped clock is right twice a day' -


THIS is why I have alwaya so strongly argued against such views.

THIS is what we are up against!

THIS is why progressives can NEVER make common cause with the anti-establishment right!

THIS is what we must all fight against in unity while it is still not too late!!!

[tocqueville]

14. this is mostly a UK problem

in a situation where the sitting government is completely discredited even by its own.

proportional vote is the rule in European countries except the UK. Even France has a partial proportionality in Presidential elections and specially in legislative and local.

[tocqueville]

8. you'd dream to have European conservatives to rule the US

the parties you name are populist minorities. The winners are :

1) mainstream conservatives like Merkel, Sarkozy etc... those guys are in reality social-democrats. they stand to the left of US Democrats. All what you wish about abortion laws, separation of Church and State, single payer healthcare, public transportation, public service energy etc.. would be implemented. which is considered as "socialism" in the US.

2) the Green

losers are socialists because their empty marxistic rethorics don't seduce anymore. In the US those parties are fringe, exotic parties.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Merkel perhaps. The BNP and similar parties and even UKIP - No!

The most worrying thing isn't the rise of mainstream conservatives but of far-right and borderline-far-right parties

[tocqueville]

15. the equivalent of the UKIP in France

got 4%. The problem is mostly in Austria and the Netherlands. But often those votes are a protest vote more than anything else. Besides it's not a national vote, because the stakes are different. The populist far-right votes at Strasbourg won't change anything because all other parties are antifascistic by essence.

When Brown goes to the unavoidable elections to come soon, the UKIP won't win, but you might get Cameron. And Cameron isn't a fascist.

[JVS]

25. Bzzzt. I live in Merkel's Germany. She's been fucking it up.

Schröder did a good amount of fucking it up too. Too much Sozialabbau. And the greens suck ass. They're shit on economics and they're stupid enough to be so scared of nuclear that they're actually pushing for coal power plants. By the way, at the link I posted, if you look at Germany's results you see that Merkel's CDU is the big loser dropping 5.8% since last time SPD lost .7%, Greens were HUGH WINNERS with a gain of .2% and those pissant doctors' sons over at the FDP shot up 4.9%

So what does this tell us. A sizable chunk of traditional conservatives and a few others are joining splinterparties and the fucking FDP mammon worshipers.

[BolivarianHero]

17. The BNP would not even be legal where I'm from...

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would not allow a party to ban non-Whites.