Shift to Right in Europe Bodes Ill for US Dems

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 9, 2009 4:12 PM CDT
Shift to Right in Europe Bodes Ill for US Dems
People walk through a gangway at the European Parliament building in Brussels.   (AP Photo)

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. (More European Union stories.)

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