[DEBATE] : A right-wing shift in Europe?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Peter Dwyer <peter at brc-net.org.uk> wrote:
> But there are other countries where the picture is very different.
> Die Linke in Germany emerged from a split in the mainstream
> centre-left Social Democratic Party. It has more than 50 deputies
> in the federal parliament and has made some important
> breakthroughs recently in state elections.
<snip>
> Alex Callincos
>
> http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14957

To a certain extent, the turn to the Right is a matter of who just
happened to be in power when things began to go really awry
economically.  Since the center Left don't have an answer to the
current economic problem, and the far Left, like the SWP and Galloway
factions of the old Respect coalition, are good at shooting themselves
in the foot, most protest votes tend to go to the center Right under
the circumstances.

Advances of the far Right are worrisome: in both the UK and Italy,
it's combined fears of Islam and immigrants that have been feeding
them.  Since Muslim immigrants to Europe are more proletarian than
Muslim immigrants to the USA, they may more easily become scapegoats
in the former than the latter.

The far Left are better on immigrants than the center Left, but the
question of Islam divides opinions on the far Left, too, not just the
center Left.  Added to this question is that of Israel, especially as
it claims to be defending its security against Islamist terrorist
organizations.

I wonder if Alex Callincos has checked out Gregor Gysi's position on
Israel (in a speech congratulating Israel's 60th anniversary) and BAK
Shalom der Linksjugend's platform "against Anti-Semitism,
Anti-Zionism, Anti-Americanism, and Regressive Anti-Capitalism":
<http://die-linke.de/die_linke/nachrichten/detail/zurueck/aktuell/artikel/die-haltung-der-deutschen-linken-zum-staat-israel/>.
<http://bak-shalom.de/>.  Notice the equation of anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism in this platform.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>