An exit poll says the far-right and anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders is heading for a massive parliamentary election victory. It's one of the biggest political upsets in Dutch politics since World War II and one that is bound to send shockwaves through Europe.

Oh what the hell is going on over there

  • aqwxcvbnji [none/use name]
    ·
    7 months ago

    sometimes I think the left needs to say where they went wrong, because we are going wrong somewhere when stuff like this is happening, and say what we’re going to do differently

    I think the answer to that question is pretty straightforward: the traditional left in Western-Europe used to consist of two groups:

    1. people who need redistribution
    2. people who feel sympathy for people who need redistribution.

    The first group is the working class (in a narrow sense) and the poor, the second group consists of progressive intellectuals with a comfortable life. Left parties used to have organic connections to the first group trough their mass-organisations, which had tentacles deep into ordinary people's lives, which enabled people from the trade-unions and so forth to grow in to their parties and be a main element in the cadre of theose political parties. But since the 1970's those organisations slowly crumbled and/or lost their connection with the political parties, which became dominated by highly educated intellectuals. As a result, the left parties reflected the interests and priorities of that social group, and over time that thus remained the only social group which supported those parties. This is the situation in which we now find ourselves: the core constituency of the traditional left parties in Western-Europe is the progressive intellectuals - the people who feel sympathy for people who need redistribution. It is no longer the people who need redistribution.

    That's a relatively easy thing to say, but only trough building new left parties and organisations can this problem be solved.