Left of center begins the failure that led to the electoral victories of the far right. Because the political arm of ordinary people neglects their clientele and prefers to take care of: saving the world.
The “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” has bleak reports; “La rossa relies on Meloni,” meaning; Bologna and Emilia-Romagna, always red, have chosen brown – a woman who comes from Italy’s populist-fascist tradition. Mussolini greets the 21st century with a grin, just in time for the 100th birthday th anniversary of his theatrical march on Rome.
Horrified, Europe looks at Italy, the founding nation of the EU, the EU net payer, a scoundrel country in terms of politics – and now also dangerous to the public? The Democrat looks away in horror. But where should he look? To France? Marine Le Pen, Meloni’s right-wing prayer sister, represents the second largest electorate in the country. So to Sweden? Åkesson’s right-wing populist Sweden Democrats are celebrating triumphs.
Frank André Meyer (born 1944) is a Swiss journalist and columnist. In 1985 he became a member of the group management of the Ringier media company. Meyer writes for Blick and Cicero magazine, among others. He was awarded the Zurich Journalist Prize and the German Federal Cross of Merit. Meyer lives in Berlin.
Kaczynski’s clerical fascism and authoritarianism dominate both East Central European EU nations. Even looking at Europe’s neutral spot, Switzerland, offers no consolation. Helvetia’s largest party is the right-wing populist SVP. Shocked left-liberals to left-greens lament the successes of the European right, from reactionary-conservative to extreme right-wing.
All commentators’ eyes are on the phenomenon of populism: are millions of voters forgetting human rights and their shared responsibility for a culture of democratic coexistence?
Perplexed, looks wander to the right. Any anger at the Meloni-Åkesson-Le Pens seems futile. What to do? turn your head In the opposite direction. Examine the left. Left green do the political process. Because left of center begins the failure that led to the electoral victories of the far right.
Noting this is devoid of any originality, as the Left sees itself as the political home of ordinary people, the citizens, who have to cope with a difficult everyday life in order to help children achieve biographical success. Nothing is given to them. They have to fight for everything. The left-wing representatives in politics, parliament and government, in institutions and organizations make the things of these ordinary people theirs. One would think so.
But the spokesmen on the left are unfortunately, unfortunately, busy elsewhere: especially with saving the world, currently with the feminist language revolution, even more currently with the colonial sins of the wicked West compared to the morally unspoilt global South – whatever that is supposed to be.
The left-green academic scene, which ranges from well-appointed chairs to well-appointed positions in the forecourt of politics and in the creative floors of culture to comfortably equipped NGOs, gets excited about meat consumption and car consumption and flight consumption; this “last generation” also likes to get stuck on freeway entrances and block commuter traffic – while working-class mothers have to take their children to run-down day-care centers and immigrant-dominated schools early in the morning, illegally with a micro car, if they can afford one at all.
Of course, the left-green spokesmen don’t get all of this. Most of the time they are still asleep.
When they are awake, they are spellbound by their efforts to use gender-appropriate language, the elitist gibberish that they want to oblige the common people to use as the official language. After all, it is about their historically compulsory subject: justice, currently gender justice — while citizens humbly queue up in precisely those offices where the postmodern elite of the labor movement sits in the executive chairs.
With class-struggle passion, the left-green comrades demand solidarity with the global south, which their fathers and fathers despised, enslaved and exploited so shamefully, which is why the guilt of these “old white men” must be redeemed.
Preferably up close by reversing the colonization, in the form of promoting migration into the western social system, even into the political system by means of voting rights for foreigners, as the German Greens are demanding – while the population of Western Europe has to acknowledge with irritation that they are Germans or French or Italians or Swedes are downgraded to “old-timers”.
Which employee still recognizes the representatives of his interests in the left-green city nobility? Ulf Poschardt, the brilliant language berserker of the world, puts it this way: “When prominent upper-class children with their middle-class first names and some of them with millionaire surnames – explain to the workers and craftsmen what they should do without in the future (and what exactly those renunciation propagandists should do at a young age thoroughly enjoyed), then it becomes clear that the ‘working class’ has been freed from the power of representation of the left with open eyes. That’s how Trump and most recently Meloni explain themselves.”
It couldn’t be more polemically precise: the successes of the far right are thanks to the left, whose arrogance is expressed, among other things, in the fact that they believe they can pacify the working population with social policy. But the political struggle that is shaking free, democratic, open Europe these days is a culture war!
Despite citizen income and an increase in pensions, millions upon millions no longer feel comfortable in their national, European skin. They sense that it is no longer about them – their culture. They feel homeless – left behind as “deplorables,” as “unfortunate ones,” as former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton used to call her in disgust.
The world of ideas of the self-empowered ruling class is religious; she thinks she shares historical truth; the lifestyle that goes with it is Calvinistic, as can be seen in the historical example of Potsdam’s Dutch Quarter: ground-level windows without curtains allow you to check at any time whether you eat meat-free food correctly, watch public television correctly – and use the cargo bike correctly in front of the house stands.
Anyone who chooses the Melonis, the Le Pens, the Åkessons or the Höckes doesn’t want any of this. He wants a left that listens to him. A left that belongs to him.
This column first appeared in Cicero.
