Capital's Bludgeon
Brief notes on the European elections
By now you’ve perhaps seen the news about the European parliamentary election results.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s essay (Lesser Evil), the far right was predicted to do extremely well, and that’s what happened. Even tiny Luxembourg, with only half a million people and therefore only six representatives, is sending one politician from the far right Alternativ Demokratesch Reformpartei (ADR) to Brussels.
The bigger news is of course what happened in two of the three countries surrounding Luxembourg: Germany and France. In Germany, the Alternativ für Deutschland came in second; in France, the far right Rassemblement National not only came in first, but also won more votes than the two next parties on the list. In other places, far right parties did very well also, coming in first in Italy and also in Austria, while showing gains in almost every other European country.
There will be all sorts of absurd commentary about these results, and there is already no shortage of panicked screeds about how democracy is under threat in Europe. In fact, the likely returning president of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, has already begun positioning herself as the guardian of decency against “forces from the outside and from the inside” who are destabilizing “our societies and trying to weaken Europe.”
What are those forces? Well, according to von der Leyen, it’s not only the far right:
“The center is holding. But it is also true that the extremes on the left and on the right have gained support, and this is why the result comes with great responsibility for the parties in the center.”
What “extremes on the left” is she talking about? The only leftist political alliance in the EU parliament, usually just called “The Left,” actually lost a seat, and they are not eurosceptics.
Instead, von der Leyen — who is part of the Conservative party in Germany — is referring to the BSW in Germany, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenecht. That party, founded by former Left Party politician Sahra Wagenecht, won six seats in this election by pulling voters away from the far left, the Greens, and also the AfD. In fact, it’s thought that the far right would have done even better than it did if Wagenecht hadn’t offered those voters a leftist alternative.
It should give you pause that, for the mythical “center” of European politics, someone like Sahra Wagenecht is just as much a threat to civilizational stability as those who long for a return to the days of Hitler, Franco, and Mussoloni. In fact, as it seems likely that von der Leyen will need to make friends with Georgia Meloni’s hard right “Brothers of Italy” party in order to secure the presidency again, instead of entering into any dialogue with the Left party, it’s clear who the center really believes is the true enemy.