How 'the Left™' Lost the EU Elections

Some insights into last weekend's electioneering sham

I was busy doing stuff (going through the corrections of my book), hence when I re-emerged from them, I found that I don’t really have to write a lot about the EU ‘elections’—as the Berliner Zeitung already published quite an apt take, that is, at least as far as Germany is concerned.

Here are the official results, and the following is coming to you, as always, in my translation, with emphases added, and with the customary ‘bottom lines’.

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The Phoney ‘Us’ is Over: How SPD and Greens Crashed

Citizens were supposed to ‘set an example’ in the European elections instead of exercising their power. The strategy has failed. The chancellor has one last chance to turn the situation around. Then it’s over.

An op-ed by Moritz Eichhorn, Berliner Zeitung, 9 June 2024 [source]

The losers of the European elections had offered the citizens a trade-off in recent weeks. They should ‘set an example’ with their vote and ‘virtue-signal’ [orig. Haltung zeigen] instead of exercising power. Instead of exercising the sovereign’s most noble right in a democratic state in line with their own interests, instead of determining who governs them, they should send signals.

‘Against hate and agitation’, as SPD election slogans held. A sublime deed should be transformed into a symbolic act. What a downgrade! The citizens have clearly rejected this attempt by the SPD and the Greens to bamboozle [orig. über den Tisch ziehen lassen] them, not to measure them by the results of their policies or consider any policy-related outcomes

The left-wing election losers wanted to whisk citizens away to their parallel universe. A world in which today’s words, because they may become tomorrow’s deeds, count more than the facts that millions of people are facing: the decline of the economy due to political bans, a migration policy that leads to housing shortages and violence, a citizens’ income [orig. Bürgergeld, a kind of universal basic income too low to live on] that is received by more foreigners than citizens, and is suddenly ten billion euros more expensive than expected, an energy policy that causes prices to explode, and a social policy that brings conflicts into schools, sports clubs and gyms.

A ‘We’ Without Majority

And this deception about the interests of voters is also a self-deception on part of politicians. Just how deep Katarina Barley, Kevin Kühnert, Terry Reintke, and Omid Nouripour are already in this [parallel] world became clear on Sunday evening. [SPD party chair] Barley said in disbelief and amazement on [state broadcaster] ARD:

At the beginning of the year, we all thought there would be a democracy movement.

Who is ‘we’? That’s what you want to ask the SPD leadership candidate. It must be the same ‘we’ from the pretentious slogan ‘We are more’.

Who this never meant in any case could be observed at the ‘against the right’ demonstrations, which were supposed to be central to the election campaign of the Social Democrats and Greens, for six months. The slogan was meant exactly as it was written: against the right. Not exclusively against right-wing extremists or fascists, no, against everything to the right of the Greens. That was the strategy against the AfD, CDU/CSU and FDP.

Those Who Should Not be Part of ‘Democracy™’ are Suddenly Election Winners

The infamous Potsdam [which I call ‘Stupid Watergate’] meeting prompted the German government to call for protest marches with Chancellor Scholz and Foreign Minister Baerbock in the lead. This was also evident at the demonstration under the slogan ‘Stop Right-Wing Extremism—Defend Democracy’ at the Brandenburg Gate on the day before the European elections. A sign there read: ‘Fascists belong in prison and not in parliament (and don't forget the CSU)’.

This CSU, or the CDU/CSU as a whole, was to be lumped together with right-wing extremists by the demonstrations, which the citizens should then have put the lid on at the election. Instead, they voted for [CDU chair] Friedrich Merz’s party with the rather unpopular Ursula von der Leyen as the strongest force and the AfD in second place.

But it would be unfair to blame Katarina Barley for the SPD’s result or Terry Reintke for the Greens’ result. Hardly anyone knows their European politicians anyway. The European elections were, are and will remain a vote on the work of the incumbent federal government. On Sunday, Scholz, Habeck and Baerbock were judged.

Is ‘the Right™’ Becoming a Youth Movement?

According to the ARD Deutschlandtrend, almost 80% of Germans are dissatisfied with the work of the federal government [note that this is polling done by the state broadcaster]. And it is not just the election result that shows how great the need was for citizens to express their dissatisfaction. The record-breaking voter turnout of 64% also shows how massive the rejection is.

And this trend is neither limited to Germany nor is it over. The rejection of a policy that seeks to reinforce itself in Berlin and Brussels echo chambers and dictate to voters when they are right-wing extremists is at the beginning of its end. This is particularly evident in the election results of the under-30s, where the CDU/CSU and AfD share first place. It is not die-hards who support conservative to right-wing positions, it is the young. This means that the most progressive of all age cohorts is switching sides, an unmistakable sign of the seriousness of the situation.

In fact, the chancellor, who has been seen on posters all over the country together with Barley, now has the chance to recognise the people’s choice by drastically changing his policy. Because whether the CDU or even the AfD, once in power, will deliver what they are currently promising is anything but a foregone conclusion. The chancellor is the only one who could really let deeds speak for themselves instead of sending signals. To do so, however, he would have to stop thinking up an ‘us’.

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Bottom Lines

This is, sadly, what passes for quite reasonable analysis in legacy media these days. Believe me, it is, for most other mainstream outlets are far worse.

So, is that true?

Remember when James Dean play-acted a rebellious teen facing off with what he perceived his conservative elders?

Well, post-1968, ‘the Left’ (not yet ™) marched through the institutions, which they took over since. Now, what does it mean to rebel against one’s ‘progressive’, vegan, and ‘internationalist’ elders?

Right: to be ‘on the right’.

Nevermind the silly trappings, from tiki torches to trad-wive-dom to other forms of click-tivism. Make no mistake, today’s ‘Right™’ is as much corporatised and controlled as its ‘leftist™’ counterpart. Those who yell slogans on ‘the Right™’ don’t want the nanny state to go away, they just want to make sure they get to the feeding station first.

As the generations shift once more, and as political power moves across time and space, we’ll soon learn whether or not the progressive-globalist, ‘green™’ moment was—just that, the last attempt by ‘the boomers’ and parts of millennials to ensure their legacy.

Whatever comes next will be most assuredly something else, and we’ll soon see what shape it will take.