srz387
05-05-2006, 12:01 PM
By Christopher ****ey
Newsweek International
April 24, 2006 issue - The hammer and sickle quivered on wind-blown red flags as young men and women, shouting old slogans of revolution, marched through Paris to defeat the modest economic-reform program of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. That same flag was emblazoned on posters all over Rome last week as communists joined in an extremely slim—and still contested—victory by left-wing candidate Romano Prodi over right-wing incumbent Silvio Berlusconi.
To hear the billionaire populist, you'd have thought Western civilization itself was at stake. In language harking back to the red scares of the Great Depression and the cold war, Berlusconi warned that Prodi was just a mild-mannered front-man for wild-eyed communists in the mold of Marx and Lenin and Stalin. "In Italy," Berlusconi told NEWSWEEK earlier this year, "the left is not like the British left or the U.S. Democrats. The Left in Italy is still the communist left. The leaders of the left are the leaders of the strongest Communist Party in the West."
So, does Berlusconi (whose knack for right-wing rabble rousing is matched only by France's infamous Jean-Marie Le Pen) have a point? Is the extreme left that many thought was buried as a serious political force by the fall of the Berlin wall re-emerging to challenge ruling elites, and could it have a voice affecting all of Europe on issues from the economy to the environment and defense? Is the continent, in other words, about to live through a political dawn of the dead?
Actually, yes.
It's too early to say how loud a voice. But for several years now, the appeal of the far left to voters in France and Italy has grown. Middle-of-the-road socialists have been discredited by corruption and ineptitude, the staleness of their message and the ravages of much more organized right-wing political machines. In the French elections of 2002, socialist Lionel Jospin (after five years as prime minister) failed to make it into the second round when he ran for president. He lost too many votes to seven other leftist candidates, especially the feisty Arlette Laguiller (Workers' Struggle) and the young, charismatic postman-politician Olivier Besancenot (Revolutionary Communist League). The result was that ultra-rightist Le Pen ran against the center-right incumbent Jacques Chirac and the French, horrified on the left and the right, handed Chirac his second term with more than 80 percent of the vote.
In the four years since, many French socialists previously seen as pragmatic centrists have tried to shore up their far-left credentials. Former prime minister Laurent Fabius, aloof in manner as a Bourbon prince, seized the banner of opposition to the European constitution as a document that offered too few social protections to the masses. Former socialist Finance minister Dominique Strauss Kahn, once an avatar of economic liberalism within his party, has of late adopted rhetoric worthy of a Trotskyite. French polls, and most recently the success of the popular protests against the government's youth-employment law, reinforce the image of the far left as a rising force. An Ifop survey earlier this month showed 43 percent of French adults feel the extreme left enriches the public debate," especially when it comes to "social protections" and unemployment.
For Europeans who want a moderate compromise between social justice and the seemingly inescapable imperatives of the global market, none of this is good news. "People like me who believe the left can be a moderate force—we have failed," says Lucia Annunziata, one of Italy's most prominent commentators. "We are stuck in the medieval notion that there is an aristocracy and a people, and the people want a piece of what the aristocracy had—a life subsidized enough to have a minimum of work and a maximum of pleasure." Of course, no European government—left or right—can deliver that. So protest votes have grown to the point where the mainstream may be overwhelmed: in 2002, 51.4 percent of registered French voters either abstained, destroyed their ballots or voted for one of the extremes.
Now we're about to have the first real indication this century of how the extreme left behaves inside European halls of power. Though Berlusconi has been reluctant to concede, Prodi's coalition looks to have won a minimum working majority in the lower house by a .01 percent edge. It will control the Senate by a margin of two seats out of 315. Even if Prodi were representing a single relatively coherent party, those numbers would be a problem. But in fact, with no party of his own, he represents 13 lists. The largest two near the political center (including the former Italian Communist Party, now called the Democrats of the Left) lost ground in these elections. Those at the fringes gained. Among their leading lights: Oliviero Diliberto of the Party of Italian Communists, who has distinguished himself by embracing the causes of Hamas and Hizbullah, among others. Fausto Bertinotti of the Refounded Communist Party is known for bringing down Prodi's last government in 1998. Three of the coalition's radical parties have almost enough seats in the Senate to topple Prodi's government like a sickle slicing through a rose.
The prime minister-apparent seems unfazed, says John Harper, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins in Bologna, Italy. "But nobody knows what rabbit he's going to pull out of his hat to bring these people on board." The minimum price, almost certainly, will be lower taxes on wages and higher taxes on capital gains, inheritance and high incomes. A move is also afoot to repeal a Berlusconi youth-employment law similar to the much-hated French legislation crushed in the streets last week. And as the extreme left looks to its own core constituents, the politicking is likely to get awkward and angry.
Franco Giordano of the Refounded Communist Party attributes the extreme left's success to "being in tune with the no-global movement and the antiwar movement." It also made a mark opposing large European infrastructure projects like the high-speed train between Italy and France. Some take this as a sign that Prodi's victory could be a hollow one, with his government hostage to extremists pushing narrow agendas, says Annunziata. Italy and perhaps Europe "will become a huge subsidized paradise for Chinese tourists," she warns. Maybe they'll take home red flags as souvenirs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12335364/site/newsweek/
Newsweek International
April 24, 2006 issue - The hammer and sickle quivered on wind-blown red flags as young men and women, shouting old slogans of revolution, marched through Paris to defeat the modest economic-reform program of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. That same flag was emblazoned on posters all over Rome last week as communists joined in an extremely slim—and still contested—victory by left-wing candidate Romano Prodi over right-wing incumbent Silvio Berlusconi.
To hear the billionaire populist, you'd have thought Western civilization itself was at stake. In language harking back to the red scares of the Great Depression and the cold war, Berlusconi warned that Prodi was just a mild-mannered front-man for wild-eyed communists in the mold of Marx and Lenin and Stalin. "In Italy," Berlusconi told NEWSWEEK earlier this year, "the left is not like the British left or the U.S. Democrats. The Left in Italy is still the communist left. The leaders of the left are the leaders of the strongest Communist Party in the West."
So, does Berlusconi (whose knack for right-wing rabble rousing is matched only by France's infamous Jean-Marie Le Pen) have a point? Is the extreme left that many thought was buried as a serious political force by the fall of the Berlin wall re-emerging to challenge ruling elites, and could it have a voice affecting all of Europe on issues from the economy to the environment and defense? Is the continent, in other words, about to live through a political dawn of the dead?
Actually, yes.
It's too early to say how loud a voice. But for several years now, the appeal of the far left to voters in France and Italy has grown. Middle-of-the-road socialists have been discredited by corruption and ineptitude, the staleness of their message and the ravages of much more organized right-wing political machines. In the French elections of 2002, socialist Lionel Jospin (after five years as prime minister) failed to make it into the second round when he ran for president. He lost too many votes to seven other leftist candidates, especially the feisty Arlette Laguiller (Workers' Struggle) and the young, charismatic postman-politician Olivier Besancenot (Revolutionary Communist League). The result was that ultra-rightist Le Pen ran against the center-right incumbent Jacques Chirac and the French, horrified on the left and the right, handed Chirac his second term with more than 80 percent of the vote.
In the four years since, many French socialists previously seen as pragmatic centrists have tried to shore up their far-left credentials. Former prime minister Laurent Fabius, aloof in manner as a Bourbon prince, seized the banner of opposition to the European constitution as a document that offered too few social protections to the masses. Former socialist Finance minister Dominique Strauss Kahn, once an avatar of economic liberalism within his party, has of late adopted rhetoric worthy of a Trotskyite. French polls, and most recently the success of the popular protests against the government's youth-employment law, reinforce the image of the far left as a rising force. An Ifop survey earlier this month showed 43 percent of French adults feel the extreme left enriches the public debate," especially when it comes to "social protections" and unemployment.
For Europeans who want a moderate compromise between social justice and the seemingly inescapable imperatives of the global market, none of this is good news. "People like me who believe the left can be a moderate force—we have failed," says Lucia Annunziata, one of Italy's most prominent commentators. "We are stuck in the medieval notion that there is an aristocracy and a people, and the people want a piece of what the aristocracy had—a life subsidized enough to have a minimum of work and a maximum of pleasure." Of course, no European government—left or right—can deliver that. So protest votes have grown to the point where the mainstream may be overwhelmed: in 2002, 51.4 percent of registered French voters either abstained, destroyed their ballots or voted for one of the extremes.
Now we're about to have the first real indication this century of how the extreme left behaves inside European halls of power. Though Berlusconi has been reluctant to concede, Prodi's coalition looks to have won a minimum working majority in the lower house by a .01 percent edge. It will control the Senate by a margin of two seats out of 315. Even if Prodi were representing a single relatively coherent party, those numbers would be a problem. But in fact, with no party of his own, he represents 13 lists. The largest two near the political center (including the former Italian Communist Party, now called the Democrats of the Left) lost ground in these elections. Those at the fringes gained. Among their leading lights: Oliviero Diliberto of the Party of Italian Communists, who has distinguished himself by embracing the causes of Hamas and Hizbullah, among others. Fausto Bertinotti of the Refounded Communist Party is known for bringing down Prodi's last government in 1998. Three of the coalition's radical parties have almost enough seats in the Senate to topple Prodi's government like a sickle slicing through a rose.
The prime minister-apparent seems unfazed, says John Harper, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins in Bologna, Italy. "But nobody knows what rabbit he's going to pull out of his hat to bring these people on board." The minimum price, almost certainly, will be lower taxes on wages and higher taxes on capital gains, inheritance and high incomes. A move is also afoot to repeal a Berlusconi youth-employment law similar to the much-hated French legislation crushed in the streets last week. And as the extreme left looks to its own core constituents, the politicking is likely to get awkward and angry.
Franco Giordano of the Refounded Communist Party attributes the extreme left's success to "being in tune with the no-global movement and the antiwar movement." It also made a mark opposing large European infrastructure projects like the high-speed train between Italy and France. Some take this as a sign that Prodi's victory could be a hollow one, with his government hostage to extremists pushing narrow agendas, says Annunziata. Italy and perhaps Europe "will become a huge subsidized paradise for Chinese tourists," she warns. Maybe they'll take home red flags as souvenirs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12335364/site/newsweek/