Europe’s Left Turn

Is Europe making a hard left turn? That’s the question that arises following a series of reports pointing to a resurgent left wing. The Journal reckons that “Europe’s far right has surged. Now the far left is pushing back” and an ascendant left “has begun to reshape the political chessboard.” Sometimes at the ballot box, and sometimes via more sinister methods — violence from the left “has surged.” It’s unfolding as a calamity for the Continent. Feature the policy platform of the Greens in Great Britain. As the Journal explains, it seeks “to nationalize utilities, legalize drugs, withdraw from NATO, welcome asylum seekers, heavily tax private landlords, and is deeply critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.” The party recently snagged a Parliamentary seat in Britain’s north, a traditional heartland of Labour. The winning candidate, Hannah Spencer, campaigned wearing a keffiyeh.Also troubling is the rise of Die Linke, or “The Left,” in Germany, of which the least that can be said is that it is committed to truth in advertising. The Journal relates that the party has seen its “ratings rocket,” and it now stands at some 10 percent. The party’s candidate for mayor of Berlin, Elif Erlap, has a good chance to lead the city following elections in October. Ms. Erlap declares that she is modeling her campaign after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s.We recently heaped praise on Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for his stance against antisemitism and in support of Israel and America. The energy, though, appears to reside not with Mr. Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union but with Die Linke and, ironically or not, the party of the hard right, the Alternative for Germany, which has close ties to Moscow and has come out against America’s and Israel’s battle against Tehran.The City of Light could soon become the City of Even-Further Left, as the front-runner in Paris’s mayoral race on Monday is a socialist, Emmanuel Grégoire, who is an acolyte of the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo. He tells the Financial Times that “the global left is reinventing itself in big urban ecosystems” and that “at a time when the darker winds of history are blowing in many countries with the rise of the far right, big cities are territories of resistance.”Mr. Grégoire also points to Mr. Mamdani as an inspiration and template. The Frenchman is running in league with the Greens and Communists, but faces a threat from the leftist La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed, party. Its cultish leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is an antisemite of the leftist persuasion. How Paris goes could provide a preview of next year’s presidential vote. Current polling has a right-winger, Jordan Bardella, in the van. “We are arming ourselves for the fight against left-wing extremism” is how Germany’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, put it after an act of leftist terror in January on Berlin’s power grid. Credit for the arson is being claimed by the Vulkangruppe, or Volcano Group. One scholar explains that the group is committed to violence “rooted in insurrectionary anarchism.” In France, “antifascist” activists were last month charged with murder.Leftist violence is no foreigner to European history. In 1881 Narodnaya Volya murdered the Tsar, and some century later the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, wreaked havoc in Germany. That group struck an alliance with Palestinian terrorists, a modus operandi evident in today’s red-green alliance that brings together leftists with Islamists. A Europe in concert with such a movement is one taking a turn for the worse.

Europe’s Left Turn

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