Scandinavia has always been very left side, so it comes to low surprise to me that the left won the European election in Denmark, despite the right trend in the rest of Europe.
However, I will add that right wing Europe is still pretty left from America. Take Geert Wilders, the new guy from the Netherlands. The policies he wants to enact are stricter laws, more difficulty for immigrants, a stronger police force, street curfews for teenagers (real old man yells at cloud energy), and withdrawal from the climate agreement. All very right wing.
But… He also wants better funding for hospitals and schools, higher wages for nurses and teachers, more robust free healthcare system, hard caps and regulations on the increasing housing prices, more affordable housing, a more efficient and cost effective energy grid. If an American politician starts talking about these things they’ll be called a communist!
Maybe from a hard neo nazi perspective. Denmark and Sweden especially have right-wing extremist parties (Denmark Democrats + New Right + Danish People’s Party together ~= 14.3%, Sweden Democrats 17.5%) with a voter base that has been established over a longer time. The German right wing populists have risen to that level only in recent elections, which is frightening.
Geert Wilders is not “the new guy” from the Netherlands, he’s been a populist rightwing piece of shit for decades. Unfortunately, the average Dutch person over 40 / outside university towns is also quite racist under the surface - I lived there for 4 years, speak fluent Dutch with a German accent and since they felt “safe” with their bigotry around me, I have heard enough racist and sexist bullshit from “average middle class” Dutch people that I didn’t feel comfortable in that country anymore.
The young people in urban centres are okay, but unfortunately those are not a large enough demographic.
As for comparing with the US - maybe not a good idea: Even young US americans see the democrats for the corporate shills they are, and know that they have to vote for them just to prevent a Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 becoming a documentary.
The US are the scary example for Western Europe as “this will happen here if you don’t pay attention”. No one in Europe will be able to say “I didn’t know” when we slip into a totalitarian regime filled with hate and controlled by corporations, because it might be happening in front of our eyes with a ~10 year headstart in the US. I just hope that’s not what is going to happen in the end, but things have progressed far too much into the worst dystopian future thinkable for this century.
Scandinavia has always been very left side, so it comes to low surprise to me that the left won the European election in Denmark, despite the right trend in the rest of Europe.
However, I will add that right wing Europe is still pretty left from America. Take Geert Wilders, the new guy from the Netherlands. The policies he wants to enact are stricter laws, more difficulty for immigrants, a stronger police force, street curfews for teenagers (real old man yells at cloud energy), and withdrawal from the climate agreement. All very right wing.
But… He also wants better funding for hospitals and schools, higher wages for nurses and teachers, more robust free healthcare system, hard caps and regulations on the increasing housing prices, more affordable housing, a more efficient and cost effective energy grid. If an American politician starts talking about these things they’ll be called a communist!
Maybe from a hard neo nazi perspective. Denmark and Sweden especially have right-wing extremist parties (Denmark Democrats + New Right + Danish People’s Party together ~= 14.3%, Sweden Democrats 17.5%) with a voter base that has been established over a longer time. The German right wing populists have risen to that level only in recent elections, which is frightening. Geert Wilders is not “the new guy” from the Netherlands, he’s been a populist rightwing piece of shit for decades. Unfortunately, the average Dutch person over 40 / outside university towns is also quite racist under the surface - I lived there for 4 years, speak fluent Dutch with a German accent and since they felt “safe” with their bigotry around me, I have heard enough racist and sexist bullshit from “average middle class” Dutch people that I didn’t feel comfortable in that country anymore. The young people in urban centres are okay, but unfortunately those are not a large enough demographic.
As for comparing with the US - maybe not a good idea: Even young US americans see the democrats for the corporate shills they are, and know that they have to vote for them just to prevent a Handmaid’s Tale Season 6 becoming a documentary.
The US are the scary example for Western Europe as “this will happen here if you don’t pay attention”. No one in Europe will be able to say “I didn’t know” when we slip into a totalitarian regime filled with hate and controlled by corporations, because it might be happening in front of our eyes with a ~10 year headstart in the US. I just hope that’s not what is going to happen in the end, but things have progressed far too much into the worst dystopian future thinkable for this century.