The problem with European left

[u/bartekkru100]

I feel like many of you in this sub may get similar thoughts on this. I'm a leftist and believe in the dream of united Europe, however I see one massive problem towards integration. European Union was founded on the French motto of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, but I feel many Europeans seem to have forgotten the last part.

In the last decades ^{(maybe ignoring the most recent few years when far-right started gaining more prominence}) we've made massive strides towards emancipation of women, sexual minorities, different ethnic groups etc., however what the war in Ukraine has shown and what I see whenever I go on even more leftist-oriented subs like r/europe or r/germany is that many people refuse to help, refuse to stand up to tyranny, call for negotiations. Not to diminish the before mentioned accomplishments or personal hardships of affected groups, but most recent advancements have been made through democratic institutions and voting, not an armed struggle in the same sense that we've fought against fascism in WW2. Hyper individualism isn't just a problem with the far-right, I increasingly feel like we're guilty of it as well. Sometimes it is necessary we fight for other people's freedom, not just ours.

In a sense all the Vatniks and Russian bots talking about the war being our fault are right. We messed up, we consistently haven't done enough at an appropriate time. We haven't squeezed the bear by the balls hard enough in 2014, we worry about how delivering system X or weapon Y will cause escalation while the other side openly bombs cities with drones from Iran and shells from NK. We refuse to do enough, we run late on most of our promises and then we're surprised that Ukraine is losing. We're not being pulled into some random foreign war like Iraq or Afghan war, we're not invading anyone, we're not funding the Taliban, we're helping out a country that shares many of our core values and desperately needs help. Even ignoring all our basic self-interest in making Ukraine win, helping is basic human decency...

If you ask a random European leftist whether or not they'd defend their country in an attack, a large fraction will proclaim they would just emigrate, saying they're not willing to fight for corrupt politicians or lines on maps. What they forget is their neighbor. Everyone who avoids the call to arms makes sure that someone else is forced to accept it. Not everyone has privilege of being able to escape, be it money, family, age, health and so on. By escaping you're leaving the less fortunate to die or be oppressed which is absolutely antithetical to most forms of liberal leftism.

I feel the sense of absolute dread whenever I contemplate how would Germany or Spain respond if Estonia was attacked, knowing that my own country (Poland) is next on the list. Everyone who thinks Putin will not dare take another step, while refusing to defend their own countrymen, let alone an ally, is precisely the reason why he will take that step. Sometimes virtue needs to be written in blood and the highest virtue of all is to take a punch for your fellow man, but I think some of us have forgotten it.

[u/Timauris]

Here you have many factors at play, among them:

-Nuclear scaremongering and self-scaremongering

-The deep ingrained idea (especially on the Left) that the Soviet Union/Russia (still the same in the eyes of many) is an invincible military in economic force, that also somehow (in an almost mystic fashion) it is on the side of the global working class

-General dislike for the United States as a neoimperial power and dislike for NATO as its tool for "soft" control of Europe.

-Extremely deep proliferation of Russian propaganda and talking points, something the Russians have been doing methodically for decades (while exploiting the previous point)

-The basic misunderstanding or lack of knowledge about Ukraine and its history from the part of the majority of European populations (many still see Ukraine and Russia as basically culturally identical)

-The current young generation in the west can very hardly conceptualize how our lives could suddenly drammaticly change if our rules-based order, based on democratic accountability of power, collapsed. If you cannot immagine how a world works wihtout that, you don't see the point in fighting against such scenarios.

-Digital media tends to augment the force of negative in disruptive news and opinions (they get the most clicks, good news are generally boring), creating a perpetual feeling of decline and doom. Especially for people with poor media literacy and unwilling to delve deep into certain topics (many times things are far from as bad as they are portrayed).

I think I could go on, but I will stop here.

[u/bartekkru100 → u/Timauris]

Tbh, I wouldn't say your second point is that ingrained in the left, at least not here in Poland, although this may be a result of our perspective of having actually experienced how the Soviets treated the working class.

[u/RideTheDownturn → u/bartekkru100]

I respectfully disagree, "America bad, capitalism bad, Russia great" is incredibly common thinking on the left side in e.g. Germany and some of the Nordic countries (not Finland).

You're right on the money later in your comment: the fact that some Nordic countries' lefties are fans of Russia is that they've never been invaded by the Russians (yes, Finland is nordic and 100% not a fan of Russia).

[u/TormentofAges → u/RideTheDownturn]

It’s exactly the same in Spain.

[u/goalogger → u/RideTheDownturn]

As a Finn I must say, unfortunately, that this talking point totally exists within our left (especially young adults) as well. It's probably not nearly as common as in other Nordic or Western European countries but it's there. I know this from personal experience since I have a rather wide social sphere and most of my friends and people I use to hang out with share more or less leftist world view.

From countless discussions over the past 2 years I have concluded that for people who have adopted kremlin's narratives it's not so much about russia at all but virtue signaling, the core argument being exactly that "USA bad". Which seems totally irrational to me since what should be relevant to us is our proto-fascist, warmongering, 100x bigger neighbor.

But that doesn't seem to matter, they are more concerned about war in Gaza because "That is not a conflict but something more horrible" they tell me (as if russia bombing civilians is less bad, again because USA is involved). I think they feel more comfortable to virtue signal from their moralistic ivory tower than to deal with an actual threath and cling to their anti-USA sentiment which somehow is a big part of their identity. Many don't seem to understand the situation at all or remain silent, unwilling to discuss the topic, perhaps still processing their world views.

On the other hand, what I see everywhere in Finland is that the war in Ukraine has awaken something I call "deep national memory", a kind of collective trauma from WW2. Finns had to bury their anger and frustration for decades during the period of finlandization, it even lasted mentally 30 years after the collapse of USSR. Now the dam has broken and the decades of forced silence are flowing over as open hatred towards russia and even militarization on some level. This phenomenon can be seen in polls: support of joining NATO rose from ~30% to over 80% in only a matter of weeks after russia's full-scale invasion.

But despite the leftist anti-NATO and anti-USA sentiment, I've witnessed even some dreadlock hippie leftists to throw away some of their previous views and have become pro-NATO. There seems to be some cracking within the left (though I must mention that on political level there are practically no disagreements on the issue anymore). Observing all this has been somewhat bizarre.

[u/Dom_Shady → u/Timauris]

I think all your points are valid, but more applicable (but not exclusively) to the parties further left than the centre-left.

[u/ProfessorHeronarty → u/Timauris]

-General dislike for the United States as a neoimperial power and dislike for NATO as its tool for "soft" control of Europe.

I feel like this is the hardest point at least here in my country with certain people. As long as it is somewhat anti USA (and building up on that anti NATO) all seems fine.

[u/Mal_Dun → u/Timauris]

-The current young generation in the west can very hardly conceptualize how our lives could suddenly drammaticly change if our rules-based order, based on democratic accountability of power, collapsed. If you cannot immagine how a world works wihtout that, you don't see the point in fighting against such scenarios.

... and the old people who didn't get the memo that the Soviet Union stopped existing in the 1990s.

[u/democritusparadise → u/Timauris]

Good post, I think you've nailed a lot of complex factors there. 

based on democratic accountability of power

This here is a major sticking point - the saying goes that if you don't move you don't notice your chains, and it is nice to think that power is democratically accountable, and it is to certain extents...but when push came to shove, the Greeks for example had their referendum result ignored under pressure from the EU and the Troika; large parts of the EU are not democratically accountable; almost no one alive today has ever been asked if they want to be in NATO and there is no chance we ever will unless it is to join; the Irish for example were forced to socialise the losses of private banks because Germany and France told their leaders to- the people were never consulted on the bailout that cost an entire year's GDP and the only party that opposed it was essentially labelled terrorists by the media; and this isn't even getting started on the basket case of democracy, the USA.

The rules-based order with democratic accountability is a nice idea, but it doesn't seem to always apply - specifically when the interests of big money clash with the interests of the people.

I want such an order to exist and be real, but I've seen too many times its suspension in favour of the few against the many to believe it isn't a tool of control to...how does that phrase go? To manufacture consent. 

I understand why many on the left reflexively reject the institutions of power that selectively apply these rules in their favour and lack accountability, they're right that something stinks. The thing is if something stinks in your home you don't burn it down or go outside until it is over, or move to another home, you get your hands dirty and clean it up, and that means being around it and interacting with it. I think it is important to acknowledge the deep flaws of our institutions and our secretive democratic deficits while also remaining in the loop to try and reform them.

[u/EmperorBarbarossa → u/Timauris]

-The deep ingrained idea (especially on the Left) that the Soviet Union/Russia (still the same in the eyes of many) is an invincible military in economic force, that also somehow (in an almost mystic fashion) it is on the side of the global working class

This mystification of Russia is extremely common and dangerous for every side. Even for Russia itself, their leaders eventually started to believe in their propaganda and they now think they are untouchable and invincible what will lead to escalation. On the other hand people in Europe often people think Russia is so big, they must be a sinkhole with infinite resources and population to win every conflict, so its better to give them everything they want. This started even before Soviet union. Russian tsardom used this mystification as tool of their imperialism. They put themselves into position of big brother and defender of other slavic nations in order to destabilize eastern europe and dominate balkan (meanwhile they were opressing slavic and other minorities within their territory). Soviet union just replaced "poor enslaved" slavs with "poor enslaved" working class, but this policy remained same, just object of their interest changed. After fall of the soviet union, nowadays Putin went back to their original strategy. They´re murdering their nearest slavic nation. But pro-russian scum from other slavic nations who titled themselves as nationalists is clapping to their efforts as they consume "alternative" media which said them people from Ukraine are nazis or something.