Portside

Until recently, any proposal to "save" Europe was regarded sympathetically, albeit with skepticism about its feasibility. Today, the skepticism is about whether Europe is worth saving. The European idea is being driven into retreat by the combined force of a denial, an insurgency, and a fallacy. progressives need to ask a straightforward question: Why is the European idea dying? The answers are clear: involuntary unemployment and involuntary intra-EU migration.

Hit that old song again, loud and clear! "Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming." Yes, sirree! Shades of 1918 and the Battle of the Marne! Shades of 1944 and the beaches of Normandy! But no, not just shades and not just words have already been sent. The U.S. is sending significant military assets to Germany, and to countries bordering Russia.

The U.S. government, following the 9/11 attacks, expressed no intention of reforming its Constitution. It was left free of any procedure for exception or emergency. This does not mean that the United States has remained a more democratic country than France. Attacks against privacy, civil rights, and, above all, habeas corpus have proven even more virulent in the United States than in Europe.

Austria’s far right has suffered a setback, but it would be a mistake to believe the dynamic they created is broken.

The left has been in disarray since 1991 - it never fully recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite widespread opposition to Stalinism and -authoritarianism. In the past two decades, we have witnessed a major spasm of global capitalism that has triggered a long deflationary period across the United States and Europe. Just as the Great Depression did in the 1930s, this has created a breeding ground for xenophobia, racism and scapegoating.

The reality of life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe is not at all what was promised.

In the past year two referenda shook up both the European Union and Europe's Left: the Greek OXI in July 2015 and Brexit in June 2016. Exasperated by the EU's mixture of authoritarianism and economic failure, a segment of Europe's Left is calling for a 'break with the EU',[2] a stance that has come to be associated with the term Lexit.[3] DiEM25, the transnational Democracy in Europe Movement, rejects that logic and offers an alternative Progressive Agenda for Europe.

Victor Grossman reports from Berlin on causes of the spate of violence striking Germany and across Europe. We need not look too far to find possible causes of such hatred or, frequently, of distorted despair. I think of what so many have gone through. War-torn home towns, shootings, explosions and bombings in their native Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrifying flight to get away, to find some haven, where they can escape and perhaps even realize their hopes and wishes.

On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.

A new progressive coalition seeks to end Spain's punishing austerity regime and confront the country's staggering unemployment. The new kid on the block has raised the pressure on the center-left Socialists to make a choice: follow the lead of Portugal, where the Socialist Party formed a united front with the Left Bloc and the Communist/Green alliance, or imitate the Social Democrats in Germany and join a "grand coalition" and make common cause with the right?