Green parties surged in Europe's elections, in parallel to their far-right counterparts, and Mitchell Abidor writes in a Foreign Affairs essay that their success has been accompanied by a collapse of the traditional left. Labor and socialist parties still seek to represent the working class, but that voting bloc has turned toward the nationalist right, Abidor writes; the Greens, meanwhile, offer environmentalism without social justice or class grievances as part of their platforms. Abidor presents the Greens, in part, as a comfortable option for the young people and urbanites who supported them, as the problem of climate change is obvious, and dealing with it does not involve remaking the social class system. If it's tempting to see, in the Greens' rise, the left moving further left, Abidor's analysis is that the Greens are "not an alternative left at all," which may be the secret to their success. |