The June 18th elections for Parliament has provided France with a Kennedy moment, a young president now backed by a strong majority in the National Assembly. As the "party of hope" gets underway, we will have to see if reforms and initiatives can take shape.
Politics in Britain have changed. The neoliberal legacy of Tony Blair may have finally expired. The idea that anything resembling the left must remain on the periphery has died with it. The future now shows more promise than we have seen for years in Britain.
The gains by the Labour Party in the June 8th election underscore the political viability of a socialist platform during a period of right-wing and neoliberal resurgence. "What’s happened is people have said they’ve had quite enough of austerity politics,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a speech after the vote.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May's decision to call an early election for June 8th has got Britain guessing. Is it plot to legitimize a failing government in the face of Brexit? The UK is economically frail, homelessness is rampant, the welfare state is a disaster, and foreign affairs are rocky. The upcoming vote brings this crisis into sharp focus.
Our simplistic historic understanding of fascism needs to be challenged. Fascism is not German, it’s not the Nazism of the Second World War ... it starts in the heads of individuals with the idea that what keeps you disadvantaged is that some lesser breed has taken what belongs to you.
Time is on no one’s side as regards the crisis in Yemen. As nightmare visions of living skeletons with bloated bellies and pleading eyes once more appear on the planet’s TV screens, we in the U.S. will have missed a vital chance to avert a world in which untold millions are to be shocked to their bones.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019