(With apologies to Violet Venable for cribbing her line!)
Kevin DeAnna, writing for Taki's, visits Iceland, and catches a glimpse of our own future:
"Coming to an ostensibly stable and prosperous nation-state near you
"Iceland's capital of Reykjavik has been hit by days of nonstop demonstrations, which bordered on riots in the evenings. The Icelandic krona has collapsed in value, banks have been nationalized...As of this writing, the new prime minister is a left-wing lesbian who is being hailed as the first openly gay head of state in the world...
"I had come to Iceland to escape the crowds and kitsch of Obama's inauguration, but instead glimpsed what could be the future of the United States - when 'Hope' and 'Change' get a hard punch in the stomach from economic reality...
"This is what we have in store for us...
"...crowds of thousands gathered in front of the Althing to denounce the government...the people showing up have lost jobs, savings and faith in the future of a country that until recently could boast the highest standard of living in the world...
"...it was a collection of people who are all against the status quo but have nothing else in common. As a drunk girl in a Reykjavik bar told me, 'it is precisely because no one knows what to do that we are all so angry'...
"Every single person I spoke to, when they found out I was an American, expressed hope that Obama would somehow resolve the situation in the world economy. The Left stands not just to benefit, but to gain the entire benefit from the crisis.
"The Left...will benefit because in any crisis situation, they have a revolutionary gestalt lacking on the right. On the following Tuesday, crowds gathered in the Austurvollur Square in front of the Althing...The crowd was much more ideologically unified than at the rally. This was a march of the Left. Red flags, black flags, and even East German flags made an appearance...
"At some point, without any particular signal, the crowd left the Althing and marched down the main road filled with bars and shops. We marched to the national theater, where a meeting of the Social Democratic Alliance was taking place...
"Next door to the theater, three flag poles stood. In short succession, the flag of the Soviet Union and two black flags of anarchy were raised. The inherent contradiction bothers no one; the crowd cheered...
"The Icelandic government fell less than a week later, the first to fall to the international financial crisis, and certainly not the last. The government formed was a left-wing Popular Front style government of the center left and the far left...
DeAnna concludes his piece with three "lessons," all well worth the learning, I think:
(1) "Make no mistake; it is capitalism that will take the blame for this crisis...To the average person...the sudden collapse of jobs and savings because of the incomprehensible machinations of shadowy bankers will lead to greater demands for state security, regardless of the actual causes of the crisis..."
(2) "...the only response to every leftist failure will be more leftism...If the center-left cannot fix the crisis, the crowds may come back, confront the 'fascist' police yet again, and help create an even more extreme alternative...The Left is the establishment and its own alternative." [Emphasis added.]
(3) "...the crisis will provide the cover for the leftists to carry out their irreversible agenda of social transformation..."
And, finally:
"The Left, for all its failures, has a universal creed of emancipation and egalitarianism, and an idealism that can always inspire in times of crisis. Most worryingly, social democracy does not suffer from its failures but is pushed constantly towards greater extremism and statism. If this was in the spirit of the streets in Iceland, the spectre will certainly not avoid America..."
Comments (6)
Yes indeed. "Change we can believe in," anyone? Orwell was just a quarter of a century off.
For the moment, we still have a few voices crying in the wilderness.
But that can change fast.
Posted by Tim | February 5, 2009 7:34 PM
"The Left...will benefit because in any crisis situation, they have a revolutionary gestalt lacking on the right. On the following Tuesday, crowds gathered in the Austurvollur Square in front of the Althing...The crowd was much more ideologically unified than at the rally. This was a march of the Left. Red flags, black flags, and even East German flags made an appearance...
Haha. Over at Sadly, No (an American lefty blog) they're saying the exact same thing, except about the right wing - that if the US government collapses, the only people with the "gestalt" to pick anything up will be the right wing.
Right wingers think they're the beaten down ones, desperately fighting for an almost lost cause. Lefties think the exact same thing. Lefties will also say "the right wing is the establishment and its own alternative."
Nobody else finds this hilarious? When two sides of a debate mirror each other like this so closely, maybe our perspective on the debate is off.
Posted by Mike | February 5, 2009 9:57 PM
Mike: No link? I paged through "Sadly, No," for a while, and didn't find anything matching your description.
(There's only so much juvenilia one can take.)
That said, I wouldn't doubt that they're the sort of people who would regard George W. Bush as some sort of exemplar of the extreme right - i.e., the sort of people who draw their points of comparison from the last fifteen minutes or so, as opposed to the last few thousand years - i.e., silly, ignorant people.
Posted by steve burton | February 6, 2009 6:30 PM
Steve,
The dead giveaway is the bit in the Icelandic story about the Confederate flag with the two black ones -- that's the way you can tell that the people at "Sadly, No" are equally rational.
Oh, wait, ...
Posted by Tim | February 6, 2009 8:09 PM
Tim - Heh!
But will Mike get the joke?
Posted by steve burton | February 7, 2009 1:35 AM
Steve,
Sadly, no.
Posted by Tim | February 7, 2009 5:24 PM