There is no recipe for victory, there is only hard work, luck and political fingerspitzengefühl, but that you showed in your post is a recipe, a recipe for defeat.
Hard work, sure. A bit of luck doesn't harm. Sure instinct (fingerspitzengefühl) is rare amongst European politicians, especially those aligned in the socialdemocracy. It's a gift for a party having a solid leadership, is it enough? Can the decadent European environment provide political animals like Lula or Pepe Mújica? Also, what is what I showed in my post? I only said that in my opinion is a big mistake copying the far-right agenda.I doubt Lula would make it in Europe as leader of a major party, and that has nothing to do with any kind of decadence, but in his own qualities, in fact I fail to see how European political environments can be called decadent, when what it suffer under is center (from right to left) dominated by overeducated technocrates, a socialist left dominated by bleeding hearts and a far right dominated by populists.
First of all, I don't make recipes and don't have remedies. Second, why do you say I lump islamophobes together? I copied the commonly accepted definition of islamophobia, a concept coined in 1991 by a Britsh organisation called Runnymede Trust. That characterisation is recognized by the EU Observatory on Racism and Xenophobia. Do you think it's offesive? Why?
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I think it's stupid, over intellectualised and lacking any connection with reality, it fundamental build on the idea that dislike of Muslims is ideological in nature, which it rarely is. It's fundamental a strawman which make any idealog with people critical of Muslims impossible.
Of course if we have to have discussion, where we may not talk about any group as a collective, let's stop the discussion and just enjoy watching the populist right grow and grow.
If you look at my post, I don't talk about Islamic values or Islam at all, I really don't find Islam interesting in this discussion, but Muslims.
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I think people not causing trouble are not a problem, but that's really a meaningless discussion, if the average Muslim immigrant was a person with a secondary or tertiary education, we would not have this discussion, but that's really not the case, so that "what if" is not just meaningless, it will also fail to convince any person ever to change their opinion. Of course we can ask why the reaction to immigrants from China, Vietnam and Poland have not seen the same reaction, but everybody with a little common sense understand that.
This example you provide is a clear sample of counterproductive overreaction, especially if it wasn't rectified. I think such attitudes from well intentioned progressives can be costly, indeed. [/quote]
That's not a rare example, yes it's rare in severity, but lot of people have seen how the Left ignore things, which they condemn in the ingineous population.
I think there's something more like that. What you call "hypocrisy" -my impression is that it's more an issue of not dealing with problems- may be a reason for distrust. However, I'm not sure if it's really the most important factor in play. In what regards socialdemocracy, which has been traditionally the most significant portion of the "European Left", the core of the problem is the loss of identity. It's hard to keep the trust of your potential voters when your policies are indistinguishable from those of the mainstream right. I'm talking of economy, obviously. I think the problems of the "radical" left are different, maybe more related with chronic infighting and disconnection from reality: those students complaining because "workers" don't understand them.[/quote]
No the left have often even in the "Good Old Days" implemented right wing economical ideas (just as the Left have in Brazil), when it make sense, but their voters trusted them to take those decisions then. They don't anymore, and the failure to take their voters problem seriously, and the hypocrisy in how they treated minorities is a major part of this.
As for the last paragraph of your post, I'm not sure of how to deal with far-right xenophobes and right-wing populists. Luckily, they aren't strong in my country. For sure, the left must fight them by showing for what they are. I think that you may be right on that treating them as untouchables -the
cordon sanitaire- is not going to work anymore. The challenge is how to fight them without losing the core values of the left -such as social justice, brotherhood or tolerance- and counter demagoguery with argumentation accesible to common people. I doubt that if they touch power, they are going to "moderate" themselves or moving to the left. Maybe the first, to some extent, but not the latter.
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Tolerance was never a integrated part of the Left, they supported solidarity, but when people didn't show solidarity the other way, it was not extended that way. One of my relative run foul of the unions, because he didn't wanted to be member of one, his co-workers ensured he was fired. As ugly as that were, it was necessarity. But today we have become a bunch of bleeding hearts, not willing to make any hard decisions, pushing a wishy washy ideology of niceness.