Left-wing Parties Lose Traditional Voters in Favour of Immigrants
Around the globe, especially here in the West, left-wing parties have radically changed their priorities when targeting groups within societies for votes. Traditionally the left targeted workers and lower to middle class members of society in order to ensure their interests were represented in Parliament or Congress. But, this has changed drastically in recent decades.
A good example of this was the recent Democratic debate in the United States. In the debate, many candidates spoke Spanish when answering questions asked by the moderator. This may seem like a logical step to take as the debates were held in Miami, where around 69% of people identify as Latino and most feel more comfortable speaking Spanish than English.
However, the fact that they spoke Spanish and held the debate in Florida indicates that the party is prioritizing a state where around 1 in 5 residents is an immigrant, with most coming from Latin America and the Caribbean. And, the Democrats are only going to be placing more emphasis on targeting what is now the largest racial minority group in the US this election cycle.
Despite the fact that many saw what some of the Democratic candidates did as a ‘good’ thing others did not, but those that disagreed weren’t just Republicans and their voters. Many traditional Democrat voters described what occurred as ‘Hispandering’ – pandering to the Hispanic community. And online, especially on Twitter, O’Rourke and Booker were mocked for their accents and lack of grammatical accuracy.
Though, this may be seen as a strategy that benefits the Democrats as the Latino community is only increasing in size and significance. There are costs to radically changing the priorities of a large and well-established party, such as; disenfranchising traditional voters in larger numbers.
The ridiculous promises made by essentially all candidates in the debate such as; free health care for all ‘undocumented immigrants’ (which means illegal immigrants for those unfamiliar with politically correct US lingo) and open borders are a driving force behind this disenfranchisement and will most likely cost them the 2020 US election.
In the UK
Unfortunately, this cultural and political shift is not isolated to left-wing US political parties, its occurring across the West. The UK’s (United Kingdom) Labour party has for a long time actively supported relatively large-scale immigration into the country despite the fact that since 1964 the majority of citizens have opposed it.
Interestingly, Andrew Neather, a former advisor to ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair in the early 2000’s, has stated that Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration in order to socially engineer a truly multicultural country. But, Labour ensured it did not reveal its motivations for this policy to its core working class base (the people most affected by it) for fears it would alienate them.
Elsewhere in Europe
In Germany, the coalition formed between the CDU, CSU and SPD led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has also suffered a loss of support in favour of large-scale immigration. Although the CDU and CSU are considered centre-right, whilst the SPD are considered centre-left, they are more fiscally conservative then socially conservative in many ways.
Italy’s choice to accept large scale immigration at the start of the mass migration crisis in 2015 also led to the election of a Eurosceptic anti-mass migration party.
In Sweden the ruling centre-left party the Social Democrats has lost support whilst the Sweden Democrats, a party associated with the issue of migration, has gained significant support. This trend is common throughout Western Europe and will continue to lead to the diminishing popularity of left-wing parties.
The most defining characteristic of the post-war left in the West was the fight for the rights of the working class. This post-war left also rejected communism outright and understood that the best way forward regarding the emancipation of the working class was through democratic processes and means. This led to the birth of welfare regimes across Europe, especially in Scandinavia where it was most successful.
But, the left of today is but a sad shadow of what it once was. Many left-wing parties and the much of the left as a whole have embraced identity politics, oppression Olympics, mass migration and ideas and policy’s that no longer properly represent the interests of the actual working class.
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