Europe’s Social Democrats Could Suffer Mass Extinction
Born out of the second industrial revolution, the movement is stumped by the fourth.
Nowadays empty.
Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP
Here’s the state of Social Democrats across continental Europe: In two corners, Scandinavia and Iberia, they’re alive and well, having become pragmatic centrists or, as in Denmark, having turned hard right on issues such as migration. Almost everywhere in between — from France to the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Italy — they’re in various states of disarray or dissolution. What happened? And is their decline terminal?
That’s what Germany’s SPD, founded 156 years ago as the ancestor of the movement, should be asking itself, as it convenes next week to anoint new leaders and decide whether to quit its coalition with the conservative bloc of Chancellor Angela Merkel. But this more existential question won’t be debated, at least not honestly.