End of Left-Right Politics? |
The left-right divide has been a main definition of politics for more than a hundred years in Europe and beyond. But today, some politicians and observers say that the divide doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t quite agree with that because I think it is still a major divide, from the socialist and social democratic values on the left, even the communists, through the centrist liberals who can join either side of the divide, to the traditional private-sector conservatives on the right, to ultra-conservatives and populists on the far right. The edge parties on the far left and the far right are in many ways different from the old parties, and some would say that they don’t quite fit into the definition of the left-right divide, especially not the far right parties.
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I was just coming of age in 1961 when the Norwegian Socialist People’s Party was created by a small group who broke away from the dominant social democratic Labour Party, mainly caused by the socialists being against Norway’s membership in NATO and having a clear peace-activist agenda. Some voters went to the socialists because they were pacifists, but the new party was never really pacifist, rather just placing peace issues high on their agenda in a softer way, whereas the social democrats and the conservatives believed in harder ‘realpolitik’ in the midst of the Cold War and East-West tension.
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The centrist parties supported the Labour Party and the Conservative Party on these issues. Today, the socialists on the left have accepted that they too don’t see any alternative than to be part of NATO. Unfortunately, the peace-activist emphasis has become less dominant, but they continue to focus on economic and social equality issues, locally and........