Greece and Spain are currently on the verge of financial collapse and may require bailouts bigger than the European Union can handle. The financial contagion may well spill past the Greek and Spanish borders; the euro hit a 14-month low last Thursday as the U.S. stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in response to instability in Europe.
But for Raymond Johansen, party secretary of the Norwegian Labour Party, one particular threat to Europe is of grave concern — Tea Parties.
Tim Phillips, head of Americans for Prosperity, recently traveled to Oslo to teach political organization techniques to members of Norway’s conservative Progress Party. This outraged the country’s famously liberal elite.
Johansen reacted the way an apoplectic left-wing politician usually does — an unintelligible rant on the Huffington Post.
“The grass root campaigns such as those the Tea Party Movement and AFP holds aren’t bottom-up crowds, but pure lobbying campaigns,” Johansen wrote. He further hyperventilated that Tea Parties had “traveled the country with a bloody hand logo to deny poor Americans the right to health insurance” and “called the American president a Marxist to fight against government intervention to counteract the financial crisis.”
Given that Johansen is gamely attempting to write in English, I’m not sure what to make of his violent “bloody hand logo” imagery to describe Tea Parties. Of course, a representative of the ruling party government in a country where anti-Semitic protests saw 5,000 people riot and attack the Israeli embassy with Molotov cocktails last year might want to be careful about characterizing Tea Parties as violent.
Last week in Greece, a bank was firebombed by left-wing protesters, killing three people. The protesters were upset that as a result of the financial crisis, the Greek government is freezing public sector wages and taking other austerity measures.
Last week in Greece, a bank was firebombed by left-wing protesters, killing three people. The protesters were upset that as a result of the financial crisis, the Greek government is freezing public sector wages and taking other austerity measures.
Compare and contrast: In America, Tea Partiers peacefully march and demand their government spend less money to head off an impending crisis before it happens. In Greece, they evade taxes, wait until the economy collapses, then kill bank employees when the government is forced to cut benefits.
Which strikes you as the more sensible response to government fiscal recklessness?
As for Americans raising the specter of Marxism in response to trillions in bailouts and new entitlements — scandalous! In response to Johansen’s cri de coeur, Michael Moynihan, a senior editor at Reason magazine who’s lived in neighboring Sweden for years, noted Marxism is not a dirty word in Norway. Left-wing Scandinavian protesters marching under Soviet banners are common.
A hundred million were killed by Communist governments in the name of Marx, but surely Rush Limbaugh fans are the real threat here.
Perhaps Johansen is just cocky. Unlike European Union partners Greece and Spain, Norway is performing quite well economically. The country’s $450 billion sovereign wealth fund, the biggest investor in the European stock market, got a 25 percent return last year. But because Johansen is a big believer in the necessity of a large social welfare state, Norway’s Labour Party is going to urge that those profits be used to bail out Greece and Spain, right?
Johansen remains undeterred. “I am truly afraid that our society will not be recognizable in 20 years if the right-wing party comes to power,” he writes.
But if Johansen and other European liberals want to maintain their status quo, the current turmoil suggests they’ve got a lot less than two decades before things fall apart. There’s going to be a economic reckoning sooner or later, and a Continental Tea Party might be Europe’s only hope.
