In the shadow of global challenges and growing political polarization, the 2nd International Conference of Alexis Tsipras Institute presented at New York Times It highlights the need for a single, progressive front. As columnist Michelle Goldberg notes, Alexis Tsipras emphasizes that the question for the left is to convince citizens that progressive governance can virtually change their lives. A call for action and essence, against cynicism and populism.
This week, Tsipras convened a conference in Athens with progressives from Europe, Turkey, Latin America and the United States to discuss the global crisis of liberal democracy. It was the second such meeting that he organized, and the first of Trump’s re -election. Among the speakers were Senator Bernie Sanders, who participated remotely. “The far -right extremists around the world are organized effectively, and I think it’s time to build an international progressive socialist movement, and this is a step forward,” he said.
In detail the whole article: New York Times: Progressives need a global movement
It is a strange irony that in recent years the nationalist Right has become much better in the international organization and coordination by the seemingly cosmopolitan left. Conservative political action, or CPAC, became worldwide during Donald Trump’s first term; it organizes rallies in Israel, South Korea, Hungary and Argentina, including countries. US Conservatives have a growing pantheon of international leaders from whom they draw inspiration, including Victor Orban from Hungary, El Salvador and Javier Miley from Argentina.
This international right exchanges ideas and memes. Its members support each other beyond the border. A stable current of US conservative executives, including influential General Chris Rufus, has passed through the state -run Danube Institute in Hungary, learning from the country’s successful course in the use of the state to crush liberal institutions. Earlier this year, members of the Make America Great Again movement from Alex Jones to Vice President JD Vance rally around a supranational Romanian presidential candidate excluded from accusations for Russian intervention. This week, the nationalist group Patriots for Europe Foundation organized a conference in the European Parliament with members of the Right Government of India, with the aim of building an alliance based on “cultural domination” – as opposed to ecumenical human rights – and struggle against Islam.
There is nothing compared to this global network, on the other side of the progressive – which is a sign of the deep crisis of the left.
In part, the problem of progressives is a matter of inactivity. For decades, when people on the left have coordinated beyond the border, they often do so through liberal institutions: international organizations such as the UN, international NGOs, academic conferences.
These institutions tend to favor communication ways that are extremely specialized and bureaucratic. (In order to be part of the UN sphere, for example, Grassroots feminist groups often have to learn his language: “Integration of gender issues,” “Shrh,” “bodies of obligations.”) “The progressive forces, the left and the socialist forces, the leftist, the socialist forces. They became, he said, “more systemic.”
And now the systems that supported the Left – especially in the university and non -profit organizations – are under a coordinated attack. “The Left basically depended on a fantastic view of the stability of institutions,” said Subir Sinha, a professor at the University of London, who has studied the links between far -right movements in India and Europe. The progressives, he said, neither expected nor planned how they could answer the central question of our time: “How would you make politics when the ground has changed so dramatically under your feet?”
Part of this design has now begun, though late. This week, Tsipras convened a conference in Athens with progressives from Europe, Turkey, Latin America and the United States to discuss the global crisis of liberal democracy. It was the second such meeting that he organized, and the first of Trump’s re -election. Among the speakers were Senator Bernie Sanders, who participated remotely. “The far -right extremists around the world are organized effectively, and I think it’s time to build an international progressive socialist movement, and this is a step forward,” he said.
One challenge for the Left is to understand what this movement will be built. The Right has a clear image of the world that it wants to create, a picture that seems utopian for its supporters, no matter how dystopian it looks for the rest of us. It has a sense of dynamic and destiny. This is what the progressives have lost, first with the fall of communism and then with the decline of liberalism. One of Barack Obama’s most common repetitive quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. Until about a decade ago, it seemed, at least in cosmopolitan circles, that the world was inevitably moving towards the Enlightenment, more equality and deeper integration.
Particularly after Trump’s re -election, this optimism has largely disappeared. Apart from the left outskirts, where people continue to cultivate millennial hopes of revolution, the dominant progressive mood seems to be a combination of confusion and despair. “The problem is that we have lost our vision of our future and our ability to convince people that if the progressives take over the governance, their future will be different,” Tsipras told me. “We have to discuss this openly.”
I asked Tsipras if he sees world leaders who create a model that could offset the authoritarian threat. It was skeptical. As a child, he said, he was a member of the Communist Youth of Greece. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he began to believe that a society could not be free and based on equality without democracy. These days, he said, he has begun to believe that the situation is so serious that, unfortunately, “we must fight not for a democratic socialism, but for a democratic capitalism,” that will oppose the rising oligarchy and authoritarianism. To find out how such a plan can approach people’s fragmented attention and speak to their hopes in shaping is a very large stalemate. That makes the first small steps to be fulfilled even more important.
Opinion _ Progressives Need a Global Movement – The New York Times