Old revolutionaries would be ashamed of today’s left

Written by: Karlo Jurak

The right and increasingly the HDZ in various manifestations see the new left and liberal center as – extreme or radical left – thus mirroring trends from the USA where the mainstream politics of the Democratic Party is referred to in Republican, Trumpist circles as ‘extremely left’, and even very specifically ‘Marxist’.

Thus, ‘extreme left’ in the imaginary of right-wing parties and individuals primarily refers to the politicization of sexuality (so-called gender ideology, LGBT ideology), and often comes along with green policies, so-called degrowth policies (avoiding the growth paradigm at all costs), the promotion of political correctness, positive discrimination, and generally identity politics of (once) marginalized groups.

Accordingly, the ‘extreme left’ party is a very moderate one, but too postmodern, municipal, green in a local way, the Možemo! party, and often even the SDP – for which it is questionable what connection it has with social democracy and when that party made any radical step in relation to the ruling HDZ, which has always been its opposition.

Let us remember that the label ‘extreme left’ was occasionally used for conflicts within the right – thus the ‘more right-wing right’ (conditionally speaking, Most, Sovereignists, DP when it was in opposition) referred to Plenković’s HDZ, and even within HDZ itself – in 2020, the intra-party opponent to Andrej Plenković, Miro Kovač, accused his boss, the Prime Minister and favorite for the new/old president of HDZ, of – extreme leftism.

Meaningless labels

Do the terms even make sense, purpose, meaning if we throw them around indiscriminately and only for the purpose of labeling? Moreover, does ‘extreme’ remain truly extreme if almost everything can be extreme? Or are we reconciled to the fact that society is woven from extremes, so whose extreme will be stronger? This applies to both left and center positions when they see extreme right policies everywhere. This deserves a special text.

In Croatia, the Možemo! and SDP parties, in their best case, occupy positions of a moderate left that flirts with postmodern identity politics (LGBT, focus on sexuality, minorities, green policies, etc.), just like such factions within the American Democratic Party. These identity politics (often referred to as woke) on the left do not signify its radicalization or extremization (they are also not synonyms), but rather the opposite – the collaboration of that same left with the system, the dominant order.

In other words, they have been in the West since 1968 onwards, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an example of how the system (so flexible that it can absorb both right-wing nationalists and racists as well as left-wing identity activists and sexual, ecological, and other activists) is capable of co-opting all sorts of movements under the aegis of pluralism.

Finally, the problem of the left today in the Western world, and in Croatia, is not that it is extreme or radical in its identity (woke) guise, but that in the name of particularities and some absurdities, it has precisely – given up that radicality.

A little is needed

However, this is a terrain on which victories cannot really be won – neither discursive nor real political ones. For a large part of the right, the ‘extreme left’ (previously more often called ‘communists’, now this has thinned out) is nothing more than (post)liberal opposition to nationalist identity politics and new conservative trends. In the local context, a little opposition to the sanctity of the Homeland War, a little need for the liberalization of sexuality, a little appeal for changing lifestyles for political goals is enough to be an extremist.

If constant apologies for participation in the defensive war, obsession with sexuality, and virtue signaling regarding lifestyles (use of cars, waste generation, etc.) are irritating – they are. If this is extreme – it is not. The extreme left is those who throw bombs and establish guerrillas: RAF, FARC, Red Brigades, Maoists… Today’s left would be ashamed of such revolutionaries.

However, the situation is not much better on the left side either – for them, opposition to uncontrolled immigration, sexual traditionalism, and the demand for greater sovereignty of national states has also become extreme. Today’s ‘extremists’, both left and right, could only be wished for by some decent center. Yet it does not seem that we live in such decent times…