The Crisis of the Greens and the Future of the Left

Vandalised Green campaign poster depicting Robert Habeck with the slogan “Renew our prosperity.” “Wixxer” is German for “wanker.”

Make no mistake about it: If you live in a developed Western democracy, you have spent the last decades wrestling with the insanity of the Greens. This is true whether or not your political system has allowed this noxious force to condense into a specifically named Green Party, or whether – as in the United States – the Greens exist instead as a nebulous, diffuse faction within your progressive establishment. Whatever the politics of your country, the Greens have specific features that make them easy to identify. They are worried about carbon emissions, they cast themselves as defenders of the rights of racial and sexual minorities, they support mass migration, they believe ardently in technological progress and they cultivate a distinctly internationalist political outlook. Those are the Greens I’m talking about.

I have been thinking a lot about the Greens since their drubbing in the recent German elections. Something strange and unexpected is happening to them – something that even two years ago I wouldn’t have predicted. They are bleeding support; they are on the defensive and suddenly everybody hates them. In East Germany you could even say that they are in outright collapse. The party of the future, the party of the youth, the party at the cutting edge of progressivism, is now withering on the vine. And I suspect that this is not just happening in Germany. It may be happening here faster than it is in other countries, but the Greens are an international phenomenon, and Green politics are in trouble in many places beyond the Federal Republic.

What is going on with the Greens? Are they really done for? And if they are, what kind of politics will replace them? These questions are hugely important, because the Greens are not just another political faction. They are an entire elite-centred movement, distinguished by a peculiar body of moral doctrines and religious beliefs. To understand what is happening to them, we must begin by asking where they came from, and who they are.