The ‘Schland got first dibs at a news conference on Thursday with Senator Bernie Sanders, who is on a book tour for his latest memoir-manifesto:
As one of the only, major political figures — in the United States and really anywhere in western democracies — to successfully galvanize voters around a message that is more than just, “I’m the least-bad choice,” I was curious about Sanders’ views on political developments in Germany and across Europe.
The growth of illiberal parties, movements, and sentiment is as much about their success as it is the failure of their liberal counterparts, especially on the left and center-left (that is, labor). Long-time socialist and social-democratic voters are moving increasingly to the far-right. We see this, for example, in eastern Germany. Many voters in the former communist and passionately socialist region, whose authoritarian regime was built on the propagandistic and revisionist notion that it was the bulwark against the West’s fascism, are responsive to fascist-sounding rhetoric.
“What progressives are not doing is simply telling the straightforward truth,” he said. “We are moving rapidly to an oligarchic form of society.”
Here’s my question and his full response: