The fact that the Independence Party received less than 4000 votes over the Left-Greens signals a sea change in how Icelanders view their country and what should be done to take them out of the ruin imposed on them through 18 years of Independence Party and Progressive Alliance (mis)rule. While pre-poll surveys suggested even higher votes for the Left-Greens, this still remains a huge victory for them. Steingrimur Sigfusson, leader of the Left-Greens will probably remain as Finance Minister and his principled opposition to EU and privatization of resources will keep his voice, and party, in the forefront of all major decisions in the days ahead.

Another significant change is the rise of the Citizen’s Movement, a brand new populist based group that arose out of the “pots and pan revolution” which toppled the right wing government this past winter. This new group will now have four seats in Parliament bringing the number of left-populist ministers to 38 out of 63. Iceland will now have one of the most Left-oriented governments of any of the industrialized Western nations. (And special note should be made that 43% percent of the parliament are now women, including the Prime Minister.)

Is this a coup for the Left? Possibly. European Union membership is now the big issue, and unlike most of the Parliament, the Left-Greens are not in favor. Is this a big victory for the people against the moneyed interests who have ruined the world economy? Definitely. Without engaging in too much hyperbole, this next government will take office reflecting a new era of populist revolt against the policies embodied by speculative banking and investment, emblematic of the past 20 years or so in public policy around the world. Don’t let anyone tell you that 300,000+ people can’t signal a shift that might have repercussions for the US . At 1/1000th the population and a far more homogenous society than the US is, it might at first appear so. But looks can be deceiving.

Icelanders took to the streets with grit and determination following revelations that their ruined economy was driven into the ground by self-serving politicians interested more in hobnobbing with celebrities and selling off the country’s resources to the highest bidder than in advancing the people’s best interests. The people decided (in their typically reserved Icelandic manner) that enough is enough and nonviolently toppled the establishment in just a few short months. The people withheld their support, obstructed the governance of the country, and demanded completely new elections. They got all of that and more. A whopping 85.1% of eligible voters voted yesterday, an indication of Scandinavian civic-mindedness, to be sure, but also an indicator of how mobilized the people were.

Whether the new governing coalition can deliver considering the extremely difficult circumstances plaguing the world economy will not be easy to say. Some key differences within the newly certified governing coalition will make solving their problems a bit more complicated than one might at first suspect, given the uniformly positive support the broad Left has received. For example, the Left-Green Movement, unlike the Social Democrats, opposes attempts to join the European Union, which may have siphoned votes from the Independence Party which has also historically opposed the EU. Thus, the Social Democrats, who favor EU integration, will need to proceed cautiously (although the Citizen’s Movement and Progressive Party also favor EU entry). And should EU membership be advanced out of the Parliament, another election will need to be held with a nationwide referendum on EU membership taken.

While a majority in the new Parliament favor EU entry, (even some Independence Party members now support it) the country as a whole is split on this issue but Icelanders aren’t known for impulsively acting on urges (which is partly why the people were so mad at the former government) and will debate this issue carefully. There are pluses and minuses either way. Joining the EU will affect Iceland ’s fishing and immigration policies, among other things, and they are in no position to demand concessions considering their precarious financial condition. But many Icelander’s seeking long-term stability view safety in EU numbers. Either way, major decisions about social service spending, repayment of debt, ensuring unemployment benefits, and restructuring the banking system, while investigating the shenanigans which brought them into this mess in the first place, will be the first tasks ahead. Thus, Jóhanna Sigurdadóttir, the acerbic but viewed as incorruptible Prime Minister, will have her hands full.

For now however, the morning after is quiet as hangovers are nursed and a new era dawns for this republic of Vikings tenaciously clawing their way back into solvency and 21st century relevancy. One can only hope the Left in the US learns something about coalition-building and sustaining mass-based popular movements against government policies that benefit the wealthy few over the many.

Icelanders, beginning shortly after the government intervened and nationalized the three largest banks upon their collapse, signaled their displeasure with the government and week after week were demanding that the entire cabinet step down, en masse. Well, they now have and it is a victory for democracy lovers everywhere.

Icelanders did it in their own peculiar way, though. While daily reports of violence in the Greek streets dominated foreign news coverage here, I sat in bemused fascination as the travails of one single rock was being debated with the intensity of a grainy JFK assassination video and the moral indignation of a soul-searching nation stunned at its new-found loss of conscience. What a contrast! It seems that in mid-December one police officer had allegedly been scratched by a rock tossed by an angry protestor. Home videos were scrutinized as to whom might have been the attacker and talk show hosts wondered aloud at the moral state of the nation, fearing the direction protests might be turning, and what that might mean for their people who are not known as a violent sort.

While Iceland has had more than its share of a violent past (can anyone say, Vikings?) it seems that the insularity and isolation of the country (and the occasional intervention of its Scandinavian neighbors over the years) has tempered the Icelandic temperament. This has forced typical tension releasing into arenas such as skiing, regular gym workouts and, for the insistent, drunken revelry from Friday to Sunday. But even the latter rarely descends into more than early morning shouting matches as displays of violence are rarely countenanced. In fact, in a recent conversation with Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade, she asked this writer to consider if Iceland had in fact, made the remarkable transition from a dominator mode of social relationship to a partnership mode. I will leave that discussion for another time, but the results are stunning. In just over three months, Icelanders have stopped cooperating, withdrawing their support for a coalition government seen as more concerned with holding onto power than working in the people’s legitimate interests. So the people took to the streets. Tentatively, of course, and with an Icelanders typical reserve, holding protests in front of the Parliament building on Saturdays, promptly and peacefully at 3pm. But the people came together.

While Athens burned into a maelstrom of ungovernable chaos, Icelanders, in roughly the same time period, politely listened to long speeches and, as the weeks progressed, increased their venting with the occasional egg toss and curse word. (One newly coined expression of their frustrated rage was “Fokking fokk!” laughable perhaps at first listen, but as near a violent expression as I’ve heard hear in nearly seven years). A couple of times small bonfires were lit and, as reported later, appeared to be evidence of violence against the Parliament. No such violence occurred, though. And as the recent tensions came to a head and the frustration boiled over even more, many protesters took to wearing orange ribbons signifying their “legitimate” protester status, as opposed to the occasional drunken lout eager to fight or create mayhem at will, something most Icelanders, pro or against the government loathe. Still the protests continued onward and Icelanders, oblivious to the cold and rain soldiered on bravely until, last week, on January 20, as the Parliament resumed meeting, the protests culminated in between 7-8000 people gathering (the US equivalent of 7-8 million). (This was the second time such a large gathering had happened in the course of this crisis.) Apparently, the die was cast: within a few days, the Business Minister resigned and the political blogging hit a fevered pitch, letting the politicians know their time was up. It has now precipitated the collapse of the government and the frenzied assembling of a caretaker government to lead until elections are held in May. Where this will go in the next few months is uncertain, (the Left-Green Alliance is certainly to be a major player in the new government) but the Icelandic example provides powerful instruction that, when a people reject violence and take up a struggle together, they can still actually win.

Yesterday, (Nov. 22) an estimated 7-8000 people (the US equivalent to several million) gathered in what is becoming a weekly mass protest in front of the Althingi, or Parliament. As well, angry citizens stormed the police building in downtown Reykjavik to force the release of one young man held for raising a supermarket chain flag atop the Parliament building. Eggs now regularly adorn the Parliament’s windows and doorways, statues are defaced, and the demands for the government to step down are becoming increasingly forceful. And near-violent as well. Perhaps the best received line in all the speeches yesterday was passionately delivered by Katrín Oddsdottir who said, at Saturday’s gathering said, “If they don’t let us vote, we will find another way of voting-we will carry them out…” In a country this size, this is not a threat to be taken lightly.

The calls for new elections are taking an edgy fervor, with a normally quiet citizenry emboldened each week despite governmental news conferences rejecting early elections, and thin pledges to trim Parliamentarian salaries. The dominant party of the past 60 years, The Independence Party (conservative, neo-liberal) has its reputation in complete tatters. (A recent study projects that, were an election were held today, they would receive a paltry 24%, losing eight representatives in Parliament. In contrast, an election held today would propel the Left-Green Movement into power with 19 members, up from only 9 now. No wonder they don’t want to call early elections.)

The Independence Party’s former leader (and ex-Prime Minister for 12 years) David Oddsson, had been appointed head of the Central Bank of Iceland in 2007 in a sweetheart deal that now has him and a few other politicians (like current Prime Minister, Geir Haarde) facing physical threats in a decidedly uncharacteristic Icelandic display of anger. The largest opposition party, the Social Democratic Alliance (moderately socialist) is fairing a little better, though their once-vaunted standard-bearer Ingibjörg Solrun Gisladottir sits in the coalition partnership with the Independence Party. A mood of barely subdued volcanic tension is felt everywhere and Iceland ’s politicians are in serious trouble.

The one notable exception, Steingrimur J. Sigfusson, the eloquent Left-Green Movement leader, is rising dramatically in the polls. His calls for a new election are becoming so forceful that, despite a constant barrage of anti-new election PR, the ruling coalition is facing almost no support and losing rapidly what little it retains, pushing them towards that very real possibility.

Iceland , sitting literally smack in the middle of two tectonic plates, (ironically the European and North American) is now facing earth-shaking political tremors which may soon herald a completely new configuration in Icelandic politics. Let us hope the political classes on both sides of this divide also take the hint and act rapidly in their countries before they too face similar populist dissatisfaction. For if they don’t, this small North Atlantic island might spawn a tsunami that washes onto both American and European shores and cleans out the political detritus there. One can only hope…

anywhere you go, it’s the same cry
money worries

– The Maytones

When I arrived in Iceland nearly 7 years ago, I saw two distinct faces of the country. On almost every large hilltop stretching from Reykjavík to the airport were a half dozen cranes, blighting the otherwise gorgeous scenery in a perverse paean to over development which almost no one at the time thought necessary but everyone put up with. It seemed to demonstrate some Icelandic version of “Damn the torpedoes—Full steam ahead!” This might explain, among other things, the revival of whaling (a marginal enterprise at best), granting Bobby Fischer citizenship, and selecting in-your-face comedienne Agusta Erlendsdottir as their representative to Eurovision in 2006. Each of those actions (and others) drew condemnation and quizzical stares from their neighbors. However, Icelanders don’t care much for what outsiders think and don’t like being told what to do—even if it’s in their own best interests. So now we watch as the entire economy collapses and, in typical Icelandic fashion, barely a whisper is heard about how their version of neo-liberal IMF Republicans have driven them into uncharacteristic submission before the financiers of the world. It’s a sad time to be in Iceland, and my guess is things will only get worse.

Usually the only time Americans hear about Iceland is when some intrepid traveler returns to regale us with tales of lunar-like landscapes, stunningly fresh air and endless miles of unspoilt beautiful expanses. Now Iceland, making headlines on the Wall St. Journal, the New York Times, CNN, BBC, and others, returns to our attention as what the British press are calling a “test case” of failed capitalism. Pay attention America. In the past week, all three of Iceland’s biggest banks have essentially collapsed and been taken over by the government. Stock trading has been suspended, and a war of words is happening between Iceland’s banking czars and the Brits over the possibility that Iceland will not secure the money many Brits placed in another Icelandic bank, Icesave. By this time next month, it is betting odds that the Icelandic Kronur will be an historical relic, the IMF will have bailed them out, and the adoption of the Euro is near inevitable. Not to mention all those typical bailout conditions the IMF levels to the Third World like stringent “austerity measures” and other cheerful sounding destructors of formerly independent people around the world.

It is now becoming clear that Iceland (a country so fiercely proud of its identity that the novelist Halldor Laxness, 1955 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature won for was appropriately titled, Independent People) is no more independent in almost any but the most perfunctory ways. This is because the criminal class who privatized the banking system, creating for the first time since the Middle Ages a class of ultra-rich who could afford to buy soccer clubs in England, and get Elton John to sing at their birthday parties, are now begging Russia to lend them 4 billion Euros (5.8 billion dollars) to help them weather a crisis they caused. On top of that, it is near certain that the IMF will step in like they have done in many countries and extract further concessions sure to be painful to that delicate ego which clings to a proud independent streak.

In other countries, a “throw the bums out!” mentality would be heard and swiftly acted upon. So far, nothing of the sort is playing out here. That might be because since gaining their independence from Denmark in 1944, the Independence Party, which has dominated the political scene since then, cunningly plays right into the myth of Icelanders as an independent people that Laxness so beautifully wrote about almost 60 years ago. But the nostalgic retention of such an image is dangerous. Especially when reality bites. Holding on to this image, by constantly allowing the Independent Party to rule, even in coalition with other parties, only insures that so long as it’s done under the guise of maintaining this myth of independence, Icelanders will close their eyes to the apparent thievery that goes on under their noses. They would do well to try something new. Quickly.

Both candidates are imperial Democrats, supporting the 800 or so military bases around the world, and the hegemonic dominance that assures. Both candidates will not support an end to insurance company mobsterism in health care, and instead opt for what most modern Western democracies have: a single-payer health system. Both candidates talk only in the vaguest of generalities about the importance of unions (but neither support an end to Taft-Hartley), the environment (yet both support nuclear power and neither will reign in destructive corporate agriculture), or “working families” (but neither supports a living wage). What all this means is that, simply put, a progressive agenda is once again relegated to the backburner in exchange for the maddeningly inevitable mantra of “change”, which in American politics means changing the prison guards and keeping the Left locked away from mainstream debates.

Here in Iceland where I live, the Left-Green Movement, a Green-Socialist-Feminist coalition, is part of the government, and its leader Steingrímur Sigfússon delivers the most impassioned and inspiring speeches, winning respect from even opponents for his integrity and vision. But they represent only 14.3% of Parliament. The Socialist Alliance, a Social Democratic, center-left coalition (perhaps the equivalent of a more liberal version of New Deal Democrats) holds 26.8% of Parliament and so between them, almost half of the total seats. Together they get attention and more importantly, some legislation passed that fits a progressive description. While this is not the place to recommend a proportional system of representation for the US (though I do) or a whole new way of configuring movements and political parties (which I do), I think it time some of us on the US Left reassess our choice of words (and fear of others) and earnestly support where we can an openly socialist agenda electorally. What this means is giving a new look to an old friend, the Socialist Party-USA (SP-USA).

Even as large numbers of progressives, including socialists joined the Green Parties in the 80´s (and technically there still remains 2, without counting the arcane mergers and configurations within individual states) the Greens have been hobbled by infighting and crass manipulation by Dems in Green clothing. And while Communists (CPUSA) and other socialist parties exist, they have neither the traction (organization or ballot access) nor the independence (the CP, for example, supports the Dems as a tactical, and “practical” endeavor) to make more waves than a pond ripple. For progressives, these are disheartening signs.

In addition, we have seen the movement of radicals, Leftists, and other progressives drift towards the Republican candidacy of Ron Paul. His unswerving opposition to American imperial adventurism and undeclared wars, and strong support of the Constitution make him appealing. Yet many of his other positions are questionable, to say the least. Why aren’t we reassessing a group that has always opposed wars, imperialism and unjust policies at home and abroad?

The Socialist Party is the US´s oldest socialist party, does not favor top down “democratic centralism”, is adaptable to distinctly American political realities and has a platform remarkably consistent with progressive (and Green) views without the nutty baggage that hampers any Left discussion of politics. At one time, in its heyday, the Socialist Party had numerous elected officials in office and Eugene Debs once received almost a million votes—while he was in jail! By openly supporting the Socialist Party, we would be making a statement loud and clear that can push the debate much further to the Left than it is at present.

Yet, if history teaches us anything it’s that movements matter and that unified struggle beats divisive sectarianism. Hopping from one political party to another is now an unfortunate, inevitable consequence of US ballot access laws. Thus, a socialist may have to vote Green in order to have her vote count (or in order to simply be able to vote) or a Green to support an Independent candidacy in order to be heard.

But what if we simply agreed that what we want, at its most basic, is found pretty squarely inside that SP-USA platform and that, wherever possible, by voting Socialist we are helping a noble party get back into the consciousness of Americans and giving an alternative vision the chance it needs to compete. While I have for 20 years committed myself to Green politics, I think it may be time to shift back to where my heart says I should go for me to feel I am not wasting my vote, or my time—to the Socialist Party. And if, and when we can form our version of a Left-Green Alliance, in whatever name, I’ll be right there too.