All over Europe, socialism is taking punch after punch. The most recent example is Sweden, where the Social Democrats took such a serious beating in the latest election that the party leader Mona Sahlin officially asked why the party's ideology isn't relevant to the electorate anymore. That's when you know the politician in question just woke up after a serious political knock-out.

The question becomes ever more important when you look at those who won the election: the moderate conservatives and the ultra-conservatives, the latter a fairly new political party called Sweden Democrats.

The party has its roots in Neo-Nazism and promotes an anti-Islamic agenda to, in their own words, protect Sweden. This party now holds the balance of power in the Swedish parliament, putting the moderate conservative leader in an awful situation.

Four years ago, the moderate conservative party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt won the 2006 election by calling his party the New Moderates, effectively creating the image that the old conservative party had just been through a political makeover. As the Swedish people soon learned, that wasn't the case.

Instead, the New Moderates referred to the new people who took over the Moderate party, mostly men and women in their thirties and forties. That left many party veterans in their fifties and sixties feeling useless and ignored, but what exactly could they do about it? It wasn't like there was another conservative party to join.

Until now. The new moderates are in fact the Sweden Democrats, a party so successful in the latest election that they are in desperate need of experienced conservative politicians. The underdog party is also an existential threat to two other political parties, the Christian Democrats, with deep roots in the Swedish Pentecostal Movement, and the Center Party, a rural party struggling to be relevant in urban areas.

Both parties are hovering right above the national vote threshold¸ and could be eradicated on a national level if the Sweden Democrats decides it's worth a try. The new kid on the block has turned out to be an effective political predator, and as the video above from Russia Today shows, the underdog party can expect to retain its martyrdom role for months, if not years, to come.

Out of touch

One could easily argue that socialism, including concepts such as a generous welfare state, should be popular in today's tough economic times. After all, unemployment and its related problems are increasing all over Europe. Foreign direct investments are down, to a great extent because it's so much more favorable to invest in countries such as Brazil, India, China, Vietnam, and Australia.

At the same time, governments all over Europe are cutting down on welfare benefits. How come socialism isn't relevant to the people affected by these dramatic changes?

Well, it probably is. Problem is, the socialist parties of Europe have had serious problems adapting to the dramatic turn of events we've witnessed during the last two decades.

First, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact just vanished. That was terribly confusing to many European socialists, who looked upon socialism as a middle way between American capitalism and Soviet communism.

With communism dead, socialism was suddenly the only major ideology on the left side of the political scale with an own responsibility to define itself according to what it was, instead of what it wasn't, that is capitalism or communism.

Instead of asking why socialism was relevant in the post Cold War era, European socialists got busy integrating Europe into a coherent whole through the European Union, a task even more important than initially expected due to the wars in former Yugoslavia.

In that process, redefining socialism was neglected and its contemporary value taken for granted.

Then came September 11, 2001, a tragedy that couldn't be described in socialist terms. However, conservative intellectuals such as Samuel Huntington could easily put words on what happened. "The Clash of Civilizations" was suddenly a relevant concept, because that's a rather good description of what people saw on live TV.

Many European socialists spent the coming decade denying there was a clash between Islam and the western world, without being able to define what we saw on September 11, 2001 with socialist sound bites.

That powerful clash narrative is an important part of the explanation to why ultra-conservative parties such as the Sweden Democrats have become influential in post 9/11 Europe.

The black and white adventure

So is European socialism finally dying? Well, it could be, but socialists all over Europe could also learn from the right-wing extremists and beat them at their own game.

When you jump on the ultra-conservative adventure bandwagon, it's all about you against evilness. Today, no one in Europe is better at polarizing political shows than the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, as his highly provoking No Mosque Here speech proved (better video quality after 04:22).

It's easy to call that performance a hate speech. However, it's important to keep in mind that hate is an essential part of successful political campaigns. You've got to hate something to make a substantial difference. Geert Wilders hates militant Islam, Arizona's Jan Brewer hates illegal immigration, and old school socialists hated social injustice. That hate made the socialists in question credible and relevant.

How the times are changing. One hundred years ago, the socialists were the ones who took people on a black and white adventure.

The socialists were the ones who gave people the opportunity to fight in the battle between good and evil.

The socialists, through impressive organizational skills, where the ones who created a complicated web of services that protected the people from capitalist predators all the way from the cradle to the grave.

That was a powerful narrative, featuring mandatory and provoking exaggerations. It's been done before and now, their political competitors among right-wing extremists are excelling in this political art form that used to be the socialist's turf.

Hope from the other side of the pond

Now the question is: Can European socialism find its groove again? What could possibly inject hope for change in a leftist ideology struggling with the relevance of its existence? Where on Earth could the words be found that wrap up the modern European socialist adventure in just a few easily memorable phrases?

In the America constitution, of course:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare [my italics], and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Hold on, we're almost there, we just have to rephrase that a little.

OK, here we go:

“We the People of Europe, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of Europe.”

There you go.

It's possible. European socialism can be reinvented. Socialism 2.0 can be done.

But are European socialists really interested in reinventing an ideology most of them seem comfortable with, no matter how much they're punished by the electorates in the polls?

And are European socialists prepared to leave their ideological comfort zone and become competitive?

Or has European socialism already fought its final struggle?

The communists on the ash heap of history might soon have company. As the latest election is Sweden proved, contemporary socialism is neither competitive nor relevant to many Europeans and hasn't been since at least 9/11, 2001.

However, as we've seen, change is possible, but are European socialists prepared to accept that hope doesn't start with themselves, but with an American rebel who fought for freedom against Europeans?

Maybe not. On the other hand, considering how much John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Barack Obama have inspired Europeans, we can't exclude that.

So Socialism 2.0 is possible.

Thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the other signatories, it can be done.

Daniel Kronlid, Sweden