Youth Socialists Respond, Slam U.S.

Last week I reported for PoliGazette, the website I co-founded and of which I am the editor-in-chief, that Dutch Youth Socialists announced they would travel to the American state of Pennsylvania in order to campaign for Barack Obama.

This is a follow-up to that post: Dutch Youth Socialists (Jonge Socialisten) of the Groningen Department responded to coverage of their upcoming trip, at their website.

The news item on the Youth Socialists Groningen website is entitled "the JS is HOT in the US." In it, Dutch Youth Socialists - who have ties to government coalition party the PvdA - write that they have become "famous in the U.S."

They link to the original report appearing here at PoliGazette and to conservative bloggers who picked the story up.

They defend the trip by saying that it will be a "candy trip" (having fun, etc.) but that they call such "candy trips," "research" nowadays. In other words, they admit that the "research" description is a hoax.

"Socialism isn't exactly a popular term in the United States," the Youth Socialists go on to write, "there are only a few people who realize that Social-Democrats contributed significantly to North and Central European countries."

Read more at PoliGazette - it becomes quite interesting, they lash out at the United States for perceived 'market fundamentalism' and they politely tell American conservatives to shut up.