Opinion | Europe Is Aflame, and It’s Not Going to Stop

A decade and a half ago, Time magazine chose “the protester” as its person of the year. From California to Cairo, the weekly profiled more than 100 participants in public demonstrations throughout 2011: One was pictured wearing a black-and-orange gas mask, and from another, who spoke Arabic, the magazine “understood the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter.’” Together they made up the aggregate that became the year’s hero.

Today, Time’s choice appears both timely and distant. As a fresh wave of protest roils the West, little of the magazine’s romanticism about public rebellion survives. Despair rather than celebration now is the dominant mood in which Western commentators approach protests as younger citizens take to the streets across Europe.

Although geographically spread out, the current surges display a remarkable synchronicity. In France, student protests have given way to more violent insurrections, while young people have occupied squares in Madrid and Lisbon. In Albania, the country’s Supreme Court was set aflame by antigovernment demonstrators, and in Italian cities the police geared up for clashes with others.

In contrast to the indignant citizens portrayed by Time in 2011, today’s protesters resist easy political identification. On the left, organizers have distanced themselves from those who hijacked their marches with indiscriminate looting. On the right, commentators have cast protesters as extremists or youngsters with migrant backgrounds supposedly bent on toppling the West one luxury outlet at a time.

These interpretations strain credulity. Instead, the protests appear as a wholly contemporary genre of unofficial politics, typical of our hyperpolitical age. Resistant to political recuperation by either left or right, they express feelings of generational futility. The protests have put Europe on edge. Yet given the circumstances underlying them, they appear destined to recur.

Some months after Time named its person of the year, the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck delivered a lecture in Frankfurt on what he termed “the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism.” In the talk, he described a malaise of Europe’s fiscal state that had been building since the end of the 20th century. Against a backdrop of declining growth rates, he argued, governments were caught between the barricade and the bond market, with no effective remedy in sight.