Talking Ghosts and Ideas
Talking Ghosts and Ideas

Summary/Abstract: On 29 September 2009, The New York Times ran a story headlined “Europe’s Socialists Suffering Even in Downturn.” The first line of the story read, “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.” The purported reason for running such a story at that time was the German federal election two days earlier, which saw Angela Merkel return as chancellor and her party’s main rival, the Social Democrats (SPD), receive only 23.5 percent of the seats in the Bundestag – its lowest total ever.

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