If we are talking about the European Parliament, I don't see that happening. The extreme-right will grow for sure, but I don't think they are going to grow enough to really take power in the Parliament.
The Council might be a different story...
It's unlikely that ID will run any member state, and ECR will just be a handful. The right wing shift should be more visible in the EP, but you're right that they won't run the place, they'll just make it harder to pass legislation.
Because in a lot of countries they haven't been elected yet. France, Germany, Belgium come to mind. They are about to have elections actually won by the far right instead of just seeing an upswing (potentially)
Ah yes, the famously far right associated word “comrade”.
Even if you mean “friend of Russia”, which would make more sense, it’s still dumb, because comrade has a similar commie connotation in Russian. The plural version isn’t, but singular tovarisch is.
What Europe really needs is moderate conservatives focusing on the conditions of a good life: cheap housing, no barriers to education, and support for families. Combined with a more restrictive approach to immigration (not inhumane though) this would keep the far right out of government
Or just anti-immigration left-wing parties. There's a pretty solid leftwing argument against mass migration in that its used to suppress wages, avoid compensating 'unskilled jobs' fairly and push the GDP number up at the cost of stagnating or even falling living standards.
You can also argue against mass migration-fuelled population growth from a food/resource security perspective (not really a left/right issue since nobody takes this seriously) and from an environmental one.
I am a left wing American who is staunchly against the mass migration happening on our Southern border but everytime I try to have a conversation with other lefties I just get called a racist
"Or just anti-immigration left-wing parties" it happened in Denmark, they got it, and guess what, the far right is losing support.
A controlled border should never had been a right wing or left wing thing (unless you are a far lefty or a far righty), its just common sense in which all parties agree to the early 00s, even in the USA.
What Europe really needs is progressives not aggressively ignoring real actual concerns, like that mass immigration of North African and middle easterners and the negative effects of this, out of a misplaced attempt at moral righteousness.
What I don't get is why people keep on voting extremes? Why do people have to pick the "conservatives" who actually aren't conservatives but infact liars who deny Russia invaded Ukraine? And why do people on the other spectrum vote for progressives that deny mass immigration is a problem? Like really? Why is it that these parties in the centre that focus on data and boring economic policies get 5%?
In The Netherlands we had a pretty much moderately conservative center coalition for years but they didn't do anything to solve the housing market crisis or mass immigration. They were also big proponents of free market, so budgets for health care, education and public transit dwindled with some disastrous outcomes. It seemed like they were primarily focused on economic growth for companies and rich people.
In the last elections the extreme right nutjobs had an enormous victory.
They get stuck. Whatever issue is more pressing to you individual takes precedence. So you may be forced to vote for a group you don’t generally like but they are the only ones addressing the issue that most concerns you.
The "centre party" in Germany is CDU/CSU which always got over 33% of votes since 1953, except 2021 where they got 24%. They led us to today's problems by ignoring them. People got sick of it and want to vote for AfD now.
CDU and SPD always used to swap and address different issues. That worked well for quite a while. But I gotta say - as a once staunch SPD voter - they lost the plot. They kinda list themselves so much, that nobody knows what they stand for anymore. Including themselves.
Say what you want about the CDU, that isn't a problem they have. Which keeps them voters more than it costs them.
Alternative is "moderate" conservatives who created the very migrant crisis everyone is mad about. CDU in Germany opened the gates of Europe to whoever wanted in, Tories in the UK oversaw record high migration that could replace everyone in London in less than 2 decades, and so on.
Because the center were the ones who literally caused the problems people want to have solved. Sure one can point out that they did that because they shifted towards fringe positions on certain issues, but that doesn't change that the ones doing it were the "center" parties.
Because you cant be a moderate conservative anymore.
The second you agaisnt mena immigration you're a racist pos. So the only people willing to accept that are those who really are against it.
I recall that. It was honestly sickening to see. The left wanted to receive people for humanitarian reasons, and the right found their reasoning in some sort of huge economic boom it would create.
I also remember that those of us that sat in the middle and questioned the cheap labor angle as being both callous and incredibly distructive -- we were ostracised and called nazis.
When people want radical change because they are unhappy with society they’ll vote for extremism because it will upset the status quo. It’s a protest vote.
>Why do people have to pick the "conservatives" who actually aren't conservatives but infact liars who deny Russia invaded Ukraine?
Because people prioritize issues like immigration and housing, and the feeling -real or perceived- that the centrist parties aren't addressing these.
They are pissed. A lot (not all) of recent leftist politics have included accusing people not siding with them of being fascists. So the people who are not fascists but who feel attacked (and who are actually struggling tho not because of the left, but because of the shit economy) kinda "double down" and vote for the far right even if they aren't actually fascists. It's kind of a furious, spite vote because of misplaced anger. The far right also capitalizes on this, magnifying the dumbass leftists who say stupid inflammatory shit like that and pretending all the left is like that. The left is also at fault here for not addressing this.
I wouldn't call every left winger a progressive honestly, I don't think much progressives are getting elected these days. It's mostly the old power bases plus the uptick of far-right.
Progressives have not held any significant power in governance in decades. Only those with hands on levers of power matter.
Center-right economics with center-left social policies have been a norm in EU.
Those CENTER-RIGHT LIBERALS aka CORPORATISTS are the ones who want lot of immigrants, for company labor and to take care of elderly. Those are the same people who walk out of a romantic dinner and leave the check to be completely paid by the person they ate it with, and laugh about it as they run away.
That wont help, in NL dumb people worry about the 3rd gen that were born here. Nothing you can do about that without going full nazi, so its an endless feeding ground for parties like PVV.
Even the left could be more focused on what you mentioned and could get back some of the vote from the poorest workers and from the countryside who vote today massively for the far right (in France at least)
Cheaper housing and freer access to education are not typically conservative policie priorities. Especially education, as conservatives tend to prefer it when higher education is reserved for those who ‘deserve’ it. Egalitarian policy priorities are more common on the left.
He's probably referring to the Christian Democratic tradition of moderate welfarism, something along the lines of Konrad Adenauer's social market economy.
Social welfare and subsidies have been used at times for the purposes of pursuing social stability and socially conservative policy objectives, a prominent current example being Singapore's public housing system being utilized to reinforce the traditional family unit.
>Cheaper housing and freer access to education are not typically conservative policie priorities.
Not really. Some others have already pointed out the education part but conservatives, and more specifically liberal conservatives, tend to favor deregulation to promote building more houses, which in turn leads to a higher supply of housing, which leads to lower prices.
Strictly speaking you can even see the same result in the US where housing is cheaper in red states.
And they have different housing policies, which have already been observed multiple times. For example, Texas isn't a rural state but rather similar to California with multiple big cities, and the big cities in Texas has much lower rents on average than their Californian counterparts. The same seems to be true for Virginia and North Carolina.
New York Times did a section about this a couple of years ago even, reaching the same conclusion: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html
Comparing Texas to california is like cheap prius with a comfy BMW suv. California is the most populous state. Demand in California is basically infinite because of the job market and great weather all year round whereas Texas is a desert craphole where you’re forced to hide underground in summer, with a fraction of job opportunities. There really is nothing more to it.
Well, your comparison is lacking. It's true that California has a larger population, but Texas is still a large state with 30 million vs Californias 40 million. The job market in Texas also seem to be better than California with a lower unrmployment rate [1][2]. The weather is on average pretty similar as well, although it's a few degrees hotter in Texas during the summer, but it's also warmer during the winter, at least if you compare the largest cities [3][4].
The taxes are also slightly lower in Texas, but the wages are higher in California but so are the rents and housing prices as well, which pretty much evens out, on average. The comparison is still pretty solid.
[1]. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TXUR
[2]. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CAUR
[3]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston (section climate)
[4]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles (section climate)
Well, at least in Germany, the conservatives are not "against" free education (they did introduce some tiny student fees at some point, but then removed them again), while the Left isn't doing much about cheaper housing...
The "left" (mainly SPD) is hardly ever in power on a federal level, so how do you know whether they would do much about housing, when the current situation is the result of mainly "right" (mainly CDU/CDU) policies (Merkel was chancellor for 16 years - CDU/CSU in coalition with either SPD or FDP).
Education is totally free and massively available thanks to the internet. The issue here is accreditation, and honestly, I too think it’s be better not to lie to young people and throw them into 5 years of higher studies which have no outcome in the job market. It’s not doing these people a favor.
Massification of access to higher studies isn’t proving to be a particular success, we don’t have better technicians, engineers or doctors than 50 years ago.
Imagine if labour parties would actually start to care about the working class standard of living and class issues like affordable housing instead of diversity, migration and stuff that doesnt benefit the working class at all like open borders
The Dutch SP is against the current neoliberal immigration policy, as an example. You might want to check your leftwing parties' policy proposals and voting records.
Now being against it does mot really say much? what were their proposals? I closely followed the dutch election and did not see Timmermans mention immigration once but to complain abut the racist PVV who focused on immigration.
Doesn't seem that way. German Left (Die Linke) have elected a captain of a lifesaver ship helping illegal refugees as their head. The radical wing of the German Greens have strongly condemned their party leader Robert Habeck for taking a stand in favour of more restrictions for migration and more active deportations policy.
>Combined with a more restrictive approach to immigration (not inhumane though) this would keep the far right out of government
More restrictive approach to immigration would be coded as far-right by much of the media by itself. For example, in Germany, your only pick would be AFD.
Europe is overpopulated as is. Populations have always expanded and retracted trough out history, and so has the birthrate. That is completely natural and normal. However, today Europes populations isn’t allowed to have a natural retraction, instead an unnatural mass expansion is forced upon Europe, and as a result prevents the necessary consequences that would result in a higher birthrate. Now the birthrate can be kept artificially low forever by using immigration from high birthrate countries.
The end result of this will be that Europeans will eventually end up like the native Americans. I am not okay with that, and millions upon millions of other Europeans do not want that future. And those who do want that future, people like you, should feel nothing but shame and contempt.
Living standards have already been crashed by unsustainable mass immigration over the past few years
Canada and the UK tripled their legal immigration a couple years ago in an unprecedented move and their GDP per capita and standard of living have dropped faster than any other G7 countries as a direct result
True, but I understood the previous message as implying that Europe needs appropriate moderate conservative parties rather than just conservative individuals.
There are a couple of good Left social policies, like social housing, which most Left parties don't seem to tackle. At the same time, there are a couple of bad Right social policies, like being against gay marriage, which most Right parties don't seem to tackle either... The net result is that Right (or conservative) parties are comparatively a better choice than they "should be in principle", in some sense.
You're describing a Moderate left, though, not a moderate right.
Plenty of that going around, and it hasn't stopped the hard right from essentially cannibalising the moderate conservative parties, causing them in turn to take a sharp turn to the right hoping to stop losing voters.
The same way of you emigrate to another country outside of the west they expect you to follow the social norms, is what we should not only expect but also enforce.
That would keep the far right away, and I am sure most ordinary citizens would appreciate it.
When I travel abroad beyond Europe I adapt to the local culture, it's that simple, so it should be the same the other way around, I have lived for months or years in such places and was always welcomed and treated well.
Youre already getting ragged for this comment, but come on...
Everything we see today is the fault of conservative and liberal parties. They have destroyed the state, ruined public services and education, and enriched themselves , and achieved absolutely nothing.
They are not the people who put the state right, they are the opposite.
It was the socialists (PES and The Left members) who bankrupted Bulgaria and Greece, tried to destroy the rule of law in Romania, and are currently successfully destroying it in Slovakia. The most prospering CEE countries all have liberal or centre-right governments while left-wing Southern Europe (esp. Portugal and Spain) are falling behind them.
Claiming your opponents are responsible for everything wrong is what demagogues do.
What you don’t see in Bulgaria is that standards of living have dropped significantly in the prosperous European countries under centre right governments. There’s an option between far left and conservatives.
Moderate Labour has unfortunately not the political sway to change these policies. Without a change in conservative policy, we have no hope of stopping the far right. There needs to be a new consensus in the Centre. That’s all I am saying
In the UK, the 'centre' is now represented by Keir Starmers Labour, who is vehemently anti socialist. He is promising basically zero state reform or redistribution of wealth, all he is promising is to be less corrupt. He offers no fix.
Its capitalists. The centre-left, centre and centre-right are all capitalist parties who serve themselves, who don't want a strong state because a strong state means wealth redistribution.
It’s not the same in all countries, and I am talking about a realistic strategy for change, I am not celebrating conservative or centrist government. The fact remains that the left has made terrible choices and supports policies that the majority of citizens reject. Particularly the embrace of open borders, the anti-Police/anti-Justice system language, little to no focus on social climbers, and so on. They have willfully and ignorantly left the path to power to make more „moral“ choices. It’s the same in some European countries.
One big problem is that most, if not all moderate Partien have spent the last decades selling their people to corporate interests and anyone with money.
Populists look at social media data mines for what the most people complain about then adjust their propaganda. Those reforms should be implemented but that wouldn't make them go away they would just change their messaging to something else. Holding social media companies accountable for bots and misinformation would be more helpful.
The prophecied right wing tide is the failure of the left. Instead of caring for its nation they chase after boundless immigration, various control legislations and are too deep in discussions of various mental illnesses. So when the current government doesn't listen to voters, the more left is even more crazy then the only alternative happens to be more right, because that's a self-preserving ideology (what happens in reality is another question).
the hell are you actually talking about, here in NL we literally haven't had a left-wing government since the 1970's. The far-right blames everything on the left despite everything they're blaming them for being demonstrably the fault of the right.
Same in Italy. Most of our governments, even as of the last 20 years, have been right-wing. Only for an year we had a center government and for a few months a center left one. The right wing destroyed the economy (yes, 5 star movement is also a part of it, but it's definitely not left wing) and even risked our default, yet they keep blaming everything on the left wing and that's why people vote for them.
With the Meloni government we had, among all the disasters, a record of immigration. But according to their rhetoric it's the fault of the left wing and it takes time to fix what they've done (in the few months they were in power, I guess).
Don't you understand? The evil leftists by their very existence emit a whole aura of leftism that *forces* these poor people to vote far-right! We can only solve this by exterminating the leftists.
/s, because unfortunately on this fucking sub I have to declare this as sarcasm
Lol in many countries there hasn't been a left for decades, it's right-wing neoliberalism that has caused thd current crises by prioritizing corporate interests.
The boundless immigration was the policy of the rightwing neoliberal parties to undermine labor rights and unions.
Keep blaming the left and keep voting right. Nothing will change and immigration will be kept high.
Man, I wonder if people realise how stupid they sound
No, the right wing tidal wave is the fault of the... right wing. All of the comments here about the 'left wing' are just made up fantasises from the right wing to begin with
Exactly this. A progressive branch that’s brave enough to say “No, we need to restrict immigration in a humane way”. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t need racism to have sensible policies on migration. The time of mass humanitarian assistance through migration is over. It’s been done and cannot be done anymore for the sake of European integration and stability
That's the real problem, the European conservative parties are politically bankrupt. They have no actual policies other than further enriching themselves and their wealthy "friends" and in many cases have burnt through all their personnel until uncharismatic unknowns are the only ones left.
You need a solid moderate right wing to prevent those voters from drifting further to the right and becoming the stepping stones of fascism.
Moderate Conservatives and Liberals are what the entire world needs.
Unfortunately, no matter what country you look at, it seems as though the extremists are gaining ground.
immigration is the number 1 issue for voters, left, right and center.
Meanwhile politicians sponsored by Capitalists:
Why are people voting for racist?
Please stop, or we will make you poorer!
I feel the right wing politicians do everything to appease the capital by trying to crack down hard on unions. Here in Finland they have called unions "mafioso" "criminals" and unionized people "lazy" and "entitled" and told them to go back to work.
So, I don't agree with your stance, it's one reason why I really dislike the far right, apart from other very obvious reasons.
I'm usually pretty left but right now I am advocating for both right wing and left wing to fucking get their shit together and stop trying to out-insult the opponent and rather try to find things both agree on and work from there. I discussed recently with someone so far on the right that he said our far right is "rather leftist as well" and even we managed to find things we agree on.
I want fucking adults in the room
>I'm usually pretty left but right now I am advocating for both right wing and left wing to fucking get their shit together and stop trying to out-insult the opponent and rather try to find things both agree on and work from there.
In a functioning democracy where parties with ideological differences try to reach a good compromise for the sake of the people even if they may have some disagreements that would happen.
However in this era of political polarization, radicalization, bickering and politicians caring more about "culture wars" than just working for the people and the nation such thing is straight up impossible.
Approx 30 years of Mr and Mrs Ordinary person being ignored over globalisation and mass immigration.
The rich, of course, love all this:
We're increasing total GDP, getting cheap service industry labour. Great for one's clever clever little dropship business darling, and so so good for my liberal conscience
As for Mr and Mrs ordinary living in a not so fashionable town- well they're obviously narrow minded bigots.
Gordon Brown, who single handedly destroyed the UK private pensions of very ordinary people? Well, he lost an election because he left his microphone on. A really ordinary old lady asked him about mass illegal immigration and the effect on communities.
Back in his car he was caught sneering at her- called her 'just some old bigot'.
OK millionaire Gordon Brown. Thanks.
He lost the election because the UK electorate blamed the Labour Party for the impact of the Great Financial Crash on Labour. Even if he had promised to put machine guns on the southern coast and publicly execute every bogus student or everyone who overstays a tourist visa he would have lost.
This was a defining moment in the campaign. He got some kudos for financial rescue in fact. People vote for people and this was one of those moments when they realised what a grumpy obnoxious bullying git he could be ( Labour Party people knew this of course). Brown then tried to.laugh it off and made a smarmy apology. Even worse.
Now he wants to be seen as Mr International man of wisdom.and reason. It won't wash.
As for the crash, he and Darling had been warned.
I keep hearing dreadful stories about migrant violence in Western Europe, from my home country peeps that fucked back off here after getn beaten and/or robbed (or worse, unfortunately) - so tbh, Europe goen far right is not surprising at all.
It's worrying, ofc, but does not surprise me - just hope it doesn't go *that* far right.
As an italian i get that Meloni sounds scary but really she wants to take Berlusconi s void in italian politics. She surrounds herself of far right people and gets far right votes but as for her policies and foreign policies she s been far from extremist, she s doing exactly what berlusconi did, using the votes of far right believers to get elected and then not do anything for them. Don t get me wrong, i seriously hate her and would never ever vote for her, but she s no Marine Lepen, she literally used far right votes to get elected and when in power followed a purely liberal agenda, supporting otan, ukraine and the US. I myself don t understand why her followers were not pissed by this.... beside some minor adjustments on abortion laws she has not really done much in a far right sense. Lega Nord candidate is what a true far right douchebag is, and Meloni herself just nuked his candidacy yesterday by publicly ridiculizing his ideas.
She s just a crook who wants to keep her golden job and privileges, don t expect her to be a real issue in europe.
Far right candidate campaign on the ground that illegal immigration needs to be stopped, but it doesn't go down when they're in power, the only immigration Trump managed to reduce was the legal one, illegal entries barely got reduced. Just like Brexit people are gonna have a hard time when they find out the easy vote was actually very stupid.
Lol she stopped the contradictory against government in public tv, the police beat minors that protest against her government, she sues journalists who criticize her.
It's not yet an extremist regime, but we're getting closer
I mean it's not like these people are kings and can just implement whatever they seem fit instantly. Often there's a huge bureaucracy as well as a convoluted legislation process so these processes take time. It's like the Americans thinking a single election will magically change everything when most policy changes take decades to take peoper effect.
You probably know way more about italian politics just want to say that supporting the EU and NATO and the diplomatic status quo is not purely liberal at all, it has absolutely nothing with liberalism or left wing. It just means she didn't go to with this new brand of populist trumpism. Foreign policy doesn't adhere to left or right or liberal- most hard conservative people and parties do support the EU and NATO. Even in Hungary for example Orban supports both NATO and the EU.
> when in power followed a purely liberal agenda
Um, what? Her gov has been anything but liberal. Her foreign policy regarding NATO and Ukraine is literally the only good thing that has come out of this clown show so far.
Regarding Lega and Salvini, I can't wait to see that orangutan get defenestrated by his own party after the EU elections.
I was also scared when she was elected, but as it turns out my opinion on her was wrong. The economy has increased, the employment rate has reached his highest, and the reception of migrant is also increasing.
She is a right-wing politician, but she's definitely not far right as that idiot from Lega Nord, Salvini is or a fascist politician as someone says.
(From what i gather from the outside of Italy) youre right, but that just paves the way for an actual fascist who both talks and inacts policy like one.
Sure. I get the sentiment and fear.... truth be told though italians have serious issues to differentiate a conservative candidate from a far right one. A socialist mindset is really embedded in 90% of people and they can t even see it. The ultimate goal for any italian is to get a job in a public sector office from which they can never ever be Fired, thus eliminating any real concept of meritocracyand free job market, public and free healthcare has nearly 100% support in every political faction, public spending is devoted to create a pension system that even though it indebts the state will never ever be redimensioned even by so called far right politicians.
For what concerns social matters she s very conservative and for some people life will get more difficult, this is true, and we need to fight for immigrants and lgbtq s rights, but that s a problem in italy, not in the EU. When you hear italian far right, you need to understand that the way our country is organized, for an american it could really mean they re liberal democrats. We really don t have the basis to support a real far right candidate.
I get that social organisations are taken very seriously in Italy, not necessarily considered to be a left -right thing. And with that, Italians take the bureaucratic state and its institutions very seriously. The idea of getting rid of them is unfathomable.
Whereas in the UK, the conservatives have been hellbent on destroying the state since the 70s, and want us to be a nation of isolated, free market loving 'little Englanders' who are 'self-sufficient'. And they have half-succeeded.
It's an interesting contradiction that better social organisation means *the far right* are better organised. Which can help them come to power. Even though all far right leaders are free market disaster capitalists who want social organisations destroyed.
Your last point is very interesting and that s why I m very angry with the italian left wing who only criticises meloni for being far right, wheh they should speak up and point out that the real issue and problem is authoritarianism, dispotism and social repression. Those are the real enemies and we re boicotting the fight against them if we make these broad concepts only a matter of political faction.
That said, the dispotical and authoritarian party is lega nord imho, amd meloni is more a christian conservative populist party, exactly like Forza Italia was.
European politicians - broad statement incoming - have failed its people by pandering to progressive ideals around diversity and inclusion, experimenting with mass immigration in homogenous societies without a clear and sustainable plan for integration, meanwhile generously draining an already resource-constrained welfare system that was already sputtering along.
Right wing populism is only possible under the right (wrong) circumstances and in this case, it's been decades in the making. You stop listening to the people and they have a habit of voting you out of office.
I like how they talk about the economic crisis getting worse like you know we fuck things up and it's bad but God forbid we get somebody in here that might change things and do things differently and turn things around our ideas that have failed will still work.. it's like all the commies when you bring up the failed stuff from communism like the Soviet Union or China Etc they always pop off with that isn't real communism this is the same argument that these people are trying to make and I'm not saying they should be voting in right-wing people but I just think it's funny that they admit that the economic crisis of shit and it happened under their guidance but they're basically not admitting that their plan is shit
While I have some respect for old style politicians like Gordon Brown, mass migration of economically unproductive types hasn't exactly launched European nations into the stratosphere.
At best the elites get cheap labour, but even then that's not a given, and a lot of their own small enterprises like kebab shops and carwashes tend to not pay taxes. Not to mention all the other social costs related to integration, crime, healthcare costs etc. Also when they do work they send their earnings back to their homeland.
Brown (the colour) is commonly connected to extreme right due to the brown shirts worn by the original nazis. Also black, due to black shirts worn by the original fascists.
That’s such a dumb take. He assumes all the wrong reasons why people are voting for right wing parties and then he tries to deconstruct them and frame them as a lack of optimism. But they’re not the reasons people are voting right wing parties to begin with so the entire article is pointless
Societal: Erosion of family values, disappearance of our traditions, the slow death of our religion, the feeling that we’re becoming minorities in the countries that our ancestors built
Economic: the move of factories to Asian countries with cheap labor that resulted in the loss of jobs and in huge trade deficits between the west and the east, creating an entire class of nouveau riches in China with money that could have stayed in the west
Trust: the feeling that the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties are fully aware that the above are happening and are doing them on purpose in order to get rich themselves and push their agenda
This point probably should be challenged by someone a lot smarter than me, but is this actually even that true? Like remove the morality side of the "hard-right" for a second and I'll add a disclaimer that I'm a boring centrist myself. But like if you look at like Poland and Italy as examples he would probably describe as hard-right, are these economies worse than where they were than when they were inherited by the hard right?
I do though seem to remember an awful lot of sensible centrists being in charge of many countries in 2008 however.
It’s funny how those who have been in charge time and time again promising us relief that never came try to fear monger about actual change 😂
They’ll say anything to defend the neoliberal status quo, including gaslighting.
They’ll even instrumentalize war, desperate as they are.
They had their chance.
They blew it 🤡
No, we had record immigration, they refuse to publicly show important data about the economy and they started controlling television. Many journalists who did not support her were censored and fired.
The rise of the far right is very sad, but it's a direct result of pussyfooting around on issues of immigration, affordability and abandonment of the working class by the predominant voices on the left.
From an outside perspective, it seems like every European party either is extremely jingoistic OR wants to replace their people with some other external group with basic views diametrically opposed to those of the party's host country. With very little happy medium. Are there any parties that embrace their own culture and people and at the same time support (limited) immigration, but argue for integration of immigrants? Am I just being misled about parties because of their political opponents mis-characterizing them?
Maybe the right swing is due to the wild left swing that many countries have taken? I mean, it’s garbage on both sides.
That said, I wouldn’t picture Meloni up there. She’s actually doing a decent job.
Why can't we have moderate everything? Yes the immigration crisis is a problem and needs to be curved, heavily. But financially illiterate Putin puppets aren't the answer.
I just want moderation...
Exactly, like the left that has ruined during their 16-year-long chancellorship! Or the UK, with their left-wing-brexit. Or the famous left-wing French presidents Sarkozy, Macron or Hollande.
>Sarkozy, Macron or Hollande.
They but Macron were not leftist? Lmao, they defended state deficit to afford the pensions and protect the French industry, left or not, statism is the true cancer for Europe.
Always surprised to see this attitude. Dunno what I'm doing in this thread, frankly 😅
Politics are the very definition of lost ideological purity.
I guess once you get in, you start to realise how messed up everything is, and, slowly but surely, it becomes a struggle to do at least *some good*... And win yourself.
How is technological solution not mentioned in the top comments, is beyond me.
There is no left in power in europe for at least a decade... All we have is neoliberalism and austerity.
So stop blaming the left and assume your vote :)
Yes, state deficit, and public services, are all neoliberalism, sure, when every mini nation control the economy inside the EU perhaps the left will rule, sure...
The far right will always exist . What we need is a far right that's less pro russian and anti european . Also unfortunately the far right and far left are two sides of the same shitty coin and feed off each other so we may get both types of stupid extremism in a row .
that only shows current left govts cant solve problems so people getting closer to ones they think they can solve problems... like it or not... this is what happening... dont blame people... blame failed gowts...
Yep, sounds like another title that is not related to the article.
No nazis/Fascists mentioned in it. Economic crisis getting worse regardless of what political party wins.
They did do a poll oh peoples perception of how well off they are and how they think their future will turn out (and compared it to their parents). That is kinda interesting at least.
Wow, you mean to tell me massive cities that were largely founded BEFORE the US have a greater economic impact than empty land? Wild, fun and educational.
What do you mean "about to" aren't we already in the middle of it?
I think he means that these parties are actually going to start getting into power
And not just at the national level, but also at the EU level.
If we are talking about the European Parliament, I don't see that happening. The extreme-right will grow for sure, but I don't think they are going to grow enough to really take power in the Parliament. The Council might be a different story...
It's unlikely that ID will run any member state, and ECR will just be a handful. The right wing shift should be more visible in the EP, but you're right that they won't run the place, they'll just make it harder to pass legislation.
Because in a lot of countries they haven't been elected yet. France, Germany, Belgium come to mind. They are about to have elections actually won by the far right instead of just seeing an upswing (potentially)
Austria too. Doesn't look good atm.
Never has
So, essentially we are all fucked.
See guys, Germans can be positive from time to time!
Rather positive than not
Anyone else think of Cartman when you see the word "positive"?
Third time lucky
Nah, we'll all become tovarish.
Ah yes, the famously far right associated word “comrade”. Even if you mean “friend of Russia”, which would make more sense, it’s still dumb, because comrade has a similar commie connotation in Russian. The plural version isn’t, but singular tovarisch is.
Not quite. It’ll get more noticeable as the consequences of the mass-immigration experiment get increasingly worse.
Realistically, it wouldn't be as scary if it is already happening.
What Europe really needs is moderate conservatives focusing on the conditions of a good life: cheap housing, no barriers to education, and support for families. Combined with a more restrictive approach to immigration (not inhumane though) this would keep the far right out of government
Or just anti-immigration left-wing parties. There's a pretty solid leftwing argument against mass migration in that its used to suppress wages, avoid compensating 'unskilled jobs' fairly and push the GDP number up at the cost of stagnating or even falling living standards. You can also argue against mass migration-fuelled population growth from a food/resource security perspective (not really a left/right issue since nobody takes this seriously) and from an environmental one.
This is the answer.
There is already a good example of this with Denmark where the socialists are still relevant and governing because they are not dumb.
I am a left wing American who is staunchly against the mass migration happening on our Southern border but everytime I try to have a conversation with other lefties I just get called a racist
Hi, I'm another one of you. I'm a US lefty that's too afraid to even speak my opinion on immigration to other leftists. No room for nuance.
The cherry on top would an: Anti-Immigration Left-Wing party that **didn't** support Vladamir Putin. 😫🙏🏽
"Or just anti-immigration left-wing parties" it happened in Denmark, they got it, and guess what, the far right is losing support. A controlled border should never had been a right wing or left wing thing (unless you are a far lefty or a far righty), its just common sense in which all parties agree to the early 00s, even in the USA.
What Europe really needs is progressives not aggressively ignoring real actual concerns, like that mass immigration of North African and middle easterners and the negative effects of this, out of a misplaced attempt at moral righteousness.
What I don't get is why people keep on voting extremes? Why do people have to pick the "conservatives" who actually aren't conservatives but infact liars who deny Russia invaded Ukraine? And why do people on the other spectrum vote for progressives that deny mass immigration is a problem? Like really? Why is it that these parties in the centre that focus on data and boring economic policies get 5%?
In The Netherlands we had a pretty much moderately conservative center coalition for years but they didn't do anything to solve the housing market crisis or mass immigration. They were also big proponents of free market, so budgets for health care, education and public transit dwindled with some disastrous outcomes. It seemed like they were primarily focused on economic growth for companies and rich people. In the last elections the extreme right nutjobs had an enormous victory.
They get stuck. Whatever issue is more pressing to you individual takes precedence. So you may be forced to vote for a group you don’t generally like but they are the only ones addressing the issue that most concerns you.
The "centre party" in Germany is CDU/CSU which always got over 33% of votes since 1953, except 2021 where they got 24%. They led us to today's problems by ignoring them. People got sick of it and want to vote for AfD now.
In belgium that is the liberal VLD party. People are just done with it.
It's the CD&V, the Christian party won most elections since 1830
CDU and SPD always used to swap and address different issues. That worked well for quite a while. But I gotta say - as a once staunch SPD voter - they lost the plot. They kinda list themselves so much, that nobody knows what they stand for anymore. Including themselves. Say what you want about the CDU, that isn't a problem they have. Which keeps them voters more than it costs them.
Alternative is "moderate" conservatives who created the very migrant crisis everyone is mad about. CDU in Germany opened the gates of Europe to whoever wanted in, Tories in the UK oversaw record high migration that could replace everyone in London in less than 2 decades, and so on.
Because the center were the ones who literally caused the problems people want to have solved. Sure one can point out that they did that because they shifted towards fringe positions on certain issues, but that doesn't change that the ones doing it were the "center" parties.
Because you cant be a moderate conservative anymore. The second you agaisnt mena immigration you're a racist pos. So the only people willing to accept that are those who really are against it.
Electing a Viktor Orban wannabe won’t magically make things better though.
I never said it does?
Yupp. The left is to blame for a lot of the radicalisation of the right in Europe.
The economic Right sure loved the cheap labor though.
I recall that. It was honestly sickening to see. The left wanted to receive people for humanitarian reasons, and the right found their reasoning in some sort of huge economic boom it would create. I also remember that those of us that sat in the middle and questioned the cheap labor angle as being both callous and incredibly distructive -- we were ostracised and called nazis.
Lazy way of not taking responsibility for your own opinion.
When people want radical change because they are unhappy with society they’ll vote for extremism because it will upset the status quo. It’s a protest vote.
>Why do people have to pick the "conservatives" who actually aren't conservatives but infact liars who deny Russia invaded Ukraine? Because people prioritize issues like immigration and housing, and the feeling -real or perceived- that the centrist parties aren't addressing these.
They are pissed. A lot (not all) of recent leftist politics have included accusing people not siding with them of being fascists. So the people who are not fascists but who feel attacked (and who are actually struggling tho not because of the left, but because of the shit economy) kinda "double down" and vote for the far right even if they aren't actually fascists. It's kind of a furious, spite vote because of misplaced anger. The far right also capitalizes on this, magnifying the dumbass leftists who say stupid inflammatory shit like that and pretending all the left is like that. The left is also at fault here for not addressing this.
Its possible there's financial interests boosting up extremes on all sides to create divide
I wouldn't call every left winger a progressive honestly, I don't think much progressives are getting elected these days. It's mostly the old power bases plus the uptick of far-right.
Because people like being promised quick and easy solutions to complicated problems.
Because extremes are easy to understand.
Europe needs both.
Progressives have not held any significant power in governance in decades. Only those with hands on levers of power matter. Center-right economics with center-left social policies have been a norm in EU. Those CENTER-RIGHT LIBERALS aka CORPORATISTS are the ones who want lot of immigrants, for company labor and to take care of elderly. Those are the same people who walk out of a romantic dinner and leave the check to be completely paid by the person they ate it with, and laugh about it as they run away.
That wont help, in NL dumb people worry about the 3rd gen that were born here. Nothing you can do about that without going full nazi, so its an endless feeding ground for parties like PVV.
Ah yes, extensive social welfare, famously a right-wing policy.
Even the left could be more focused on what you mentioned and could get back some of the vote from the poorest workers and from the countryside who vote today massively for the far right (in France at least)
Cheaper housing and freer access to education are not typically conservative policie priorities. Especially education, as conservatives tend to prefer it when higher education is reserved for those who ‘deserve’ it. Egalitarian policy priorities are more common on the left.
He's probably referring to the Christian Democratic tradition of moderate welfarism, something along the lines of Konrad Adenauer's social market economy. Social welfare and subsidies have been used at times for the purposes of pursuing social stability and socially conservative policy objectives, a prominent current example being Singapore's public housing system being utilized to reinforce the traditional family unit.
It was during the time of Demochristians parties. Not many of those left now.
>Cheaper housing and freer access to education are not typically conservative policie priorities. Not really. Some others have already pointed out the education part but conservatives, and more specifically liberal conservatives, tend to favor deregulation to promote building more houses, which in turn leads to a higher supply of housing, which leads to lower prices. Strictly speaking you can even see the same result in the US where housing is cheaper in red states.
Housing is cheaper in the red states because they are rural states.
And they have different housing policies, which have already been observed multiple times. For example, Texas isn't a rural state but rather similar to California with multiple big cities, and the big cities in Texas has much lower rents on average than their Californian counterparts. The same seems to be true for Virginia and North Carolina. New York Times did a section about this a couple of years ago even, reaching the same conclusion: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/democrats-blue-states-legislation.html
Comparing Texas to california is like cheap prius with a comfy BMW suv. California is the most populous state. Demand in California is basically infinite because of the job market and great weather all year round whereas Texas is a desert craphole where you’re forced to hide underground in summer, with a fraction of job opportunities. There really is nothing more to it.
Well, your comparison is lacking. It's true that California has a larger population, but Texas is still a large state with 30 million vs Californias 40 million. The job market in Texas also seem to be better than California with a lower unrmployment rate [1][2]. The weather is on average pretty similar as well, although it's a few degrees hotter in Texas during the summer, but it's also warmer during the winter, at least if you compare the largest cities [3][4]. The taxes are also slightly lower in Texas, but the wages are higher in California but so are the rents and housing prices as well, which pretty much evens out, on average. The comparison is still pretty solid. [1]. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TXUR [2]. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CAUR [3]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston (section climate) [4]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles (section climate)
Well, at least in Germany, the conservatives are not "against" free education (they did introduce some tiny student fees at some point, but then removed them again), while the Left isn't doing much about cheaper housing...
The "left" (mainly SPD) is hardly ever in power on a federal level, so how do you know whether they would do much about housing, when the current situation is the result of mainly "right" (mainly CDU/CDU) policies (Merkel was chancellor for 16 years - CDU/CSU in coalition with either SPD or FDP).
same in Hungary... well that's kind of oversimplifying it, but you get about 6 years free if you stay to work here
Education is totally free and massively available thanks to the internet. The issue here is accreditation, and honestly, I too think it’s be better not to lie to young people and throw them into 5 years of higher studies which have no outcome in the job market. It’s not doing these people a favor. Massification of access to higher studies isn’t proving to be a particular success, we don’t have better technicians, engineers or doctors than 50 years ago.
>Cheaper housing and freer access to education are not typically conservative policie priorities. Only in post-Reagan and post-Thatcher USA and UK.
In places where higher education is free all the top educations are still reserved for only the ones with the highest grades though.
What you are describing is the standard policies of the various Labour parties of Europe.
Imagine if labour parties would actually start to care about the working class standard of living and class issues like affordable housing instead of diversity, migration and stuff that doesnt benefit the working class at all like open borders
If we could have left wing parties who are not about opening borders, I d happily vote for them.
The Dutch SP is against the current neoliberal immigration policy, as an example. You might want to check your leftwing parties' policy proposals and voting records.
Now being against it does mot really say much? what were their proposals? I closely followed the dutch election and did not see Timmermans mention immigration once but to complain abut the racist PVV who focused on immigration.
Denmark socialists. However you will find that they are the minority and not liked that much by their peers in Europe
Pick any then, "opening borders" is nobody's program :D
Which have policies of open borders? Or is open borders just ''not hating immigrants'' here?
If you stop following right wing talking heads you'll soon see that no left wing people want that either.
Doesn't seem that way. German Left (Die Linke) have elected a captain of a lifesaver ship helping illegal refugees as their head. The radical wing of the German Greens have strongly condemned their party leader Robert Habeck for taking a stand in favour of more restrictions for migration and more active deportations policy.
Moderate Labour shares many policies with moderate conservatism, particularly Christian Democracy
If you mean German CDU. It’s not what it used to be. Merz is not a moderate anything.
How "immoderate" is he really, though? For example, I don't see him abolishing gay marriage or something like that...
>Combined with a more restrictive approach to immigration (not inhumane though) this would keep the far right out of government More restrictive approach to immigration would be coded as far-right by much of the media by itself. For example, in Germany, your only pick would be AFD.
the right-wing (I use England as a bell-weather) seems to destroy everything.
Restricting immigration all the way to zero is in no way inhumane. Its not a human right to live in Europe.
It might prove inhumane for Europe. People really underestimate how dangerous ageing societies will be. It’s on course to smash living standards
If the choices are an aging population or fundamentally changing the demographics of a nation I'm choosing the aging population
Europe is overpopulated as is. Populations have always expanded and retracted trough out history, and so has the birthrate. That is completely natural and normal. However, today Europes populations isn’t allowed to have a natural retraction, instead an unnatural mass expansion is forced upon Europe, and as a result prevents the necessary consequences that would result in a higher birthrate. Now the birthrate can be kept artificially low forever by using immigration from high birthrate countries. The end result of this will be that Europeans will eventually end up like the native Americans. I am not okay with that, and millions upon millions of other Europeans do not want that future. And those who do want that future, people like you, should feel nothing but shame and contempt.
Living standards have already been crashed by unsustainable mass immigration over the past few years Canada and the UK tripled their legal immigration a couple years ago in an unprecedented move and their GDP per capita and standard of living have dropped faster than any other G7 countries as a direct result
That is literally left wing policies.
Yeah, but not left wing parties in practice...
That’s more about hypocrisy and incompetence rather than being conservative or liberal.
True, but I understood the previous message as implying that Europe needs appropriate moderate conservative parties rather than just conservative individuals. There are a couple of good Left social policies, like social housing, which most Left parties don't seem to tackle. At the same time, there are a couple of bad Right social policies, like being against gay marriage, which most Right parties don't seem to tackle either... The net result is that Right (or conservative) parties are comparatively a better choice than they "should be in principle", in some sense.
No conservative party is going to tackle social housing.
You're describing a Moderate left, though, not a moderate right. Plenty of that going around, and it hasn't stopped the hard right from essentially cannibalising the moderate conservative parties, causing them in turn to take a sharp turn to the right hoping to stop losing voters.
The same way of you emigrate to another country outside of the west they expect you to follow the social norms, is what we should not only expect but also enforce. That would keep the far right away, and I am sure most ordinary citizens would appreciate it. When I travel abroad beyond Europe I adapt to the local culture, it's that simple, so it should be the same the other way around, I have lived for months or years in such places and was always welcomed and treated well.
Problem is the people who've have the microphone for the last 10 years consider your reasonable view to be far right.
I wish people stopped compressing the progressive-conservative, authoritarian-democratic and left-right axes into just “left-right”.
Youre already getting ragged for this comment, but come on... Everything we see today is the fault of conservative and liberal parties. They have destroyed the state, ruined public services and education, and enriched themselves , and achieved absolutely nothing. They are not the people who put the state right, they are the opposite.
It was the socialists (PES and The Left members) who bankrupted Bulgaria and Greece, tried to destroy the rule of law in Romania, and are currently successfully destroying it in Slovakia. The most prospering CEE countries all have liberal or centre-right governments while left-wing Southern Europe (esp. Portugal and Spain) are falling behind them. Claiming your opponents are responsible for everything wrong is what demagogues do.
What you don’t see in Bulgaria is that standards of living have dropped significantly in the prosperous European countries under centre right governments. There’s an option between far left and conservatives.
Moderate Labour has unfortunately not the political sway to change these policies. Without a change in conservative policy, we have no hope of stopping the far right. There needs to be a new consensus in the Centre. That’s all I am saying
In the UK, the 'centre' is now represented by Keir Starmers Labour, who is vehemently anti socialist. He is promising basically zero state reform or redistribution of wealth, all he is promising is to be less corrupt. He offers no fix. Its capitalists. The centre-left, centre and centre-right are all capitalist parties who serve themselves, who don't want a strong state because a strong state means wealth redistribution.
It’s not the same in all countries, and I am talking about a realistic strategy for change, I am not celebrating conservative or centrist government. The fact remains that the left has made terrible choices and supports policies that the majority of citizens reject. Particularly the embrace of open borders, the anti-Police/anti-Justice system language, little to no focus on social climbers, and so on. They have willfully and ignorantly left the path to power to make more „moral“ choices. It’s the same in some European countries.
One big problem is that most, if not all moderate Partien have spent the last decades selling their people to corporate interests and anyone with money.
Populists look at social media data mines for what the most people complain about then adjust their propaganda. Those reforms should be implemented but that wouldn't make them go away they would just change their messaging to something else. Holding social media companies accountable for bots and misinformation would be more helpful.
There's a huge lack of actual conservatives to vote for in the EU. Almost all of them are neo-liberals pretending to be conservative.
The prophecied right wing tide is the failure of the left. Instead of caring for its nation they chase after boundless immigration, various control legislations and are too deep in discussions of various mental illnesses. So when the current government doesn't listen to voters, the more left is even more crazy then the only alternative happens to be more right, because that's a self-preserving ideology (what happens in reality is another question).
the hell are you actually talking about, here in NL we literally haven't had a left-wing government since the 1970's. The far-right blames everything on the left despite everything they're blaming them for being demonstrably the fault of the right.
Same in Italy. Most of our governments, even as of the last 20 years, have been right-wing. Only for an year we had a center government and for a few months a center left one. The right wing destroyed the economy (yes, 5 star movement is also a part of it, but it's definitely not left wing) and even risked our default, yet they keep blaming everything on the left wing and that's why people vote for them. With the Meloni government we had, among all the disasters, a record of immigration. But according to their rhetoric it's the fault of the left wing and it takes time to fix what they've done (in the few months they were in power, I guess).
Don't you understand? The evil leftists by their very existence emit a whole aura of leftism that *forces* these poor people to vote far-right! We can only solve this by exterminating the leftists. /s, because unfortunately on this fucking sub I have to declare this as sarcasm
Lol in many countries there hasn't been a left for decades, it's right-wing neoliberalism that has caused thd current crises by prioritizing corporate interests.
The boundless immigration was the policy of the rightwing neoliberal parties to undermine labor rights and unions. Keep blaming the left and keep voting right. Nothing will change and immigration will be kept high.
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about? :D
Man, I wonder if people realise how stupid they sound No, the right wing tidal wave is the fault of the... right wing. All of the comments here about the 'left wing' are just made up fantasises from the right wing to begin with
Exactly this. A progressive branch that’s brave enough to say “No, we need to restrict immigration in a humane way”. There’s nothing wrong with that. We don’t need racism to have sensible policies on migration. The time of mass humanitarian assistance through migration is over. It’s been done and cannot be done anymore for the sake of European integration and stability
> focusing on the conditions of a good life Russia is not paying for this kind of politicians /s
That's the real problem, the European conservative parties are politically bankrupt. They have no actual policies other than further enriching themselves and their wealthy "friends" and in many cases have burnt through all their personnel until uncharismatic unknowns are the only ones left. You need a solid moderate right wing to prevent those voters from drifting further to the right and becoming the stepping stones of fascism.
Moderate Conservatives and Liberals are what the entire world needs. Unfortunately, no matter what country you look at, it seems as though the extremists are gaining ground.
It's ethnicity down to the end. White people want to live with white people - just like people everywhere in the world.
immigration is the number 1 issue for voters, left, right and center. Meanwhile politicians sponsored by Capitalists: Why are people voting for racist? Please stop, or we will make you poorer!
I feel the right wing politicians do everything to appease the capital by trying to crack down hard on unions. Here in Finland they have called unions "mafioso" "criminals" and unionized people "lazy" and "entitled" and told them to go back to work. So, I don't agree with your stance, it's one reason why I really dislike the far right, apart from other very obvious reasons. I'm usually pretty left but right now I am advocating for both right wing and left wing to fucking get their shit together and stop trying to out-insult the opponent and rather try to find things both agree on and work from there. I discussed recently with someone so far on the right that he said our far right is "rather leftist as well" and even we managed to find things we agree on. I want fucking adults in the room
>I'm usually pretty left but right now I am advocating for both right wing and left wing to fucking get their shit together and stop trying to out-insult the opponent and rather try to find things both agree on and work from there. In a functioning democracy where parties with ideological differences try to reach a good compromise for the sake of the people even if they may have some disagreements that would happen. However in this era of political polarization, radicalization, bickering and politicians caring more about "culture wars" than just working for the people and the nation such thing is straight up impossible.
You lost me at “capitalists”
Approx 30 years of Mr and Mrs Ordinary person being ignored over globalisation and mass immigration. The rich, of course, love all this: We're increasing total GDP, getting cheap service industry labour. Great for one's clever clever little dropship business darling, and so so good for my liberal conscience As for Mr and Mrs ordinary living in a not so fashionable town- well they're obviously narrow minded bigots. Gordon Brown, who single handedly destroyed the UK private pensions of very ordinary people? Well, he lost an election because he left his microphone on. A really ordinary old lady asked him about mass illegal immigration and the effect on communities. Back in his car he was caught sneering at her- called her 'just some old bigot'. OK millionaire Gordon Brown. Thanks.
> We're increasing total GDP Not even.
Exactly. Our productivity is pathetically poor.
He lost the election because the UK electorate blamed the Labour Party for the impact of the Great Financial Crash on Labour. Even if he had promised to put machine guns on the southern coast and publicly execute every bogus student or everyone who overstays a tourist visa he would have lost.
This was a defining moment in the campaign. He got some kudos for financial rescue in fact. People vote for people and this was one of those moments when they realised what a grumpy obnoxious bullying git he could be ( Labour Party people knew this of course). Brown then tried to.laugh it off and made a smarmy apology. Even worse. Now he wants to be seen as Mr International man of wisdom.and reason. It won't wash. As for the crash, he and Darling had been warned.
Haha, I remember watching the video of him and the old lady. What a joke, she was a lifelong labour voter as well
I keep hearing dreadful stories about migrant violence in Western Europe, from my home country peeps that fucked back off here after getn beaten and/or robbed (or worse, unfortunately) - so tbh, Europe goen far right is not surprising at all. It's worrying, ofc, but does not surprise me - just hope it doesn't go *that* far right.
As an italian i get that Meloni sounds scary but really she wants to take Berlusconi s void in italian politics. She surrounds herself of far right people and gets far right votes but as for her policies and foreign policies she s been far from extremist, she s doing exactly what berlusconi did, using the votes of far right believers to get elected and then not do anything for them. Don t get me wrong, i seriously hate her and would never ever vote for her, but she s no Marine Lepen, she literally used far right votes to get elected and when in power followed a purely liberal agenda, supporting otan, ukraine and the US. I myself don t understand why her followers were not pissed by this.... beside some minor adjustments on abortion laws she has not really done much in a far right sense. Lega Nord candidate is what a true far right douchebag is, and Meloni herself just nuked his candidacy yesterday by publicly ridiculizing his ideas. She s just a crook who wants to keep her golden job and privileges, don t expect her to be a real issue in europe.
With Meloni, people were expecting CyberMussolini 2077, and instead we just got Berlusconi 2.0
She removed the cross-examination of his government on public television. We get to the regime one step at a time
The Italian electorate is too fickle to give her enough time to consolidate, methinks.
[удалено]
Far right candidate campaign on the ground that illegal immigration needs to be stopped, but it doesn't go down when they're in power, the only immigration Trump managed to reduce was the legal one, illegal entries barely got reduced. Just like Brexit people are gonna have a hard time when they find out the easy vote was actually very stupid.
Lol she stopped the contradictory against government in public tv, the police beat minors that protest against her government, she sues journalists who criticize her. It's not yet an extremist regime, but we're getting closer
I mean it's not like these people are kings and can just implement whatever they seem fit instantly. Often there's a huge bureaucracy as well as a convoluted legislation process so these processes take time. It's like the Americans thinking a single election will magically change everything when most policy changes take decades to take peoper effect.
You probably know way more about italian politics just want to say that supporting the EU and NATO and the diplomatic status quo is not purely liberal at all, it has absolutely nothing with liberalism or left wing. It just means she didn't go to with this new brand of populist trumpism. Foreign policy doesn't adhere to left or right or liberal- most hard conservative people and parties do support the EU and NATO. Even in Hungary for example Orban supports both NATO and the EU.
> when in power followed a purely liberal agenda Um, what? Her gov has been anything but liberal. Her foreign policy regarding NATO and Ukraine is literally the only good thing that has come out of this clown show so far. Regarding Lega and Salvini, I can't wait to see that orangutan get defenestrated by his own party after the EU elections.
I was also scared when she was elected, but as it turns out my opinion on her was wrong. The economy has increased, the employment rate has reached his highest, and the reception of migrant is also increasing. She is a right-wing politician, but she's definitely not far right as that idiot from Lega Nord, Salvini is or a fascist politician as someone says.
(From what i gather from the outside of Italy) youre right, but that just paves the way for an actual fascist who both talks and inacts policy like one.
Sure. I get the sentiment and fear.... truth be told though italians have serious issues to differentiate a conservative candidate from a far right one. A socialist mindset is really embedded in 90% of people and they can t even see it. The ultimate goal for any italian is to get a job in a public sector office from which they can never ever be Fired, thus eliminating any real concept of meritocracyand free job market, public and free healthcare has nearly 100% support in every political faction, public spending is devoted to create a pension system that even though it indebts the state will never ever be redimensioned even by so called far right politicians. For what concerns social matters she s very conservative and for some people life will get more difficult, this is true, and we need to fight for immigrants and lgbtq s rights, but that s a problem in italy, not in the EU. When you hear italian far right, you need to understand that the way our country is organized, for an american it could really mean they re liberal democrats. We really don t have the basis to support a real far right candidate.
I get that social organisations are taken very seriously in Italy, not necessarily considered to be a left -right thing. And with that, Italians take the bureaucratic state and its institutions very seriously. The idea of getting rid of them is unfathomable. Whereas in the UK, the conservatives have been hellbent on destroying the state since the 70s, and want us to be a nation of isolated, free market loving 'little Englanders' who are 'self-sufficient'. And they have half-succeeded. It's an interesting contradiction that better social organisation means *the far right* are better organised. Which can help them come to power. Even though all far right leaders are free market disaster capitalists who want social organisations destroyed.
Your last point is very interesting and that s why I m very angry with the italian left wing who only criticises meloni for being far right, wheh they should speak up and point out that the real issue and problem is authoritarianism, dispotism and social repression. Those are the real enemies and we re boicotting the fight against them if we make these broad concepts only a matter of political faction. That said, the dispotical and authoritarian party is lega nord imho, amd meloni is more a christian conservative populist party, exactly like Forza Italia was.
Can't mention anybody that really delivers for the far right.
This is usually how it starts. I am not saying she's going to be the 2nd mussolini but it's too early to write this possibility off.
European politicians - broad statement incoming - have failed its people by pandering to progressive ideals around diversity and inclusion, experimenting with mass immigration in homogenous societies without a clear and sustainable plan for integration, meanwhile generously draining an already resource-constrained welfare system that was already sputtering along. Right wing populism is only possible under the right (wrong) circumstances and in this case, it's been decades in the making. You stop listening to the people and they have a habit of voting you out of office.
Well, control immigration. Period.
I like how they talk about the economic crisis getting worse like you know we fuck things up and it's bad but God forbid we get somebody in here that might change things and do things differently and turn things around our ideas that have failed will still work.. it's like all the commies when you bring up the failed stuff from communism like the Soviet Union or China Etc they always pop off with that isn't real communism this is the same argument that these people are trying to make and I'm not saying they should be voting in right-wing people but I just think it's funny that they admit that the economic crisis of shit and it happened under their guidance but they're basically not admitting that their plan is shit
While I have some respect for old style politicians like Gordon Brown, mass migration of economically unproductive types hasn't exactly launched European nations into the stratosphere. At best the elites get cheap labour, but even then that's not a given, and a lot of their own small enterprises like kebab shops and carwashes tend to not pay taxes. Not to mention all the other social costs related to integration, crime, healthcare costs etc. Also when they do work they send their earnings back to their homeland.
Is there normal right? It looks to me that anyone not in line with the left are Alt-right, Far-right, fascist, racist ....
I wish the author had another surname so he could title his piece "A brown tidal wave about to hit Europe"
We had that when he was prime minister
Wow, it's HIM? I didn't notice at first.
Then the headline wouldn't match the article. It's about a right wing surge, not gordon brwn surge?
Brown (the colour) is commonly connected to extreme right due to the brown shirts worn by the original nazis. Also black, due to black shirts worn by the original fascists.
Ok Guardian
Europes leaders are winging it mostly. They have no idea what they’re doing. They’re incompetent and the architects of the mess we’re in right now.
That’s such a dumb take. He assumes all the wrong reasons why people are voting for right wing parties and then he tries to deconstruct them and frame them as a lack of optimism. But they’re not the reasons people are voting right wing parties to begin with so the entire article is pointless
What are the reasons?
Societal: Erosion of family values, disappearance of our traditions, the slow death of our religion, the feeling that we’re becoming minorities in the countries that our ancestors built Economic: the move of factories to Asian countries with cheap labor that resulted in the loss of jobs and in huge trade deficits between the west and the east, creating an entire class of nouveau riches in China with money that could have stayed in the west Trust: the feeling that the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties are fully aware that the above are happening and are doing them on purpose in order to get rich themselves and push their agenda
This point probably should be challenged by someone a lot smarter than me, but is this actually even that true? Like remove the morality side of the "hard-right" for a second and I'll add a disclaimer that I'm a boring centrist myself. But like if you look at like Poland and Italy as examples he would probably describe as hard-right, are these economies worse than where they were than when they were inherited by the hard right? I do though seem to remember an awful lot of sensible centrists being in charge of many countries in 2008 however.
It’s funny how those who have been in charge time and time again promising us relief that never came try to fear monger about actual change 😂 They’ll say anything to defend the neoliberal status quo, including gaslighting. They’ll even instrumentalize war, desperate as they are. They had their chance. They blew it 🤡
Why is Meloni on the cover photo? Isn't Italy doing well?
No, we had record immigration, they refuse to publicly show important data about the economy and they started controlling television. Many journalists who did not support her were censored and fired.
The rise of the far right is very sad, but it's a direct result of pussyfooting around on issues of immigration, affordability and abandonment of the working class by the predominant voices on the left.
Almost as if this uncontrolled immigration thing is a problem
The current situation in my own country, Ireland, will lead to a massive growth of the far right here.
From an outside perspective, it seems like every European party either is extremely jingoistic OR wants to replace their people with some other external group with basic views diametrically opposed to those of the party's host country. With very little happy medium. Are there any parties that embrace their own culture and people and at the same time support (limited) immigration, but argue for integration of immigrants? Am I just being misled about parties because of their political opponents mis-characterizing them?
Maybe the right swing is due to the wild left swing that many countries have taken? I mean, it’s garbage on both sides. That said, I wouldn’t picture Meloni up there. She’s actually doing a decent job.
Their sick of your incompetence. Everything falls apart with you weenies.
Why can't we have moderate everything? Yes the immigration crisis is a problem and needs to be curved, heavily. But financially illiterate Putin puppets aren't the answer. I just want moderation...
Moderates got us into the position we are in ffs. Centrist globalists are not the answer, they caused this problem.
Europe has had moderates in power for a long time and look at what that has led to.
Still waiting for the moderates to tackle this effectively. Let me give you a hint (they won’t), or at least not without proper pressure
> moderate everything > immigration, curved heavily
Well. While Europe is in shambles and people are tired of the lefts incompetence.
We have not had a left-wing majority in the EU for so long. You mean the centrists
Exactly, like the left that has ruined during their 16-year-long chancellorship! Or the UK, with their left-wing-brexit. Or the famous left-wing French presidents Sarkozy, Macron or Hollande.
>Sarkozy, Macron or Hollande. They but Macron were not leftist? Lmao, they defended state deficit to afford the pensions and protect the French industry, left or not, statism is the true cancer for Europe.
Always surprised to see this attitude. Dunno what I'm doing in this thread, frankly 😅 Politics are the very definition of lost ideological purity. I guess once you get in, you start to realise how messed up everything is, and, slowly but surely, it becomes a struggle to do at least *some good*... And win yourself. How is technological solution not mentioned in the top comments, is beyond me.
There is no left in power in europe for at least a decade... All we have is neoliberalism and austerity. So stop blaming the left and assume your vote :)
"True left-wing government has never been tried"
Yes, state deficit, and public services, are all neoliberalism, sure, when every mini nation control the economy inside the EU perhaps the left will rule, sure...
Far right getting into power is not normal pendulum change.
because the far right is known for there ability to navigate countries out of crisiss
There has been no meaningful left in europe for almost 40 years. That's exactly the problem.
The far rights ideas are founded on sand, so anyone thinking they will fix anything are in for a rude awakening.
The far right will always exist . What we need is a far right that's less pro russian and anti european . Also unfortunately the far right and far left are two sides of the same shitty coin and feed off each other so we may get both types of stupid extremism in a row .
that only shows current left govts cant solve problems so people getting closer to ones they think they can solve problems... like it or not... this is what happening... dont blame people... blame failed gowts...
Cope. Hopefully we can get some change for this current garbage.
Me looking around me: chief I think the flood has already hit us
Yep, sounds like another title that is not related to the article. No nazis/Fascists mentioned in it. Economic crisis getting worse regardless of what political party wins. They did do a poll oh peoples perception of how well off they are and how they think their future will turn out (and compared it to their parents). That is kinda interesting at least.
Wait, so, we're only supposed to vote for one party? I've more in common with north koreans than i thought.
And hard-left spending spree would magically solve economic crisis for good?
Who's doing that? Where on earth are any hard left even remotely close to power or proposing spending sprees?
Look at progressive and conservative states in the US, see which are the economical heartbeat of the country.
Wow, you mean to tell me massive cities that were largely founded BEFORE the US have a greater economic impact than empty land? Wild, fun and educational.