Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

for some odd reason

where do you see that they had people rate it on a scale from 1 to 10?

I saw someone discussing it on twitter. there's some details on page 7 here:

http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Foa%26Mounk-27-3.pdf

(um, on page 4 on the pdf, rather. but it says page 7 at the top of the page)

I'm sort of playing devil's advocate, but it could just as easily mean that younger people are more critical and have been less conditioned by Cold War-era experiences and propaganda when it comes to i) how 'democratic' their own countries and the existing international order are and ii) whether the existence of other 'undemocratic' countries is actually going to lead to a nuclear apocalypse that will make life impossible.

I got nothing re Americans' increased appreciation for military rule, though.

because as americans we've been fellating the military steadily ever since 9/11

of all institutions in this country, the military is the only one polling over 30%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx

Because people don't serve in it.

I am pretty worried about what BRUMPXIT means for democracy, not just because I think Loomis is right about how McCrory is setting the example for other GOP incumbents to follow from here on out, but for the potential loss of faith in democratic systems that all this shit is causing in the young & impressionable.

I guess we'll see which way the pendulum swings on Sunday, when Austria has another opportunity to vote in the first far-right head of state since WWII. I'm not feeling hopeful.

That seventy-year gap seems to be an awfully big contributor to the rise of these sentiments. There's hardly anyone around anymore who had first-hand experience with this shit back in the day. History's boring! Democracy's lame! It's time for something new and fresh and exciting!

I think people's indifference runs a little bit deeper than "ugh, lame". democracy is increasingly appearing to fail people on many levels, from the economic to the actually feeling like they have a say in how their country is run.

"democracy" is too vague a term to usefully discuss in any detail imo

leaving aside the efficacy of voting, in the UK at least the scope of democracy i.e. the commons has been shrunk over the long term. I think you could make a good case that this has been inversely correlated with increased suffrage - even the likes of peter hitchens agree on this point. ppl sense that most aspects of the world they live in are beyond the horizons of party politics even though this is inevitably downplayed & not reflected by political rhetoric. without regular reform this is inevitable, but as far as I can tell all modern western govts are built more for stability than flexibility.

Is it possible that people who respond that they'd be ok with military rule just have no idea what that means?

It means the military RULES, duh.

democracy is increasingly appearing to fail people on many levels, from the economic to the actually feeling like they have a say in how their country is run.

yeah when I saw these results I didn't necessarily see it as a popular embrace of autocracy so much as perceiving that "democracy" as currently practiced fails on its own terms

The problem being that so many people who feel that way decide that attempting to fix a broken system has less appeal than smashing it to bits and replacing it with...I dunno, whatever! Because different is always better.

Because the problems are largely caused by power differentials that the existing systems are set up to protect

Austria not going Nazi (yet!)!

https://twitter.com/AP/status/805445655539892224

every election is going to be like this now

Yeah, I felt more relieved about that than I would like to.

http://i.imgur.com/GjnWi8x.jpg

Mr Mahdalik singled out Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, for contributing to the party’s defeat after he said on Fox News on Friday that Mr Hofer would hold a referendum on Austria leaving the European Union.

“That didn’t help us, it hindered us,” he said, saying that an overwhelming majority of Austrians support EU membership.

Casting his vote in his home town of Pinkafeld earlier on Sunday, Mr Hofer ruled out a referendum and said: “I would ask Mr Farage not to interfere in Austria’s internal affairs.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/04/austria-election-norbert-hofer-cusp-becoming-europes-first-far/

Some good news at last.

It will be clearer in the next couple of days what happened, but voter turnout was extremely high. Woman, the young, and pensioners went VdB, men. the less well-educated, and older working people went Hofer. Super clear country-city split as well going the way you'd expect. I personally think that ultimately Hofer went too nasty in his campaigning even for conservative church ladies who think VdB's a communist.

Thought the men/women split was especially significant. 62% of women voted for VdB, versus 44% of the men.

Here's a good analysis (in German, but you and google should figure it out together): http://derstandard.at/2000048754159/Wer-wem-seine-Stimme-gegeben-hat

Renzi out.

I got nothing re Americans' increased appreciation for military rule, though.

― Spiritual Hat Minimalism (Sund4r)

they haven't experienced it and don't know what it's actually like. america is in a situation where a lot of people are thinking "man, it couldn't actually be worse than donald trump running the country, could it?"

of course it could and would.

I'm disturbed by the reflexively martial tone of RW people expecting to be thanked for their military service or that of their relatives ALL THE DAMNED TIME. Is this a post-9/11 thing? Previous generations of military people did not shill for gratitude in this way. It's gross, especially when someone barges into a social media thread about BLM/guns/politics in the expectation that we'll all stop whatever we're doing to kiss some camo ass. Most of my friends are polite and do acknowledge them, but I'm suspicious of rightward drift in ordinary discourse and the role these people are happy to play to enable it.

only time i've ever thanked someone from their service was a Disney employee dressed as a green plastic army man from toy story when i was at disneyworld last year

i was informed by a passing floridian that i was 'disrespectful'

loooooooooooool

stephen colbert frequently thanks people for their service with non-military people presumably in order to mock the claustrophobic platitudinous imperative to do so with military people and also with military people because of that imperative or because he sincerely means it or both

xxp a+ would lol again

This seems a very American thing to do.

Only in its specifics - see the UK tabloids' tic of referring to servicemen and women as HEROES whenever mentioned.

Yes, that's just tabloidspeak, nobody really falls for that. In the UK, if somebody was to say "But I was in military" people would just shrug their shoulders and say, "So"?

I assume this is to do with the difference in patriotism between the USA and the UK and possibly numbers going into the services, which has always been fairly low in the UK. Also, in the UK, in the services, you are serving Queen and Country, the monarch comes first, so fuck that for, er, a game of soldiers.

the main thing that bothers me about 'thank you for your service' is the implication that active involvement in the military is inherently of value, which I've got a pretty fundamental problem with

UK people do this too, Help for Heroes isn't just a tabloid thing, but I agree it seems more memeified in the US. Always like to point out that if they're unhappy with the terms and conditions of their employment they should maybe consider getting unionized.

Well it is signing up to be potentially be killed on behalf of others (a bit like firefighting or being a police officer) - it's not fascist to recognize that

xpost

I haven't asked anybody to sign up and potentially kill others on my behalf tbh

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/i-wonder-what-kind-of-message-im-sending-to-the-tr-11209

it's a career choice, get over yourselves.

Especially given well documented reports of rape and other abuse of power from some military personnel.

nobody really falls for that

not sure why you'd deny there's not a significant number of the 'back our brave boys' persuasion in the UK! Wootoon Bassett and all that - but maybe they're all cardboard cutouts.

I read in the paper that a lot of the troops are complaining about the war, and want to come home. They're putting their lives on the line. It's my duty to support them, but I get confused. What message am I sending the troops if I read articles like that? For that matter, what kind of a message are those troops sending themselves? They are the troops, but it almost sounds like they're not supporting the troops!

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that last statement to sound anti-troops.

occasionally if I tell somebody what I do for a living I get this "oh that's wonderful" spiel and I have to point out that I get paid to do it

Well it is signing up to be potentially be killed on behalf of others (a bit like firefighting or being a police officer) - it's not fascist to recognize that

like nv says, it is signing up with the expectation that you may well have to kill others, and in some cases the hope that you will kill others, eg many who signed up in response to 9/11

xp thanks for your service noodle

it's ok, I get paid for it

I know people who I went to school with who would openly admit they took the queen's shilling for mayhem/violence/adventure and a higher earning potential, none of this bollocks about making it safer for us civilians.

http://ibdp.huluim.com/show_art/4266?size=900x350

cheers for this lads