Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

When I was growing up, the British Army were only occasionally killing Irishmen, that never excited the media too much. Then along cane Galtieri.

hey, that's royal wootton bassett to you son - the name was changed in 2011 in recognition of its role as a military cadaver sorting office xps

Wiltshire is the land of jingoism and forelock-grabbing - I spend Xmas there with a close friend whose Polish ex-POW dad was one of the few socialists in his town.

i apologise if my comments have disrespected royal wooton bassett, the military, the corpses which have travelled through the town, or the loyal subjects who gathered to watch the corpses

When I was at school you joined the Army and, if you were unlucky, got sent to Belfast. How much of a hoohah could you make about that?

aye, it's a much more exciting career now tom - if you're lucky you might get to go to the middle east on a modern-day crusade, and if you are horribly injured there's a decent chance your cutting-edge body armour will keep you alive so you can come home and appear in a help for heroes ad showing off your prosthetics

That's how the Sun editorial team sees it.

When I lived in San Diego I took the bus to UCSD each day, and almost every time there was also veterans taking the bus to the UCSD hospital, many of them on crutches, in wheelchairs. And the respect that they got was wonderful, with many many thank yous and people saying how grateful they was, and nobody ever complaining that the bus was almost always late because it took so long to get their wheelchairs on board, but I kinda kept thinking that perhaps there could be done something more helpful so wounded/disabled veterans wouldn't have to take the bus for an hour on their own to get healthcare?

that sounds suspiciously like socialism *narrows eyes*

fervent troop-supporters tend to support everything to help veterans apart from anything which might negatively impact on their own lives or finances

yeah i don't seem to see the same respect for disabled people in general nor the will to improve the crappy infrastructure that disables them

not technically the west but i've always felt like this should be a "developed nations" drift trend anyway:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437950/japans-new-fascism

(article is old, but i just read it for the first time today)

this is good:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/i-watched-a-populist-leader-rise-in-my-country-and-that-is-why-i-am-genuinely-worried-for-america/2016/12/27/6b4cf632-cc65-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html?utm_term=.fed868c01f85

I remember there being quite a lot of Japanese fascist thinkers I had to study. I think, like Paxton, that to describe japan as fascist in the 30s-40s is wrong. But that aspect of politics was/is certainly there and influential.

https://i.sli.mg/cCiEOa.jpg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/28/theresa-may-fight-2020-election-plans-take-britain-european/

She thinks that's her big vote winner does she? LOL.

The Prime Minister is understood to be backing plans to “lift and shift” human rights enshrined in the European Convention and write them into UK law.

this was her idea for Brexit as well. to literally take current EU law and emboss it into the very living weft of UK jurisprudence. which isn't quite what people voted for this summer, was it?

i suspect the laws dealing w/ the permeability of borders will be more "shift" than "lift."

i really like the bit in the piece about Orban and Trump linked above where it says something that they both share is that they don't mind being hated - they thrive on it. 'Their two basic postures of “defending” and “triumphing” are impossible to perform without picking enemies.'

Can it finally be time for the Democratic Party to pick a few enemies? People who they don't mind being hated by? It's just so fundamentally lame when you see a 'leader' who tries to please everyone

lol i'm pretty sure there are some deplorables we can unearth

yes except establishment Dems are HORRIFIED to be hated by them, which was sniffed out instantly

seriously tho i think the trump coalition were mostly unified by feeling looked down upon and despised by the wealthier, better educated, woke democratic coalition

if only there were a famous historical figure the dem party could turn to for advice on being hated

obv the real dem coalition is very broad and includes people from various levels of wealth and religious faith but in the culture war it's the universities/media vs. the middle class and their vulgar outsider billionaire benefactor

i disagree

i think there was a hardcore of trump voters who were probably unified by that sort of resentment - there is a racist hard right that feels this way in almost every country, but "coalition" is a very very generous term to use

i think democrats need to pick sides now and go ahead and be hated by that group. you're nobody without good enemies.

this isn't really the thread for it i think (or maybe it is!) but i started noticing how every time ilx would discuss one of these culture wars locations they'd dismiss them as manufactured outrage, exaggerations, misrepresentations, etc, but then i'd see all these right-wing acquaintances post about them as tho they were real. i thought on the merits the right-wing case against transexual bathrooms was incomprehensibly dumb but then i'd see republicans get actually worked up about the topic so obv they were real to someone. it really feels like this election (which i've been trying not to discuss but it's very hard) was kinda more like the 2000 election. the economy is doing not terrible actually, we don't have a particularly pressing foreign entanglement, so there was a luxury to fall back on the culture wars.

like i think this is why evangelicals went so hard for trump. they thought the dem party and hillary in particular was anathema to their values and trump at least paid lip service to their faith. i do think she would've gotten some mileage out of talking about religion more outspokenly but i guess it's not really in her personality. they feel hated by us, i think. and then the nativist / white nationalist group which is probably larger than we think. in the end who did the republicans lose? maybe some neocons in new york like kristol and goldberg.

this is definitely not the thread for any of that nonsense

I believe we might need a new thread separate from this one and the Trump / rolling politics thread(s), a Rolling Geopolitics As We Know It Into The Shitbin Thread if you will

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/01/trump-endorses-american-geopolitical-suicide

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/01/15/the-real-reason-the-us-supports-nato-and-the-eu/

obviously would prefer to not have to start it until after the inauguration, as one does

I'd be worried if Trump wasn't trying to undermine the EU, tbh. They need to work against him on Iran, Israel and broader Middle-East policy, China, climate change, the status of post-Brexit Britain, etc, etc. If they aren't going to try to reposition the EU as an alternate pole of political (and, if you like, moral) influence vs a neo-Fash US then there isn't much point in attempting to have any say on the wider world at all.

The gamble would be that Gove/Farage and Trump palling it up, and the ongoing trash fire of contemporary US politics, doesn't have the exact opposite effect. Trump was toxic in Europe before the election (something like 9% approval) and is likely to get more toxic as time goes on. In a best-case scenario, people look at Brexit and Trump, think there for but for the grace of god, and head in the opposite direction. In reality, it seems more likely that 'mainstream' parties look to incorporate Trump-lite domestic policy into their platforms (as Fillon seems to be doing) while defending the EU and its influence to the hilt.

any thoughts on this

Most people in this country, certainly most members of the political class and especially its expression in Washington, don't realize what Donald Trump is trying to do in Europe and Russia. Back in December I explained that Trump has a plan to break up the European Union. Trump and his key advisor Steve Bannon (former Breitbart chief) believe they can promise an advantageous trade agreement with the United Kingdom, thus strengthening the UK's position in its negotiations over exiting the EU. With such a deal in place with the UK, they believe they can slice apart the EU by offering the same model deal to individual EU states. Steve Bannon discussed all of this at length with Business Week's Josh Green and Josh and I discussed it in great detail in this episode of my podcast from mid-December.

...Today in a new interview with the Germany's Bild and the Times of London Trump expanded on these goals dramatically. Trump leveled a series of attacks on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, suggesting he'd like to see her defeated for reelection and saying she'd hurt Germany by letting "all these illegals" into the country. Trump also called NATO "obsolete", predicted other countries would soon leave the EU, and characterized the EU itself as "basically a vehicle for Germany."

Trump and Bannon are extremely hostile to Merkel and eager to see her lose. But what is increasingly clear is that Trump will make the break up of the EU a central administration policy and appears to want the same for NATO.

My own view is that Trump and Bannon greatly overestimate America's relative economic power in the world. Their view appears to be that no European country will feel it is able to be locked out of trade with a US-UK trade pact. An America eager to break up the EU seems more likely to inject new life into the union. However that may be, Trump and Bannon clearly want to create a nativist world order based on the US, Russia and states that want to align with them. The EU and NATO are only obstacles to that goal.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-s-and-putin-s-plan-to-dissolve-the-eu-and-nato

However that may be, Trump and Bannon clearly want to create a nativist world order based on the US, Russia and states that want to align with them. The EU and NATO are only obstacles to that goal.

Sounds about right.

LOL @ this tho:

Trump wants to empower Farage as its interlocutor with the United Kingdom. Given Farage's fringe status in the UK, on its face that seems crazy. But that is the plan. And it is a sign of how potent Farage's guidance and advice has become for Trump's view of Europe, the EU and Russia.

lol at the idea that Farage's view aligns with Trump's, or lol that he has fringe status? i'm not very knowledgeable about farage, beyond the basics.

LOL @ the idea that Nigel Farage has any actual political power and influence in the UK.

did you hear that the uk has voted to become independent

So does Bannon want to re-do world war 2 and cobble together a nativist US-UK-French-Russian alliance against Germany?

but you'll never guess the twist!

i don't think the part you excerpted claims that farage has much power and influence - it describes him as having "fringe status in the UK", and then says that nonetheless his guidance and advice is "potent" for Trump's views. but it is pretty sloppily written, so who knows.

xpost

it says he has influence over trump. this is indeed lol from a certain extremely detached perspective.

I was LOLing @ Trump's Farage, as opposed to the puny reality.

My own view is that Trump and Bannon greatly overestimate America's relative economic power in the world. Their view appears to be that no European country will feel it is able to be locked out of trade with a US-UK trade pact. An America eager to break up the EU seems more likely to inject new life into the union.

All of that sounds reasonable to me except this last bit which sounds like wishful thinking.

Yes. A US-UK trade pact that works equally well for both parties also seems like wishful thinking, on the part of whoever in the UK supports the idea.

The bigger issue is that Trump is confused about whose interests NATO and the EU serve but the idea that European nations, especially ones dealing w/ their own right-wing insurrections, would not be interested in following the US' lead is kinda silly once you understand why these institutions were developed in the first place. Trump likes to complain that Europe doesn't pay enough for its own defense + military but doesn't understand that was built in as a feature, not a bug. We wanted dependents.

Brownie points for the first pundit to call any US-UK arrangement 'you-suck'.

Here we go again: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/angela-merkel-replaces-hillary-clinton-as-target-of-fake-news/

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/donald-trumps-topsy-turvy-world/

If the difference between Clinton and Trump was one between liberal establishment and Rightist populist rage, this difference has shrunk to a minimum in the case of le Pen versus Fillon. Although both are cultural conservatives, in matters of economy Fillon is a pure neoliberal, while Le Pen is much more oriented towards protecting workers’ interests. In short, since Fillon stands for the worst combination around today – economic neoliberalism and social conservativism -, one is seriously tempted to prefer Le Pen.

give me one good reason france isn't going to elect le pen