Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

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

seems likely to me

because +50% of French voters aren't going to vote for her

http://www.france24.com/en/20170116-pro-eu-macron-surges-french-election-polls-france

If Theresa May can keep up the good work maybe Macron can surprise us all.

Macron basically stand for economic neoliberalism and social liberalism doesn't he? that doesn't necessarily seem like a slam dunk as an election winning stance in 2017 either

and pro-EU but he makes motions towards limiting immigration responsibly but why vote for the immigration restriction lite when you can get the real thing

Maybe most people don't want heavy duty limits on immigration?

Ségolène Royal has explicitly backed Macron (said he's the only candidate "of the left" who can win, though Macron describes himself as neither left nor right), and some ppl seem to be speculating that Hollande might do the same? don't know if that would be a help or a hindrance to Macron

Yes, I think Hollande would do well to stay out of it tbh.

Mordy are you trying to become the Frederik B of French politics on ILX?

I don't think so. The United States has a president, who, for all that leftists dislike him, is probably the most left-wing President since the 1970s. In England, the Conservative majority will be smaller than the center-right Conservative-LD coalition that was in charge before, and my sense is that the massive swing from Scottish Labour to SNP is in no way a move to the right. In Canada, NDP just took over one of the most conservative provinces in the country, and Liberals are polling way better than they were back in 2011 when Harper won his current majority; I don't think people are projecting he'll keep that majority in the upcoming election. I don't know much about Australia or France.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 8 May 2015 17:26 (one year ago) Permalink

david bowie was still alive, etc.

xp how so?

I think some drift happened between then and now and I think people overstate the extent to which it's happened now but yes, overall, I would cahnge my answer at this point

I just meant that you speak very confidently about the national politics of a place you don't live, on a board where other people do live there, and do not share your confidence.

i think you misread my comment. i was sincerely asking for some good reasons why she won't win in light of these broader trends. note that the italics came from zizek, not from myself. i'm certainly not an expert on french politics and if you told me something like "france's history of left-wing revolutionary activity insulates it against the generally right-wing shift occurring in the West" i would probably believe you. but i'm more seeing things like that zizek article that posits that hollande v. marie le pen will shape up into a disaster, or caldwell on calais, or paris, which paints a pretty dystopian picture. nb that caldwell makes the pt that the very ppl who are insulated from the trends that are pushing a right-wing shift in france are ppl like you - members of the upper educated crust who are being catered by the new paris economy. whereas the right-wing voters are much like our trump voters - neither too poor or too rich, middle class and feeling squeezed out of the political social life of france. anyway, i disagree about the problem w/ fred b - it's not that he has opinions about American political life that Americans don't share (if that was it who would care - we clearly don't know shit about American politics even though we live here). it's that he's so fervent about his opinions and his remedies and solutions. i have no idea how to fix european right-wingism. that's like the very essence of this thread. is there a drift and if there is, why is it happening. not "there def is a drift" (tho tpbh there is) and "it's happening bc france isn't accommodating enough to immigrants" - that kind of didactic self-confidence being imho the ultimate issue w/ fredism.

also if i can toot my own horn i started this thread b4 brexit & trump so maybe despite as intimate a relationship to french politics as you might have, i may be able to notice broader trends that are worth considering. even if you feel like le pen can't possibly win - i thought trump couldn't possibly win. and i had written this before the election:

bump.

fingers crossed i don't have to bump this thread again in nov.

― Mordy, Friday, June 24, 2016 10:17 AM (six months ago)

I sincerely don't know who the author of that piece is, Zizek, though I've seen the name on ILX before; but I read over it and saw this:

"Now that Fillon was elected to be the Right’s candidate in the forthcoming French presidential elections, and with the (almost full) certainty that, in the second round of the elections, the choice will be between Fillon and Marine Le Pen, our democracy has reached its (till now) lowest point."

and I wonder what sense of "certainty" is at play here? for the situation is quite fluid. obv that runoff is a possibility but certainty? it's hard to take the article seriously...except as wish-fulfillment?

I don't know who Caldwell is either!

I live in ground zero of the Parisian migrant crisis---I can see a group of them looking out my window as I write this post---and am only insulated from the crisis inasmuch as I am a civil servant here. but I wait in the same immigration queues as all other immigrants, deal with the same opacity of process, experience the same indifference of the state toward our transiency.

French right-wing-ism is a reply to immigration. was there ever a time when immigrants have been welcomed by "the people", here or anywhere? Not in the America I know: my father was an immigrant to the USA in the 1960s and there were no lamps beside golden doors.

Mordy, if you only saw this right wing drift in 2015, 15 years after the Jörg Haider sanctions and 14 years after the populists came to power in Denmark, I don't think that's anything to brag about.

No idea Zizek lived in France tbh.

i think comparing the current immigration crisis to previous hostility to immigration is a mistake. it seems different to me in kind + scale. for one, it's a very large group of people, coming over in a very short period of time, w/ radically different ideological + theological views from the countries to which they are immigrating, in the midst of ongoing large scale terror attacks by nominal [even if unfairly associated] coreligionists, and then w/ the added crisis of a total failure to assimilate them into the broader society - instead shoveling them out to banlieues. this is a vastly different situation than, say, immigration of latinos to the US who share the same religion, european language speakers, at least partial european descent, and social structure that looks a lot like america of 50 years ago. ie not a clash of civilizations in any kind of reasonable way.

zizek is a pop star continental philosopher who is often wrong or silly but sometimes has fairly insightful things to say. i'm not sure what you see as the wishful thinking in his article there. it's possibly to read out some kind of minor sympathy w/ le pen + right-wing populism (the closest he goes to stepping over this line is singing the social safety net praises of the current Polish gov) but he immediately repudiates it (on the basis of its xenophobia) and i think sees this more as just being a self-evident rhyme w/ these other dynamics playing out. ultimately after brexit and trump i think any one who looks at any election at the moment and writes off an anti-immigrant, anti-neoliberalism candidate for being too right-wing is not paying v good attention? like i wrote above, if france is somehow different culturally then that's the kind of answer i was trying to solicit. not sure that the idea that macron is going to come and save the day is particularly reasonable (i mean it might be true, but if we're talking about wishful thinking we should probably start here).

and lol fred i can't get hit twice in the same conversation for predicting too much right-wing drift when the evidence doesn't support it /and/ not predicting it soon enough

Can I then hit you on speaking very didactically and self-confident on immigration to France without mentioning colonialism and the Algerian War?

There's definitely a populist drift, btw. And that should have been clear to everyone for decades, and mostly was, at least in Europe. But whether or not that should be called a 'right wing drift' and include stuff like the conservatives winning the 2015 election is up for debate, imo.

Wish-fulfillment inasmuch there'd be some "charge" in seeing Le Pen take it all. accelerationism, is that what it's called?

Catholics were by no means welcomed to the USA as coreligionists.

I don't mean to say that I see the way forward for France, not at all.

no, bc you're confused [as per usual]. what does colonialism and the Algerian War have to do w/ what we're discussing? even if the conditions that led to the current crisis is 100% entirely France's fault, that does not change the actual implications today. you can't convince people to vote for the person you prefer by telling them that it's their fault in the first place. xp

iow

"massive islamic immigration to europe is freaking out europeans and pushing them to vote for more right-wing parties"
"you didn't mention colonialism"

^ this is a non-sequitar

Zizek is a troll not worthy of serious consideration

xp