Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

& corporation tax bumped back up a bit

My suspicion is that the US election was kind of watershed moment where a lot of other people in other countries sat up and went "this can't be allowed to happen here". There was bound to be backlash against all this shit sooner or later and we're in the early stages of that now.

The fact that it was won by an absolute clown is possibly a blessing in that sense - standing with him has damaged serious politicians, though obviously existing dangerous clowns (eg Farage) haven't minded.

A high-level view is that, as Trump is riding the high point of various anti-progressive waves, his eventual ignominious departure will tie those attitudes to him - a Don Draper that you either hate or pretend you hate.

Like lots of high-level views it will be of no comfort for those getting it in the neck now and for some time to come.

if u believe that there are systemic reasons for the right-wing tide then trump may end up temporarily discrediting the notion but the underlying push isn't going to vanish just bc he's a buffoon.

But with the right-wingers being beaten left and right by everyone from Macron to Corbyn to, well, themselves in Finland, it's probably worth reconsidering what the 'systemic reasons' for the rise might be.

if u believe that there are systemic reasons for the right-wing tide

I don't, really, I believe political motion of this kind is largely driven by fads which are arbitrary and contingent and for which we invent plausible explanations after the fact

A lot of the "systemic reasons" that don't amount to straight up racism and bigotry can also work to the benefit of left-wing parties as well. That definitely happened in Britain last week.

I believe there are systemic reasons for the current instability/discontent but don't think they need lead to a right-wing resurgence: they can benefit the left just as easily. The only ppl they cannot benefit is those too associated with The Establishment in people's minds - which is why even a centrist like Macron made his campaign about change, going outside the established main parties, etc.

xpost

Matt DC otm

I wouldn't say systemic, but one of the factors is pushback from increasing progress along various axes - it's no coincidence that Trump comes after eight years of the first black president and the fear of the first female president.

caek posted this on the US politics thread but seems more relevant to this one imo

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/donald-trump-is-making-europe-liberal-again/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_good_fight/2017/09/afd_party_enters_german_parliament_the_country_is_no_longer_immune_from.html

Never in Germany’s postwar history has a far-right party gained more than 6 percent in a national election. Today, the Islamophobic, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pulverized that record, taking over 13 percent of the vote, winning a plurality in a significant number of districts, and establishing itself as the country’s third-biggest party.

The AfD won this remarkable victory even though a more radical wing of the party took over a few months ago. It won this remarkable victory even though one of its two new leaders used distinctively Nazi rhetoric when he expressed his hope that a competitor of Turkish roots would be “disposed of” in Anatolia. And it won this remarkable victory even though the other new leader said that members of the government are “just puppets of the victors of World War II,” implying that the current political system is illegitimate.

increasing appeal of fascism/nationalism as the air and the oceans coincidentally warm is a dumb fad, germany. don't fall for it!

A friend pointed out that this is not really a remarkable victory, it's about average (a little low in fact) for the far-right across Europe. Which isn't good, of course, and there's a frisson from it being Germany, but it's not the end of the world.

"It is, frankly, hard to imagine better headwinds for an anti-Muslim, anti-immigration political party than Germany this election. IMAGINE the media and political response in the UK if Theresa May had opened the borders! (To avoid ambiguity, I think Merkel was basically right to do this and May's response to the humanitarian crisis has been outrageous.) Is the AfD's 13% really a seismic shock? And since they've tacked hard to the right to get it - to the point where their leader just walked out because the party's too extreme for her now - can they do any better?"

After underwhelming results for the far right in various European countries when everyone was expecting the Trump/Brexit trend to continue, this does feel more like the tail end of a trend, but that might be dangerously misplaced optimism on my part.

i am ok w/ ppl being terrified about 1 in 8 german voters thinking the nazi thing was good actually and they should do that again. i mean the only hope we have is that ppl remember that kind of shit and are horrified by it. would hope to rely on germans of everyone taking the lead in that particular discipline.

Sitting in a country where the far right scored 12% as early as 2001, it's hard to feel it's that seismic. But it's bad that they over performed polls, for the reason Daniel points out.

Sitting in a country where the far right scored 12% as early as 2001, it's hard to feel it's that seismic

to point this out for literally the 45th billionth time since you started posting here, maybe you're not that worried about it because you're a white person in a land of white people and the threat isn't directly against you

Donald Trumpth billionth time

he has even taken over the number system, we're dooooooooomed, he is the gray goo we were warned about

karl malone otm x a billion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHG0ezLiVGc

I never said I wasn't worried, but I don't think any of my immigrant friends are surprised at the far right doing 13% in Germany.

i am not surprised the giant vampire squid has a role in all this . . . but a lesbian???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4917706/Lesbian-mother-two-set-Angela-Merkel.html

That shouldn't surprise anybody since at least Pim Fortuyn. But I guess I'm saying that because I'm white too.

so what's to keep afd from facing the same fate as the DRP or the FAP?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/how-a-splintering-of-the-national-front-could-end-up-rebranding-it/540567/?utm_source=atltw

Whenever I see "AfD", I first think "Appetite for Destruction", which I guess is actually apt, but the reality is still doubly disappointing.

Btw, the SNL sketch is funny but not really reflective of my experience.

i am ok w/ ppl being terrified about 1 in 8 german voters thinking the nazi thing was good actually and they should do that again. i mean the only hope we have is that ppl remember that kind of shit and are horrified by it. would hope to rely on germans of everyone taking the lead in that particular discipline.

― Roberto Spiralli, Dienstag, 26. September 2017

To be fair, people who actually remember the Nazis didn't vote AfD. Less than 7% of people over 70 did.

Sadly, Germany's baby boomers' attitude towards fascism boils down to "we can't possibly be like Nazis coz we're not wearing swastikas"

the npr piece on the election interviewed one guy (so small sample size) who of course started off why he voted for AfD with 'I'm not a racist, I'm not a Nazi, BUT...'

Hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness are as popular here as anywhere.

Rewatching "The Nazis:A Warning from History" the last few weeks has confirmed in the belief that if you choose to affiliate with this shit you deserve to be forcibly reputed

Repudiated, sorry

Germany's favorite brand of history doc is the kind where you get shown the usual prominent Nazis over and over again, with menacing background music and a solemn commentary about what they just did or what they are about to do. Doesn't really get you to contemplate the causes and workings of authorianism.

That '97 Nazi doc by the BBC is very good, but it just just didn't include the caveat that there is a risk that they might end up disseminating hate-speak and providing propaganda for far right regimes themselves, during the next right wing cycle. #trenchant warning!

Rewatching "The Nazis:A Warning from History" the last few weeks has confirmed in the belief that if you choose to affiliate with this shit you deserve to be forcibly reputed

― be the cringe you want to see in the world (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, September 26, 2017 10:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I watched this too over the summer, and was startled to learn that the dude who discovered after the fact that his dad was a Nazi, ended up going neo-Nazi himself iirc

Before watching the Ilse Totzke segment from "The Nazis" I had no idea that the Gestapo went after random unpopular people as well. I'm sure AfD voters could get behind that: snitch on the neighborhood weirdos, have them shipped off to forced labor camps, no real harm done and everyone lives happily ever after.

Suffice to say that no Gestapo snitch was ever called out on German TV like that old lady on "The Nazis."

oh aye, plenty of SS/Gestapo officers got plum government jobs in the post war FRG as well, never mind the snitches. It is very good is that bit though. Gotcha vindictive + evil snitch! I also watched Orphuls The Memory Of Justice recently. Excellent that was.

I'm just reading an incredibly depressing book called Savage Continent about all the post-war pogroms, genocides and ethnic cleansing, revenge killings throughout Europe after Fascism was defeated forever.

there's a particularly brutal Robert Kaplan book called Balkan Ghosts that I couldn't get through, similar topics but focus is just on the Balkans in the 90's

It's unfortunately kind of inevitable that you can't hold fascism at bay forever based solely on historical memory -- historical memory dies out by its nature.

I never realised that Jews were still getting persecuted and murdered in Poland after the war. I knew that much of the ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe was encouraged by Stalin. Not that Tito needed any encouragement to wipe out the Ustashas, or other score settling where the oppressed became oppressors. But a lot of this stuff was happening shortly before the end of the Nazi regime or 18 months after even. It is a far cry from the victory parades and camps getting liberated and this "will never happen again" spiel.

reading Enemies, tim weiner's history of the FBI. the number and extent of semi-official "patriotic" vigilante snitch societies in America in the first half of C20, encouraged by the justice department, is breathtaking

watching something about the Pacific War last night and I hadn't previously realised how openly the US had committed war crimes for which there were no post-war consequences

what's a little firebombing of civilians between friends

guys openly talking about shooting captured Japanese soldiers because they were taking no prisoners

it's not a war crime if your side wins iirc

(marine a to thread)