Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

Sweeping Win for Cameron in Britain: Conservative Party Secures Majority

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Liberal Party in charge in Australia, Conservative Party in Canada.

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And if so, why?

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.

I don't think so either. Bibi's coalition not likely to last long, US drifting towards the left afaict. Europe's rightward drift seems largely driven by xenophobia (always with the petty regionalism/nationalism over there) which is sad to watch.

I don't think Canada is more right-wing that it was 10 or 20 years ago. It's just that the more left-leaning vote is split between two parties. Also the Liberals have had terrible leadership in the last decade or so.

The conservatives have been pretty good at keeping everyone together and keeping internal dissent to a minimum.

based on comments in this thread obv the answer is "hell yes"

XP xenophobia of Scots towards the english, maybe

other answer is "because the further right we go the further right people think of as 'left wing'"

Renzi's performance in the Euro elections seemed significant. Huge victory for pro-austerity leader who was thought to be much more divisive. It's mostly fiscal conservatism on the rise in Europe. Despite the growth of the far right the mainstream tends to be more socially liberal I think.

dont forget Greece lol

I guess if you look at the actual governments in place, they are more right-wing, but that feels more like the left not getting their shit together rather than the actual people being more conservative. I don't know. We probably don't have the best systems for electing governments.

XP xenophobia of Scots towards the english, maybe

You're making the assumption that people who vote SNP are nationalists... for a start.

just playing with the yanks tom

Suspected as much, but I remember them having difficulty understanding the concept to left wing nationalists during the referendum, bless 'em.

concept of

theyre some craic hey

The United States has a president, who, for all that leftists dislike him, is probably the most left-wing President since the 1970s

lol, picked that decade due to that anarchist Jimmy Carter? (who ruled out reparations to Vietnam because "the destruction was mutual")

the last liberal POTUS was a man named Lyndon Johnson.

both houses of congress and most of the state houses in the u.s. are controlled by a class of republicans who are probably the most right-wing major faction in america since the southern democrats of the antebellum era. i think the u.s. actually is drifting to the left in a lot of ways, but it's not always perceptible in our elections.

it seems hard to dispute that obama's the most progressive president since johnson, his foreign policy's certainly better.

yeah idk if electorates are drifting right as much as right-wing oligarchs are just tightening their reigns of power

xp

xp

well that's a high raw body count to match even when you bomb 7 Muslim countries

and have prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents in history

and

"progressive" sure is a versatile word is all im sayin'

I don't think Canada is more right-wing that it was 10 or 20 years ago. It's just that the more left-leaning vote is split between two parties.

Why do people always say this? The NDP has been around since 1961; before it, the CCF was winning seats in federal elections since 1935. The Liberals still managed to thoroughly dominate Canada in the 20th century, even with a single 'united' PC or Conservative party until the 90s.

In terms of economic policy, I still think the Liberals of the 90s were at least as right-wing as any other post-war federal government. I actually feel like the mood is shifting left these days (which the AB election demonstrates).

I specified "10 or 20 years" specifically because I didn't really follow politics before that. I think the fact that there were multiple right-wing parties in the 90s is a pretty significant reason as to why the Liberals were able to win elections with such large majorities back then.

Here in Quebec it definitely feels like we have shifted to the right. Every successive Liberal leader has been more right-wing than his predecessor.

The West is definitely rightward leaning. The US left is more or less non-existent, beholden to the same corporate interests as the right. They dangle civil rights issues like gay marriage as a carrot to voters, because they know without those issues, nothing much separates their war-and-banks-driven governmental style from the right's. The hope that Obama will close gitmo is certainly worth more monetarily than him actually closing it down.

The question is: is this a recent development or a general tendency of US representative democracy? I suppose it began as representing mainly the interests of those who could legally vote (white male landowners/oligarchs), which you could say is a rightward position. Since then women have been granted the vote and minorities as well, but is their vote worth the same as the oligarchs that have always monopolized representation? No way in hell.

Perhaps in a way we have become more socially liberal, but the systems of control and oppression are working against that development in a way that greatly negates it. Corporate personhood imo continues to devalue "free speech" and the spits at the virtue of representative democracy.

Going by Wiki numbers, the combined popular vote of the Reform and PC parties was still less than the Liberals' share of the popular vote in the 93 and 97 elections. The combined total of the Alliance's and PCs' share of the popular vote in 2000 was just under the Liberals' share and was well under the combined total of the Liberals and NDP. (I also doubt that all PC voters would have chosen the Alliance over the Liberals if they had to choose. Clark himself preferred the Liberals.) King's, St. Laurent's, Pearson's, and Pierre Trudeau's Liberals all managed to win elections (after elections) despite facing left-wing competition.

I get resentful about 'vote-splitting' arguments for a few reasons but especially because I feel that they are usually made by Liberals to unfairly marginalize/minimize/accuse any progressive alternative.

The Liberals lost in 2006 because they were corrupt, arrogant, and entitled. They haven't managed to convince the voting public since then.

for the record, I agree with you re: vote-splitting. I don't want any kind of NDP/Liberals merger and will most likely vote NDP in the next election.

Still, I think it's difficult to argue that the Conservatives being the only viable party right of center doesn't benefit them enormously, allowing them to form majority governments despite not being able to get beyond 40% support.

The real problem is a lack of any kind of proportional representation.

I don't have the nuanced take on what is left wing, probably a bit dated & old fashioned. Indiscriminately killing civilians with drones and police does throw up some red flags though

most nuanced take

It is all shifted right in the context of most other Western countries.

it seems hard to dispute that obama's the most progressive president since johnson

Obama Lashes Out at Liberal Foes of Pacific Trade Deal
By PETER BAKER 3:07 PM ET
At Nike headquarters in Oregon, the president lashed out at critics within his own party, accusing Democrats of deliberately distorting the impact of the trade agreement he is negotiating with Asia.

i didn't think it'd be terribly controversial to say that obama was more progressive than carter or clinton. but yes i'm aware that the guy isn't bernie sanders.

you are also aware some people never get tired of criticizing him

I don't think the left's popularity is waning. It's just that their appeal is becoming more selective.

http://i.imgur.com/OGFBhT3.jpg

Here in Quebec it definitely feels like we have shifted to the right. Every successive Liberal leader has been more right-wing than his predecessor.

― silverfish, Friday, May 8, 2015 2:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not only that, but like in many places across the West, our de facto left wing party has slowly and steadily become right wing.

love the passive voice thread question

plz put the q in active voice for me

present progressive, not passive

de facto left wing party

Had sort of a hollow lol when I realized that this probably refers to the PQ.

h/t the donald trump thread

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_MxkTUjnGeBaoavzdNapdX_UqkI=/1600x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4082854/Figure_7_.0.png

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by "shift in the percentage replying..." -- e.g. if 1000 respondents were surveyed from the United States in 1995 and 50 said "good or very good" then, does the chart mean that the number/1000 increased to 55 in 2014, or does it mean it increased to 150?

i.e. are we talking percent change or percentage point change?

the way i understand it, if in 1955 20% said army rule is good, and then in 2015 30% said so, there would be an increase of 10%? does that make sense?

btw i think the premise of this thread is true more than ever right now.

I don't think there's an overall rightward drift in the US. I do think there's a rightward drift on the right.

xp that makes sense, as long as that's what vox means

btw i think the premise of this thread is true more than ever right now.

― Mordy

I dunno. hard to say. to play devil's advocate:

likelihood is the United States will elect a democrat next year for the third election in a row.

Canada just voted out the conservatives in an election where the conservatives purposefully used wedge issues and stoked islamophobia as a vote-winning tactic.

The ruling party the conservative PP in Spain failed to return a majority in the election on Sunday.

I do think there's a rightward drift on the right.

^^^this

otoh france has moved so far to the right that the socialists had to throw their support behind the republicans to keep the national front out of power

Yeah, they're just a bundle of anger and resentment. I think that's one of the biggest reasons Trump appeals to them so much: he's the apotheosis of resentment.

So what kind of politics should conservatives today, as inheritors of a failed movement, adopt? For starters, they should stop thinking of themselves as conservatives (much less as Republicans) and start thinking of themselves as radicals, restorationists, and counterrevolutionaries. Indeed, that is what they are, whether they embrace those labels or not.

It’s Franz, Duke of Bavaria’s time to shine. Would we let him be King Franz I or would he have to anglicize it?

King Frank I

One of the things that blows me away, even as someone who is often angry or mad at the state of the world, is how bitter, hateful, and totally devoid of joy a lot of these people are.

I think that a lot. I'm surrounded by affluent white suburban families who by all measures are enjoying the best standard of living in the history of the species, and whose personal wealth and comfort is not seriously challenged in any way (and here, they live in an absurdly low-tax county in an absurdly low-tax state). And yet they seem so performatively angry, just seething with resentment, and seemingly deriving pleasure primarily from any opportunity to inflict cruelty — rhetorical or otherwise — on their perceived enemies.

They're not loved and respected in the right way, they don't see culture catering to their whims - every sitcom with a Black family or a gay couple is a dagger in their heart, every time their kid makes a video on TikTok set to rap it's a failure they'll never recover from.

I suppose we can lay the blame partly at the feet of conservative media. They figured out in the early 80s that they could supercharge their ratings by portraying liberals as not only wrong, but evil, and an actual, ongoing threat. And, of course, the racism was always just under the surface, until Barack Obama was elected.

Oh for sure, the right-wing media universe is a huge part of it.

The USA is ghost country, and conservatives are right to be afraid when they don't understand or respect any of the history that haunts the worlds they walk through.

people who won’t even acknowledge that the two original sins of this country’s founding are actually sins, or that they even happened the way they actually did. soul rot and mind detergent

In a recent essay for Compact, Jon Askonas argues convincingly that the conservative project failed because “it didn’t take into account the revolutionary principle of technology, and its intrinsic connection to the telos of sheer profit.” Conservatives, he says, were too obsessed with “left-wing revolutionary politics” and missed the real threat, which was technological change so swift and powerful it fundamentally reordered society, swept tradition aside, and unleashed a moral relativism that rendered the conservative project obsolete.

lol @ the unnameable spectre haunting this paragraphful of jeopardy clues. clicked thru to the compact piece and it quotes marx explicitly, for paragraphs, the ones you'd expect, then just carries on talking about the tradition-liquefying acid of... "technology". not unrelatedly tho it was a pleasure to scroll thru its expensive design.

I took the family out to dinner on Sunday and then they wanted to go to this huge housewares store and I was successful in partitioning to hang back in the car and listen to the football on am radio. Not far from where I parked was this little blue Ford Fiesta parked in the handicap space and on the hatchback window it had these big reflective letter stickers like the ones you might put on a mailbox to put the address stating:

AMERICAN PATRIOT
BORN AND BRED
MAGA REPUBLICAN
GO TRUMP GO

Then it at the bottom it had an NRA and a couple of Marine Corp stickers. Few minutes later this couple of retirement age comes out pushing a shopping cart with some wall hangings. They open up the back seat and put in the stuff and then the guy comes around the side where I can see and he is packing a holster with some type of pistol on his belt. He gets in the passenger seat and then they drive away. Just a normal Sunday out on the town.

When I was 18 I worked the summer in a factory. It was a horrible job and I barely made more than minimum wage but the thing that I remember most about it was how openly antagonistic everyone was. You'd think there would be some class solidarity but nope. People would get on you all the time for dumb shit and they'd always be questioning your work ethic even when you finished all your work early. I remember when someone fucked up an order for the parts and we wound up with literally nothing to do for a week and if you were caught standing around you'd get bitched at for not sweeping the floor for the 27th time. Even if you were in the bathroom for more than a couple minutes someone would accuse you of slacking off. They were also really hostile towards the safety equipment, like I'd get mocked for wearing the gloves and ear protection, or the masks we got when we were working with MEK or other brainkilling chemicals. You should've seen the welder's face, he looked like a piece of Warhammer 40K terrain. As the summer help I'd get a lot of weird verbal abuse too. I remember introducing myself on like the 4th day (nobody talked to me my first few days there) and the guy was like, "nah, you're Willard. You look like a Willard". Admittedly that was kinda funny but everything else was so mean-spirited. Like they took pride in how shitty the job was and (correctly) sussed out that I wasn't really built for it.

Anyway I think of those people whenever I see those morons with the Lets Go Brandon bumper sticker and the "Fu*k your feelings" T-shirt, like all these people care about is their own shit attitude towards life, but they wear it like a badge of honor and just don't want anyone else to have it easier than them. It fucking sucks. I feel like you can pretty accurately determine a person's political affiliation in this country based solely on whether or not they've shown any actual empathy for anyone in a bad situation they're not directly familiar with. Maybe it's always been that way.

well put, Willard

lol

would you mind defining "woke"?

LOL: Briahna Joy Gray BREAKS the brain of Rising guest Bethany Mandel by asking her to define "wokeness" pic.twitter.com/uwRSSH0LaM

— The Vanguard (@vanguard_pod) March 14, 2023

I love that she's worried about it going viral and it's already on Wikipedia:

In March of 2023, Mandel struggled to define the word "woke" while criticizing it in a viral video interview clip.

Also from Wiki:

During her college years, she adopted conservative views after finding that Medicaid and other government welfare programs she had expected to help her after her mother's death were inefficient and ineffective,[11] objecting to the idea that as someone who had grown up in poverty, she had any 'white privilege,'[3] as well as due to the influence of college friends and the writings of Ayn Rand.

So sure, join the political party that has no ideas what to do when it comes to healthcare.

I always hoped people would do the same thing back when "Social Justice Warrior" was used as a pejorative a few years back. "What is a SJW and why is it bad?"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyFrAktXgAAHy7n?format=jpg&name=medium

AfD not just ahead, but 9 points clear in East Germany (excluding Berlin)

Are those polls or election results?

That should be just a poll, I don't think there have been elections recently. The first word translates to "Sunday question," which I think also indicates that this is a poll.

"Next regular elections in Fall 2025"

Yes, sorry, just polling nothing more than that. I think its the first time AfD have topped 20 nationally, but these are some big rises in the east.

No elections upcoming, think the next is Slovakia with Fico now topping polls

Worthwhile chat on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFf4RCtPfBI

Also gets into the point that a lot of rightwing more visible characters at the moment are just whining cranks and low-effort idiots, but there are others out there who might be harder to counter and the usual dunks won’t work

Well the class struggle is not going to be won by dunks, as enjoyable those may be.

the dunks don't work

so far 2023 has been the year the far right have shifted from "raging at cancel culture" to "using cancel culture to push the Overton window as far as possible" and unfortunately it seems to be working.

the dunks don't work

They just make you worse

feels like Spain dodged a bullet today

The question is, did Vox deflate and PP grow because Spain's right is moving away from frothing nationalism, or because PP has gone frothing-nationalist enough to co-opt erstwhile Vox voters?

feels like Spain dodged a bullet today

otm

Looks more like a stalemate than dodging a bullet, and that they could need new elections a few months from now.

Do we still have any ilxors in Spain? I am curious about the success of the various left groupings... From what I understand through things like a wealth tax, free public transport schemes, guaranteed national minimum income etc etc Spain has avoided the inflation/recession double whammy coming soon to the UK. Feels like making a material difference to people's lives might be a pretty good way of keeping the fash at bay, and something more centre left parties across Europe should take note of?

Yes, it's pretty positive. Believe Spanish government also introduced rent controls. Incredible result given unemployment levels.

Vox got less seats however I have seen tweets saying it was because the right has incorporated their program.

I would strongly advise against checking out the comments on youtube reaction videos to Try That In A Small Town

I would strongly advise against checking out the comments on youtube reaction videos to Try That In A Small Town

I would strongly advise against checking out the comments on youtube reaction videos to Try That In A Small Town

I have managed to avoid actually listening to the song.

I would strongly advise against checking out the comments on youtube reaction videos to Try That In A Small Town

*doctor misdiagnosing rheumatoid arthritis* I would strongly advise against checking out the comments on youtube reaction videos to Try That In A Small Town

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/08/22/slovak-opposition-claims-sep-election-will-be-stolen-and-too-many-believe-it/

Looking ahead to Slovakia's election next month, as Fico and SMER are now leading on 24% in latest couple of polls

Not trying to be a dickhead, but as someone who has spent a fair amount of time in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, I don’t think of them as part of the “West” because frankly, they’re not, despite any memberships in the EU or NATO or etc,

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/05/slovak-election-pitches-past-against-future-says-democratic-contender/

More on the election in two weeks, Fico consistently leading in polls for quite a while now

https://www.dw.com/en/german-conservatives-scorned-over-vote-with-far-right-afd/a-66822806

the cordon sanitaire against the AfD continues to weaken

The CDU joined forces with both the AfD and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) to sink the tax on buying real estate in Thuringia from 6.5% to 5%.

Together, the three parties were able to muscle the legislation past the state's minority government of the Left, the Social Democrats and the Greens, which together have only 42 of the parliament's 90 seats.

The CDU's Merz has defended the actions of his colleagues in Thuringia, saying the CDU did not shape policy according to what how other parties would vote. He denied that the CDU had worked with the AfD and said the party's so-called "firewall" against the far-right would be maintained at both state and national levels.

a couple of month's ago Merz was publicly musing on the CDU dropping it's opposition to working with the AfD at municipal level, though he backtracked after criticism.

also, this is from the lead editorial in this weeks Economist:

How should centrist voters and parties respond to the threat from the hard right? The old answer was to erect a cordon sanitaire. Mainstream parties refused to work with the insurgents; mainstream media refused to air their views. That approach may have run out of road; in places it is becoming counter-productive. In Germany the isolation of the afd has reinforced its narrative of being the only alternative to a failed establishment. Mainstream parties cannot pretend for ever not to hear the voice of 20% of voters without eventually corroding democracy.

Meanwhile, there is more evidence that hard-right parties in Europe tend to moderate their views when they have to take responsibility for governing.

Any decision to include a hard-right party in local or national government should be taken with extreme caution, especially in places where a history of fascism arouses acute sensitivity. Some rules of the road may help. One is that to be considered, any party must agree to renounce violence and respect the rule of law. Just as important is the constitutional context: at what level of government should they be included? What are the checks and balances created by the electoral system and other institutions? It may make sense to allow the afd to take part as junior members of local-government coalitions in Germany, for example.

Shocking that the Economist would be first in line for the "don't let's be beastly to the nazis" takes.

remember that other party they said would moderate their views when they got into power?

part whatever in the liberals talking themselves into fascism series

Some rules of the road may help.

chef's kiss

don't you understand, they agreed to renounce violence and respect the rule of law! what could possibly go wrong?

also fuck the Economist forever

You can't take the name Face-Eating Tigers Party literally.