Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

I'm fairly certain we're not facing Syria or Venezeula and we're not facing 1938 Europe or 1860 America. Which isn't to say things don't look terribly bleak but it does make sense to put it into some context.

the damage will likely not be so dramatic or immediate, sure. but i have a real feeling of not knowing how far this will go or where it can end

I'm more concerned about the Frank Gaffney / Peter Thiel dream team whispering in his ear than Trump himself. I'm not sure this will be a definitive break from GWB, just a horrible magnification of its worst excesses. And we're still dealing with the fallout from the first time around.

The only positive recently has been Polish women showing that if you withdraw your labour from the market, you can stymie parts of a regressive platform. Six million people going on strike forced the government to shelve even more restrictive abortion laws. That kind of tactic might have a value in the US and UK over the next few years.

The only positive recently has been Polish women showing that if you withdraw your labour from the market, you can stymie parts of a regressive platform. Six million people going on strike forced the government to shelve even more restrictive abortion laws. That kind of tactic might have a value in the US and UK over the next few years.

― Bubba H.O.T.A.P.E (ShariVari), Wednesday, November 9, 2016 2:04 AM (four seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry if people couldn't be arsed to vote in large numbers against Trump why would they care for such tactics? Life in Williamsburg and in Silicon Valley will continue to be pretty great I'm certain.

People did vote in fairly large numbers against Trump, Brexit, PiS, etc, but not large enough to stop them. The common theme with all of them is that they had enough of the public vote to win but (and I think this will be true of Trump as well) a majority of economically active people voted the other way. They have a power over and above their vote. I don't think it will do much to stop the wider economic programme or foreign policy catastrophes but on single issues it might be effective.

if i thought there were techno-puppeteers whispering into trump's ears that would almost make me feel a little better but i don't think he plans to listen to anyone. i hope ppl in nat sec can prevail on him to not withdraw from the world stage, or that if he does that putin at least shows some resistance. annexing south ossetia we can probably live with. all of ukraine? moldova? one thing that concerns/interests me is that it seems like now, maybe more than ever before in history, there is zero moral authority in the world. if i were a dictator or a fascist or i had a neighbor whose land i coveted or an ethnic group that i thought it would be convenient to ethnically cleanse, this seems like the perfect time to do it. who is going to stop you?

not sure we should hope the type of nat sec people who are likely to have his ear see their suggestions prevail

you want to strike a balance but i'd like some guys in there who are maybe like "hey let's not detonate any tactical nukes in the field that seems like a bad idea" or "you know that torture thing didn't work out too great last time maybe let's avoid that one" or "hey let's just reassure japan and the saudis and maybe dissuade them from getting nukes"

wonder how bibi feels right now. probably nervous. bennett is gonna be knocking on his door in a few minutes asking when they can start annexing area C.

Yglesias bad a sad tweet about the difference between trump and brexit is that brexit at least won a majority

I strongly suspect that someone will sit him down over the next few days and remind him how many of his colleagues depend on the military industrial complex for their seats. The projection of American power is unlikely to go anywhere. How that power is expressed is anyone's guess but I suppose I can forget about doing any business with Iran over the next four years.

ARPAIO OUT

http://www.jpost.com/US-Elections/Donald-Trump/Likud-MKs-react-to-Trumps-victory-in-US-Presidential-Election-472088

After congratulating President-elect Donald Trump, and thanking defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her friendship to Israel, Bayit Yehudi chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett said "the era of a Palestinian state is over."

"Trump's victory is an opportunity for Israel to immediately retract the notion of a Palestinian state in the center of the country, which would hurt our security and just cause. This is the position of the President-elect, as written in his platform, and it should be our policy, plain and simple," he wrote.

this wolfgang munchau bit has also been doing the rounds

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwzzYmNXEAAN6M8.jpg

The world's most powerful person who is neither an authoritarian nor a nutjob is, as of this week, Angela Merkel. This is not good news.

yeah that is very sobering.

Huntington in 2004

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw1QafgXgAEI_MG.jpg:large

In the Netherlands Wilders obv gloating about Trump's victory, calling it "another boost in the worldwide patriotic spring". We've elections in March next year. That will be fun :-/

People will fight really hard to hold onto what they have, whatever shitty thing it is.

The Netherlands got overrun by its more powerful neighbor the last time patriotic nationalism got up a big head of steam in Europe.

It's so weird this worldwide international nationalism right I feel like we've barely touched on it but it's obv very real. Is it comparable to Germany Japan and Italy or is this some weird new thing? What do Russian patriots and US patriots and French patriots really have in common? It's really international white supremacism isn't t?

Describing anything this complex as 'just' anything does not feel particularly productive.

Is it comparable to Germany Japan and Italy or is this some weird new thing?

the obvious difference is that this new nationalism seems more concerned with a kind of isolationism, retrenchment, and the like. WW2 Japan, Italy, and Germany were more or less embarking on colonial adventures, no? at the very least the whole "autarky" idea which drove hitler and his ilk is surely a player here but i have seen no desire for expansionism, or securing "lebensraum" or any of that. it would well be that this represents merely an internal momentum that will eventually turn outward but it's hard to say.

i have seen no desire for expansionism, or securing "lebensraum" or any of that.

Russian patriots were mentioned.

failure to integrate restive Muslim populations in Europe is obvious #1 driver, I think. maybe even in US too. there's a strong desire to make this problem "just go away"

not (yet) driven by desire for military adventuring, if anything the opposite

maybe even in US too.

What, all 1% of them?

I thought the US has done an admirable job integrating our Muslim citizens and might have been a model.

(Not to say there were no problems just comparably that the melting pot model might still be resilient)

Possibly because there's so few of them?

i think as this century goes on we're gonna see ever greater pressure put on the distinction (increasingly explicit) between those are afforded the benefits of the security apparatus of the modern nation state and those who will be reduced, essentially, to barbarians at the gate. hope i shuffle off before it gets worse but it will.

Also they seem, from the the perspective of the UK, more middle class. More like the Indian community in the UK. (xp)

on an optimistic note, however, i think we're about to see, in the US at least, a real revival of progressive politics at the grass roots level--trump will have his own version of the tea party to deal with. whether this accelerates the rightward drift or slows it down is impossible to say.

World population predictions suggest you're right.

Re your first point.

yeah, and the "security" idea may be the key to really fleshing out how this differs from the 30s. this is about drawing the ladder up after you.

Possibly because there's so few of them?

also a lot more space, also geographically isolated: when the US pulls some shit in the middle east it is Europe that has to clean up after.

What, all 1% of them?

not saying it's rational, but my sense is that an overwhelming majority of Americans want a complete stop to further Muslim immigration to the US, although can't/won't admit this in public. I think this is a wedge issue

other contributors, specific to US:

* dismay at recent riots, strong desire to keep crime rate low. Fear of a return to early 90s crime rates looms large in the minds of older Americans, especially property owners. yes it's racist
* street-level knowledge of Mexican black-tar heroin distribution rings and frustration at meaningful law enforcement efforts to curb them (think this underreported issue might have swung Ohio and PA)
* frustration with PC witch hunts, desire never to hear word "microaggression" again, don't want to lose job over a stray tweet
* visceral, gut-level hatred of HRC

also—and this is worldwide—a sense that the left no longer has any ideas, and indeed, that what's called the "left" is just a placeholder for centrist, technocratic, ineffective political management

* frustration with PC witch hunts, desire never to hear word "microaggression" again, don't want to lose job over a stray tweet

Think there has been a massive failure with this, it's true - failure to communicate the fact that most/all of us humans still have some level of sexism / racism / prejudice and that it's all of our duty as rational human beings to recognise and deal with that. There has been a tendency to pull out somebody's off-colour remark or bad-taste joke and go after them as "the enemy" - the (silent) reaction of many is going to be that they've said similar things before and are scared they will be next - witch-hunts do not lead to the needed self-questioning, and this needs to be recognised quickly. (Want to be clear that I'm not saying we should in any way compromise with genuine shitbags or give white males special treatment, in case anyone was wondering)

a placeholder for centrist, technocratic, ineffective political management

tbf, as government goes, this is one of the most benign formulations any of us is ever likely to live under. just about anything we exchange this for will be worse.

It's so weird this worldwide international nationalism right I feel like we've barely touched on it but it's obv very real. Is it comparable to Germany Japan and Italy or is this some weird new thing?

Key difference I suppose is that 30s Axis countries didn't have the same historical perspective on 30s Axis countries that we do. Well, duh. Obviously. But seems worth clarifying? Mussolini didn't have to deal with people comparing him to Mussolini, or have to sell himself to people who knew that Mussolini was a bad thing.

What do Russian patriots and US patriots and French patriots really have in common? It's really international white supremacism isn't t?

Well, re: Russia: in a country on a whole other scale to most, several decades of Soviet communism (never really tried before, a historically new thing) flat-out eradicate traditional bourgeois liberalism (its people, its institutions, the very idea itself). Then communism is wiped out, with no concern for what actually gets left over. Leaving what? Nationalism in a weird, purified form.

As to France, well. Assuming the 19th century situation underlies and to some extent determines the 21st century situation. The British Empire was paternalistic towards its subjects. Within that there is at least a route towards a genuinely fraternal relationship later. Compare to the French Empire ...? Going back further into the past of each country, could also compare our patchy, organic, wooly semi-secularism-or-is-it to France's one fell swoop highly abstract and centrally planned secularism (as influences on how things play out today).

I was listening to an interesting interview with someone (possibly Alex Zaitchik) who said that a lot of the Trump supporters he spoke to saw 'political correctness' not as a tool for combating racism but as a shared language used by liberals both to mask their own racism and to exclude anyone who didn't 'get it' from polite society. It's a bad take but probably one that needs to be kept in mind.

Talking about "Russian nationalism" as 'a thing' is close to meaningless. Russia has a number of competing strains of nationalism. The government form does have some fairly traditional links to post-imperial anxiety, defence, declining birthrate, etc, etc, as well as harsh laws against undocumented workers but it's also the default party for millions of Muslim / non-white Russians, has built extremely strong alliances with Muslim power bases, has a Minister of Defence (and possible future leader) from an Asian Buddhist/Animist minority (though he is probably orthodox), has actively courted Jewish business and religious leaders and has good ties with Israel, etc. The capital-letters Russian Nationalism of Zhirinovsky, etc, is much closer to the traditional international far right but there's also a strain of what i interpret as white nationalism / antisemitism in a lot of the 'liberal' opposition to Putin (Navalny, etc) who resent what they see as un-European influences on the country.

What underpins most of the mainstream nationalism (in the anti-free trade, pro-nationalisation, Russia must be strong and independent, keep your nose out of our business, sense) is the complete, nightmarish failure of what was presented as internationalist liberalism in the 90s.

France has always had a vocal minority of people who have been happy to vote for a fascist Le Pen. Would Marine have as much support as she does now without that traditional racist / French exceptionalist strain? No. Would she have less support if France didn't have the same youth unemployment rate as Portugal - with a quarter of young people unable to find a job? Probably not.

It's possibly more interesting to look at the huge success of antisemitic / conspiracy-theorising Catholic revanchism in Poland where, if you look at the data, you'd think the economy has been performing substantially better than almost anywhere in Europe, the previous government was a model of efficiency, etc. One of the things that keeps getting called out is the fact that the rising tide has not lifted all boats - rural areas, low-skilled workers and pensioners have all had to deal with huge increases in the cost of living without seeing many of the benefits of the booming urban zones.

Does that explain Orban? Does it explain the Baltic state rehabilitating their Nazi war criminals? Is centering "whiteness" a mistake in itself given the rise of populist neo-Fascism in India and the Philippines? idk.

Would Marine have as much support as she does now without that traditional racist / French exceptionalist strain? No. Would she have less support if France didn't have the same youth unemployment rate as Portugal - with a quarter of young people unable to find a job? Probably not.

That should have been 'probably', obvs.

also—and this is worldwide—a sense that the left no longer has any ideas

Most of this thread is over my head but maybe the problem isn't that "the left" is out of ideas but that they've already all been rejected or made to seem so fringe-y that everyone has decided to stick with predatory capitalism or whatever system enriches the already powerful and is painted as more "reasonable" than open borders, universal basic income, participatory structures, socialism, etc etc....

the left's place in mainstream politics has been aggressively and systematically co-opted. we saw a little of the friction caused by the left trying to reassert itself with sanders but much more exaggerated and transparent with the reaction to corbyn in the uk.

just rehashing here but the "right wing drift" is in 2 parts, chronic rightward drift of the centre and acute rise of the extreme right as part of the overall reaction to the centre. the sidelining of the left is a big part of the former of course, but when the latter occurs it makes the rightward reaction more obvious and effective because the alternative of the leftward reaction is more obscure and marginalized

The left has tons of ideas! Obamacare, single payer healthcare, free college, affordable college, universal basic income, police accountability, cap and trade, carbon taxes, investments in green energy, bolstering the epa, immigration amnesty, a three pronged approach, pacifist foreign policy, cautious foreign policy, leading from behind... The trumpist right is nearly down on ideas, in fact, they're down to one: Build a wall. But it's a big one. Problem is, the left has no one big idea anymore, instead it's a coalition of small ideas, but too many people treat their idea as the one big idea that should be more important than anything, and then go away and skulk when inevitably that fails to become universally accepted.

lol most that stuff u just listed was pilloried as the crazy rantings of deluded Bernie Bros. who don't know "how government really works"

Yep, and I've also included a lot of clintonist compromise, which was pilloried as selloutism and just as bad as Trump. That's kinda my point.

xp Yes that was my point above. Those are sound ideas afaict but have been pushed into the margins and discredited by...whomever could be said to control the space of discourse. Traditional media? Right and center-right electeds and Koch-funded interest groups masquerading as policy makers? Idk.