Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

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.

Election taking place tomorrow, SMERs lead looks relatively small. Not that clear which way this might go

Fico/SMER wins as expected (though exit polls got it wrong, polls in the run in were correct)

He'll need to form a coalition, but the votes for it look to be there

Where is this?

Slovakia, election yesterday

Restrictions on L.G.B.T.Q. Depictions Rattle Hungary’s Cultural World

uh oh

Argentina?

seems like it's gonna get weird