As expected, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally came out on top in the first round of French elections yesterday, solidifying the country’s move to the right after the European vote earlier in the month.
The EU’s three largest countries by population and three largest economies – France, Germany, and Italy – are now all led by far right parties or on that path.
In France, Macron should get a thank you card for helping to make the National Rally’s victory possible:
France is a gruesome case study in how centrists acted as the handmaidens of the far right.
Under Macron, France became a cauldron of disillusionment which the far right fed off.
The centrists relentlessly focused on demonising the left. Behold the consequences. https://t.co/OjpjJJTzEv
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) June 30, 2024
The story is the same across much of the EU as the centrists – as they call themselves – continue to dismiss working class voter concerns, pursue disastrous economic confrontations, and now appear prepared to plunge the bloc back into austerity in the coming months.
While the Davos crowd that runs the EU is still expressing widespread disapproval of voters’ choices following the recent European elections, and no doubt there will be more after the vote in France, they keep doing their best to empower the far right [1] with their choices of policy.
The effort to explain away the increasingly rightward shift of the European electorate typically blames the voters. Take your pick: media explanations range from lumping populism in with fascism to blaming the Covid lock downs(!), but they all strike the same note that it is not the people in power that need to change; it is the fact that the voters are dangerous.
Dismissing Economic Concerns
The media seems to be latching onto the fact that a larger share of younger voters swung right. And their explanations are variations of the same: they brush off economic concerns and emphasize the role of new media like TikTok, Twitter X, Youtube, etc.
Reuters declares, “With the leaders of Europe’s often upstart ethno-nationalist, anti-establishment movements mastering new social media better than their mainstream counterparts, they are earning cachet as a subversive counterculture among some young people.”
CNN gets bonus points for the now-common misuse of the term populism while also running through a range of economic concerns of younger voters only to brush them aside as the result of short attention spans and the failure to grasp the larger picture:
After her center-right bloc secured the most seats in the European Parliament, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen took to the stage in Brussels to give a victory speech. But her tone was more somber than victorious. She spoke of the importance of defending European values: integration, democracy and the rule of law.
How do these abstract values sound to young voters?
“Young people will double check, does that help me with any of my needs? Does it entertain me? Does it give me security? Is it fun? And if it’s none of that, it’s boring,” said Schnetzer. “If you have this TikTok logic, you’ll quickly swipe further.”
And CNN adds in a reminder of just how silly voters are for expecting anything to change:
Out of office, the far right is unable to break promises, while it can point endlessly to the mainstream’s inability to deliver. Once in government, it will prove just as disappointing.
Ignoring the people’s concerns is really the responsible course of action, they tell us.
Take Politico’s “Europe’s ‘foreigners out!’ generation: Why young people vote far right.” And the deck: “Their grandparents ushered in the sexual revolution. Today’s youth want to turn back the clock to 1950.”
In it, the reporters explain that the increasing number of young voters voting right is largely due to immigration backlash, but it’s not that simple. It’s also that the information they receive about the immigration debate is tainted by the nefarious influence of TikTok, and there’s the unexplained assertion that younger voters swung right partly due to “the isolation many youths suffered during the COVID lockdown years.” [2]
On voters’ concerns over economic policy, Politico explains that they are simply wrong:
In many ways, the surge in youth support is disconnected from reality. After hitting a high of more than 10 percent in October 2022, Europe’s inflation rate is now back down to 2 percent. The same goes for unemployment which, at 6 percent on average across the EU according to Eurostat, is far below the 12.2 percent average joblessness rate reached in 2013.
In other words, on the economy, migration and the effects of the pandemic, Europe has already weathered the worst of the storm.
In other words, nothing needs to change – well, almost nothing. If there’s one item on the to-do list, it looks to be that more censorship is needed as the blame for voters voting the way they did is being laid at the feet of social media companies like X and TikTok.
It seems odd to brush aside economic concerns in an EU that is dealing with an ongoing energy crisis, deindustrialization, and declining real wages. The European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 45 million European workers, recently found that real wages slid by 0.7% in 2023, after dropping by 4.3% in 2022. Those 2023 numbers include falls of 2.6% in Italy (currently led by the far right), 0.9% in Germany (far right gaining ground), and 0.6% in France (far right on the cusp of power).
And yet the elite conventional wisdom, represented by Politico declaring Europe has weathered the storm, is that this is all no longer a concern.
More Austerity on the Way
Another sign that the EU elite has learned nothing is that it plans a return to austerity starting in six months. Should it stick to that plan, it will force member states to start cutting spending under already-difficult conditions. There’s also the fact that there is a wealth of evidence that increased austerity leads to a larger vote share for “extremist” parties. You can go back as far as the 1930s to see the results.
A 2021 study published in the Journal of Economic History showed that voting data from a thousand districts and a hundred cities for four elections between 1930 and 1933 showed that areas more affected by austerity had more support for the Nazi Party. More recent research from May shows that 1930-32 “austerity shocks reduced German GDP by more than four percent and caused an increase in unemployment by almost two million, paving the way for the success of extremist parties.”
For something a little more recent, we have a 2023 paper, The Political Costs of Austerity, published in The Review of Economics and Statistics. It is authored by Ricardo Duque Gabriel from the National Bureau of Economic Research, Mathias Klein from the research division of Sveriges Riksbank, and Ana Sofia Pessoa from the University of Bonn’s Department of Economics.
In it the authors review more than 200 elections in several European countries, providing evidence of the political consequences of fiscal consolidations. The main takeaway is the following:
Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters’ support for extreme parties by showing that austerity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages. Austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment.
Austerity will worsen economies that are already on life support in many areas of the EU. The decision to force countries to cut spending comes despite the main driver of increased government expenditures over the past two years being the need to deal with the energy crisis brought about by the elites’ decision to wage war against Russia. As the authors point out, “Austerity leads to a significant fall in regional output, employment, investment, durable consumption, and wages.”
Shockingly, voters react angrily to the willful destruction of their standards of living:
…people’s trust in the government deteriorates much more strongly during austerity recessions compared to non-austerity recessions. This might point toward a “doom loop” between distrust in the political system and more extreme voting following fiscal consolidations. In sum, austerity-driven recessions are special in the sense that they considerably amplify the political costs of economic downturns by creating more distrust in the political environment.
…in recessions coinciding with fiscal consolidations, a reduction in regional government spending implies a larger increase in extreme voting compared to lowering public spending in non-austerity recessions. These results suggest that austerity recessions are special in the sense that they considerably amplify the political costs of economic downturns.
The fact that the EU is granting a minimal amount of wiggle room on austerity requirements set to go into effect in 2025 might be an acknowledgment of this data.
For example, the new agreement stipulates that countries with a deficit above 3% of GDP are required to halve this to 1.5% but can do so during periods of growth. That growth might quickly evaporate with such a public spending pullback, but that’s the plan. Elsewhere, countries will still be required to reduce their debt on average by 1% per year if it is above 90% of GDP, and by 0.5% per year on average if the debt is between 60% and 90% of GDP. The new rules give countries seven years to get their spending in order, up from four previously.
And yet, these minor attempts to make the pain more palatable are unlikely to impress voters who will still see a reduction in quality in life. In some cases, it could be even worse than the Euro Crisis:
Too meet reformed EU fiscal rules, Italy and France would have to go for fiscal consolidations over 2025-2028 that are larger than during the Euro Crisis (2011-2014). Spain has to do about half.
Do we properly remember the effects and political debates of €zone austerity? pic.twitter.com/Rmuz8jfkTJ
— Philipp Heimberger (@heimbergecon) June 21, 2024
The “Doom Loop”
The great question is where will voters turn when austerity returns? The Political Costs of Austerity offers a somber possibility:
Our results show that fiscal consolidations are associated with significant political costs: a 1% reduction in regional public spending leads to an increase in extreme parties’ vote share of around 3 percentage points. The higher vote share captured by extreme parties coincides with a fall in voter turnout together with an increase in the total votes for these parties. Thus, in response to fiscal consolidations, fewer people vote and those who do, exhibit a higher tendency to vote for extreme parties.
This “doom loop” appears to be what is taking hold in Italy – which has been dealing with current EU-wide trends of austerity and declining living standards for decades. It is abundantly clear in recent votes empowering Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party. The number of Italians who have effectively given up on the system (51.66 percent) and chose not to vote in the recent EU election trounced those that support Meloni who got 13.89 percent of eligible voters. And it wasn’t just that it was an EU election; Italy’s voter turnout has been dropping in national elections for decades and hit a post-WWII low of 64 percent in the 2022 election that brought the FdI to power. And unlike parties elsewhere in Europe who were recently punished in the European elections over two years of a sanctions and energy policy that has hurt European workers, FdI came away in the top spot nationally.
France and Germany just saw very high turnouts, but how will voters respond if, as CNN claims, they are destined to be disappointed? Will it look like Italy where FdI’s success largely revolves around lower turnout and the successful blaming of – not the economic sanctions against Russia, not a disastrous energy policy, not the decades-long adherence to fiscal rules, not the decades of market-friendly reforms, not the decades of wage suppression strategy, not the decades of pursuit of more “flexible” labor – immigration for Italy’s problems.
Similar arguments are everywhere across Europe nowadays because it would be difficult for the Davos crowd to create an atmosphere more suitable for the rise of the right if it tried. They push an artificial scarcity of resources while immigration increases making it easy for the right to argue that those dwindling resources should be reserved for the native population and taken away from the immigrants.
So while some point to the increase in immigration:
Remarkable chart, within just a decade net migration into Germany has been 6 Million people. That’s more or less Berlin and Munich combined. Is it sustainable? pic.twitter.com/s8JZAZ8dVx
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) June 27, 2024
What gets far less attention is that the EU’s own polling of bloc citizens shows that nearly 80 percent favor stronger social policies and more social spending.
CNN’s above prediction that the right will be unable to deliver any meaningful economic benefits to voters would appear to be accurate as even those on the right who would want to do so are constrained by the EU’s “tools.” Does that necessarily mean they will be voted out of power and Europe will see a return towards the center? Not necessarily. As The Political Costs of Austerity points out, it’s just as likely that the doom loop takes over, voters increasingly give up, and parties on the right redirect frustration with plummeting living standards towards other targets, such as immigrants (as Meloni has done) or other perceived enemies like, say, Russia.
So while much was made about the fact the “center held” in the most recent EU elections, the trend is clear – and one that is likely to only be sped up by more austerity.
So why is the EU’s ruling center seemingly doing all it can to help these forces on the right?
Are they oblivious to these concerns or do they simply dismiss warnings that conflict with their dogma? Is it hubris? Does the von der Leyen crowd think they can control the far right as they have done with Meloni and are attempting to do now with Le Pen?
A scarier thought is that the center welcomes alliances with the far right as long they’re the center’s kind of far right (i.e., pro-EU, pro-NATO, and anti-Russia + China). The responsible center can continue with its pet projects of war against Russia, censorship, and neoliberalism while the far right blames immigrants for the results of the former’s policies (66 percent of the EU working class feel their quality of life is getting worse).
Either way, the coming rounds of austerity should be clarifying if the EU doesn’t break in the meantime. Will governments like Meloni’s or the National Rally in France be punished if they enact harsh economic plans? Or will the doom loop only become stronger?
Notes
[1] Among the parties and candidates under that far right umbrella term, there are many differences – on Ukraine policy, for example, or the fact that some have softened their stance towards the EU and NATO while others remain “sovereignists.” The one trait they have in common, however, is that they are outside the respectable “center.”
[2] The Politico piece does later say the following:
Another oft-cited factor: COVID and the lockdowns that confined youths at a time when many were due to leave their homes to start university. The lockdown orders that were handed down by leaders across Europe within a few weeks in 2020 helped cement the idea that political elites were high-handed and insulated from the effects of their policies. Such grievances are deeply entrenched among right-wing voters in many European countries.
The assertion that these “grievances are deeply entrenched among right-wing voters” doesn’t explain why 2020 lockdowns swung 2024 voters to the right, however.
Neoliberalism is the actual road to serfdom.
Centrists the world over wod rather have Addie H and friends than risk a billionaire feeling sad.
yes, I am certain the UK’s imminent Starmer Government will
– facilitate Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC),
– assist climate racketeers,
– enable health tyranny (Disease ‘X’, more dangerous untested mRNA vaccination, expedite the WHO’s pandemic treaty in the NHS, etc.),
– deploy a war on food and enable edible insects for the Many by discharging poultry culls, introducing a fart and burp tax on cows and making staple items become luxuries.
EU/UK Atlanticist centrists are building a road to wigan pier and serfdom
What is going on in Europe is an insanity loop. Look at the new EU “leaders”. VDL full of scandals, Kallas an anti Russian hawk full of insane proclamations about dismantling Russia as the top diplomat and the Portuguese guy also investigated for scandals.
These ppl are completely divorced from reality.
At the same time Europeans are facing an unprecedented cost of living crisis, a mass migration that threatens to irrevocably change their societies and a woke agenda that most ppl find hideous.
Le Pen , Starmer will be no different from Rishi or Macron. Le Pen might throw in some violence. Starmer will raise throw in some minor tax break but nothing significant to rock the big my money boat. Can anyone in west do a tech crackdown or cut down billionaires like Xi ?.
I think you’re right on the violence. MLP even said last week that she expects it. For the cops and the gendarmes, it’s going to be open bar. They will get anything they ask for and have virtual impunity in the use of force. That’s probably the biggest reason for which I will never, ever vote for these brownshirts.
Fun times in the European Hegemony next year. Not only is there a demand that every country pay their full 2% contribution to the NATO budget but there is talk of doubling it to 4%. And then there is the pressure on each country on top of that to militarize and take money from social spending to pay for it. Add in the 40 billion Euros that the EU wants to send to the Ukraine each and every year, then the budgets of the individual EU countries is going to be crunched. So now as a solution to all these financial pressures, the EU want to bring in austerity because they reckon things are not bad enough. Even the financial gurus of the IMF have said that this is a real bad idea. And when Mark Blyth wrote a book about austerity, he named it “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea”-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Dangerous_Idea
Austerity can only work when most of the citizens have a basic trust in the institutions and people who man/woman the system. People across the West increasingly do not trust the the System therefore austerity cannot work despite the mainstream media’s complete support of the neo-liberal/conservative war agenda.
So, to sum up, the “centrists” are the actual far right when it comes to economics. That other far right is so because the new Hitler may be lurking in their ranks.
Will WW2 ever be over? Just asking. We seem to be getting a thousand year Reich of bad thinking. Hitler down in Hades must be pleased and especially his pal Goebbels.
Today’s far-right in Western countries is not even close to the 1930s fascist movements. Rather their project is to resurrect crumbling social-bonds with a sense of purpose that does not include perpetual war for perpetual peace. The right is taking over the natural left position (can anyone remember when the left and center-left believed in peace and diplomacy and not “full-spectrum dominance of the US led Empire). Yes, there is a part of the right-wingers who wave flags but not for war but for a return to traditions, to the centrality of the family and so on.
The far right may appear not to be like the fascist movements of the 1930’s but underneath most of their members believe in the ideas and ideals of 1930’s fascist movements. Hitler gave people full employment (a the same time as banning Trade Unions, etc.
The problem is that the modern “centrist’ parties have extreme right wing economic policies.
Well said. To add: Fascists, by definition, reject liberal democracy and parliamentarianism, which makes these constant references to 20th-century Fascism tedious and facile. To my knowledge, none of these “fascist” European parties call for the abolition of their parliaments. Meanwhile, how exactly did Kallas get her current post? How democratic was that?
Yes, a fascist might camouflage themselves (or not!) prior to electoral success, but Right Wing is not a priori a fascist-in-waiting. Please.
As you say, the right is taking moral high ground that the left abandoned. It’s astounding to see German Greens all-in on war, while the AFD advocates peace. No wonder the right is ascendant. As a lefty, I don’t know who I’d even vote for in Europe these days.
The Greens aren’t “the left”. Just like the US Democrats aren’t “the left”. Their policies make this clear.
The actual left is about concrete material benefits for the working class, solidarity among workers worldwide, pro-diplomacy and anti-war, among other policies.
In Germany, BSW is much more representative of the left.
One fact that I have been watching for some many years now is that the younger generations aren’t, apparently, willing to take certain kinds of jobs that are then taken by migrants. Yet it is unclear to me what is really going on. Many technical professions: electricians, HVAC installers, home repairs and refurbishments, and others like, for instance veterinarians willing to take jobs in clinics with emergency services (meaning working at any time), jobs on fisheries and possibly in many agricultural jobs. There are possibly several more professions which I ignore. These are now practised by very seasoned people for which generational replacement is seen. If there is replacement it is done by migrants.
Some talk about the newest generations as the “crystal” generations that have been accustomed by their families to have all their necessities well served and who aren’t willing to take jobs which are physically hard, require manual abilities… But one can also say the contrary: that because this jobs have been taken by migrants (suggesting labour conditions which can be unsafe, unsecure, lowering wages etc) this has crowded out the locals. Possibly both narratives have some truth to them, but IMO large migrations have almost certainly have such crowding out effect.
First, a few quibbles: The cumulative immigration bar graph from the Financial Times is chart-junk. It should be a regular bar chart that allows us to read the numbers easily. Un-aligned bars are misaligned information. That said, the six million immigrants to Germany do make Germany an outlier.
I’m also going to quibble here (sorry, Conor): “Will it look like Italy where FdI’s success largely revolves around lower turnout and the successful blaming of – not the economic sanctions against Russia, not a disastrous energy policy, not the decades-long adherence to fiscal rules, not the decades of market-friendly reforms, not the decades of wage suppression strategy, not the decades of pursuit of more “flexible” labor – immigration for Italy’s problems?”
The Italians in fact aren’t buying it. The European elections went something like 10 percent Five Stars, 7 percent Sinistra Italian / Verdi, and 28 percent feckless Partito Democratico: That’s still roughly 45 percent for parties that politically stand well to the left of U.S. Democrats.
The Italian center consists of mush like Noi Moderati and Forza Italia. I have lately come to the realization that Forza Italia is Hillary Clinton’s natural home in Italy, even with its worship of the phantasm of Silvio Berlusconi and other preoccupations of the Big Bourgeoisie.
The hard right in Italy is now the Lega of Salvini, who is throwing red meat to his constituency and congratulations to Le Pen and Bardella. Yet the Lega gets whiffy in Italy with its snobbery toward the South (not just immigants). Yet many in the Lega insist that they are antifascists and wouldn’t vote for the dotty General Vannacci.
The Fratelli d’Italia have embarrassed themselves repeatedly on immigration — everything from trotting out “ethnic substitution” to shrugging their shoulders at images of drowned migrants washing up on beaches as the locals rush down to try to rescue them.
Italy is a peculiar place. (Heck, that’s why I am here in the truly peculiar Undisclosed Region.)
What worries me is that the Italians are desperate for some leverage. Meloni (yep, Giorgia) made noises about not approving La Ursula. Kaja Kallas is getting bad reviews for her foam-at-the-mouth Russian hatred. Yet the EU decisionmakers ignored Meloni.
Italians are still heading off to London to make the Big Pounds. For the Germans, French, and English, Italy is still the land of cheap labor. And one goes there on vacation to eat oddities like lardo and maritozzi.
Italians are already pre-pissed about the imposition of new austerity: It is very much in news and commentary. And it will not end well—which doesn’t necessarily mean Roman salutes at the Quirinale.
Thanks for the insight, DJG.
“Success” might have been too strong to describe FdI in the recent elections, yet it was still striking to see them come out on top all things considered. It seems they do have a solid base of support. From the polling data I’ve seen, “don’t know” and “wouldn’t vote” are Italians top choices on issues like the economy and immigration while the FdI come in second. Should more austerity be on the way, I suspect that could change, but of those other existing parties, who’s prepared to stand up to Brussels? I imagine any “success” from FdI relies on that belief that little can or will change
Conor: “Success” is how Fratelli d’Italia saw it. The fact that Forza Italia (cargo cult of the Big Bourgeoisie and purveyor of bunga-bunga) survived and added votes was considered a success, too. But is Italy swinging to the “far right”?
I’m not so sure. Fratelli d’Italia also is a coalition. Of people who think that they are creating the Italian Tories, of people who are opportunists and blabberers (Lollobrigida, Sangiuliano, Donzelli), and some genuine crackpot rightists: Ignazio Benito La Russa.
You are undoubtedly following the Fanpage scandal of FDI Youth meetings and the shenanigans and antisemitism. Embarrassing for the party of Law and Order, when the giovanotti start acting like it’s a meeting at CasaPound, eh?
But that doesn’t transfer to a rightist takeover of the Italian state. Italians are polite and differential (especially here in Piedmont, where we are falsi ma cortesi, ne). But Italians aren’t docile.
I may be singing a different tune by September. All opinions are temporary, eh.
What may cause a twist in the plot: And as one of the few writers in the Anglosphere who understands Italian politics and culture thoroughly, you likely are tracking:
—il premierato (elected premier, the constitutional disaster foretold)
—autonomia differenziata. Crackpot scheme on stilts.
—wrecking of the health-care system
—the gradual yet continuing understanding that the EU, imposed austerity, and the “Thrifty North” have caused Italian wages to stagnate for some thirty years.
So: I was quibbling.
Some clarification regarding the french first vote.
RN has got 39 seats already due to candidates getting more than 50% of their votes. It needs 289 seats to have a majority. There will be a concerted effort by all the other parties to stop it getting the required further 250 seats. However this election shows a deep rural versus urban split. RN is leading in a further 258 rural seats. If it keeps those leads it will get a majority because rural France , including small towns, is fed up of the policies of the urban elite. Its an anti-Paris movement on steroids, personified by the loathing of the arrogant peacock Macron. Hence the left being strong in Brittany and the west coast areas.
RN may of course fail to get their 250 seats in round two, and that will plunge France into even more of a mess than usual. Macron will be lent on to resign , but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’ve commented on the French elections on the Links page, so I won’t repeat myself here. I’d just say, once more, that there’s a critical distinction between some kind of move by the voters “to the Right” by traditional reckoning, and a move towards increased support of parties who are coded as “of the extreme Right” by their enemies, who control the current political and media system. What we’re seeing, in every country I’m aware of, is essentially the second.
People are voting for the “extreme Right” parties because they are the only ones not part of “the system,” and not sharing the blame for the current state of affairs. This didn’t used to be so, when disaffected votes from the working class often went to the Communists, and to an extent the Socialists. All that’s gone now. And since comparisons with Germany in 1933 are being dragged out yet one more time, recall that if there was a protest vote in favour of the Nazis, there was also one in favour of the Communists, who increased their share of the vote between July and November 1932, partly at the expense of the Nazis, who lost substantial numbers of supporters. Indeed, if you include some of the minor parties, more than 50% of the votes in the two elections went to parties outside “the system.”
So the answer is not to tell millions of voters they are fasc*sts: it’s to give them a reason to vote for you.
Regarding that dynamic, I see this passage at the end of Conor’s piece as significant:
“A scarier thought is that the center welcomes alliances with the far right as long they’re the center’s kind of far right (i.e., pro-EU, pro-NATO, and anti-Russia + China). The responsible center can continue with its pet projects of war against Russia, censorship, and neoliberalism while the far right blames immigrants for the results of the former’s policies (66 percent of the EU working class feel their quality of life is getting worse).”
This is certainly what I see happening in the US. The Democrat’s deal with Mike Johnson, who is about as “far right” as you can get on many issues, is that they’ll accept his social conservatism, immigrant bashing, Christian Zionism, etc. in return for his support for War Party foreign policy. He’s “the center’s kind of far right,” if you will. Most Republicans are; they are fine with the neoliberal economic project, and in fact they help it along by directing all the resentment among their constituents toward immigrants, Big Government, and an amorphous “globalism” to which their economic policies actually contribute. And most strongly support our various military adventures and all the money that comes with it. It’s a nice scam. Meanwhile, the “left” is politically powerless here, as are the few authentic “libertarians” that actually oppose our foreign policy. The goal of the Establishment “center” is to marginalize and minimize those “extremist” forces and absorb everyone else.
Though the real impact of immigration is not the same here as in Europe, its ideological scapegoating value is the same.
I think the Center/Right partnership is always to some degree in play. Keeping the (materialist) Left out of play is part of what makes it work. Both groups benefit from inequality by securing money from the wealthy to continue to wield and hold power. Their differences might be deeply held or at least have all the appearance of being deeply held but ultimately they’re happy to be servants to the wealthy. And they can be bought so cheaply!
This era of prolonged crisis which is really in some ways 50 (maybe 60) years old by now is just the slow grinding down of those small wins that normal people have been able to secure: the New Deal reforms, strong active unions, etc. Once the true political left- the one that wants to give some semblance of decency to the poors- is routed there’s no further REAL contention to be had between these two groups, which is why they devolve into *pure* Kayfabe and spectacle.
Naturally, this is also a time where a new (materialist) left can emerge, taking some from the past but ultimately finding a way to refresh itself. Any progress on this front needs to be choked out and the “Center” and “Far” Right are always happy to do it. Fascism is, to some degree, the result of this process.
“People are voting for the “extreme Right” parties because they are the only ones not part of “the system,”
Do YOU believe that?
It’s not a crazy thought. That is why Trump won in 2016 and why the “radical left” wing party Syriza won in Greece in 2015.
I do.
In Germany, for example, Sahra Wagenknecht’s party on the left sprung from nothing on the basis of disaffection on the left.
The corporate center attacks the left, leaving the right as the only alternative. Arguably, neoliberal co-opted ‘democracies’ that turn to austerity are more like a transitional form on the path to a more authoritarian corporatism familiar from various fascist regimes. Certainly the corporate owners must spend a lot less to control a handful of leaders rather than 2 or more parties full of politicians.
This is always a truism but more important for campaigns to heed. I’m not sure how Macron voters will break. The modern French left has had trouble attracting non-white voters for a few reasons, partially because Hollande was a neoliberal putting the left put of reach of being viable and conservative Imans, but my gut is the short term strategy is to get those votes and Macron’s voters who loathe the National Front. The old SDs already collapsed leaving the Communists as the power that be, so all that still has to be worked out.
Then there is the eff off Macron crowd. They may not be as loyal to Le Pen as they wanted to defeat Macron.
The modern French left has had trouble attracting non-white voters for a few reasons, partially because Hollande was a neoliberal putting the left put of reach of being viable
My understanding is that the divorce between the left and “non-white voters” was already consummated in the 1990s.
During the 1980s, the French population of non-European origin organized large demos and actions to denounce racism, the economic and social discrimination it was subject to, and being ignored by politicians.
The socialist party was pissed off that a large social movement had sprung outside its purview, and was interested in recuperating its energy to further its own electoral objectives, and so it hijacked the movement — which then petered out. That part of the population then remained durably distrustful of politics, mired in absentionism and with giant riots as an outlet for pent-up frustration.
I’ve known many Communists who have told me the story of what happened in Germany. 1931 the German Communist Party had a million members under arms. Stalin told them to join with the Nazi party in a common front. About one million members left the party in a year or two.
Stalin had just done the same tactic in China, directing the Communist Party to back Chiang kai Shek — who turned on them in the Shanghai massacre in 1928.
Stalin feared that any non-Russian Communist Party would take the world Communist leadership. The parallel with today is the US fear that any “real” left party would shift support away from the US-backed centrist neoliberal parties. So as the above article says, voters simply want to bring down “the establishment,” as British voters did with Brexit.
And in the US/UK: since the traditional left has failed and/or been suppressed, destroyed, and the “centrist” liberal class is aligned with the right-wing authoritarians, there is nowhere to turn. There is no way to vote against the interests of the oligarchy. Besides, SCOTUS says that unlimited political bribery is legal and gifts for political favors are acceptable. Democracy Inc. the best money can buy!
I’ve been following this somewhat under-the-radar story of the CDK software cyberattack and how it has crippled car dealerships across the country. I keep seeing Nassim Taleb’s books on fragility and systems in my mind.
I Can’t get Paid
So CDK apparently got bought out by a PE firm some years ago. They’ve apparently taken over all the IT systems for these dealers and put them “in the cloud.” Of course, they’ve also sunk their filthy meathooks into all the data from those dealerships, including probably what you paid for that Buick, your race, gender, ZIP code, etc.
Which they then sell off to the highest bidder.
I’ve posted the question on my social networks as to whether anyone knows if CDK even bothered to hire a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) and the best answer I got was that they’ve lawyered up and refuse to disclose.
(Yesterday was the end of the quarter and the month, so sales people aren’t getting paid for their commissions, and sales didn’t happen, and some poor guy who just drives a car taking parts to dealerships can’t even get paid because CDK wet the bed and designed such a shoddy system that it put all the eggs in one basket. Too bad there isn’t the equivalent of legal malpractice in the software engineering industry.)
So now the lawyers are circling, I hope the class action suits fly, this is another example of how PE ruins everything it touches.
Arghh, my above comment was meant for the 7-1-24 links, not this thread. Sorry for any thread derailment. Carry on with on-topic discussions and moderators feel free to delete. Tell me why, I hate Mondays?
And thus do Jonathan Hopkin’s Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies and Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea combine as prophetic where the future of the neoliberal straight jacket that is the EU is concerned (the inevitable structural failures of which were described in William Mitchell’s Eurozone Dystopia: Groupthink and Denial on a Grand Scale).
I have been engaged in a running battle with David McWilliams on his Patreon page concerning what I consider to be the inevitable political unpleasantness that will result from the serial failure (refusal?) of the ruling centrist parties in Europe to provide their citizenry with concrete material benefits now for decades. He along with the rest of the “centrist Dads” are going to reap what they have sown …
the euro is simply a paper gold standard. throw in free trade, and you got germany in 1930. the real far right are the neo-liberals.
who were more than happy to throw their countries onto the bonfires of free trade economics, that benefited a tiny few, to the detriment of the many.
really the vat tax to try to pay for free trade, was a massive austerity burden on the many already.
i doubt the neo-liberals fear the right, what they fear is the real left.
but like last time. the far right will not respect the neo-liberals feverish ferocious appetite for profits above all other considerations.
so in the end, the dovos crowd may well end up being the dog, and not the tail.
Can anyone other than Owen Jones really believe that centrists are “relentlessly focussed on demonising the left”? Presumably, to his mind, the MSM’s relentless focus on the evils of the “hard right”, “far right” and “extreme right” – which sometimes seems to encompass anyone to the right of the late Jiang Qing – is just objective fair comment.
This depends on who you are referring to by “the left.” Have they demonized Jeremy Corbyn? Bernie Sanders back in 2016 when he was advocating Medicare for all? Julian Assange? Anti-Zionist protesters on college campuses? People like Glenn Greenwald Matt Taibi, Aaron Mate, Max Blumenthal, etc. who raise any questions whatsoever about censorship or the actual history of the war in Ukraine?
They also demonize the “far right,” of course, which serves as the bogeyman legitimation for censorship and also helps with the demonization of authentic leftists who oppose our foreign policy as “Putin puppets,” enablers of “authoritarianism,” “red-brown useful idiots,” and so on. As Conor points out, the “Center” demonizes both “extremes” if they challenge their status quo agenda.
Of course it doesn’t help when those on the “right” characterize liberal “centrists” like Biden or Hillary Clinton as “the left.” Or rather, it *does* help – with the ideological obfuscation and divide-and-rule strategies of the “centrist” Establishment.
It’s certainly true in the USA.
We recently had a candidate pushing for cheaper medical, more equal distribution of wealth, less predatory capitalism among other things, and that candidate is/was despised by the “centrists” who in my own reality are to the right of reagan era republicans. A centrist bailed out the banksters, protecting them from the effects of their misdeeds, cemented a broken health care system that is not about health care, but rather industry profit, among many other things.
None of those topics are currently in the political discourse in the USA, and if you bring them up you are labelled a trump supporter, so…
maybe different in europe, but I doubt it.
Well, granted the opinions of Owen “No Beards” Jones can be taken with a grain of salt, I don’t think the well documented shenanigans of the “center,” or whatever, to keep the levers of power out of the hands of the left can be do easily dismissed.
When it comes to France (which is the immediate reason of the renewed soul-searching about the electoral successes of the far-right), there is indeed ample evidence that the MSM have
1) systematically demonized left-wing parties and their programmes (especially from the “France Insoumise”): intolerant of European values, economically unrealistic, culturally disconnected from the population, furiously anti-semitic (the big argument since October 2023)…
2) devoted a large part of its reporting to the RN/FN, while showing a surprisingly considerate treatment of its programme, understanding for the worries of its voters (going astray with their vote, but nevertheless), suggesting that Marine Le Pen & co will actually tone down their rethoric and moderate their policies if they ever come to power, etc.
In other words, left-wing politicians are presented as wild, dangerous extremists, while the current avatar of the extreme-right are handled are spared the worst criticisms and given ample “show-time” in the MSM.
If you read French, the site acrimed.org provides detailed reviews of how the French MSM handle a variety of topics, especially French politics.
I suppose it depends how you define MSM, but sites like Le Monde and Libération, radio stations like France Inter and France Culture, all MSM expressions of the ruling groupthink of the PMC, have become unfrequentable in recent months because of their anti-RN hysteria, and now they seem to be having nervous breakdowns because the End of the World is approaching. It’s not just that the RN are fa*cists, it’s that they diss Brussels, are a little less bloodthirsty about Ukraine, and not anti-Chinese enough, among other things. Unlike large sections of the Left, they are actually outside (if only slightly) mainstream opinion on a number of issues.
Some of the French media have actually troubled to read RN documents, interview leaders and talk to supporters, and that is bound to produce a “less unfavourable” image than that vehiculed by the PMC’s favourite media. Others have featured the work of sociologists and others who have looked at the actual social and economic basis of RN support. If your standard is demonisation, then by definition any of these activities can be construed as normalisation.
They are also critical of the Left (if that’s the word I’m looking for) and Mélenchon has come in for quite a bit of criticism, much of which, frankly, is justified. But at the end of the day, he and most of the NFP are insiders (Mélenchon was a Minister under Mitterrand) whereas the RN are outsiders. The difference is shown by the speed with which the NFP and the Macronites agreed to support each other in the second round, and the tears of relief shed by the MSM that the end of the world might after all be averted.
Thesis
Antithesis
Synthesis.
A project to prepare the mob for a new order, sorry, New World Order.
If only the media ould tell us what is happening …. !!!
Luckily, the ‘Great Reset’ is actually about to be taken over by an even greater natural series of disasters. Keep an eye on the Sun. Our Lord will become Our Lady, again. We have time to order our affairs, or we can rely on ‘our betters’.
Hopefully, the mob will trust ‘those they elect’!
A shout out to MMT on austerity. It makes the (obviously correct) point that fiat governments create money. As well, that money is not a commodity, eg, gold and therefore not scarce, precious, or something that needs to be guarded in a treasury. In fact it cannot be because it is nothing more than an entries on a ledger, ie, in limitless supply (in principle) and costing nothing. The only thing a ledger requires is balance and there is the rub – the essential doom loop.
Austerity’s mantra is to cut spending and taxes and if taxes more than spending to balance the ledger by converting excess spending to savings (as government bonds), ie, to increase wealth inequality and therefore settling power into the hands of an ever smaller oligarchy.
A just economy requires the opposite – increased spending for public purpose and increased taxes to ensure it does not accumulate to the wealthy, ie, a vibrant (and democratic?) commonwealth.
Austerity is a determined and relentless project for control – perhaps, in Europe, because memories of the established ‘Order’ are long or perhaps something more sinister? Ultimately though it is something we have lost awareness of – a class war that is being waged against the citizens of Europe.
That today, the torch is being thrown to the right is testimony to Marx, that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy and then as farce”.
Excellent!
And it’s the labor and/or product that has the “value”?
Of course, anyone should be required to unravel whether ‘value’ derives from labour, materials, energy, capital, the market, advertising colour or whether raisins have been added before asking for a modestly decent standard of living, healthcare, a roof over their head and an education for their children.
MMT states that the ‘value’ of money derives from it being the only thing you can pay state imposed taxes with.
In regards to [2] – This one shouldn’t be underestimated, Because what it showed to people was that politicians could do things. They could find money. They could close borders. They could solve problems by curtailing Civic freedoms. They would screw young people on behalf of old people.
The question is not whether or not these were sound ideas or not – But it does make it hard for centrist to say that there isn’t an alternative (their favorite argument) – When Covid showed that Oh yes, there is.
I think this should not be underestimated in radicalizing the young in particular, on both sides of the centre.
Those on the ‘left’ want action on climate change, those on the right, want action on immigration (Both want action on the economy). Neither want centrists sticking to the same solution that lead to the problems they currently perceive.
I fear that the persuasive power of Nationalism beats the persuasive power of mother nature.
What’s going on in the knackered political economy of Greece, vis a vis doom loop scenarios? Any lessons to be drawn, other than “don’t allow corrupt oligarchs and bureaucrats and corporatists get a grip on your fiscal testicles and ovaries?”
“Out of office, the far right is unable to break promises, while it can point endlessly to the mainstream’s inability to deliver. Once in government, it will prove just as disappointing.”
This much, I think, may be true. I’ve long suspected that those far right parties, once in power, will simply swap “progressive” theatrics for “nationalist” ones, adjust some culture war policies, carry out some performative attacks on popular targets and largely stay the course on everything else from foreign affairs to the economy. On the other hand, RN at least might actually be a little better on workers’ rights and pensions, and even a small improvement in the majority’s lives could make a real political difference, considering how useless all their enemies have been recently.
Could someone povide a comprehensive definition for “far right‘ in this context? It seems to be a rather “elastic” definition, and mostly used as a pejorative.
Yes, it is. There are two answers. The Far or Extreme Right existed in France from the Revolution onward. It was variously anti-Revolution, anti-republican, anti-democracy, anti-semitic, anti-freemason, anti-City of London, anti-American, anti-Dreyfus, anti-Communist and anti much of the modern world generally. Within that, there was the elite conservative tendency (Church, Army, Big Business, Establishment) which is where Vichy came from, but which limited collaboration with the Nazis, for example, to areas where they thought it would benefit France. But there was also the populist, genuinely fas*ist mass tendency, which sent people to fight in Russia and believed in overthrowing democracy on the streets. If you’re interested, this is the best book I know on it, but I have no idea whether it’s been translated.
https://www.editionspoints.com/ouvrage/histoire-de-l-extreme-droite-en-france-collectif/9782757855317
But these days, it has come to mean “people not like us.” In the past, the old National Front inherited some of the populist extreme Right tendency, especially from French nationals thrown out of Algeria in the 1960s, but that has very largely gone now. Instead, what it’s now fashionable to call the “ultra-Right” has largely inherited the role that used to be played by the Communist Party as the bogeyman of right-thinking people and respectable opinion. Curiously enough, many of the voters and parts of the programme of the old PCF have reappeared under RN colours. In both cases, they represent the fear of a genuinely popular mass movement outside the limits of what the PMC will tolerate.
Excellent question. Many (especially the mass media) throw around loaded political terms without understanding what they actually mean
I find this helpful as it uses a TWO DIMENSIONAL political spectrum.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/france2024
According to objective criteria and working definitions, the Rassemblement National is NOT the most right-wing party in mainstream French politics. They are however, the most authoritarian. As others here point out: Macron and his party are MORE right-wing than RN and only a bit less authoritarian.
The Political Compass originally marked its horizontal axis as Radical->Conservative, now it is Left->Right. I think this is unfortunate as I would draw the Left-Right axis diagonally from bottom-left to top-right, putting Communists and Anarcho-Capitalists (?) outside the mainline.
There is actually much about France and right-wing traditions. I had to do some research on this for pre-WWII.
The groups were very varied and large in numbers. After the 1934 incident when right-wing wanted to storm French parliament the biggest French right-wing party, the Croix de Feu under François de La Rocque, (between 400K and 2M members) did not participate which might have saved the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_de_La_Rocque
Interestingly almost all of these parties participated in the war against Germany in 1940.
So their over-arching shared “value” was French nationalism not Nazism. I believe there was a French law that would dispossess of French citizenship who would fight for Germany. But I have to check that again.
This French “patriotic” stance might also be an explanation for the tradition of Lyon which was the center of the Résistance, later would become the center for RN and at the same time center of French petrochemical industry – all of which was connected regarding the personnel and management (for that also look into the various Elf-Aquitaine scandals).
On the other hand of course you had the infamous “rather Hitler than Blum” phrase in France while the left Popular Front did its thing until 1939. And the decision of the French steel barons to support Germany not France if things would develope that way. Wolfgang Streeck in April I think reminded of the fact that real opposition to the Germans in France was very limited. Résistance certainly was small, 1% or less of the people depending on who you ask. (Compared to huge numbers in Netherlands, Poland, and above all Serbia.)
On French collaboration Marcel Ophüls made some great documentaries, one major via open access here, 2 parts (long):
“Le chagrin et la pitié”, 1971
https://archive.org/details/the-sorrow-and-the-pity-2_202106
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity
I would disagree with Aurelian though on the group fighting against the USSR, that was rather limited in numbers – as far as my knowledge goes.
As I said fascism yes but France for almost all of them was bigger.
As complex as the issue of antisemitism. Croix de Feu e.g. opposed the harsh German antisemitism laws which was one reason why its leader La Rocque would be interned by the Germans late in the war.
This oddity was true also with Hungarian and Austrian rightwingers who opposed the Nazis on certain issues. They were interned. So you could be right-wing, but if you opposed the racist notion you were no real Nazi for the Nazis.
There is a thesis that Fascism was born off the Dreyfus affair i.e. well before Mussolini and was in fact a child of the French.
Further reading e.g.
-Robert Paxton (also very good work on French peasants v. fascism)
-Hans Wilhelm Eckart (German though) on conservative revolution in France and the “Jeune Droite” and “Ordre Nouveau”
-William Irvine, “The Boulanger Affair -Royalism, Boulangism, and the origins of the Radical Right in France”
-The great Stanley Hoffmann, e.g. “Vichy France and the Jews” but with a much broader scholarly range generally on France
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Hoffmann
-German-born, but prof. in Maine, Raffael Scheck, has done some interesting work on feminism among Nazis, and about African soldiers in the French Army in WWII later ill-treated by Wehrmacht (after Wehrmacht had tried to pit them agains their former “masters”)
-Karina Urbach (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939
contains this chapter online
“A Counter-Revolution d’outre-tombe: Notes on the French Aristocracy
and the Extreme Right during the Third Republic and the Vichy Regime”
https://perspectivia.net/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/pnet_derivate_00004306/malinowski_counter-revolution.pdf
by Stefan Malinowski, one of the few specialists on European nobility in this time, which was one of the main harbingers of right-wing in Europe. Eventually left by the side-lines once war became more genocidal and they had served their purpose.
“Collaboration in wartime France, 1940–1944”
Fabian Lemmes, 2008
https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Lemmes,%20Collaboration%20in%20wartime%20France%201940-1944%20(2008).pdf
essay by Bertram Gordon, 1975
“Focuses on one of the more extreme and activist political groups who supported collaboration with the Germans during their occupation of France in the Second World War.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372365133_Mouvement-Social-Revolutionnaire-Gordon
Any definition and, by extension, analysis, needs to be based on objective criteria rather than any self-definitions attributed to the PMC and The Official Narrative view of what is and is not acceptable opinion, extremist etc.
I’ve recently heard opinion that Le Pen’s Party and its following is a more moderate “Gaullist” entity these days compared to its former manifestation rather than extremist. Which is, lets go with, ‘interesting’ given the context provided by this recent clip of a Le Pen rally:
https://x.com/liz_churchill10/status/1807756172239224854
“The French who adapt the ideology of the enemy.”…”must be expelled.”
– Le Pen
Certainly raises some pertinent questions:
Who/what is the “enemy”?
What ‘ideologies’ are on the table here? – Will it be limited to some subjective definition of “extremist” Islam only as the bogyman of (“Gaulist”) right-thinking people and respectable opinion? Or will all Muslim’s be part of this process? Will anyone defined as the political ‘left’ be classified as an “enemy” at any point by this particular strand of right-thinking people and respectable opinion once in power?
Because, as the late Milton Mayer {‘They Thought they were Free’] catalogued, once you go down this scapegoating dog whistle road it takes on a life of its own.
Who decides/defines these terms?
To what end?
Will this expulsion and related charges include the ‘foreigners’ ie US/UK/French & other Western elites agencies/personnel & their alphabet agencies who created and have long nurtured, funded and sustained many, if not all, of these “Moderate” Islamic Jihadists & the Muslim Brotherhood?
Or are we going to see the usual double standards & hypocrisy of the so called “Rules Based Order” [we make the rules, you obey the orders] once again in operation?
Will, for example, people fleeing Western caused destruction from those areas of the world considered by the Western elites and their new useful idiots represented by La Pen to be “The Jungle” be the only target of these stated policies of Le Pen or will (sensible) draft dodgers from what is considered by the Western Establishment “The Garden” (404) be included as well rather than being given an inconsistent free pass as they are at present?
Will this newly minted and redefined ‘moderate/not an extremist Gaulist” entity (honest Guvnor) La Pen and her base cease French involvement in the creation of refugees by no longer using the military to bomb the Countries classified by the PMC elite as “the jungle” back to the Stone Age every time they do not cry uncle when ever the US and its European/ Western vassals come for their resources?
For sure, this strand of French society can be considered outside the accepted Official Narrative when it comes to the Ukraine conflict. However, from the perspective of consistency a policy platform of antipathy towards and scapegoating of Muslims it is more than reasonable to anticipate more active support from these newly defined non extreme right moderate ‘Gaulists’ for a larger war in the Near East against this “common Muslim enemy.’
Simply withdrawing French support for one conflict project of the Western neo-liberal establishment based on a rabid Russiaphobia and replacing it with strong support for another Western neo-liberal establishment conflict project based on a rabid Islamaphobia.
Not “extremist”? Hmmm! Any port in a storm against a neo-liberal establishment well practiced in this kind of divide and rule eh!
Now look at that: The German government wants to use Tump as an argument to introduce a war budget:
from BERLINER ZEITUNG, 2/7/24
https://archive.is/zMtuI
“A renewed suspension of the debt brake is likely to fail before the Federal Constitutional Court , says Südekum, who is also a member of the scientific advisory board of the Ministry of Economics. The argument that the war in Ukraine represents an unforeseen emergency situation for Germany is no longer convincing more than two years after the war began. “It would be different if Donald Trump were elected US President and announced his withdrawal from NATO . Then you could argue that it is an emergency situation, but we won’t know whether that will happen until November.”
(NATO withdrawal IMHO won´t happen. Sevim Dagdelen from Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance says the same in her new book on NATO)
Wow. How crooked are these people?
How long does it have to become worse before it “becomes better” to quote some movie…
p.s. re: war
Why is it not possible to legally challenge the war policies by pointing out that alleged NATO intelligence on RU are lies.
I am pretty sure that were we to read the original military reports it would be clear beyond any doubt how much all of this is one huge fairy-tale – the biggest lie in decades – considering the possible dangers much worse than the Iraqi WMD bullshit.
On useless intelligence see this nice podcast with Stephen Bryen (former Reagan Cabinet on Defense and Doug Bandow, CATO Inst.)
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/national-insecurity/episodes/U-S–should-enter-into-peace-negotiations-with-Russia-e2l46et/a-a58fgd.
Actually this very much reminds me of what Frank Kofsky wrote in his 1995 study “The War Scare of 1948” and how Truman invented the danger of war with the USSR to save Boeing and Co.
They even created a fabrication with the infamous “Clay” Telegram where Gen. Clay wrote that Stalin was preparing for war, which was a lie. But Truman´s people used it to deceive Congress and the entire nation into war hysteria.
It´s the same fucking playbook now.
And at the same time poverty in Germany again has reached record levels. The lowest 20% own 0%, while the top 1% have between 30-50 % of German wealth. The top 10% own 60%. Same with child poverty:
“one in five children lived in poverty in 2023. As recently as January, the Bertelsmann Foundation reported that there were around three million poor children in Germany . 1.7 million single parents, the vast majority of them women, lived in poverty with their children, the foundation announced last Tuesday.”
from the short statement in daily JUNGE WELT:
“Child poverty in Germany
Millions on the sidelines”
https://archive.is/oVITb
This is really difficult to stomach considering the obvious fabrications and blatant lies 24/7 regarding Ukraine which is the officially sole reason for any of this.
And if you look into how French RN has developed I don´t see a right-wing way out of this, i.e. via vote. Nothing will change there. It doesn´t depend on the party. It depends on the function and significance of the country. Orban can be Orban because it´s tiny Hungary at the border. There would be no Orban in Germany. (And besides Orban is as egotistical a maniac as any other.)
France’s “double ballot” system is just as, or more “undemocratic” (less representative of voter preferences) than the ‘first past the post/winner takes all” system used in the US/UK.
Instant runoff voting (IRV) sometimes known as STV (single transferable voting) would reflect the will of the majority more closely. And then there are various forms of direct democracy where people directly vote on policy issues which many consider the most representative. But when the mass media is monopolized by a small group of interests, accurate information is always a problem.
It would be nice to have public discourse on this topic, but that’s too “boring”. It’s better to have emotionally charged political hysteria to confuse the public and it generates more revenue.
These comparisons to Weimar Republic are totally inappropriate and in fact counter-productive because they hide the real context today. A beautiful diversion and textbook case of scare-mongering.
Nazis rose to power in an environment of utter street and public violence.
SA, essentially the predecessor of the SS, in 1934 had a 3,5 M strong militia. In the late 1920s close to 1 M.
Communists, the SPD, even Monarchists were subdued through brutal violence. People were simply killed and intimidated. That´s the way Hitler came to power.
Even the Army, the Reichswehr, was used to do the dirty work and loomed over the events like the sword ready to strike. And only late in the 1930s Hitler´s power was established as safe. Only after he had killed another 90-200 of the major SA caders in 1934 (Night of the Long Knives), who had been his friends and allies in the past. Germany was a mafia-state.
Imagine today a paramilitary organisation in Germany or France with 3,5 M armed militias who are projecting the power of an AfD or an RN into society, with the German Bundeswehr possibly ready to strike too.
Along that high politicians repeatedly being killed, like say Wagenknecht run over by a car and Melenchon shot.
And then the first concentration camps where members of the French and German labour unions would be locked up and tortured.
This is absurd. But this would be necessary for a justified comparison. Because these were the real and necessary conditions.
So many in Germany speak about Nazis but they seem not to understand what that truly meant.
But not so hard to imagine in Trump’s divided and corporatist states of America.
As the late Milton Mayer pointed out…..
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html%5D
……such outcomes do not occur instantaneously and overnight. They are part of an incremental process which occurs over time.
“”To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head…..
…..Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty…..
….And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? ….That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest…But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”
The chickens are yet to hatch. Counting them now may not prove to be prudent.
As my grandmother used to say when I was a naughty child “it will all end in tears”.
She was right about most things, and if she were alive today, she would say it again.