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Calling the democrats "firmly right wing" means you don't understand at least two of the three words in that sentence, jesus. I know hyperbole is fun and all, but 
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Jun 2, 2014 15:46
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Certainly they are? Please name a metric by which they are not. Remember that this is the party of Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama.
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Jun 2, 2014 16:31
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computer parts posted:I already knew this, good reading comprehension. The entirety of the post wasn't directed at you, lest you think the world turns around you. KoldPT posted:Calling the democrats "firmly right wing" means you don't understand at least two of the three words in that sentence, jesus. I know hyperbole is fun and all, but The Democratic party is way to the right compared to all the centrist parties of Europe. The U.S. would plead and beg for a PS or Labor party. Mans fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 16:42
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Tony Jowns posted:British Labour, French Socialists, Greek PASOK... like, there's a party which fits this bill in every second country in the EU? Yeah, the Danish SD party, the Social Democrats, were created with the express aim of creating a socialist society through parliament, and were responsible for nearly every great social program Denmark is known for, and in their recent period as ruling party they slashed everything to give tax cuts to the richest.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:34
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Tony Jowns posted:British Labour, French Socialists, Greek PASOK... like, there's a party which fits this bill in every second country in the EU? Today the PVV is more leftist than the main labour party in the Netherlands. They are truly National Socialists and support free education, welfare and universal healthcare for every (White, Dutch) person. It is a big part of their platform (well now it is, 8 years ago they wanted to abolish minimum wage but it didn't poll well).
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Jun 2, 2014 18:14
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SALT CURES HAM posted:"Capitalism is good" and "America is good" are not the same thing holy gently caress how are you this dense It doesn't have to do anything about economics, it's just by incorporating nationalist ideas in your message, you may make it more palatable, but also reinforce these ideas. In your example, a Mexican wrestler calls out Tea Partiers for not being true Americans because (here go the reasons). Except of those reasons, this movie also communicates two things: 1. It is a big deal to be a true American. 2. You can stop being a true American if your behavior is unworthy. Therefore, this message reinforces ideas that are pretty much the basis of nationalist thought. It's even better in promoting them, because they come from the source where you wouldn't normally expect them, encapsulated in generally leftist ideas. In this way, you end up promoting nationalism along with leftism. And given the fact that you will be one of many people advocating nationalism and one of the few advocating socialism, I wouldn't expect your intended set of ideas to win in the long run.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:17
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It's almost like European countries and the United States are different places ... Well, if your metric to compare U.S. and Western European political parties is the degree of support for a robust social welfare system, then yeah the U.S. Democrats are to the right of equivalent European parties. But the U.S. has a different history. It didn't experience a series of terrible and destructive wars, military occupations, genocides etc. on its own territory during the first half of the 20th century that led elites to rebuild their shattered societies by promoting the state as the guarantor of health and housing. Then after all of that, had those programs underwritten by the Marshall Plan and the U.S. military umbrella + several thousand U.S. strategic nuclear warheads.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:18
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Granted, I don't really buy that the Labour party of 2014 really is even that different than the Democrats, they more or less not so silently have embrace much of Cameron's changes...which are extreme. Ultimately, it is more important to look at trajectory than starting points, and the fact Labour seems uninterested rolling back recent changes means they are at least center-right. PS I think still has a strong center-left core to it but then again it is continuing to shift right at such a pace it is a bit difficult to predict.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:33
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Omi-Polari posted:It's almost like European countries and the United States are different places ... Well, if your metric to compare U.S. and Western European political parties is the degree of support for a robust social welfare system, then yeah the U.S. Democrats are to the right of equivalent European parties. No, let's hang the definition of "left" on things other than support for labor and social welfare programs. Let's uh, lets decide based on where a party's MPs went to school, or what manner of insouciant, smart-assed student editorials they wrote 40 years ago.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:36
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Ardennes posted:Granted, I don't really buy that the Labour party of 2014 really is even that different than the Democrats, they more or less not so silently have embrace much of Cameron's changes...which are extreme. It's worth bearing in mind that many of Cameron's changes have their origins in New Labour/Blairite policy, education and marketisation within the NHS particularly. The labour party membership are more to the left of the central party leadership but they, due to some trotskyist attempts at entryism in the 70s/80s, have structures and policies in place to avoid any real democratic involvement or influence on party policies by the actual people who vote for and support them, letting the party to drift to the right regardless of the wishes of it's core supporters.
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Jun 2, 2014 18:46
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Puntification posted:It's worth bearing in mind that many of Cameron's changes have their origins in New Labour/Blairite policy, education and marketisation within the NHS particularly. The labour party membership are more to the left of the central party leadership but they, due to some trotskyist attempts at entryism in the 70s/80s, have structures and policies in place to avoid any real democratic involvement or influence on party policies by the actual people who vote for and support them, letting the party to drift to the right regardless of the wishes of it's core supporters. I like to think it is more as a symbiosis between New Labour and Thatcherism, either way it is hard not to look at the slant of their rhetoric and not see them as that different than the US Democrats at this point even if their base is still to the left of than them (especially since the base as you say they actually have very little influence or choice). Obviously even after the changes the UK will still have considering more of a social welfare state than the US, but in the end it is trajectories like I said that are more important. Unfortunately as far as politics go, the UK has gotten very Americanized very quickly (including UKIP). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 18:50
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Ardennes posted:I like to think it is more as a symbiosis between New Labour and Thatcherism, either way it is hard not to look at the slant of their rhetoric and not seem them as that different than the US Democrats at this point even if their basis is still to the left of than them (especially since the base as you say they actually have very little influence or choice). Obviously even after the changes, the UK will still have considering more of a social welfare state than the US, but in the end it is trajectories like I said that are more important. Obviously the base of all these various Social Democrats are significantly to the left of whatever their parties are now, as you said, which is partly why we see this upsurge of support for populist parties. Ardennes posted:Unfortunately as far as politics go, the UK has gotten very Americanized very quickly (including UKIP).
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Jun 2, 2014 19:13
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Ardennes posted:I like to think it is more as a symbiosis between New Labour and Thatcherism, either way it is hard not to look at the slant of their rhetoric and not seem them as that different than the US Democrats at this point even if their basis is still to the left of than them (especially since the base as you say they actually have very little influence or choice). Obviously even after the changes, the UK will still have considering more of a social welfare state than the US, but in the end it is trajectories like I said that are more important. Yeah I think you are correct both about the trajectory of Labour and the Americanisation of UK politics.
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Jun 2, 2014 19:15
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computer parts posted:At what point would you consider the Democratic Party as the "left"? Even during the Great Depression the policies they used were made explicitly to favor white people over others and even that aside they were made to stave people off from going full communist - by definition, that does not make them Left at all. Here in Reality Land the DNC is center-left.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:52
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America isn't Reality Land. Hope this helps.
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Jun 2, 2014 21:58
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It's not like the Democrats have always been the only option; and I'm not talking about tiny socialist parties. The United States has had times when organized labor has proposed forming a union-based, social democratic labor party, similar to [pre-Blair] Labour in the UK or the NDP in Canada. During at least three US labor upswings (I haven't studied those prior to the 1930s well enough to talk knowledgeably about efforts before then) American workers came very close to taking this step, but unfortunately faltered at the final hurdle of pushing the union bureaucracy into actually fulfilling their promises to break with the Democrats and make the new party. These efforts surfaced during the Great Depression in the 1930s, in the period immediately after the end of WW2 (1945-1948), and during the early 1970s. The union bureaucracy (aided by the Democratic-aligned CP in the 1930s and postwar period) only barely managed to contain the massive support for a labor party, which started in the CIO but was present in force even in the more conservative unions in the AFL. Check out Art Preis's Labor's Giant Step if you're interested in the subject. If such a party had been created, it would be a leftist party; liberal bourgeois parties like the Democrats are not leftist. I'd agree that the UK's Labour Party has reached that point; the NDP is not there yet although its leadership is also pushing hard to the right.
Rogue0071 fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 23:05
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Rogue0071 posted:It's not like the Democrats have always been the only option; and I'm not talking about tiny socialist parties. The United States has had times when organized labor has proposed forming a union-based, social democratic labor party, similar to [pre-Blair] Labour in the UK or the NDP in Canada. During at least three US labor upswings (I haven't studied those prior to the 1930s well enough to talk knowledgeably about efforts before then) American workers came very close to taking this step, but unfortunately faltered at the final hurdle of pushing the union bureaucracy into actually fulfilling their promises to break with the Democrats and make the new party. These efforts surfaced during the Great Depression in the 1930s, in the period immediately after the end of WW2 (1945-1948), and during the early 1970s. The union bureaucracy (aided by the Democratic-aligned CP in the 1930s and postwar period) only barely managed to contain the massive support for a labor party, which started in the CIO but was present in force even in the more conservative unions in the AFL. Check out Art Preis's Labor's Giant Step if you're interested in the subject. If such a party had been created, it would be a leftist party; liberal bourgeois parties like the Democrats are not leftist. I'd agree that the UK's Labour Party has reached that point; the NDP is not there yet although its leadership is also pushing hard to the right. You probably could make a case the NDP is still center-left, but yeah I think it was a matter of time after Layton died. I remember the despair in the Canada thread right around the 2012 party election. It may still be another few elections out though. That said, the Democrats' particular form of liberal comes from more the liberal radicalism of the late 19th century which has sort of its own history and trajectory to it as well. I think the last real chance the US had for a center-left/left party was the original SPA (somewhere around 1912-1920). By the 1930s (and certainly the 1970s) it was too late, the New Deal sucked up too much air out of the room and by the 1970s, identity politics had really taken hold and the two-party had such a vast amount of institutional weight behind it.
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Jun 3, 2014 00:19
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Kyrie eleison posted:Here in Reality Land the DNC is center-left. To filth who openly flirt with nativist ideology that may be the case.
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Jun 3, 2014 01:04
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SedanChair posted:To filth who openly flirt with nativist ideology that may be the case. I'm a moderate  From my (normal) perspective you violent commie types are no better.Any mainstream source would consider the DNC center-left but I'm sure RADICAL REVOLUTION WEEKLY considers them fascists.
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Jun 3, 2014 01:24
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Kyrie eleison posted:I'm a moderate For those not in the know, please keep in mind when replying to this that Kyrie Eleison previously got banned for being a lovely gimmick poster that pretended to be an ultra-traditionalist Catholic, and regularly called Protestants and other Christians "heretics" like it was 1552 AD. And if it wasn't a gimmick (which, I admit, was quite funny for a while so props to you), then oh boy are they a sad, broken person. EDIT: To bring this back on topic, do any of the current far-right European parties in Catholic countries put a lot of focus on Catholicism like the Falange or other Iberian fascist movements did in the Interwar era? Most of them seem to be based on nebulous "Cultural Christianity"-based xenophobia rather than explicitly being for a larger part of Christian religion in public society. Spiderfist Island fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 02:11
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Good to know the global circus that is American politics is "Reality Land" and the rest of the planet is out of its mind.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:28
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I'm well qualified to comment on the nature of reality and the modern world. Now let me tell you more about the heretical Lutherans and how they undermine the will of God.
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Jun 3, 2014 02:48
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Spiderfist Island posted:EDIT: To bring this back on topic, do any of the current far-right European parties in Catholic countries put a lot of focus on Catholicism like the Falange or other Iberian fascist movements did in the Interwar era? Most of them seem to be based on nebulous "Cultural Christianity"-based xenophobia rather than explicitly being for a larger part of Christian religion in public society. Well of the two biggest far-right parties in Catholic nations, FN obviously is not overtly Catholic, and Jobbik was founded by both Catholic and Protestant students and is big into Eurasianism so it's unlikely. I tried looking into the Freedom Party of Austria, the National Renovator Party (Portugal) and the Slovak National Party, none of which I could find anything about the parties really pushing a specific focus on Catholicism. It's by no means an exhaustive list (and I can't help but feel there's some other major far right party in a Catholic nation that I'm overlooking) but of the ones I could recall, none of them focus specifically on Catholicism instead of "Cultural Christianity" (and FN in particular I think drops the cultural Christianity in favor of aggressive secularism that just happens to hit Jews and Muslims harder than Christians in France).
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Jun 3, 2014 03:06
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Radio Prune posted:Good to know the global circus that is American politics is "Reality Land" and the rest of the planet is out of its mind. I'll take a circus over literal fascists roaming the streets and getting elected.
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Jun 3, 2014 03:22
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Spiderfist Island posted:For those not in the know, please keep in mind when replying to this that Kyrie Eleison previously got banned for being a lovely gimmick poster that pretended to be an ultra-traditionalist Catholic, and regularly called Protestants and other Christians "heretics" like it was 1552 AD. And if it wasn't a gimmick (which, I admit, was quite funny for a while so props to you), then oh boy are they a sad, broken person. Are you sure they weren't writing those things in earnest? Unless that fervor just comes from being young, or from being a recent convert, I actually really enjoy that sort of theatricality. Kyrie eleison posted:I'm a moderate Well, if you think "fascist" is used too often as a slur, then I agree. That was happening as early as the 40's according to Orwell. Regarding the DNC: if you'd like, I'd give you that the DNC is center-left amongst major contemporary American political parties. But of course the ideologies and convictions of leftists aren't formed relative to what's politically popular in the US. The modern left traces its roots back to socialists and communists whose conception of class struggle required the subversion and replacement of capitalism. This is not a liberal notion! Like fascists, leftists are not interested in the liberal-capitalist order for its own sake. For "liberal" parties (not in the contemporary American sense), maintenance of the liberal-capitalist order underwrites their whole political program. This goes for Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Forza Italia, and yes, UKIP. The DNC has less in common with this historical conception of the left than most European Social-Democratic parties, and most of those parties have themselves adopted clintonist/blairist/third wayism. I think its fair then that leftists consider the DNC a centrist party, if not even more conservative. edit: It would be funny if you regarded protestants as heretics, since you're taking a similar view to leftists when they judge modern political parties. The political environment has shifted, but the left still assesses things in much the same way as when its ideology was originally formulated. Dilkington fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 03:59
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Dilkington posted:It would be funny if you regarded protestants as heretics, since you're taking a similar view to leftists when they judge modern political parties. The political environment has shifted, but the left still assesses things in much the same way as when its ideology was originally formulated. But when was it originally formulated? The terms "left" and "right" originate, by my understanding, from the French Revolution, not from karl marx. So the origin of the word is decidedly liberal. Furthermore within communism, there's the term "left communism" which is a more libertarian (i.e. non-violent) bent.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:18
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Left communism isn't really necessarily nonviolent, it just doesn't agree that Leninists/Stalinists/Maoists/etc ought to be in unquestioned charge of the world.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:23
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Radio Prune posted:Good to know the global circus that is American politics is "Reality Land" and the rest of the planet is out of its mind. Don't worry we're catching up real fast.
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Jun 3, 2014 04:31
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Left communism has meant a variety of different things during different periods of time, and on the whole labels of "left" and "right" within the far left are much more malleable than the labels left or right in a general sense. (when people talk about the (German) Left Opposition in 1922, for instance, it's about a tendency that is very different from the Left Opposition Trotsky formed after 1924). That being said:quote:Left communism isn't really necessarily nonviolent, it just doesn't agree that Leninists/Stalinists/Maoists/etc ought to be in unquestioned charge of the world. is a really passive-aggressive and useless way to describe it. Some general characteristics of left communism I would note are opposition to the idea that the nationalism of oppressed nationalities can serve a progressive role, refusals to work within parliaments or reactionary trade unions at all or only to an extremely limited extent, and strong internationalism. Rogue0071 fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 05:19
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DrProsek posted:(and FN in particular I think drops the cultural Christianity in favor of aggressive secularism that just happens to hit Jews and Muslims harder than Christians in France). It doesn't hit Christians hard now because they've gotten used to it. France started being "aggressively secularist" with the Revolution and after some back-and-forth with the Restoration and Empires, it has been like this since the late 19th/early 20th century (with the exception of the Vichy regime). The public school system in particular was instrumental in taking a fight against the Church's influence. Now that Christians are used to live in a secular country where their religion isn't thought to be a good motive for starting a civil war anymore, it just seems normal to them. But Muslims, especially young radicalized 2nd generation immigrant Muslims, do not accept secularism as normal. So, they clash. Jews aren't really affected by France's secularism, by the way. If anything, they've benefited from it, as the Church used to be a large factor of antisemitism, and they have had to knock it off. The FN's embrace of secularism is relatively recent in the party's history, and is part of the reforms taken to make it more acceptable to the mainstream. There's no doubt in that the FN's hands it would be primarily a weapon against Islam, rather than an enforcement of neutrality.
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Jun 3, 2014 10:46
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It's kind of called "Catholaicité" in that they give lip service to secularism, while praising Catholic traditions and Catholic roots of France to high heavens. You also see that behavior with some far right secular groups like Riposte Laique, who don't mind having Catholic extremists as allies against Islam. I remember reading one of their article going on about same sex marriage played into the hands of the Muslim Menace. But the other main parties (PS and UMP) are pretty much on the same tune.
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Jun 3, 2014 12:18
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Kurtofan posted:"Catholaicité" What the gently caress that makes exactly no sense. e: Like "Christian Satanism" would make 10X more sense
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Jun 3, 2014 14:07
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Kyrie eleison posted:But when was it originally formulated? The terms "left" and "right" originate, by my understanding, from the French Revolution, not from karl marx. So the origin of the word is decidedly liberal. I think you're absolutely right. Also, in French, the potato is "earth apple" pomme de terre- but we know it is not just an apple buried in the ground. If you wanted to understand the political platform of the modern DNC, exploring the etymology of the "Democratic" in "Democratic Party," wouldn't be very useful. The ostensible point of similarity between anarchists, communists, socialists (etc.) who self identify as "leftists" is their emphasis on class struggle. The concept of "class struggle" predates the FR, and it predates the use of "leftist" to describe parties preoccupied with it. If you're really concerned with the etymology of "left" and believe in nominative determinism, then you might rather refer to "leftists" as "class-strugglists."
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Jun 3, 2014 17:07
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Cat Mattress posted:good post My comment about FN's secularism was very poorly phrased and mentioning Jews didn't really make sense. What I meant to say was, as you mentioned in the bottom of your post, FN would likely use secularism as a tool against Muslims (stuff like instituting a ban on minarets like in Switzerland). As for Jews, I recalled Jean-Marie Le Pen saying things about how Nazi Germany did nothing inhumane in France during WWII, and so I assumed FN had a thing against Jews, but that's pre-Marine FN so even if antisemitism was part of the party platform, that might have changed since then.
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Jun 3, 2014 17:56
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Like racism, antisemitism is one of these things that MLP's FN flirts with without ever endorsing it. They're not part of the party platform (the "national preference" thing they defend is about nationality, not race, so supposedly they'd prefer a Black French to a White immigrant) but you can bet many militants, especially the old-timers who've been there for years, are deeply influenced by this kind of prejudice. Anyhow, the vice-president of the FN is actually Jewish. Whether it's just tokenism or not, I do not claim to know. Jean-Marie Le Pen did say a lot of poo poo like that. It was his specialty. He was sued several times for that, and became an expert at weaseling things away with the "technically, what I said was..." and "in context, ..." kind of excuses. (If he said that the Germans did nothing inhumane in France in WW2, then it follows that everything inhumane that happened then was the French's own fault. Kind of a backfire here, Jean-Marie.)
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Jun 3, 2014 19:31
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FN seemed like a garden-variety fascist party at first but jesus christ they're loving strange.
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Jun 3, 2014 23:54
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Dilkington posted:I think you're absolutely right. No he's wrong about that as well, the Jacobins encompassed a wide range of political positions including things we would say were socialist nowadays, like redistribution of wealth and state control over the economy. It would be more accurate to say that liberalism and socialism have their origins (in part) in the left of the French revolution. Wallerstein writes in After Liberalism that the divide only became apparent in the 1830s, and only deep after 1848.
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Jun 4, 2014 03:45
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Thanks, I will add After Liberalism to my reading list.
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Jun 4, 2014 13:27
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SedanChair posted:Certainly they are? Please name a metric by which they are not. Remember that this is the party of Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama. In what world is Lyndon B. "Great Society and War on Poverty" Johnson on par with Bill "End welfare as we know it" and Barack "I have a literal fetish for Grand Bargains to destroy Social Security" Obama?
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Jun 5, 2014 02:03
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Gen. Ripper posted:In what world is Lyndon B. "Great Society and War on Poverty" Johnson on par with Bill "End welfare as we know it" and Barack "I have a literal fetish for Grand Bargains to destroy Social Security" Obama? The one where Clinton and Obama didn't set out to butcher hundreds of thousands of people in southeast asia because of some harebrained scheme?
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Jun 5, 2014 07:12
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