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GABA ghoul posted:We had state elections recently in Germany with huge AFD gains and the polls show the same thing as always: the areas with the best AFD results are rural. These are the areas that don't have a significant number of immigrants and are not much affected by the housing crisis, crime, cultural changes or terrorism. The areas that actually do have these problems, i.e. urban centers, are where AFD got the worst results. The areas with the best AfD results might be rural, but "urban centers where AfD got the worst results" is pretty disingenous - AfD still did horrifyingly well everywhere overall, they're not just a rural party. They got 18.4% of the vote in quite urban/rich Hesse (2nd largest party), 14.6% in Munich dominated Bavaria (3rd largest party) and 9.1% even in super liberal/urban Berlin. They're also polling at 21% for the German national elections, firmly in place as the second largest party in the country. Ten years ago they were getting under 2% of the vote, and were (rightly) regarded as a completely insane extremist minority party. Migration is whats unfortunately propelling them rapidly upwards.
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Nov 26, 2023 23:39
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GABA ghoul posted:We had state elections recently in Germany with huge AFD gains and the polls show the same thing as always: the areas with the best AFD results are rural. These are the areas that don't have a significant number of immigrants and are not much affected by the housing crisis, crime, cultural changes or terrorism. The areas that actually do have these problems, i.e. urban centers, are where AFD got the worst results. rural localities have as their big problem a reinforcing tendency of budgets to just go elsewhere, because the return on investment is higher elsewhere. that includes what we perceive as the provision of basic state welfare. this makes living in small towns or villages ever more expensive and jobs more sparse, which means that economics are pushing younger people into the larger cities. that means that these places, often with significant traditions and history, get depopulated and increasingly lose out, paying the same level of tax while not getting anywhere near the same level of services. the contemporary left has basically nothing to offer these people, because the logic of investment which leads to this inequality is fully accepted by what amounts to every left-wing party in europe with which i'm familiar; in a national system, greater investment in the national periphery is necessary for various geopolitical reasons. i think this is also why the alternative-right tendency trends euroskeptic. to top it all off, these people can't even help their kids get into the prague property market or whatever, because housing in the cities appreciates in value while housing in the periphery depreciates or remains stagnant - basically every signal they get is "gently caress you, you made poor life decisions because you're stupid and mean and we owe you nothing" which is not a terribly encouraging thing to hear. the right-wing euroskeptics are not especially credible, but there's more reason to believe that they'll represent these people's interests than the contemporary left, whose cadres and sympathisers tend to embrace the "gently caress you"-mentality with special enthusiasm
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Nov 26, 2023 23:49
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Blut posted:The areas with the best AfD results might be rural, but "urban centers where AfD got the worst results" is pretty disingenous - AfD still did horrifyingly well everywhere overall, they're not just a rural party. Here is a map of AFD results in the recent Bavarian election https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/landtagswahl-bayern-wer-waehlte-wen-waehlerwanderung-hochburgen,TqZoIrF Everything in the top places are small towns in rural areas. Large cities all had results consistently below 10% and Munich, a highly diverse city with the most hosed up housing market in Germany, had literally the lowest AFD results in Bavaria with 5-6%. Günzburg, a tiny town of 20k people, had the highest AFD vote share at 24.4%. It's in a rural county with one of the highest average disposable incomes in Bavaria, far from being left behind. V. Illych L. posted:rural localities have as their big problem a reinforcing tendency of budgets to just go elsewhere, because the return on investment is higher elsewhere. that includes what we perceive as the provision of basic state welfare. this makes living in small towns or villages ever more expensive and jobs more sparse, which means that economics are pushing younger people into the larger cities. that means that these places, often with significant traditions and history, get depopulated and increasingly lose out, paying the same level of tax while not getting anywhere near the same level of services. the contemporary left has basically nothing to offer these people, because the logic of investment which leads to this inequality is fully accepted by what amounts to every left-wing party in europe with which i'm familiar; in a national system, greater investment in the national periphery is necessary for various geopolitical reasons. i think this is also why the alternative-right tendency trends euroskeptic. This is just not true for places like Bavaria, where post-war politics have been dominated almost completely by conservative and rural parties at the expense of urban centers. The rural areas are getting massive transfer funds from the economically productive cities and consistently report high standards of living. Their unemployment is also lower than in cities and close to full employment in many regions.
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Nov 27, 2023 01:31
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GABA ghoul posted:Here is a map of AFD results in the recent Bavarian election Having done cultural exchanges to Bamberg and loved it while also learning about the very large unrepentant nazi problem, I'm not surprised it's as high as it is. Solid Gegen-Nazi punk presence, though.
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Nov 27, 2023 10:29
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YF-23 posted:At the same time social media makes it a lot easier to be exposed to left-wing objections and counterarguments to all of those things, where in the past you'd need to be buying socialist papers (and, depending on where you lived, end up on a list because of it). The left as a whole keeps falling for the same old problem. If a leftist encounters a leftist who's slightly less left than them, they get lumped in with the useless centrists who empower the right.
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Nov 27, 2023 11:29
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nimby posted:The left as a whole keeps falling for the same old problem. If a leftist encounters a leftist who's slightly less left than them, they get lumped in with the useless centrists who empower the right. That first group would only be a major problem if they were close to, but not quite achieving power. As it is, the second group is much larger and actually is creating the conditions where the far right wins elections. You don't actually think leftist in-fighting is why Europe is slowly falling to the right, do you?
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Nov 27, 2023 12:11
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It is incumbent on socialdemocratic and centrist parties to ensure that socialdemocratic and centrist policies are not functionally indistinguishable from neoliberalism. If they open themselves up to criticism from the left because they keep betraying their supposed political space, that is well-earned and necessary.
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Nov 27, 2023 13:52
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Doctor Malaver posted:In Croatia the top visited site is probably index.hr and it's independent. It's liberal left, with strong anti-corruption and anti-nationalism stance. They don't filter out social care, LGBT, climate, and other left wing topics. But neither do most other top sites that are corporate-owned. And yet we've had a conservative government since forever and we're sliding more right. Croatia doesn't have an issue with immigration but with the recent war so maybe we're an odd case, but I have trouble believing that in all other countries sliding right it's the billionaires steering media anti-left. I was thinking more like Facebook, YouTube and Xwitter - all three of them are known for ending up radicalising people towards the right, each in their own often unintentional ways. Comment sections for big national newspapers are also filled to the brim with all manner of racists, reactionaries, conspiracy morons and misogynists.
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Nov 27, 2023 18:04
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GABA ghoul posted:Here is a map of AFD results in the recent Bavarian election Yes, but again, my point is that AfD have surged from under 1.9% ten years ago, and being regarded as extremists nutjobs, to now polling at 21% and being the second largest party in Germany - and still growing. Which is almost entirely down to the migration policies of the other major parties. Their urban vote share being smaller than their rural vote share is entirely secondary to that country-wide growth. Its completely disengenous to suggest its just a rural party when its polling as the second largest party in some cities, and just got 9.1% of the vote in the most urban/liberal part of the country - Berlin's 2023 state elections.
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Nov 27, 2023 18:06
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Blut posted:Yes, but again, my point is that AfD have surged from under 1.9% ten years ago, and being regarded as extremists nutjobs, to now polling at 21% and being the second largest party in Germany - and still growing. Which is almost entirely down to the migration policies of the other major parties. Yes, all radical parties are getting massively boosted in recent years no matter the direction. Almost entirely because life in general is getting worse which favours radical politics over centrist politics.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:03
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GABA ghoul posted:This is just not true for places like Bavaria, where post-war politics have been dominated almost completely by conservative and rural parties at the expense of urban centers. The rural areas are getting massive transfer funds from the economically productive cities and consistently report high standards of living. Their unemployment is also lower than in cities and close to full employment in many regions. welp i guess they're just intrinsically racist then
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Nov 27, 2023 19:16
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Blut posted:Yes, but again, my point is that AfD have surged from under 1.9% ten years ago, and being regarded as extremists nutjobs, to now polling at 21% and being the second largest party in Germany - and still growing. Which is almost entirely down to the migration policies of the other major parties. I'm not denying the AFD poll numbers or that immigration is the most important issue for their voters. Your thesis that it's the fault of local crime increase or competition for jobs or housing just does not match the data. It's the opposite. Areas that do have these problems are the least likely to vote AFD and vice versa. Berlin shows exactly the same pattern with the "whitest" & safest parts of it voting AFD the most. The idea that people in the deepest AFD majority heartland in eastern Germany are afraid of immigrants moving there and compete with them for jobs or housing is just absurd. No immigrant will ever move there without someone holding a gun to their head and everyone understands that. These people's fears mainly revolve around vague conspiracy theories about the coming islamisation/arabization/degeneration of German culture, the Great Replacement or a political takeover by arabic immigrants. These fears cannot be addressed by building housing or increasing police presence because there is no housing shortage or significant crime where they live. And yes, the housing crisis, stagnating real wages or public infrastructure cut backs are extremely important issues that need to be addressed by the left. But the current German nativist tendencies need to be solved on a cultural level and through sensible social media regulation. The nativist population need to understand that the German economy and prosperity is only made possible by the labor of immigrants & their descendents. That we are experiencing an extreme labor shortage not seen since the post-WW2 recovery and that it will continue to get worse as the demographic collapse accelerates. We need more immigrants to keep our quality of life, not less.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:31
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GABA ghoul posted:I'm not denying the AFD poll numbers or that immigration is the most important issue for their voters. Your thesis that it's the fault of local crime increase or competition for jobs or housing just does not match the data. It's the opposite. Areas that do have these problems are the least likely to vote AFD and vice versa. Berlin shows exactly the same pattern with the "whitest" & safest parts of it voting AFD the most. My thesis isn't that its the fault of just one fear, or that every fear applies equally to all AfD supporters, I've absolutely no idea how you could take that from my post. I listed a whole host of causes for fear of migration, and it wasn't even a full definitive list as implied by the 'etc'. I quote directly: "What the modern left-wing parties generally don't do is actually address the fears of working class people of more strain on social housing/welfare, more competition for entry level jobs, more crowding in underfunded schools and hospitals, more competition for private housing, increased crime locally, fear of terrorism, fear of local cultural/social change etc." Different ones of those apply to different demographics, its not uniform. Plenty of them also apply in rural areas. The fact that the AfDs support level is now both so high, and so widespread across all areas in Germany, would rather back this up. "current German nativist tendencies need to be solved on a cultural level and through sensible social media regulation" - is absolutely the exact kind of refusal to engage with reality nonsense that was being debunked on the last page. You could completely ban all of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook tomorrow and the far-right would still keep rising in Germany, and the rest of Europe, because of the opinions of the working class being ignored on migration. Blaming populism on social media for right-wing support levels is a total cop out for the modern left's economical, social and cultural abandonment of the working class over the last 40 years.
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Nov 28, 2023 00:04
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Blut posted:My thesis isn't that its the fault of just one fear, or that every fear applies equally to all AfD supporters, I've absolutely no idea how you could take that from my post. I listed a whole host of causes for fear of migration, and it wasn't even a full definitive list as implied by the 'etc'. I quote directly: All experiments I have heard of suggest the opposite. Whenever a left wing party joins the right in pretending that killing immigrants would solve the housing/welfare/schooling crisis they lose votes. If they join in on pretending that crime commited by non-rich people is rising they lose votes. That is because the people who share those assumptions have already found parties that support those "solutions". While the party loses the voters who actually want to solve those problems.
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Nov 28, 2023 00:18
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Blut posted:"current German nativist tendencies need to be solved on a cultural level and through sensible social media regulation" - is absolutely the exact kind of refusal to engage with reality nonsense that was being debunked on the last page. You could completely ban all of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook tomorrow and the far-right would still keep rising in Germany, and the rest of Europe, because of the opinions of the working class being ignored on migration. Blaming populism on social media for right-wing support levels is a total cop out for the modern left's economical, social and cultural abandonment of the working class over the last 40 years. You've taken what was said in the last page, that propaganda exists and is utilised with or without social media, and decided that the consensus instead was that propaganda doesn't exist. Yes, the right has been successful at employing propaganda to make people irrationally mad at immigrants and appeal to some kind of ethnonationalist pride. To accept that framing as fact isn't the right response, that is just ceding the playing field. I am not saying that the European left has done a good job at its own messaging - it very clearly has not! - but if your response to that is to surrender basic human empathy and the promise of a brighter future to those that need it most, and adopt regressive stances with regards to ethnicity and nationality, you need to stop and start reflecting a bit on what values you actually stand for.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:38
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Normally in Europe when a left party joins a right party in coalition it ends up being annihilated in the next elections rightfully.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:38
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This reminds me of the discourse when trump won in America in 2016, I wasn't in America then and a lot of Americans response was "obviously we need to be racist to appeal to the common man", glad that didn't become a mainstream thing and was kept as a fringe idea here.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:39
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I'm seeing from Reuters that Geerty boy is struggling at the moment, with VVD telling him to gently caress off and even the NSC being cautious. It seems his guy in charge of trying to broker a coalition resigned today under the shadow of fraud charges... I do enjoy watching a dog caught the car scenario. How long do you have in the Nederlands to form a government before you go back to the polls?
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Nov 28, 2023 11:23
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It took 208 days back in 1977. A record not broken until 2017 with 225 days, which was followed up in 2021 with 299 days. The average is 103 days apparently (based on formations after 1945). The shortest period was 31 days, all the way back in 1948. I don't know if there is a upper limit on how long a formation period can last. You would be more likely to get another minority coalition with confidence and supply than reelections. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 11:32
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A whole month without a government sounds like a very long time for every election, do Dutch interim ministerial posts retain enough authority for the bureaucracy not to grind to a halt in the meantime?
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Nov 28, 2023 12:05
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Yes, the previous government stays in place until a new coalition is agreed. Parliament has the authority to declare certain subjects off-limits in the interim, which they have done for a few things.
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Nov 28, 2023 12:59
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That is roughly how it goes in Finland, the wikipedia article on a 'caretaker government' saysquote:Caretaker governments in representative democracies are usually limited in their function, serving only to maintain the status quo, rather than truly govern and propose new legislation. Unlike the government it is meant to temporarily replace, a caretaker government does not have a legitimate mandate (electoral approval) to exercise aforementioned functions. (bolding mine) i.e. it's more or less literally  , but since parliament would have to vote on new legislation either way, it'd be pretty stupid (or weird circumstances) for a caretaker government to try and push anything substantive through.
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Nov 28, 2023 13:13
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Kinda hoping Geert doesn't get to be PM because people won't play ball with him.
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Nov 28, 2023 15:12
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Tesseraction posted:Kinda hoping Geert doesn't get to be PM because people won't play ball with him. People will, in the end, "we can't not have a government" they'll say, clutching their pearls mightily. "Let's just give the fascists an inch, it's worked well in the past."
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Nov 28, 2023 17:18
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YF-23 posted:A whole month without a government sounds like a very long time for every election, do Dutch interim ministerial posts retain enough authority for the bureaucracy not to grind to a halt in the meantime?
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Nov 28, 2023 17:23
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A Buttery Pastry posted:That's just part of the regional character of the Benelux to not be able to form governments. Yes, it took 592 days in Belgium after the 2020 elections, breaking its own previous record of 544 days. Oddly, because caretaker governments ad interim are constrained in what they can do, this also meant they couldn't seriously gently caress it up, so these record-breaking government formation attempts didn't destabilise the country in any appreciable way.
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Nov 28, 2023 17:46
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YF-23 posted:You've taken what was said in the last page, that propaganda exists and is utilised with or without social media, and decided that the consensus instead was that propaganda doesn't exist. Yes, the right has been successful at employing propaganda to make people irrationally mad at immigrants and appeal to some kind of ethnonationalist pride. To accept that framing as fact isn't the right response, that is just ceding the playing field. No, I haven't remotely "decided that the consensus instead was that propaganda doesn't exist.". I've stated that social media isn't the primary driver of working class voters across Europe moving to support the far right, and listed a number of the more salient reasons they have. Blaming social media is a cop out to avoid addressing the elephant in the room, which is that the dominant pro-migration strand of thinking in the European intellectual left is now extremely unpopular with working class voters. VictualSquid posted:All experiments I have heard of suggest the opposite. But this is exactly the false dichotomy of the modern left thats the problem. A left-wing party doesnt need to "pretend that killing immigrants would solve the problem". It just needs to actually address working class people's valid fears of what impact high levels of immigration will have on their quality of life - and admit some of them will, in fact, be negative. I've no idea what "experiments" you're referring to but we have real world examples of left-wing parties adopting more popular immigration policies and recovering support very well. Denmark is the most obvious EU example recently, where the far right was very successfully defanged as a result.
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Nov 28, 2023 20:26
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Blut posted:I've no idea what "experiments" you're referring to but we have real world examples of left-wing parties adopting more popular immigration policies and recovering support very well. Denmark is the most obvious EU example recently, where the far right was very successfully defanged as a result. What is your proposed compromise position? You refuse to state it. You can declare that all of societies problems are caused by immigration, or you can refuse to believe that. Are you specifically arguing that left wing parties should start pretending that there is a mystical solution that can not be actually explained, but that should take center stage in all propaganda?
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Nov 28, 2023 20:46
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Blut posted:I've no idea what "experiments" you're referring to but we have real world examples of left-wing parties adopting more popular immigration policies and recovering support very well. Denmark is the most obvious EU example recently, where the far right was very successfully defanged as a result. The far right being defanged would mean it losing actual political influence, to a significant degree, not the far right getting partially absorbed into the mainstream and splintering into parties catering to specific types of racists.
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Nov 28, 2023 21:19
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Exactly, claiming that the left adopting a nationalist stance on immigration has "defanged" the right is like saying that Brexit has successfully defanged UKIP. As if the goal of UKIP was to get a party named UKIP in government in the UK rather than achieving Brexit.
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Nov 28, 2023 21:54
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VictualSquid posted:There are regularly local chapters of left wing parties, including greens, who try pretending that immigration is actually the cause of all of current society's problems. The generally tank their vote in the following elections. I'm not refusing to state anything, I would have thought I've been very clear in my stance that the modern left-wing parties need to have policy platforms that actually reflect the fears/desires of working class voters. Or else stop being surprised when working class voters decide not to vote for them. This varies by country, but for example in Ireland, where I've seen the most recent polls, 80%+ of working class voters now want a complete halt to taking in any more asylum seekers from safe/not at war countries (the largest group last year, 20%, came from Georgia). Theres absolutely no need to "pretend theres a mystical solution" on this issue, the very obvious solution is doing exactly what the voters are telling you they want. A Buttery Pastry posted:What is your definition of "defang"? If your party loses relevance because its flagship policies have now been adopted by a larger more established party, you haven't really been defanged, you've just won. Aside from that, we've got two more far right parties now, with a combined mandate only beaten by the outlier 2015 election result. The DPP (far-right populists along the lines of the AfD, Le Pen etc) went from getting 21% of the vote in 2015 to 2% of the vote in 2022. Thats being defanged. The Danish Social Democrats are one of very very few center-left political parties in Europe that are still topping the polls. Thats winning. One element of the far-right platform, thats hugely popular with voters across the political spectrum, being adopted is not them 'winning'. Far right parties getting into government is them winning. When they get into power they won't just change immigration systems, they'll gently caress up everything else too - policies with regard to Ukraine/Putin, environmentalism, corporate corruption etc - you name it and they'll amost certainly break it.
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Nov 29, 2023 13:35
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Blut posted:The DPP (far-right populists along the lines of the AfD, Le Pen etc) went from getting 21% of the vote in 2015 to 2% of the vote in 2022. Thats being defanged. The Danish Social Democrats are one of very very few center-left political parties in Europe that are still topping the polls. Thats winning. if there's one thing the far-right love to do, it's rebranding and jumping ship
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Nov 29, 2023 13:59
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Blut posted:I'm not refusing to state anything, I would have thought I've been very clear in my stance that the modern left-wing parties need to have policy platforms that actually reflect the fears/desires of working class voters. Or else stop being surprised when working class voters decide not to vote for them. "We pretend that stopping immigration will help people" is already the centrist platform. Those voters are happy there. "We will stop immigration because we hate Also is that questionary from Ireland one that defines working class as earning between "100k and 200k yearly", like the last graph you posted?
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Nov 29, 2023 14:01
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Blut posted:The DPP (far-right populists along the lines of the AfD, Le Pen etc) went from getting 21% of the vote in 2015 to 2% of the vote in 2022. Thats being defanged. The Danish Social Democrats are one of very very few center-left political parties in Europe that are still topping the polls. Thats winning. Anyway, to bring something real to the table, here's the actual evolution since 2015:  A bunch of their 2015 voters return to Venstre (V), our main center-right party, the voters who in large part helped push them to their record 2015 result. Basically, the two parties were seen as close enough in their politics that a decent chunk of voters had no issue making a quick jump, and then back again. The Social Democrats then picked up a couple of voters, while the two new far right parties (D & P) and the Conservatives (C) pulled most of the rest.  Continuing on to the next election, the DPP essentially gets replaced by the Danish Democrats (Æ), while the remaining center to center-right parties grab most of their remaining voters, leaving a rump party. That's not a story of the far right getting defanged, that's a story of party system that (for good or ill) is responsive enough to voters that the center shifted far enough to the right in politics and rhetoric that there was less need for a dedicated big tent far right party. Meaning they can now have the racist parties differentiate themselves along economic, non-racist social lines, and just by the personality cults of the politicians in charge. Blut posted:One element of the far-right platform, thats hugely popular with voters across the political spectrum, being adopted is not them 'winning'. Far right parties getting into government is them winning. When they get into power they won't just change immigration systems, they'll gently caress up everything else too - policies with regard to Ukraine/Putin, environmentalism, corporate corruption etc - you name it and they'll amost certainly break it. While I don't entirely disagree from a "lesser evil" point of view, that doing all the poo poo you mention on top of the anti-immigrant poo poo is worse than just (perhaps slightly watered down) anti-immigrant poo poo, it still sounds like basically defining anti-immigrant poo poo as not really far-right because the people it fucks up don't really count. Like the issue with being far-right is the geopolitical implications, rather than a holistically lovely position where no individual aspect is really acceptable and something we should celebrate adapting because it "weakens" the far right.
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Nov 29, 2023 15:03
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YF-23 posted:Exactly, claiming that the left adopting a nationalist stance on immigration has "defanged" the right is like saying that Brexit has successfully defanged UKIP. As if the goal of UKIP was to get a party named UKIP in government in the UK rather than achieving Brexit. They also basically took over the centre-right party from the inside and now have actual fascists in cabinet positions when before they were considered backbench jokes who were clearly insane and evil and were just there to make the front bench look moderate by comparison.
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Nov 29, 2023 17:05
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Similar things happened in Flanders: between 1995 and 2002, Vlaams Blok (Vlaams Belang's predecessor, but later changed its name after getting convicted of racism in court), which was founded by an actual Nazi, would routinely gobble up to and over 25% of the electorate. Then N-VA entered the scene as a moderate nationalist party and even had a few positions that could be considered centre-left. N-VA began siphoning away Vlaams Belang's voters and party members bit by bit until it began attracting the low 30%s of the electorate, leaving Vlaams Belang teetering around 10%. In part, N-VA was able to do this by adopting more and more policy positions of Vlaams Belang. Since 2014, Vlaams Belang has been successfully rebounding and N-VA has lost some voter share, but both parties now account for 40% of the electorate while having policy positions that are in many cases virtually indistuingishable. Not to mention N-VA has been in Flemish government now for 16 years. The damage this party has done to mainstream politics in Flanders is simply catastrophic.
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Nov 29, 2023 17:56
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Blut posted:I'm not refusing to state anything, I would have thought I've been very clear in my stance that the modern left-wing parties need to have policy platforms that actually reflect the fears/desires of working class voters. Or else stop being surprised when working class voters decide not to vote for them. The point of a left-wing party isn't to represent the working class's opinions, it is to represent the working class's interests. If the working class's opinions are contrary to the working class's interests (as is the case with bigotry and xenophobia which drive the working class away from material class-based politics and into identitarian infighting), it is the left-wing party's job to course-correct against that and work towards promoting class consciousness and a politics that advances the interests of the working class, providing an alternative away from the mainstreamed identitarianism.
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Nov 30, 2023 02:43
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YF-23 posted:The point of a left-wing party isn't to represent the working class's opinions, it is to represent the working class's interests. If the working class's opinions are contrary to the working class's interests (as is the case with bigotry and xenophobia which drive the working class away from material class-based politics and into identitarian infighting), it is the left-wing party's job to course-correct against that and work towards promoting class consciousness and a politics that advances the interests of the working class, providing an alternative away from the mainstreamed identitarianism. Also, can a "leftist" party that adopts an explicitly non-leftist platform (in this case, anti-solidarity with non-natives) really be called leftist anymore? By adopting these right-wing policies, haven't they just become center-right parties with a red coat of paint?
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Nov 30, 2023 11:58
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Svensken posted:Also, can a "leftist" party that adopts an explicitly non-leftist platform (in this case, anti-solidarity with non-natives) really be called leftist anymore? By adopting these right-wing policies, haven't they just become center-right parties with a red coat of paint? What are the core aspects of leftism that if you veer from them you cease to be one? As an umbrella term, leftism has wildly different approaches under it. From policy views that want central planning to believers in market economy, from wanting workers to own the means of production with one party steering the will of proletariat to syndicalists who see unions being the prime movers of politics to believers in capitalist relations of production but with regulation and all encompassing welfare state. Those have some deep contradictions in actual policies between each other, yet all are traditionally thought to belonging under leftist politics. Similarly historically there's been a lot of leftist movements that have been tied strongly to nationalist politics. Like the different colonial struggles during the Cold War. I'm not saying that there aren't such aspects, it's just that this post got me thinking about what those could be.... Wanting to solve the social question instead of just accepting that poverty and suffering are the will of God/markets that we shouldn't go against?
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Nov 30, 2023 12:15
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| # ? May 30, 2024 15:38 |
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Svensken posted:Also, can a "leftist" party that adopts an explicitly non-leftist platform (in this case, anti-solidarity with non-natives) really be called leftist anymore? By adopting these right-wing policies, haven't they just become center-right parties with a red coat of paint? I suppose one could argue that cross-border solidarity and internationalism aren't necessarily intrinsic components of all leftism, I think you'd be wrong & take an entirely internationalist viewpoint myself. But you could argue that serious internationalism in the social democratic movement died with the failure of the Second International & WW1, & even further on the left in the '20s & '30s USSR it was more empty rhetoric covering a foreign policy based as much on realpolitik as anything else. Not much internationalist about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact after all. And so at that point, well, what's a leftist party if you're excluding social democrats, communists & pretty much everything in between bar some extremely minor groups on the libertarian left & among left communists? Again, not actually my viewpoint, but I do think the argument is worth considering if only out of practicality. There's always been a strain in the working class movement which is anti-immigration on the basis that immigrants can be used by employers to force down wages. I think this is short sighted but when you're struggling to get by then short-termism is kind of understandable.
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Nov 30, 2023 12:22
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