Topic: Elections in Europe

[Bend It Like Aurelio]

The Italian Far-Right in line to win their election on the 25th as well, which is a particularly frightening prospect for European unity, and the anti-Putin front.

Think the Swedes are essentially a centre right coalition with an obvious tinge of far right politics, but for the most part the views seem to be mainstream and pro-NATO, at the very least anti-Russia. The next PM will probably come from the Moderates.

Seems like it will be similar in Italy, it will probably be the centre right running the show. The League have pretty much replaced the Five Star movement as the pro Russian movement in this context, but they are trailing in the polls to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.

From what I can see the support for Ukraine is widespread in both of these countries, though you do see the far left and the far right getting the publicity outside of their respective countries, especially in Italy.

[Linudden]

Fratelli d'Italia is not a mainstream right party, the only profound difference for me as a foreigner looking in between them and Lega is the nationalism vs regionalism aspect.

Anyway, the new Swedish government is going to be moderately conservative but applying very strict immigration policies and crack down on crime similar to the Social Democratic government of Denmark has done. The overton window is so different between Sweden and Italy that's it's not even in the same postcode.

The Sweden Democrats would be on the centre-left in Italian politics, for sure. Their main demand besides net zero immigration was to maintain unemployment benefits at the covid levels. Meanwhile, the PD (Italian Labour) are not running on any social benefits at all and would definitely not introduce paid parental leave (which doesn't universally exist in Italy).

[plura]

Fratelli d'Italia is not a mainstream right party, the only profound difference for me as a foreigner looking in between them and Lega is the nationalism vs regionalism aspect.

Anyway, the new Swedish government is going to be moderately conservative but applying very strict immigration policies and crack down on crime similar to the Social Democratic government of Denmark has done. The overton window is so different between Sweden and Italy that's it's not even in the same postcode.

The Sweden Democrats would be on the centre-left in Italian politics, for sure. Their main demand besides net zero immigration was to maintain unemployment benefits at the covid levels. Meanwhile, the PD (Italian Labour) are not running on any social benefits at all and would definitely not introduce parental leave (which doesn't exist in Italy).

I think this is an interesting thing to look at. A lot of the politics of this so called far-right party (SD) is actually what you'd consider to belong on the left side, and also at the middle of the chart. A lot of welfare politics, healthcare and elderly care politics that you don't associate with the politics of the parties like Moderates or the Tories.

But then of course SD have the politics around immigration and integration which is conservative and restrictive. So the overall party politics of the Sweden Democrates is hastily categorised as far-right. Even though they might share more policy similarities with the Social Democrates than the conservative Moderates.

Obviously this is all in the context of Sweden's political landscape. If you compare each party's policies with foreign parties then a centre or right sided party in Sweden might be seen as a socialistic party elsewhere.

[Indomitable_Carp]

I think this is an interesting thing to look at. A lot of the politics of this so called far-right party (SD) is actually what you'd consider to belong on the left side, and also at the middle of the chart. A lot of welfare politics, healthcare and elderly care politics that you don't associate with the politics of the parties like Moderates or the Tories.

But then of course SD have the politics around immigration and integration which is conservative and restrictive. So the overall party politics of the Sweden Democrates is hastily categorised as far-right. Even though they might share more policy similarities with the Social Democrates than the conservative Moderates.

Obviously this is all in the context of Sweden's political landscape. If you compare each party's policies with foreign parties then a centre or right sided party in Sweden might be seen as a socialistic party elsewhere.

Isn´t that most Far Right politics? Most Far Right parties have socialist policies for those who fit their definitions of belonging. "We look after our own" is basically the whole point no? National Socialists etc etc

I don´t know the ins-and-outs of SD policies, so I am hesitant to comment one way or the other. But Left-Right isn´t a purely economic measure.

[Stockholm Syndrome]

Isn´t that most Far Right politics? Most Far Right parties have socialist policies for those who fit their definitions of belonging. "We look after our own" is basically the whole point no? National Socialists etc etc

I don´t know the ins-and-outs of SD policies, so I am hesitant to comment one way or the other. But Left-Right isn´t a purely economic measure.

I'm not sure, but when you talk about UK and US the right wing, even the far right wing, are less about looking after their own, and more on the libertarian side of "Stopping government from interfering with the individuals life"

Which all sounds like the idea of letting people do as they please and earn the sweat from their own brow with less red tape and less taxes and not having to pay for lazy scroungers who won't work.

But in actual fact it just allows big business to exploit labor force, produce worse products, exploit consumers, and pay less tax, with the end goal being they can do a shittier job, charge more money, and pay less for the profits.

[Indomitable_Carp]

I'm not sure, but when you talk about UK and US the right wing, even the far right wing, are less about looking after their own, and more on the libertarian side of "Stopping government from interfering with the individuals life"

Which all sounds like the idea of letting people do as they please and earn the sweat from their own brow with less red tape and less taxes and not having to pay for lazy scroungers who won't work.

But in actual fact it just allows big business to exploit labor force, produce worse products, exploit consumers, and pay less tax, with the end goal being they can do a shittier job, charge more money, and pay less for the profits.

That really depends. There is certainly that strain of the Far Right.

However take the BNP for example. Their economic policy focused on the idea of the UK becoming self-sufficient, incl¡uding economic nationalism (protection from global markets), government intervention in the economy, nationalisation of the railways, etc etc

Even UKIP, which started as an economically libertarian throw-everything-to-the-free-market party, started to see internal fissures once it evolved into a populist nationalist party, between its libertarian wing and those arguing for greater protectionism of things like the NHS (lets not forget that Brexit was sold, quite ludicrously, partly on account of protectionism - e.g. extra 350 million a week for the NHS etc etc)

[Linudden]

When it comes to Sweden one of the most important aspects to understand is how the overton window is different enough that here the Social Democrats are the status-quo managers and the Moderates/Sweden Democrat bloc are the 'agents of change'. In other words, the opposite of Britain where the Tories are the constant and Labour are the change. Blair only changed this by veering to the right on economic policies, thus extending the usually short Labour cycles. This is seen time and again through history that when Swedes vote change they vote in the right, who then conduct that change and then the left get promptly back in and keeps the status quo the right introduced intact. Essentially this means that the Social Democrats shift where the status quo is.

In 2006, the population wanted an end to the abuse of the early retirement system and tax cuts for the middle class. Eight years later, the Social Democrats kept all of those reforms intact. Now, a majority of the population want drastic immigration cuts and the building of nuclear power plants. As ever, there is a lag between general sentiments in polls and the election outcome in Sweden, because the right need to be a lot more popular on the individual issues to overwhelm the institutional Social Democratic advantage. Anyway, I do predict the left will triumph in four years time but they will essentially govern the same way as the right will do now. It's a refresher for them to adjust and then be able to point out to the progressives in parliament that 'this is the new normal, sorry'. With billions tied up into building new power plants, the Green Party are not going to be able to stop them halfway. Also with a lower population growth, the system lag of long queues for healthcare will catch up as the rate of doctors and nurses per capita increases and that would eliminate any possibility of even a return to the half-strict 2022 immigration policy.

The thing about it is that the left while before a reform are representing a majority of their own voters, but if the right of the country is like 90/10 in favour of building power plants and restricting immigration and the left is 70/30 against, it still totals out to 60/40 over the general public. I would say those are the rough sentiments right now. The Social Democratic leadership know this and that's why they push that consensus leftwards among the electorate to gain governmental control.

Therefore, on a nationwide scale these issues will go from 60/40 issues to 70/30 consensus policies once the moderately leftist politicians shift the internal overton window in order to win the next election. Once you reach nearly 2/3 of the population on any issue, it gets impossible to win the election on another platform because not enough detractors are willing to overlook that specific proposal of yours.

The main change I expect is a redefinition of asylum claims to follow the Dublin Treaty of 'the first safe country', thus having a government instruction to deny asylum to anyone entering Sweden via Denmark, Germany or Finland.

This is more or less what happened in Denmark and Norway, which is the template the Sweden Democrats have followed. Essentially, the right comes in to conduct major systematic reform and then the respective Labour parties adopt all of those policies and make them their own.

You also have the small country and small language aspect. In places that don't have a wider global reach, protectionism will be a lot more inclined to be about social rather than economic issues. There is no risk that the English language or Anglo culture would not be dominant no matter how much immigration you had, but if there are just 10 million speakers of a language, it becomes much more of a sensitive issue. There are more people living in the London urban area than people in the world able to speak the Swedish language. That's in my opinion the deep root to why Sweden's mean is 'conservative left' or if the Red Wall was a country, but still has a quite wide majority in favour of EU membership. The median left voters in say Stockholm or Bristol are rather different and it's coming down to very deep sociological differences in the perception of the status of the respective countries. Interestingly, the politicians have been way more liberal than the population for quite some time but there is this 2/3 threshold that already forced the Social Democrats to reshape themselves with a lot more conservative policy positions. This was all to be able to even get the bloc within 45,000 votes.

I hope it helped understanding what forms the political climate not just here but in Denmark, Finland and Norway as well The four of us all mirror one another.

[plura]

Isn´t that most Far Right politics? Most Far Right parties have socialist policies for those who fit their definitions of belonging. "We look after our own" is basically the whole point no? National Socialists etc etc

I don´t know the ins-and-outs of SD policies, so I am hesitant to comment one way or the other. But Left-Right isn´t a purely economic measure.

The collaboration between the right sided block is going to be interesting. The Sweden Democrats, besides it’s immigration and integration policies as mentioned have most of its other policies well grounded in a strong state, that looks after its people as you say, with strong governmental agencies supporting the people. And in many ways pave the wave for government reliance of many.

Then you have at least two other parties in that block that are the right sided parties that want to privatise much of what the government ‘controls’. See less government reliance and more libertarian goals come to fruition. Less taxes, more freedom to the individual to succeed. If they can. If not, tough luck.

So yeah far right parties are with their socialistic views about the strong state combined with conservative liberals are an interesting mix.

[Linudden]

Regarding what Plura said, the situation with the Sweden Democrats is that they've always held the balance of power on economic questions since the 2010 entry and in some cases they lean left and in others to the right. What they do is preventing the right from privatizing social services and from cutting unemployment, but also prevent the left from abolishing the private alternatives in existence today and be a roadblock to raise taxes on the middle class.

On the grand scale of things I'd say they're moderately centre-right on economics on a Swedish scale, which is centre-left in Britain.

[rafathegaffa83]

Looks like Meloni's bloc has won in Italy. Record low turnout too
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63029909

[GreatEx]

Hooray, let's do right-wing Europe again, always worked well in the past

[TepidT2O]

It’s Italy of course… so it probably won’t last more than 18 months

[ChaChaMooMoo]

Well.. I dont know..

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1574251105940377607

[Libertine]

Utterly depressing result.

The only positive I guess is that, as bad as Meloni is, she's not quite as bad as Salvini and Berlusconi (particularly in relation to not being a Putin shill). The latter two had terrible results. And as with all ideologues, no doubt they'll soon be fighting like rats in a sack.

The combined left / centre-left (if including M5S) got more votes than the right of course, but hopelessly divided as always.

[killer-heels]

It’s Italy of course… so it probably won’t last more than 18 months

That long? Halve that.

[Red-Soldier]

Utterly depressing result.

The only positive I guess is that, as bad as Meloni is, she's not quite as bad as Salvini and Berlusconi (particularly in relation to not being a Putin shill). The latter two had terrible results. And as with all ideologues, no doubt they'll soon be fighting like rats in a sack.

The combined left / centre-left (if including M5S) got more votes than the right of course, but hopelessly divided as always.

As well as being divided, the main left/centre left party was still pushing the same bullshit globalisation (status quo) that has served everyone so well.

[Nobby Reserve]

I listened to some analysis of the Italian elections, and they talked about 'the left' (well, the centre-left parties, who've been in power for most of the past few years) doing pretty much nothing but carry on that right-of-centre, corporate-capitalist economic model. Given [I'll be kind] it's a model that has severe limitations and creates a few financial winners and an awful lot of losers, it deserves jettisoning for a model that spreads the wealth creation around much more equally. But broadly the supposedly 'left of centre' parties in multiple European countries (including the UK) are run by politicians who are adherents of and believers in that corporate-capitalist model.

When all parties are offering only slight variations on the same economic model, and the quality of life continues to diminish for most, electorates are going to begin basing their voting choice decisions on issues outside of the economic arguments. And they are therefore more susceptible to fall for the sort of far-right rhetoric that demonises certain groups and subconsciously appeals to one's baser and less pleasant emotions

[kennedy81]

It’s Italy of course… so it probably won’t last more than 18 months

Yeah, I can't see them lasting long. Salvini will be fuming that he has to play second fiddle to a woman and it won't be long before the cracks will start showing. He's already been secretly recorded calling her an asshole not long ago.

Meloni has already been reported as getting panicked at the thought of being PM. I suspect she'll find herself way out of her depth and Italy has some serious issues to deal with. Plus she has to play ball with the EU or risk losing their €195 billion covid recovery fund from Brussels. She has to keep both the far-right and more moderate right wingers on board which will be difficult.
These populist clowns always come unstuck when they actually have to govern, instead of just giving fiery speeches bashing immigrants.

[kennedy81]

Utterly depressing result.

The only positive I guess is that, as bad as Meloni is, she's not quite as bad as Salvini and Berlusconi (particularly in relation to not being a Putin shill). The latter two had terrible results. And as with all ideologues, no doubt they'll soon be fighting like rats in a sack.

The combined left / centre-left (if including M5S) got more votes than the right of course, but hopelessly divided as always.

Her party voted against sanctions on Russia after they invaded Crimea in 2014. She is just as soft on Putin as the other two, maybe even more so. She is more dangerous than the other two in my book. You only have to look at her party's lineage.

[Iska]

Well.. I dont know..

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1574251105940377607

Some speech that.

[Garrus]

Well.. I dont know..

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1574251105940377607

Cringeworthy. Who says identity politics are endemic to the left?

[Red-Soldier]

Yeah, I can't see them lasting long. Salvini will be fuming that he has to play second fiddle to a woman and it won't be long before the cracks will start showing. He's already been secretly recorded calling her an asshole not long ago.

Meloni has already been reported as getting panicked at the thought of being PM. I suspect she'll find herself way out of her depth and Italy has some serious issues to deal with. Plus she has to play ball with the EU or risk losing their €195 billion covid recovery fund from Brussels. She has to keep both the far-right and more moderate right wingers on board which will be difficult.
These populist clowns always come unstuck when they actually have to govern, instead of just giving fiery speeches bashing immigrants.

I agree with this.  He's on the decline, but he's also a megalomaniac who wont be too happy playing second fiddle.

[Nobby Reserve]

Well.. I dont know..

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1574251105940377607

That's got a horribly depressing bunch of comments.

Now for a meandering attempt to put some deeper thoughts down for what I find to be a confusing political era!

As long as I've had political awareness, I've had an instinctive aversion towards 'the Establishment' and to big business. The Establishment included the [small-c] conservatives - the Mary Whitehouse types, the religionists who wanted to oppress the fun out of life, those who despised gay people and women's rights and were often racist. Big business sought to get government to implement policies for the benefit of big business, and ultimately created this consumerist hell where we're all brainwashed to judge people on what material possessions they have.

In my eyes it was the right-wing of politics who were the representatives of 'the Establishment' and also the representatives of 'big business'. The two went hand in hand.

I still tend to view politics through that prism, and know I'm far from alone. But it seems half the rest of the world have shifted onto some different understanding.

There's been the emergence of whole new political alignment for millions of people. We've seen it in the UK, in the US, in Italy and other places. It's represented by people like Frottage & the whole Brexit movement, by Trump, by Meloni.

The message marries old-school, small-c conservate-oppression with messages of being anti-big business (and to a form of nationalism that tries to frame patriotism to those old-school, oppressive 'values' as the only pure form of nationalism). They talk of big business as an enemy of the people; listen to Meloni rant about big business trying to strip everyone of their identity in order to turn them into consumer slaves.

Issue is, it's all a con.

Whenever the politicians who peddle these memes obtain power, they implement laws that help big business - weaker regulation, lower business taxes, cuts to workers' rights, cuts to environmental protections.

There is undeniably a significant (but still very much minority) groundswell of people who fervently believe that they are being oppressed by 'lefty wokeists', that they are having 'lefty wokeist' views forced on them. That there is a tyranny of progressivism out to destroy their identity.

Again, this is bullshit. It's what I call 'the conservative fallacy'.

See, these conservatives (allow me to generalise) claim that their wanting to bring in laws to (eg) ban gay marriage or restrict LGBT rights or curb alternative lifestyles or a whole host of other things they personally find 'offensive', is the equivalence of 'progressives' wanting to bring in laws that allow gay marriage or enshrine LGBT rights, etc. That there's an equal argumentative weight to people wanting laws to give rights to minority groups and  to people wanting to restrict rights to minority groups.

This is fundamentally wrong. And rather duplicitious.

'Progressives' don't want to ban (eg) families or force people into same-sex relationships or change their gender. They want to give people the choice of (again eg) starting a family or no, of marrying a person of the opposite or same sex, of being able to change their gender.

They want to give people the choice to live their lives the way they choose.

Conservatives want to remove that choice. They want to oppress people into a narrow band of social acceptance and reinforce that in law.

The big question is: how do 'we' counter this? I mean, with an increasing proportion of the citizens many western countries facing a downturn in quality of life, we can't have this fallacious political movement gaining more support from the disaffected.





 

[GreatEx]

Great post, NR.

[Iska]

Excellent post.  I disagree with most of it but you (and Linudden above) have identified something important in that the politics we’ve grown up with has totally changed.

One thing I think you get wrong is strawmanning conservatism.  It isn’t about wanting to repress people while progressivism seeks to set them free – instead it’s a sincere belief that those things are bad ways to live, either on a personal level or because the collective cannot support them beyond a certain level.  That’s a powerful traditional message, and it’s one that is borne out by what I think is a widespread feeling that things have gone badly wrong in recent years, call it atomisation or whatever.  That is what Meloni is articulating in her speech imo, and that’s why it’s caught fire.

One thing you miss in saying ”They want to give people the choice of (again eg) starting a family or no, of marrying a person of the opposite or same sex, of being able to change their gender.” is that people’s choices aren’t formed in a vacuum, but are influenced by those around them.  Take the gender choice, for example, where has that come from?  It didn’t even exist 10/15 years ago, and now you have huge numbers of teenage girls going for it.  It’s been pushed out from academia and has caught on, but people do not like it, it is one of the things that is considered a bad way to live.  So you can’t cast it as an example of just giving people freedom of choice, because (at least from a conservative pov) it is an example of forcing people to do something, or most generously of a moral failing in vacating common values and allowing something random in.  Conservatives do have a tried-and-tested system at their back in the shape of tradition, and it isn’t fair to call adherence to or promotion of that all oppression whereas progressivism is all good.

The analysis is good though and is a rare realisation that the two sides as we’ve understood them have both fractured as liberalism ran out of gas.  Now the class interests and economic policies that the parties represented a generation ago no longer align, and you get daft stuff like Labour promoting the gig economy when its natural supporters should want anything but.  These fractures will have to be addressed somehow and I think you’re right in identifying the attraction of conservatism to unexpected groups in Sweden and Italy as part of that process.

[GreatEx]

I agree that the average voter may have sincere worries about the way society is headed, but Nobby makes the important distinction between the rhetoric and what the conservative parties actually deliver when in power. Beware the politics of fear, or indeed of golden age thinking. Also look at abortion in the US before claiming that conservative governments aren't about restricting freedoms.

Nobby, I feel I should play devil's advocate on this a bit, because I face a barrage of Trumpist thinking in other parts of my life. Where you say the Trumps of the world will tell the people big business are their enemy and then do everything to tip the scales in bb's favour, they will undoubtedly counter that it's actually globalism that's the enemy and local bb that gets the boost, and that wages and standards of living improved under Trump. Whether that's true or not (and conveniently ignoring how it all fell apart at the first black swan event), how would you address the globalist/anti-globalist claim? Do conservative parties practice what they preach when viewed through that prism?

[thejbs]

One thing you miss in saying ”They want to give people the choice of (again eg) starting a family or no, of marrying a person of the opposite or same sex, of being able to change their gender.” is that people’s choices aren’t formed in a vacuum, but are influenced by those around them.  Take the gender choice, for example, where has that come from?  It didn’t even exist 10/15 years ago, and now you have huge numbers of teenage girls going for it.  It’s been pushed out from academia and has caught on, but people do not like it, it is one of the things that is considered a bad way to live.  So you can’t cast it as an example of just giving people freedom of choice, because (at least from a conservative pov) it is an example of forcing people to do something, or most generously of a moral failing in vacating common values and allowing something random in.  Conservatives do have a tried-and-tested system at their back in the shape of tradition, and it isn’t fair to call adherence to or promotion of that all oppression whereas progressivism is all good.

If you can argue this, then we can perhaps argue that religion is quite similar. While religion is a freedom, it’s being foisted upon people, especially children, leaving little real choice. And religion is far from benign in its influence.

Other conservative (religious?) moralities such as avoiding divorce, encouraging procreation, denying abortion, denying marriage equality are morally dubious but somehow believed by conservatives more acceptable than someone changing gender.

[GreatEx]

I mean, if we're trying to prevent people getting convinced to make questionable life choices, it's probably time we banned advertising of sports betting, alcohol, junk food and sugary drinks, etc etc. I have endured many a rant from so-called libertarians who become talibanesque when the subject shifts to abortion, marriage equality and transgender issues. But I guess that's all part of the human equation, 99% of us simply want the world to align to our own personal values.

[Iska]

All good points.  What I’d say is that although the swell of feeling has in retrospect been building for some time – Trump and Brexit are both probably expressions of it but the results that came out of it definitely weren’t – the fracture in actual politics is much more recent to the point where we’re watching it happen live and having to guess what the essence of it actually is. 

What I think is that it is about freedom, but in a totally different way that is hard to get our heads around when we’re so used to thinking of freedom in a kind of progress-towards-absolute-liberty American way.  I think it’s more like a rejection of freedom-as-unalloyed-good, or a recognition that there are freedoms which we don’t need.  So while ” While religion is a freedom, it’s being foisted upon people, especially children, leaving little real choice” makes sense under the old paradigm, it misses the point under the new one - the issue is more about moving towards a new system that balances the individual against the collective, rather than the liberal ideal of always favouring the individual.

It seems like a massive conceptual change, and it is, but on another view it isn’t because we have no difficulty recognising that there’s a common good to be taken into account in economic matters or social ones.  The post-sixties liberal consensus was in place so long that it came to feel like sacrilege to suggest that individual wants or self-expression should be curtailed in any way.  I keep coming back to gender as the key example as freedom-for-freedom’s-sake, something which has become conceptually possible only recently, but has no utility to the wider community (except for the tiny number of people with spontaneous and incurable dysphoria).  Using a progressive lens it’s difficult to articulate any opposition to it, because the practical objections that come to mind could always be addressed by closer and closer individualisation, whether that’s separate cubicles, individual risk assessments, event-by-event sporting criteria, individual Gillick assessments, new prison wings, or whatever.  But there’s no conceptual basis for giving effect to the common good because that would be a restriction of individual autonomy.  You could apply a similar analysis to other topics, like how immigration seems to have played out in Sweden, or gambling, or the sexual revolution.

If there’s a key point to the new era, I think it might be that - that the past fifty/sixty years saw a rejection of the idea that there can be any common standard applied to individual behaviour, and a new approach is needed.

[Indomitable_Carp]

Good posts. And I think a lot of good points about these modern problems of identity and politics stem from the basic conflict between feelings of individualism and feelings of community, with the way leftwing and rightwing politics have developed leaving inhrent contradictions between the two. 

A lot of us more socially liberal minded and more left-wing people have been raised in an interesting juxtaposition.

On the one hand younger people have been raised in an era where we have challenged all of the conservative and traditional norms of society. In doing so we have opened up society to whole groups of people to live how they want to live without feeling socially repressed or forced into doing otherwise. This on the one hand represents equality and communitarian minded values in allowing people of all different stripes to live (hopefully) peacefully side-by-side, intermingling and getting on with life. People who have historically faced horrendous repression have been able to live with a degree of freedom and dignity.

Yet this is matched by the era of rampant individualism. The same young people who have been brought up to accept all of the above have also been brought up in the time of unrestrained consumerism. This has come with the idea that we are all individuals trying to get ahead (or keep afloat), that we can all be who or what we want to be without consequence for anyone else or wider society, that we can pick and choose the aspects of society we want to accept meanwhile disregard those parts of society we don´t like. The internet has then allowed us to atomise even further, so we now only have to converse with those who we feel match our own individual view of the world, and can effectively shun or block out anyone else. In some ways the polar opposite of the same communitarian values that underpinned the breaking down of repressive and marginalising traditional values in the first place.

Then to further complicate the mix we have got the development of identity politics. This has seen us attempt to label people in a way that draws social and historical conclusions from those labels. This may have started on the socially liberal left with the intent of giving marginalised people a voice and understanding sources of repression, which might seem communitarian. However, it is inherently marginalising in and of itself in drawing lines through society and organising ourselves politically and socially around those lines. It hinders community as suddenly we are all seperate communities living side-by-side. It makes even liberally minded people afraid to broach barriers out of fear of putting their foot in it, meanwhile it makes others who are told they have to shut up and listen into reactionaries.

Accordingly, we have the slightly odd scenario in which young leftwingers are arguing for social and economic policies to benefit marginalised working class communities whose social conservatism is often derided if not despised. At the same time, ex-public school bankers like Nigel Frottage are able to portray themselves as outsiders to these same working class communities

Finally, the processes of deindustrialisation, secularisation and globalisation have seen a lot of our traditional communal rallying points break down. For many people feelings of nationhood are all they have left in regards to feeling part of a wider community in the face of rapid change across the board.

Then all of this other stuff - Trump, Brexit, Brothers of Italy - seems a basic reaction to that, to the extent of being able to deride left-wing economic policies whilst simultaneously rallying against globalisation because they are associated with this wider liberal leftwing view that has itself developed in step with consumerism and globalisation.

[didi shamone]

Some speech that.

Yep, full of fire and rhetoric, invisible forces trying to destroy you and devoid of any actual policy or solutions. 
I used to be amazed how Hitler gained so much traction so quickly  but not anymore. A huge amount of people are monumentally dumb.
Thank god Italy is so dysfunctional that she won't lead long enough to do real damage to freedom and introduce her own brand of freedom.

[BER]

Remember watching this at the time and thinking how naive the guardian reporter was to think this movement had failed or gone away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2twSMMdHs

Adam Curtis has been talking about this all being part of Putin's playbook for years too and I'm sure many other experts.

Yet we all act surprised.

[thaddeus]

Yep, full of fire and rhetoric, invisible forces trying to destroy you and devoid of any actual policy or solutions. 
I used to be amazed how Hitler gained so much traction so quickly  but not anymore. A huge amount of people are monumentally dumb.
Thank god Italy is so dysfunctional that she won't lead long enough to do real damage to freedom and introduce her own brand of freedom.

It was a clever speech in that it pushed the right buttons and it was passionately delivered.  No substance whatsoever.

I worry that much of Europe will be susceptible to similar messaging and as such it's good news that both Germany and France have settled governments for the next few years.  The UK is already under the governance of populist idiots and we're hopefully close to coming out the other side.  If nothing else Brexit has meant even the far right parties across Europe are less vocal on taking their countries out of the bloc.

[GreatEx]

Thanks Iska and Carp for your thought provoking posts.

I hope to find time to organise my thoughts and type on a keyboard but not sure that'll ever happen! What I can say is that confusion abounds and the lines have been blurred as you say. Carp articulates the contradiction of the modern left well. And the equivalent contradiction on the right is the notion that consevatism somehow has taken over the communitarian ideals while at the same time indulging in its own rampant consumerist individualism at the cost of the environment and public safety. It's all just a big mess and I've long argued that it's time to stop thinking of a 1-dimensional political spectrum. As someone who tends towards moderate-left economic policy, I resent being made to "own" some of the fringe idpol nonsense that goes on. That's not to say that I have fixed ideas on gender etc, more that I consider them minor issues that are being deliberately inflated to discredit the important policies that could improve people's lives. I'm very sceptical about the source of the idpol wave, or at least its channels.

[Nobby Reserve]

One thing I think you get wrong is strawmanning conservatism.  It isn’t about wanting to repress people while progressivism seeks to set them free – instead it’s a sincere belief that those things are bad ways to live, either on a personal level or because the collective cannot support them beyond a certain level.  That’s a powerful traditional message, and it’s one that is borne out by what I think is a widespread feeling that things have gone badly wrong in recent years, call it atomisation or whatever.  That is what Meloni is articulating in her speech imo, and that’s why it’s caught fire.

One thing you miss in saying ”They want to give people the choice of (again eg) starting a family or no, of marrying a person of the opposite or same sex, of being able to change their gender.” is that people’s choices aren’t formed in a vacuum, but are influenced by those around them.  Take the gender choice, for example, where has that come from?  It didn’t even exist 10/15 years ago, and now you have huge numbers of teenage girls going for it.  It’s been pushed out from academia and has caught on, but people do not like it, it is one of the things that is considered a bad way to live.  So you can’t cast it as an example of just giving people freedom of choice, because (at least from a conservative pov) it is an example of forcing people to do something, or most generously of a moral failing in vacating common values and allowing something random in.  Conservatives do have a tried-and-tested system at their back in the shape of tradition, and it isn’t fair to call adherence to or promotion of that all oppression whereas progressivism is all good.

I wouldn't call it straw-manning, when it's the core issue at the hert of the debate (per the election of Meloni in Italy)

I also take some issue with your conclusion that [the current brand of] conservatism isn't about repressing people's freedoms. This conservatism really is about that. It's about imposing conjured 'moral values' on everyone.

There's no doubt that many conservatives do indeed hold the belief that 'those things are bad ways to live'. But what entitles them to force everyone to live within a strict, puritannical straightjacket when 'alternative lifestyles' don't directly and negatively impact on the conservatives (beyond a sense of 'I don't like it' or 'my sky fairy doesn't agree with that sort of thing')?

Remember also that things like homosexuality and gender dysphoria (and, of course, race) aren't lifestyle choices. I know that some young people will go through a phase of pretending they are, but so what? Is that so catastrophic for society? Except, of course, to the people who choose to be offended by it. Homosexuals have suffered huge discrimination over the years by 'moralising conservatives', and I dare you to argue that repressing homosexuality within society is more desirable to openly accepting that there are homosexual people who should be able to live their lives honestly, without needing to hide what is a core facet of their existence.

Not surprisingly, I also don't agree that, for societal cohesion, there has to be some narrow set of societal 'moral rules' framework within which we should live our lives (beyond the obvious laws to prohibit causing direct harm against others, like murder, assault, theft, etc). I don't care if people are gay and want to celebrate that, or take action to address their gender dysphoria, or like to intoxicate themselves with whatever intoxicants they choose. I get thoroughly exasperated at people who take all that religion stuff so seriously, but I don't want to ban people from being religionists. Society needs to be accepting of differences, not seek to eradicate differences. That, to me, represents a far more attractive notion of society than one which seeks to brand certain harmless/consensual activity as 'morally wrong' and looking to outlaw it.

[Machae]

Israel bring back war monger Benjamin Netanyahu, who in turn forms a coalition with a far right Jewish party

Itamar Ben-Gvir: Israeli far-right leader set to join new coalition

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-63754806

[GreatEx]

Fucking hell, that was brief.

[RedGuy]

Absolute disaster for secular Israelis, we fear the worst. Hopefully by some miracle he won't be able to form a government

[GreatEx]

Sorry, but if you're secular you don't get miracles

[RedGuy]

Sorry, but if you're secular you don't get miracles

Haha I suppose so