It's like we learned nothing from the 20th century: every time the rich get too greedy, they'll gleefully fertilize the fields of fascism before they'll accept making less money.
The rich wrote the history books and have a strong influence in education, so... yeah.
Don't forget about the Red Scare either. We're still feeling the effects today (mostly in the US, which matters everywhere else as well due to the economic influence of the US in the world)
Precisely because the Parliament is relatively weak, the election is closely watched as a measure of uninhibited popular sentiment, where voters register their discontent with potentially powerful downstream effects on national politics.
For France, it means that a party that is nationalist, xenophobic and Islamophobic may well emerge reinforced — accepted, legitimized and eminently electable to high office in a way that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.
The language of these parties may be less incandescent than former President Donald J. Trump’s invocations of “bloodshed,” but as they whip up support by scapegoating immigrants, and even move to lock in systems that could perpetuate their power, the threat to the postwar order seems real enough.
Warnings of the disasters that engulfed 20th-century Europe under fascist governments tend not to resonate with 21st-century supporters of xenophobic nationalist movements that have none of the militarism of fascism, nor the personality cults of its dictatorial leaders, but are fed by hatred of “the other” and jingoistic hymns to national glory.
The working class, long the cornerstone of socialism in Europe, migrated en masse to the anti-immigrant right as an expression of frustration at growing inequality and stagnant paychecks.
For them, as for Mr. Putin, it has been easy to present a simplistic portrayal of the West of liberal urban elites as the decadent locus of cultural suicide, the place where family, church, nation and traditional notions of marriage and gender go to die.
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A right wing party—even if “far” right is a misnomer at this point—that is demonizing marginalized groups while passionately chanting about “homeland”…umm…is scary as fuck. Italy has elected the furthest right govt since MUSSOLINI.
A near continental shift toward finding a single scapegoat is terrifying. Just when Spain, Germany and Italy moved this direction last time, we had ww2. Now it’s Netherlands, UK, Italy, Germany, France, Spain’s far right is surging, I believe I read Portugal’s as well, then you add Poland, Hungary…this is a BAD sign.
I agree that everyone (not just the left) has, since ww2, gone to the hitler well way too often. It blunts the impact. But that fact only leads to the situation where now that we may seriously be in trouble, you (and others) say, “okay guys, how many times have we said this next person is a fascist?”
But these are telltale signs of fascism. Demonizing marginalized groups and erring on the side of “purity in the motherland” is fuckin scary. You’re not wrong about the overall problem, but you’re misreading the situation.
Europeans: *go further right again after decades of conservative and social democrat governments chopping on welfare programs and privatisations in the name of austerity measures, economical crises, and following USA agenda right into geopolitical irrelevance, while attempting to show themselves as the moral lighthouse*
From a European perspective, the US centre-right are more conservative than the European fringe right. The European far right doesn't (typically) want to restrict abortion, sabotage education or reinstate child labor for example. And are mostly about increasing and militarizing police, disenfranchising minorities, and different schemes to control that only the right people get to vote.
I'd argue that the US centre right is actually as radical, or even more so than the European fringe right, they are certainly causing about the same commotion, but of course have much more power in the US.
The article is behind a paywall so I can't read it, but the answer to the question is that they are about as dangerous as all other parties. Yes, we should watch out for "far-right" parties eroding democracy and civil liberties. We should also watch out for center-right, center-left and far-left and literally all other parties doing the same. Authoritarian tendencies are bad no matter what ideology is the current excuse.
So we should not pay more attention to parties with a ton of authoritarian tendencies compared to a party that has one or two viewpoints that may be construed as authoritarian?
I will posit my question in the nicest way I can think off. Are you fucking retarded?!?
I don't entirely agree with you because what you are saying is basically stop here. Here sucks. Hard. The window shifted. We need to shift left a bit imo. That includes taxing rich more and spending it in house not abroad. Military doesn't count. They don't need the extra money. And yes, authoritarian tendencies are bad. They are just made worst by a strong loyal military. How long before they remove the clause about not following orders that are illegal?