The West was moving to the right — and then Donald Trump got elected again
…
Something is happening among America’s allies, and it’s a tremendous relief. For some years now, we’ve seen the MAGA-infused global right gaining a foothold amongst western democracies, largely driven by the same demagogic, nationalist, pseudo-populism that has fueled Donald Trump’s dominance on the American right.
Some countries like Hungary have served as a sort of experiment for the kind of post-democratic autocracies dreamt of by the modern right wing in which government co-opts, intimidates and de-legitimizes the political opposition to create an authoritarianism that dominates the culture and the politics without a lot of overt violence.
But the rise of the far right among the Western allies seems to be stalling out.
Celebrating prematurely. The UK is about to go fascist, Germany is teetering on the brink, and Canada only just dodged a bullet for now.
And no mention of Italy?
Yes, Italy, Hungary and others are already well down the fascist path.
Romania just went fascist. Romania’s current election front-runner is a fascist. Austria is struggling not to be wholly under the far right’s control, depending on a coalition to hold them off. The far right has significant power in the governments of Slovakia, Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden. Portugal and Belgium are also dealing with surging far right movements.It’s absurd to conclude it’s over because centrism squeaked through in Canada and Australia. It’s like everyone relaxing in 2020 because the US public were sure to see sense under Biden.
And Portugal overthrew fascism in the 1970s, too…
The UK is a bit away from “about to go fascist”
Nigel (Nazi-youth-song-singing, frequent RT guest apologist for Putin & emphatic volunteer for 2nd in line of any future human trumpepede) Farage is as close to actual power as he’s ever been—which is not at all.
His party’s existence actually potentially helps more reasonable parties because he is splitting the right wing vote
Labour are going to have to come up with something soon though or things could go bad; I get it’s their first year and they’re doing unpopular things early so they’re not fresh for next election, but they’re really unpopular right now.
… Canada only just dodged a bullet for now
By 3 points; less than a basketball goal
And don’t forget that Italy, Poland and Hungary are already there and we’re about to invade the few countries that went left.
Poland actually got rid of their right wing government in the last election in 2023 and are hopefully dumping the president who’s been blocking reform. It can be done.
Poland is not out of the woods yet though
By 3 points; less than a basketball goal
Is there some weird form of Canadian basketball out there where this statement makes sense?
Nope.
What? No. All our (Canadian) fascists are gonna separate and join the US. Then we’ll be a fascist-free country!
Trade Alberta for the Western and Northeastern states
I’m happy with expelling Albertans for being secessionists but Canada is keeping the oil.
Yes but not Calgary or Edmonton, nor Lake Louise, nor Banff, or any of the other mountain resort towns! Plus we keep the full stretch of the trans Canada highway and all the major railways.
Like bacteria in a jar. They grow, then become toxic, then die off.
The UK is hardly about to go fascist. Labour recently won power and there won’t be a national election for years. There were smaller council elections recently and Reform won a few seats, but so did the Greens and Lib Dems. Basically, there were some anti-establishment votes.
East Germany voted AfD, but the rest of the country defeated that.
Canada voted Liberal despite a strong anti-establishment sentiment. It’s likely that eventually it will flip back conservative. But, there’s a chance that before that happens, the chaos of Trumpism will make the conservatives in Canada try to become an adult, respectable party rather than Maple MAGA.
Fascism. It’s called Fascism, not, “Trumpism.”
So fucking stupid.
At this point, if a news outlet or politician refuse to call it what it is, I assume they actually approve.
So far it’s most of them across the world.
You’re welcome rest of the world. Now be nice to those of us who have to suffer another 4 years.
As long as you voted against him, yes.
If someone said “oh they’re both the same” or “Kamala didn’t make her position clear enough on ______” or any of the other excuses, they need to bear the full brunt of their (in)decision.
I’ve zero sympathy for those fools.
full brunt of their
(in)decisionstupidity.Fixed it. :3
both parties are the same in many ways doesn’t mean I voted for trump I voted Harris. I knew Trump’s hate was worse than the Dems obliviousness
Very right wing of you to have no sympathy for people born less intelligent than you. Fools should not be blamed. A system that allows fools to be swayed and to be the deciding factor is where the blame should go.
Fools should not be blamed. A system that allows fools to be swayed […bad grammar…] is where the blame should go.
While the system bears its share of blame, it is the unquestioning enablers, those who readily consume its dictates, who breathe life into its flaws. Just as tolerance cannot survive by tolerating intolerance, wisdom cannot flourish when we indulge foolishness. To dismantle a flawed system, we must first challenge those who sustain it.
I agree that “wisdom cannot flourish when we indulge foolishness.” So we need to change the system so that it does not indulge foolishness.
I don’t know. Unintelligent or even uneducated is easy to label the Maga crowd, and certainly many of them deserve that. But not all of them. I know a few who are well educated but just seem racist or 'i got mine" types.
Yes there are woefully evil regardless of education. Even if you tried to nurture them with better ideas they’d reject it.
Incels come to mind.
The incels had a choice to listen to reason. They went out of their way to bully. Many ppl vulnerable got affected by this unfairly.
That’s not a stupidity that needs an advocate.
Blaming the system is a cop out. It didn’t happen before, because the electorate held their representatives to some kind of standard. Now, your representatives tell you what to think and y’all just nod your heads like lambs to the slaughter
Social media really changed the playing field. It is much easier to inundate people with messaging and such that will fool a much greater part of the population. Yet the system hasn’t adjusted.
Be nice to the people threatening to annex and bomb an ally… ? you be nice first.
Wish we could have done this before the fucker was elected.
Most people have to learn the hard way. They are dumb like that.
I always say I have to be hit over the head with a frying pan to learn my lesson, but jesus I could tell Trump was not good for America when he started running for his first term.
And now I’ll suffer for it because I’m part of the “parasite” class.
And the Republican Party is obviously a lost cause when they held that CPAC conference in Budapest of all places
Just be happy you aren’t an American, so it won’t be as bad.
:(
And it’s not like we don’t have this history where this failed before
Ironically the crazy economic shitstorm that Trump made might just be the wakeup call the world needed. Hopefully he doesn’t get to reach the whole mass murder stage of his plans.
What might be scary is if America’s Auschwitz moment is revealed to be completely independent of administration. We’ve already heard many stories about ICE during each presidency, just that many details were hidden or unconfirmed.
It was the same way at the end of WW2. Even many Germans were aghast at what they’d been doing at the camps.
Isn’t that a bit problematic to say, though, in essence, you’re implying that Trump isn’t responsible for everything that’s going on, which is a ridiculous claim, because assuming that there is all of this going on, but it was hidden up until now and Trump is only revealing it is not just a conspiracy theory, but a very, very dangerous one.
Just to be clear, I am not praising other administrations. There has been a big problem in USA administrations for a long time. But I wouldn’t dare compare any recent administration to Trump’s latest and even his last administration.
I mean, you have to go where the evidence takes you, even if you don’t like the results. The best thing you could perhaps say about Biden or Obama, was simply that any of their direct participation in border patrol activities followed rule of law.
Generally, CBP/ICE has stayed above much direct scrutiny or supervision, and if an individual doesn’t have reporters, lawyers, or family asking after them (sometimes even then) a lot can be hidden even from administration.
It’s very likely Trump did not do much to “push” ICE’s behavior, he just enabled them, and they reward him by threatening his direct opponents.
Okay, show me the evidence. You are claiming that all trump did was enable them, when he is very clearly and publicly pushing a racist anti immigration agenda. Please show me how this and anyone else in recent years is the same.
Some context:
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36e41dx425o
- https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/03/02/how-border-apprehensions-ice-arrests-and-deportations-have-changed-under-trump/
- https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/immigration/3266633/biden-did-not-abolish-ice-not-problem-democratic-party/
The basic idea is, while Trump aims for very visible rhetoric to inflame his racist base, ICE’s presence has still gone up regardless of which president is taking the chair. In fact, Biden beat Trump’s deportation numbers (and I’m sure given his ego, he aims to inflate that further, and finds due process one of his obstacles).
One thing that can be said is that when ICE has been in the news, it was never visibly aiming for cruelty under Democratic presidents. But that’s also only accounting for the cases that we know about. And, the last article points out how even through a full term, Biden not only failed to address the growing worries of cruel behavior within ICE, but built them a new quarter-billion-dollar headquarters.
Great news for ‘the rest of the world’ but I’d prefer not to deal with this shit here for 4 years as well god dammit.
I can’t speak for all of us, but I don’t think “the world” at large ever supported “Trumpism” and we largely have always thought him to be a gigantic tit and those who voted him into office TWICE to be idiotic or miseducated.
If you replace “Trumpism” with “fascism”, it has clearly been on the rise all around the world for a decade or so now, and it’s taking over more and more countries all the time. However it’s far from clear that we’ve reached any kind of turning point where fascism starts to become less popular worldwide, just because of some fairly limp election results in Canada and Australia.
I honestly don’t see a way out of this other than a war against the fascists. Something like the American civil war where the racists got their asses thoroughly beaten, or WWII, where the Nazis got absolutely crushed. I feel like it’s just one of those things that pops up once in a while. Basically, fascists are the herpes of society.
As long as neoliberals are the only alternative, fascism will always come back.
You mean modern liberals? Neoliberalism is about as far-right as fascism.
Please explain how neoliberalism is as far-right as fascism.
It’s not Trumpism, it’s fascism.
😂
Those things are, in fact, equivalent.
Squares are to rectangles as Trumpism is to fascism.
I think that - on a global scale - a fair amount of people has cause to be grateful to Trump. Whether it’s intended or not, he’s tearing down the current geopolitical statu quo and waking up people politically.
On the flipside, I do worry that we narrowly avoided the fire in order to stay in the pan, to subvert the old saying. Over in Canada, we reelected a party that has a lot of flaws, and that their defining benefit is “isn’t the conservative right”. I’m glad we avoided a conservative sweep, but let’s not pretend the shady opposition is significantly better.
I feel it’s more like a fluke than a rule. We all just got lucky. It’s not like any of us are doing anything to prepare for that next election cycle. But I guarantee you that they are.
I seriously still see mailboxes in my neighborhood with flyers about conservative. They treated the election like they were Punk kids promoting their favorite band around town. They mobilized in ways the left only dream of and they didn’t vaporize when they lost. They will come back more determined
Salon, huffpo, msnbc ffs. These are the hopium sites favored by the beaten left, because actual corporate journalism collapsed under it’s own ignorance and greed a long time ago.
The NYT will trot out a hopium piece every once in awhile like rainbow-flagging-the-logo for Pride month, but it’s all clickbait.
Who are you going to vote for in the midterms? The left needs to get its shit together. Propaganda, corruption, and blatant lies are kicking our ass.
Copium is my preferred term.
The more cynical cousin of hopium.
The problem is that we don’t have a left party; the closest are the Democrats and they’re Republicans in all but name.
I don’t buy that. I think there are a number of old corporate Dems who need to get the boot. But that’s all up to the Democratic voters to do.
It’s not that complicated in principle, it’s just that complicated once one is out in the real world.
But the rise of the far right among the Western allies seems to be stalling out.
Sorry, wut??
Can’t imagine what in the screaming goat fuck would lead you to this conclusion other than pure blind idiocy…
🤷♂️ 🤡 🖕
We might actually get world peace, as for peace in America?…
