Just How Dangerous Is Europe’s Rising Far Right? - eviltoast
  • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    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.


    The original article contains 2,099 words, the summary contains 243 words. Saved 88%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • cyd@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I feel like the US “center-right” is more dangerous than the European “far-right”.

    • jeffw@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 months ago

      Democrats are worse than literal fascists. What a great take

      • KidnappedByKitties@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        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.

        • DieguiTux8623@feddit.it
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          6 months ago

          Italian here: our “centre right” is actively on restricting abortion, dismantling public healthcare and education, deportation of immigrants, isolation of disabled students, eliminating LGBT rights and militarizing public spaces (with already students/protesters beaten by the police in several occasions) and of course jailing journalists and controlling the public media.

          The only thing that sets them apart from their US equivalent is child labor, but they already have prevented the approval of minimum wages and other social safety net measures.

          • KidnappedByKitties@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            I’d agree that there are some variation in the European far right. In contrast to Italy, Spain and Russia: German, French, UK, Nordic far right are not restricting abortion, but are doing most of the rest (northern European ones not as much dismantling welfare/healthcare as making it inaccessible to some, especially immigrants, trans, lgbt, etc).

        • s7ryph@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          I would argue that the centre-right party is the democrats. They are more in line with a European centre-right party. We have no true leftist party due to the 2 party system.

        • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          The US center right is Dems. They’re not good at all but definitely milder than their and Europe’s far right.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    The left really need to listen to what people want rather than saying everything I do is right and you’re all Nazis if you disagree.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Did you read the article?

      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.

    • Brunacho@scribe.disroot.org
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      6 months ago

      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*

      Lemmitors: “It’s the left’s fault”.

    • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The right isn’t nazis for disagreeing. They’re nazis when they do the racist shit. Nobody calls them nazis for wanting lower taxes.

      Problem is when the right wants to say they don’t harbor nazis, when they absolutely do.

    • nutsack@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      They are a complete jerk to trans people and immigrants I don’t know what else to call them

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        6 months ago

        Also, they have parties in Europe like AfD in Germany that are as close to modern Nazis as you can possibly get.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    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.

    • Pringles@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      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?!?

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Maybe not conquest but 100% of far right parties are advocating violence, usually including military aggression, towards “the others”, whether it’s Palestinians, Iran, Muslims in general, Jews and Christians in the case of Muslim far right parties, LGBTQ+ people, or more than one of the above.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          6 months ago

          You mean other than the ones sucking up to Putin while he wages a war of aggression and conquest in Ukraine while threatening other European countries?

        • Magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh
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          6 months ago

          Yeah you’re right, as long as they only victimise and kill their own people it’s JUST FINE.

          God, the shit people write sometimes…

    • Deello@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      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?