Far right parties gaining significant popularity especially in France and Germany. It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre who created and perpetuated the economic downturn we’re all in and indicates a failure of the left to present a coherent alternative. There’s a lot to unpack about it. France has already dissolved their parliament and triggered an election because of these results.
Eh, I wouldn’t say its a failure of “the left.” The problem is that American style neoliberalism has become the only game in town and any minor deviation is seen as dangerous extremism. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Neo classical economics is simply “economics” or even worse “just basic economics” now. Every major media outlet going has been captured or compromised. Social media is bought and paid for by the same interests too. I mean, there’s some pockets of resistance here and there but the ultra wealthy control all the narratives.
To me, blaming “the left” for that and calling their resistancea failure is just bizarre. Its not like the narrative has changed or is remotely hard to comprehend. Its just that people like being told what they want to hear; that they were right all along.
They clearly prefer to be told its all those damn foreigners faults and that looking up is a waste of time.
I totally agree that neoliberal economics are essentially what we understand to be economics now. To be clear, I’m not blaming the left, I think it’s a case of they have a more difficult message to convey. To explain the problems that neoliberal economics has and to propose a solution to them is a really hard task compared with “it’s the foreigners at fault”. It’s a much clearer, more concise and seemingly solvable problem compared with “we need to overhaul the global economy”.
Sadly, I think you hit the nail right on the head there. People don’t want complicated answers to complicated questions. As you eluded to, blaming the out-group has worked since groups existed.
Through my own fault, I think I read too deeply into the word failure lol.
American style neoliberalism has become the only game in town and any minor deviation is seen as dangerous extremism. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Netherlands also going great. At least the xenophobes hate Europe so much they don’t bother showing up for European elections to simply say they want less foreigners.
Netherlands actually didn’t change much. PVV got +5, but FvD (a worse PVV) lost 4. And the VVD (where Wilders came from originally) also lost 1, so it kinda cancels out. Same goes for the left parties which went from 9 to 8, but that seat went to a progressive center party.
Overall very little has shifted here. And it seems at the European level the same coalition will continue too.
But I still haven’t seen a definitive explanation of why so many voters are switching to far right parties, and how exactly they can be won back*. Because the far right parties sure aren’t going to solve their problems (although they do name them), and the center assume they just need to do more of the same but better, and that hasn’t and won’t work either.
It makes me wonder whether a) the whole system of parliamentary democracy has reached its limit and cannot logistically please its voters any more than now, or whether b) voters just have too high expectations/are too selfish.
*I imagine that some voters that have been sucked too deep down the propaganda hole, like those of Trump or Orbán, cannot be won back.
Here’s my hot take: people aren’t switching to far right parties all that much. In a moderately healthy democracy, up to 30% of voters are often protest voters. They are unsatisfied with the current state of affairs and vote for whoever promises the largest upset of the status quo that they could see as potentially benefitting them.
Often the media then likes to massively overinflate their popularity, artificially enhancing their electoral success. But it’s also often short-lived. If you look at Dutch elections, you’ll find that a group of voters went for LPF, then PVV, then FvD and then PVV again. Each time it’s broadly talked about as the “rise of X party” but almost every time nothing truly materializes.
In the US you see a hardcore group of approx. 30% of voters vote for Trump religiously. Then there’s a smaller group of moderate Republicans that dislike the Democrats enough to end up voting for Trump too. They don’t like Trump but he’s “ok enough, and better than Obama/Clinton/Biden/Sanders etc…”.
In France, Le Pen got around 30% of the vote. She didn’t perform dissimilarly to the last presidential election results, it was more noticeable that the other parties got much smaller than they were. But whether or not Le Pen can actually take the crown remains to be seen.
It often happens when a society’s prosperity decays, even if the right doesn’t offer rational solutions. Climate change is driving a ton of problems but for many of these voters it is nonetheless a lesser concern. I think for many people who feel desperate, everything starts to look like a zero-sum game. So they vote for a policy of all take and no give.
That’s part of it another is that the right offers some easy answers to some very complex questions. They aren’t the right answers but they’re easier to wrap your head around. As prosperity drops, the time, effort and resources the average person can commit to understanding the complex problems facing their country also drop. This means the easy answers take root easier, and spread further and faster because the less informed are less resilient to them.
We lefties have some easy answers and they feel quite right, too. Eat the rich. But I guess it’s not that famous in the less educated social stratum - “What if I am one of the rich, after I won the lottery?”
It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre who created and perpetuated the economic downturn we’re all in and indicates a failure of the left to present a coherent alternative
Without intending to disagree with this statement, how is voting far-right a better proposition regarding the economy?
but what “coherent alternative” are the far right parties presenting? I felt that was the part of your sentence that implied some logic in voting far right
Far right parties gaining significant popularity especially in France and Germany. It’s not great for the neo-liberal centre who created and perpetuated the economic downturn we’re all in and indicates a failure of the left to present a coherent alternative. There’s a lot to unpack about it. France has already dissolved their parliament and triggered an election because of these results.
Eh, I wouldn’t say its a failure of “the left.” The problem is that American style neoliberalism has become the only game in town and any minor deviation is seen as dangerous extremism. Its easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
Neo classical economics is simply “economics” or even worse “just basic economics” now. Every major media outlet going has been captured or compromised. Social media is bought and paid for by the same interests too. I mean, there’s some pockets of resistance here and there but the ultra wealthy control all the narratives.
To me, blaming “the left” for that and calling their resistancea failure is just bizarre. Its not like the narrative has changed or is remotely hard to comprehend. Its just that people like being told what they want to hear; that they were right all along.
They clearly prefer to be told its all those damn foreigners faults and that looking up is a waste of time.
I totally agree that neoliberal economics are essentially what we understand to be economics now. To be clear, I’m not blaming the left, I think it’s a case of they have a more difficult message to convey. To explain the problems that neoliberal economics has and to propose a solution to them is a really hard task compared with “it’s the foreigners at fault”. It’s a much clearer, more concise and seemingly solvable problem compared with “we need to overhaul the global economy”.
Sadly, I think you hit the nail right on the head there. People don’t want complicated answers to complicated questions. As you eluded to, blaming the out-group has worked since groups existed.
Through my own fault, I think I read too deeply into the word failure lol.
I’m just gonna leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
Damn… it’s wild how true this is
If you like that, I can’t recommend “capitalist realism: is there no alternative?” enough. It where I stole it from, without a hint of shame.
Netherlands also going great. At least the xenophobes hate Europe so much they don’t bother showing up for European elections to simply say they want less foreigners.
Netherlands actually didn’t change much. PVV got +5, but FvD (a worse PVV) lost 4. And the VVD (where Wilders came from originally) also lost 1, so it kinda cancels out. Same goes for the left parties which went from 9 to 8, but that seat went to a progressive center party.
Overall very little has shifted here. And it seems at the European level the same coalition will continue too.
But I still haven’t seen a definitive explanation of why so many voters are switching to far right parties, and how exactly they can be won back*. Because the far right parties sure aren’t going to solve their problems (although they do name them), and the center assume they just need to do more of the same but better, and that hasn’t and won’t work either.
It makes me wonder whether a) the whole system of parliamentary democracy has reached its limit and cannot logistically please its voters any more than now, or whether b) voters just have too high expectations/are too selfish.
*I imagine that some voters that have been sucked too deep down the propaganda hole, like those of Trump or Orbán, cannot be won back.
Here’s my hot take: people aren’t switching to far right parties all that much. In a moderately healthy democracy, up to 30% of voters are often protest voters. They are unsatisfied with the current state of affairs and vote for whoever promises the largest upset of the status quo that they could see as potentially benefitting them.
Often the media then likes to massively overinflate their popularity, artificially enhancing their electoral success. But it’s also often short-lived. If you look at Dutch elections, you’ll find that a group of voters went for LPF, then PVV, then FvD and then PVV again. Each time it’s broadly talked about as the “rise of X party” but almost every time nothing truly materializes.
In the US you see a hardcore group of approx. 30% of voters vote for Trump religiously. Then there’s a smaller group of moderate Republicans that dislike the Democrats enough to end up voting for Trump too. They don’t like Trump but he’s “ok enough, and better than Obama/Clinton/Biden/Sanders etc…”.
In France, Le Pen got around 30% of the vote. She didn’t perform dissimilarly to the last presidential election results, it was more noticeable that the other parties got much smaller than they were. But whether or not Le Pen can actually take the crown remains to be seen.
It often happens when a society’s prosperity decays, even if the right doesn’t offer rational solutions. Climate change is driving a ton of problems but for many of these voters it is nonetheless a lesser concern. I think for many people who feel desperate, everything starts to look like a zero-sum game. So they vote for a policy of all take and no give.
That’s part of it another is that the right offers some easy answers to some very complex questions. They aren’t the right answers but they’re easier to wrap your head around. As prosperity drops, the time, effort and resources the average person can commit to understanding the complex problems facing their country also drop. This means the easy answers take root easier, and spread further and faster because the less informed are less resilient to them.
We lefties have some easy answers and they feel quite right, too. Eat the rich. But I guess it’s not that famous in the less educated social stratum - “What if I am one of the rich, after I won the lottery?”
Removed by mod
See, as I said, hard to understand for the less educated.
Without intending to disagree with this statement, how is voting far-right a better proposition regarding the economy?
So I didn’t make a statement about that. I’m making a statement about what these results might tell us, admittedly in a very simplistic way.
but what “coherent alternative” are the far right parties presenting? I felt that was the part of your sentence that implied some logic in voting far right
Neoliberals love fascism… why wouldn’t this be great for them?