EPTCentre-right, Euro-skeptics, pro industry, mostly socially and economically conservative.
European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 2
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
Centre-right, Euro-skeptics, pro industry, mostly socially and economically conservative. | ||
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Shiragaku
Hong Kong4308 Posts
And when it comes to the absence of left -wing anti-capitalist parties and an abundance of right-wing parties,I would largely say that it is due to the left's adoption of identity politics such as gay rights, feminism, and militant anti-racism, something that many people view as being self-righteous or "reverse discrimination" whereas the old radical left parties dismissed these issues by saying "class struggle." And is it must me or are the politics of Europe becoming more and more similar to America?From what I saw from the last French election, Hollande's campaign seemed to be nothing more than cheesy slogans like "H is for Hope" and empty promises while the right wing populists seemed to promise what our Republicans do which is getting the state out of people's way and making sure that the "undeserved" people do not leech off the hard work of everyone else. | ||
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Cheren
United States2911 Posts
On November 22 2014 13:09 Shiragaku wrote: And when it comes to the absence of left -wing anti-capitalist parties and an abundance of right-wing parties,I would largely say that it is due to the left's adoption of identity politics such as gay rights, feminism, and militant anti-racism, something that many people view as being self-righteous or "reverse discrimination" whereas the old radical left parties dismissed these issues by saying "class struggle." The right in the US has been doing the "get poor white men more mad at women and minorities than at rich white men" thing since the 70s or 80s, and lately added gay But I mostly want to lurk this thread and learn from the Europeans. | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
On November 22 2014 11:57 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: AfD, as you can see. Centre-right, Euro-skeptics, pro industry, mostly socially and economically conservative. some of their members also like to make Nazi statements. On November 22 2014 13:09 Shiragaku wrote: Whenever I talk to sincere communists and anarchists, they view Die Linke nothing more than social democrats or sellouts ever since they adopted Keynesian economics. that's because they are social democrats and never were communists. Someone else quoted the party program where it talked about "structural important industries" that have to be kept in state hands. These include Water, Electricity, Roads, and Welfare. if you want to find something that shows you broadly what "Die Linke" stands for on the federal level, try to find translations of speeches from Gregor Gysi that he made in front of the Bundestag. | ||
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Acertos
France852 Posts
On November 22 2014 08:01 WhiteDog wrote: The National Front would be viewed as a far left in many countries. Acertos : "Let's take a look at religion: 4,7 Ms Muslims, about 14 Ms practicing Catholics, about 500 000 Jews. Generally and it's proved by polls, Muslims and Arabs in general are way more likely to stigmatize Jews and the reverse is also true." What polls show is that islamophobia is higher than ever, and also in jewish population. It's pretty easy to say "look the muslim are stigmatizing the jews", while the jewish community is doing worse than that, and play a dangerous game with the Israeli war (permitting Israeli soldier and officer to recrut even in synagogues...). They are the one putting the republican pact at risk, but I guess it's easier to judge those damn muslim savages. That's untrue. Right vote more because they are old, but the voters of the socialist party also tend to vote more (public workers, management and urban population vote more). Meanwhile, the laborer and the most precarious usually vote for the far right, and are also the population that are more heavily touched by abstentionnism. Most of your point are short sighted or flat out wrong. It's like you are taking me for a racist. The climate in France right now is just pretty antisemitic and you can't deny that. I know there are very legitimate reasons for calling out pro-Israelis but not every Jew. I exactly said that Jews and Muslims are more likely to distrust each other. And I'm even not name calling specifically, I'm just talking about some of the social tensions we have. I just didn't talk about Islamophobia because I was tired and because it has been constantly on the rise. The resurgence of antisemitism was quite fast and new for our time, the violence between the LDJ vs Far Left / Young Muslims groups started again, that's why I think it was more interesting. As regards the recruitment of young Jews in synagogues, the same is happening in mosques with young Muslims to join ISIS, and even if it isn't backed by a state) I don't see how the Muslim recruitment endangers less the Republican pact than the recruitment made by Israel. I think the problem is just religion in general (I'm pretty religiophobic). Right voters vote more and it's way more complicated than "they are older and old people vote more". Most young right voters are more engaged than their left counterpart even if they are fewer in numbers (there are more right young adherents than left). Perhaps right voters are more engaged politically than others, alot of people say they are leftists but don't actually vote nor care about politics... It's a cultural thing and it's extremely complicated (it is the same thing in the US btw). http://www.20minutes.fr/politique/1417087-20140710-femmes-jeunes-vote-fn-retenir-derniere-sequence-electorale (regarding vote of adhesion and vote of protest) Even tough everyone in the public sector votes, it is divided so not really interesting: teachers vote mostly left, police and army right; other civil servants like Town Hall employees, working for Department or Region administration are more opportunistic, they want to keep their job and wage (see manifestation in Alsace) so it's pretty divided. The precarious tend to vote less and if they do, they tend to vote more for [d]the extremes[/d] it's just that nowadays the Far Right (I don't know what to call it), Lepen has the easiest and most open answer: immigration, Europe, the financial markets. http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2014/11/13/31001-20141113ARTFIG00275-marine-le-pen-est-elle-de-gauche.php This is an interesting interview of a polling expert by a conservative newspaper. It deals with Marine Le Pen's tactics. I translated it. + Show Spoiler + Interviewer : By making her political discourse on social issues more left-like, will Marine Le Pen lose some of her electorate? Jerome Fourquet : I don't think so. A strong base is still keeping each of the various electorates of the Front National together : opposing immigration. Marine Le Pen takes care of reactivating every now and then this subject with shocking lines and statements, especially concerning the place of Islam in the French society (Quick Halal of Roubaix, wearing of the veil, etc...). In marketing, we call maintaining brand consistency. Opposing immigration is still the backbone of the FN. Other aspects (European Union and free-market criticism) work together around this base. Furthermore, all the French know that "there is no more money to share" and that their life is likely to become harder. Marine Lepen addresses this concern : "We will keep our social model, but only for the French". This wording exempts her from advocating cuts in public spending. It is like making the cost of immigration the source of all evil. By deleting this cost, the French social model will stay intact, Marine Le Pen claims. This discourse can seduce various electorates. I : Anyway, let's take an example: Do a worker from Hénin-Beaumont (closed / relocated industry) and a pensioner of the South-West will have the same opinion regarding the last strike of the SNCF (the only state-owned railway company)? J.F : There is a distribution of the media roles in the FN in order to answer the opposed expectations of the electorates. Florian Philippot (vice-president of the FN) supported the strike of the SNCF on behalf of the party hostility against European institutions. His objective was to attract parts of the unionized workforce, the big associations of labor unions were worried about this breakthrough and rightly so. But at the same time, Jean-Marie Lepen (father of Marine Le Pen and former FN president), Louis Aliot (companion of Marine Le Pen and also vice-president of the FN) and Marion-Maréchal Le Pen (niece of Marine Le Pen and deputy of the FN) have a more right-wing and classic approach. By the way, the last two, who are established in the South, seem favorable to making local alliances with the moderate right. Every party trying to develop is forced to implement some kind of intern pluralism in order to attract different and diverse electorates without losing their initial core. Besides, the FN is never judged on its results nationally, because it is always part of the opposition. Thus, the FN can promise a lot of things to a lot of people. I : Can this full split last indefinitely? J.F : We cannot dismiss the political talent of Marine Le Pen. She widened the spectrum of the themes she talked about and she doesn't hesitate to borrow "leftist" rhetoric. But she always pays attention not to go too far. And even if Jean-Marie Le Pen wished she talked more about immigration, we have to recall that during the presidential elections of 2007 one of the campaign posters showed a North African as a normal voter for Jean-Marie Le Pen. It was not well received by some of the FN electors and Marine Le Pen didn't step on this slope so she always sends frequent and clear signals on this subject to her partisans (like "How many Mohammed Merah are on the boats who arrive at Lampedusa?" (Merah was a French-Algerian who murdered children in a Jewish school and was shot by the police)). Likewise, on the barrage of Sivens issue, the FN didn't have any sympathy for the radical activists who attacked the police forces, actually it was quite the contrary. By reactivating right markers during those kind of events, Marine Le Pen reassure her camp. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
2) How come the British UKIP party keeps winning things? Their leader seems like a buffoon and their policy agenda seems to have been stolen from the American Tea Party, with some of the more nuanced positions erased Because the, lets say lesser educated population is very anti-EU. Add to that very big, populistic "newspapers" who take every opportunity to jump on the EU, it's kinda easy to see. Nights out in the pubs at start blew me away, so many simply populistic and uneducated opinions on the EU and what the UK gains from it (of course, not everything that shines is gold, but still). But talking to a bit better educated people (engineers at Airbus SAS etc), makes it clear pretty quick. The british empire is no more, and people are blind eyed to that. It's like people live in the past where britain was a worldconquering power, completely delusional to what it is today. The UKIP jumps on that, and alot of people resonate with that. edit: "The EU governs us, ruined our once great country", blabla. People are too dumb to see that the ruination of the UK is purely on themselves for voting the wrong person, a couple decades back - it's easier to point at the EU for everything that goes wrong in this country (and that's alot). | ||
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Doublemint
Austria8493 Posts
On November 22 2014 11:57 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: AfD, as you can see. Centre-right, Euro-skeptics, pro industry, mostly socially and economically conservative. not just euro skeptic, euro basher. there was an interesting story in DerSpiegel a couple of weeks ago(iirc?) that blew my mind. on the one hand they like really pile on the Euro (critique generally is fine because it has a lot of flaws but that's beside the point now) while promoting and pushing gold like crazy - having higher prices than usual sellers and enrich the party and themselves. apparently that's legal(german source), though chances are they change the law because it is qute likely it undermines the original intent of party financing laws. legal battles incoming. also a more general point, the beauty (or hideous face?) of a 2 party system is that there are no "radical" parties. but certain factions in a party fight for hegemony. wonderfully illustrated in the crazies taken over the republican party and subverting the more reasonable voices while the left wing in the democratic party is too weak to show real teeth against the establishment, both in the party and society. It's not as easy to say right wing in US is the same as in EU, it's not even the same in various countries. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 22 2014 09:03 WhiteDog wrote: No because that's two completly different issue. There is a deeply universal project at the core of french values that is not necessarily racist (the enlightment, the declaration of the human right). That this project might lead to intolerance toward difference is another matter, but it's still a unifying project to begin with. A racist perspective on nation will always exclude, it's different. Jus soli and jus sanguini are different to me. The FN is always playing with the line, between the blood and the soil, the race and the culture, but I have never heard them really use a racist discourse - it's not the arabic populations that are unable to integrate our society to them, but it's the islamic culture, and overall the communautarism, that pose a problem in their mind. The more one thinks about the matter, the more one is unsatisfied with such an explanation because 19th century German nationalism was too, fundamentally more cultural than biological, and it was even more ethical than it was cultural. (I think a better distinction is to say that French universalism is more political, and German universalism more ethical.) When German idealists from Richard Wagner to Wilhelm Marr to Otto Weiniger spoke of "German culture", "German art", or "Jewish culture" or "Jewish art" as their categorical antitheses a century ago, they meant something more than qualities which were only incidentally characterised by certain nations. If anything, their universalism was more radical in spite of the cultural shorthands in which they garbed their thoughts. Analysing this complex thing isn't within the province of this forum, but I would recommend to anyone interested in the distinctions between French and German political thought a long-winded book by Klaus Epstein: The Genesis of German Conservatism, in which he traces where French and German political thought originally diverged in their respective receptions of the enlightenment. The other matter which obscures the issue is the modern man's sophomoric view of Nazi political ideology, and his tendency to reduce it to a kind of materialistic social darwinism. They then convert their simplifications about Nazism into generalisations about German nationalism as a whole. This is deeply problematic, all the moreso because many modern Germans are inclined to think this way as well. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On November 23 2014 05:25 MoltkeWarding wrote: The other matter which obscures the issue is the modern man's sophomoric view of Nazi political ideology, and his tendency to reduce it to a kind of materialistic social darwinism. They then convert their simplifications about Nazism into generalisations about German nationalism as a whole. This is deeply problematic, all the moreso because many modern Germans are inclined to think this way as well. From all your posts I know that you have a weird obsession with German nationalism, but it is totally okay to have sophomoric view of the ideology because honestly it's not very sophisticated to start with. It's unnecessary to start talking about Wagnerian aesthetics or something because honestly all of it is just romanticized crap that was used by intellectuals to justify the whole thing in the first place. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On November 22 2014 05:14 Sub40APM wrote: 2) How come the British UKIP party keeps winning things? Their leader seems like a buffoon and their policy agenda seems to have been stolen from the American Tea Party, with some of the more nuanced positions erased http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30140747 I don't see what UKIP and the American Tea Party has in common. The Tea Party appears to be for less taxes and a smaller party and the British version of that is well, is sitting in 10 Downing Street right now: the Conservatives, and nominally the Liberal Democrats. UKIP main policies are mainly anti-immigrant and anti-EU, which broadly are the one and the the same; which is the blaming of immigration for problems. UKIP are also for more funding of various arms of the government such as the defence and health departments. To compare the Tea Party and UKIP is somewhat bizarre, it honestly makes me wonder about your source of information as well as your intentions. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 23 2014 05:46 Nyxisto wrote: From all your posts I know that you have a weird obsession with German nationalism, but it is totally okay to have sophomoric view of the ideology because honestly it's not very sophisticated to start with. It's unnecessary to start talking about Wagnerian aesthetics or something because honestly all of it is just romanticized crap that was used by intellectuals to justify the whole thing in the first place. On the contrary, I think the intellectual atmosphere of the late-Wilhelminian era was one of the most dynamic ever produced by any culture, and I wonder if you have sampled a sufficient dose of it yourself to serve as an adequate judge over it. Wagnerian drama is a facet of German nationalist mythos, but it was also meant as a revolutionising ethical precept for all of humanity. The symbolic meanings behind the destruction of Wotan's spear, of Tristan and Isolde's life-renouncing passion, are media through which Wagner not only believed himself to incarnate the German spirit, but through which he believed he was transmitting "Germanness" in the goal of ethically "Germanising" mankind. p.s. I am not interested in German nationalism as an isolated phenomenon, I am interested in German philosophical idealism as a whole. The reason this surfaces here about German nationalism is because politics is never merely politics. | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
Personally when I hear discussions about politics in France I get a little sick. The posts I've read throughout the thread are also making me somewhat sick: ideologies and beliefs are shoved into people's faces whereas actual working solutions and compromises are being ignored. There is no "left-wing" or "right-wing" that should even be taking place in debates. There are good ideas and values on both sides, why the fuck should we be forced to choose one side or another without any semblance of compromise? It's absurd, it's fucking absurd. While the fucking clowns are doing their circus act (pretty much every French politician), unemployment is on the rise and the facist party is getting much more attention than it should. These people are disconnected from reality and God knows how on earth they even came into positions with responsibility when they clearly have no idea what the fuck they're doing. Ideologies should guide one's decisions but it should not MAKE decisions. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 23 2014 05:49 Dangermousecatdog wrote: I don't see what UKIP and the American Tea Party has in common. The Tea Party appears to be for less taxes and a smaller party and the British version of that is well, is sitting in 10 Downing Street right now: the Conservatives, and nominally the Liberal Democrats. UKIP main policies are mainly anti-immigrant and anti-EU, which broadly are the one and the the same; which is the blaming of immigration for problems. UKIP are also for more funding of various arms of the government such as the defence and health departments. To compare the Tea Party and UKIP is somewhat bizarre, it honestly makes me wonder about your source of information as well as your intentions. The mistake here is to associate political parties with fixed political programmes, whereas presently they are dynamically shifting in their attempts to jockey for position within the political landscape. UKIP went from its Thatcherite roots to something that is increasingly looking to fill the void left by the extinction of Old Labour. It is a catch-all party which is siphoning off disgruntled Tory voters in the south and disillusioned Labour voters in the north. To achieve this, UKIP has backed away from its former economic ideology and is presently struggling to transform itself into something more bourgeois and middle-ground. The basic cleavages in the polymorphic coalition to which it is trying to appeal is presently patched up with a strong whiff of localism. They say one thing in one constituency, and another somewhere else, but rather than facing the inevitable charge of political opportunism, UKIP will say that their party is against one-size-fits-all solutions for the country, and what they do is devolve the scale of politics so that disenfranchised voters will recognise that it is both more accessible and democratic. That is the future blueprint that UKIP will follow if it wants to articulate a coherent platform. some of their members also like to make Nazi statements I have never heard of any examples, but I suppose this is not only plausible but likely for several reasons. When the Pirate Party was temporarily at 12 or 13% in the national polls, it faced much the same sort of accusation. This is because since the decline of the Deutsche Partei, there has been no party in mainstream German politics to the "right" of the CDU. To express their desiderata, Nationalists have had to do one of several things. They could vote for a fringe party like the NPD, but because of the party's public image, they know that such a political alliance would immediately cast them beyond the pale of respectable discourse. They could withdraw from politics. Or they could attach themselves to an emerging party which is similarly dissatisfied with the status quo, and seeks to subvert it. There may be more in such a calculation than mere political sabotage. They must calculate, that if the monopoly of the present establishment can be toppled, and political discourse made more fluid as to again accept revolutionary, new ideas, that would create an opening for their agenda to enter the public scene, not as a n ostracised fringe, but as a respectable source of alternative opinions. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On November 23 2014 05:25 MoltkeWarding wrote: The more one thinks about the matter, the more one is unsatisfied with such an explanation because 19th century German nationalism was too, fundamentally more cultural than biological, and it was even more ethical than it was cultural. (I think a better distinction is to say that French universalism is more political, and German universalism more ethical.) When German idealists from Richard Wagner to Wilhelm Marr to Otto Weiniger spoke of "German culture", "German art", or "Jewish culture" or "Jewish art" as their categorical antitheses a century ago, they meant something more than qualities which were only incidentally characterised by certain nations. If anything, their universalism was more radical in spite of the cultural shorthands in which they garbed their thoughts. Analysing this complex thing isn't within the province of this forum, but I would recommend to anyone interested in the distinctions between French and German political thought a long-winded book by Klaus Epstein: The Genesis of German Conservatism, in which he traces where French and German political thought originally diverged in their respective receptions of the enlightenment. The other matter which obscures the issue is the modern man's sophomoric view of Nazi political ideology, and his tendency to reduce it to a kind of materialistic social darwinism. They then convert their simplifications about Nazism into generalisations about German nationalism as a whole. This is deeply problematic, all the moreso because many modern Germans are inclined to think this way as well. That's the kind of answers I'm bored with really. In Rwanda, the belgium used the number of cows possessed and the height of people to define if they were hutu or tutsi on their id card : they were heavily influenced by Gobineau's theory of race, the same theory that built the word aryan. In nazi germany, the german discussed in length, and created protocoles, to define the % of blood needed to be considered pure or impure. France's assimilation is different, and altho I'm willing to go as far as to say that there is a cultural racism in our internationalism, saying that the declaration of the human right and our colonialism (because the two are linked) equal or even is remotly close to nazi germany is just plain stupid. But yeah, when the youth is fed on a certain discourse of the 2nd WW history's I guess nothing cannot be discussed without this constant relation and discussion on the shoah. On November 23 2014 02:29 Acertos wrote: It's like you are taking me for a racist. The climate in France right now is just pretty antisemitic and you can't deny that. I know there are very legitimate reasons for calling out pro-Israelis but not every Jew. I exactly said that Jews and Muslims are more likely to distrust each other. And I'm even not name calling specifically, I'm just talking about some of the social tensions we have. I just didn't talk about Islamophobia because I was tired and because it has been constantly on the rise. The resurgence of antisemitism was quite fast and new for our time, the violence between the LDJ vs Far Left / Young Muslims groups started again, that's why I think it was more interesting. As regards the recruitment of young Jews in synagogues, the same is happening in mosques with young Muslims to join ISIS, and even if it isn't backed by a state) I don't see how the Muslim recruitment endangers less the Republican pact than the recruitment made by Israel. I think the problem is just religion in general (I'm pretty religiophobic). Right voters vote more and it's way more complicated than "they are older and old people vote more". Most young right voters are more engaged than their left counterpart even if they are fewer in numbers (there are more right young adherents than left). Perhaps right voters are more engaged politically than others, alot of people say they are leftists but don't actually vote nor care about politics... It's a cultural thing and it's extremely complicated (it is the same thing in the US btw). http://www.20minutes.fr/politique/1417087-20140710-femmes-jeunes-vote-fn-retenir-derniere-sequence-electorale (regarding vote of adhesion and vote of protest) Even tough everyone in the public sector votes, it is divided so not really interesting: teachers vote mostly left, police and army right; other civil servants like Town Hall employees, working for Department or Region administration are more opportunistic, they want to keep their job and wage (see manifestation in Alsace) so it's pretty divided. The precarious tend to vote less and if they do, they tend to vote more for [d]the extremes[/d] it's just that nowadays the Far Right (I don't know what to call it), Lepen has the easiest and most open answer: immigration, Europe, the financial markets. http://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/2014/11/13/31001-20141113ARTFIG00275-marine-le-pen-est-elle-de-gauche.php This is an interesting interview of a polling expert by a conservative newspaper. It deals with Marine Le Pen's tactics. I translated it. + Show Spoiler + Interviewer : By making her political discourse on social issues more left-like, will Marine Le Pen lose some of her electorate? Jerome Fourquet : I don't think so. A strong base is still keeping each of the various electorates of the Front National together : opposing immigration. Marine Le Pen takes care of reactivating every now and then this subject with shocking lines and statements, especially concerning the place of Islam in the French society (Quick Halal of Roubaix, wearing of the veil, etc...). In marketing, we call maintaining brand consistency. Opposing immigration is still the backbone of the FN. Other aspects (European Union and free-market criticism) work together around this base. Furthermore, all the French know that "there is no more money to share" and that their life is likely to become harder. Marine Lepen addresses this concern : "We will keep our social model, but only for the French". This wording exempts her from advocating cuts in public spending. It is like making the cost of immigration the source of all evil. By deleting this cost, the French social model will stay intact, Marine Le Pen claims. This discourse can seduce various electorates. I : Anyway, let's take an example: Do a worker from Hénin-Beaumont (closed / relocated industry) and a pensioner of the South-West will have the same opinion regarding the last strike of the SNCF (the only state-owned railway company)? J.F : There is a distribution of the media roles in the FN in order to answer the opposed expectations of the electorates. Florian Philippot (vice-president of the FN) supported the strike of the SNCF on behalf of the party hostility against European institutions. His objective was to attract parts of the unionized workforce, the big associations of labor unions were worried about this breakthrough and rightly so. But at the same time, Jean-Marie Lepen (father of Marine Le Pen and former FN president), Louis Aliot (companion of Marine Le Pen and also vice-president of the FN) and Marion-Maréchal Le Pen (niece of Marine Le Pen and deputy of the FN) have a more right-wing and classic approach. By the way, the last two, who are established in the South, seem favorable to making local alliances with the moderate right. Every party trying to develop is forced to implement some kind of intern pluralism in order to attract different and diverse electorates without losing their initial core. Besides, the FN is never judged on its results nationally, because it is always part of the opposition. Thus, the FN can promise a lot of things to a lot of people. I : Can this full split last indefinitely? J.F : We cannot dismiss the political talent of Marine Le Pen. She widened the spectrum of the themes she talked about and she doesn't hesitate to borrow "leftist" rhetoric. But she always pays attention not to go too far. And even if Jean-Marie Le Pen wished she talked more about immigration, we have to recall that during the presidential elections of 2007 one of the campaign posters showed a North African as a normal voter for Jean-Marie Le Pen. It was not well received by some of the FN electors and Marine Le Pen didn't step on this slope so she always sends frequent and clear signals on this subject to her partisans (like "How many Mohammed Merah are on the boats who arrive at Lampedusa?" (Merah was a French-Algerian who murdered children in a Jewish school and was shot by the police)). Likewise, on the barrage of Sivens issue, the FN didn't have any sympathy for the radical activists who attacked the police forces, actually it was quite the contrary. By reactivating right markers during those kind of events, Marine Le Pen reassure her camp. Yes it is more complicated but it doesn't change the fact that the current public that vote for the FN is also the public that is, usually, more touched by abstention. The current left, which is the PS, now does not AT ALL gain vote from the traditionnal leftist region / populations. E. Todd and LeBras showed it in the french mystery, but there are plenty of work on that (Guilly's work for exemple). Here is an article from two sociologues that argue that the FN "might be" the most touched by abstentionnism. http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2014/05/BRACONNIER/50381 Also, you cannot say that there is a "deep antisemitic atmosphere" in France, and not talk about islamophobia. There is a weird double standard : there is a difference between underground network that recruit young kids to go at war in syria, with an officer of the 4th military power in the world that comes to the biggest synagogue of paris to recruit kids. The official part, and the institutionalized situation of the jewish community, change a lot of things. On November 23 2014 06:15 Incognoto wrote: I think that rather than look at French polls one must realize that most French people (this is my impression anyway) just want a competent government in place. I see polls favoring the FN as the French trying to ring an alarm bell to both the right and left wing politicians of the French government: they're fucking up and need to calm their shit. Personally when I hear discussions about politics in France I get a little sick. The posts I've read throughout the thread are also making me somewhat sick: ideologies and beliefs are shoved into people's faces whereas actual working solutions and compromises are being ignored. There is no "left-wing" or "right-wing" that should even be taking place in debates. There are good ideas and values on both sides, why the fuck should we be forced to choose one side or another without any semblance of compromise? It's absurd, it's fucking absurd. While the fucking clowns are doing their circus act (pretty much every French politician), unemployment is on the rise and the facist party is getting much more attention than it should. These people are disconnected from reality and God knows how on earth they even came into positions with responsibility when they clearly have no idea what the fuck they're doing. Ideologies should guide one's decisions but it should not MAKE decisions. The main problem is that in all dominating parties, there is only one ideology, and you cannot really differenciate the ideology and the practice, as the first permit the second. What all government did to fight unemployment until now is entirely ideological. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 23 2014 07:38 WhiteDog wrote: That's the kind of answers I'm bored with really. In Rwanda, the belgium used the number of cows and the height of people to define if they were hutu or tutsi on their id card. In nazi germany, the german discussed in length, and created protocoles, to define the % of blood needed to be considered pure or impure. France's assimilation is different, and altho I'm willing to go as far as to say that there is a cultural racism in our internationalism, saying that the declaration of the human right and our colonialism (because the two are linked) equal or even is remotly close to nazi germany is just plain stupid. But yeah, when the youth is fed on a certain discourse of the 2nd WW history's I guess nothing cannot be discussed without this constant relation and discussion on the shoah. The "objective, scientific" view of X is another facet of German intellectual history, but it is only a part of it. All kinds of foreigners, from Mme. de Stael to Stalin, have remarked on this contradiction of German character; that mixture of inner idealism and outer conformity. Even the Nuremberg Race Laws emanated this compound of objective and subjective beliefs. Whereas the race was fubdamentally calculated on the basis grandpaternal lineage, in mixed cases there were subjective criteria such as cultural, religious and marital affiliations, which defined your "Mischling" status. Hitler himself towards the end of his life said that the biological view of race was nonsense. As a whole, Nazis were more racial idealists than racial materialists, but that is another matter. Secondly, I was not attempting to draw an equivalency between French nationalism and German nationalism. What I was expressing was a dissatisfaction with a certain formulation of those differences. The German nationalists' ideal of man was not for export in the same way as French cosmopolitan nationalism was, but the differences are not so simple as saying that one was racial and the other cultural. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On November 23 2014 06:53 MoltkeWarding wrote: Yeah, I don't think I'm going out on a llimb to say you don't live in UK, or have any idea what you are talking about do you?The mistake here is to associate political parties with fixed political programmes, whereas presently they are dynamically shifting in their attempts to jockey for position within the political landscape. UKIP went from its Thatcherite roots to something that is increasingly looking to fill the void left by the extinction of Old Labour. It is a catch-all party which is siphoning off disgruntled Tory voters in the south and disillusioned Labour voters in the north. To achieve this, UKIP has backed away from its former economic ideology and is presently struggling to transform itself into something more bourgeois and middle-ground. The basic cleavages in the polymorphic coalition to which it is trying to appeal is presently patched up with a strong whiff of localism. They say one thing in one constituency, and another somewhere else, but rather than facing the inevitable charge of political opportunism, UKIP will say that their party is against one-size-fits-all solutions for the country, and what they do is devolve the scale of politics so that disenfranchised voters will recognise that it is both more accessible and democratic. That is the future blueprint that UKIP will follow if it wants to articulate a coherent platform. | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
On November 23 2014 06:53 MoltkeWarding wrote: I have never heard of any examples, but I suppose this is not only plausible but likely for several reasons. When the Pirate Party was temporarily at 12 or 13% in the national polls, it faced much the same sort of accusation. This is because since the decline of the Deutsche Partei, there has been no party in mainstream German politics to the "right" of the CDU. To express their desiderata, Nationalists have had to do one of several things. They could vote for a fringe party like the NPD, but because of the party's public image, they know that such a political alliance would immediately cast them beyond the pale of respectable discourse. They could withdraw from politics. Or they could attach themselves to an emerging party which is similarly dissatisfied with the status quo, and seeks to subvert it. There may be more in such a calculation than mere political sabotage. They must calculate, that if the monopoly of the present establishment can be toppled, and political discourse made more fluid as to again accept revolutionary, new ideas, that would create an opening for their agenda to enter the public scene, not as a n ostracised fringe, but as a respectable source of alternative opinions. the AfD top members might be too intelligent to make right out anti-semitic and xenophobic statements but as you pointed out the AfD has pulled a lot of voters from the brown swamp at the far right, and the only difference is that they put the same shit in nicer words. There was an incident with a local AfD member of the Brandenburg parliament who made open anti-semitic comments and then there are their election adverts that like I said might say it in nicer words but are the same as teh NPD. + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://www.kraftfuttermischwerk.de/blogg/wp-content/uploads2/2014/04/9900_5d4f_960.png) I put it in spoilers because the picture is fairly big. no idea if you can speak german so I'll make a quick translation. 1.) AfD poster says "Immigration needs clear rules", NPD poster "the boat is full" 2.) AfD poster "Courage to germany", NPD "money for grandma instead for roma and sinti" 3.) AfD poster "secure currency instead of timebombs", NPD "save us from the EU-bankruptcy" 4.) AfD poster "switzerland is for referendums, so are we", NPD "Model Switzerland, stop immigration, referendums now!" | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
On November 23 2014 08:04 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Yeah, I don't think I'm going out on a llimb to say you don't live in UK, or have any idea what you are talking about do you? Quite correct. Fortunately for us foreign dilettants, I am in the society of peers who know better and from whom I expect a detailed refutation. + Show Spoiler + I put it in spoilers because the picture is fairly big. no idea if you can speak german so I'll make a quick translation. 1.) AfD poster says "Immigration needs clear rules", NPD poster "the boat is full" 2.) AfD poster "Courage to germany", NPD "money for grandma instead for roma and sinti" 3.) AfD poster "secure currency instead of timebombs", NPD "save us from the EU-bankruptcy" 4.) AfD poster "switzerland is for referendums, so are we", NPD "Model Switzerland, stop immigration, referendums now!" I tend to look more at party manifestos and leader interviews; German campaign posters are singularly, mind-numbingly awful, regardless of party. I will say though that the AfD is very careful to advertise the fact that their policy suggestions are based on foreign examples. It may merely be a symptom of their leaderships' academic backgrounds, but could be a conscious attempt to pre-empt the accusation that there is anything radical or weird about their policy prescriptions. UKIP does this as well: they want an "Australian-style" immigration system, or a "Swiss style" trading relationship with the EU. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On November 23 2014 08:02 MoltkeWarding wrote: The "objective, scientific" view of X is another facet of German intellectual history, but it is only a part of it. All kinds of foreigners, from Mme. de Stahl to Stalin, have remarked on this contradiction of German character; that mixture of inner idealism and outer conformity. Even the Nuremberg Race Laws emanated this compound of objective and subjective beliefs. Whereas the race was fubdamentally calculated on the basis grandpaternal lineage, in mixed cases there were subjective criteria such as cultural, religious and marital affiliations, which defined your "Mischling" status. Hitler himself towards the end of his life said that the biological view of race was nonsense. As a whole, Nazis were more racial idealists than racial materialists, but that is another matter. Secondly, I was not attempting to draw an equivalency between French nationalism and German nationalism. What I was expressing was a dissatisfaction with a certain formulation of those differences. The German nationalists' ideal of man was not for export in the same way as French cosmopolitan nationalism was, but the differences are not so simple as saying that one was racial and the other cultural. Yes it's not so simple, like everything historical. Of course there is a cultural aspect to german racism, but it doesn't change the fact that nationalism in germany has always gone hand in hand with a certain vision of blood, pure or impure, and the role of this blood in the definition of the nation, while France was not. The whole debate about nazism is irrelevant to what is happening in france, and that's it. Also, the cultural and the racist aspect of nazi doctrine are not two side of the same coin : the subjective part is a necessity of practice due to the incapacity of the racial concept to completly englobe all specific situations. But the culture of the aryan population was not the reason as to why the aryan were superior, but was viewed as an expression of that inherent (and natural) superiority. It's just completly different and the discussion has no reason to exist really. | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
On November 23 2014 08:12 MoltkeWarding wrote: I tend to look more at party manifestos and leader interviews; German campaign posters are singularly, mind-numbingly awful, regardless of party. I will say though that the AfD is very careful to advertise the fact that their policy suggestions are based on foreign examples. It may merely be a symptom of their leaderships' academic backgrounds, but could be a conscious attempt to pre-empt the accusation that there is anything radical or weird about their policy prescriptions. UKIP does this as well: they want an "Australian-style" immigration system, or a "Swiss style" trading relationship with the EU. doesnt matter what the leadership of the AfD wants when big parts of their base membership is brown dirt | ||
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