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It's not bad if conservatives agree on almost everything with Nazis, but watch out for the leftists joining up with the Nazis! Because... reasons!
Just to remind everyone who actually crowned Hitler King of Germany and preheated the oven: Of course, conservatives. The political black plague without ideas or concepts that has been assimilating any idea completely without questioning it for as long as it keeps them and their lobbies in power. Whether it was defending monarchy, suddenly turning liberal when liberalism came up, turning fascist when fascism rose to power, social-democratic after the war, back to liberalism when these ideologies rose again or now turning facsist again. As always they have no backbone and no brains to think for themselves.
But hey, watch out: horseshoe. ^^
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I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well.
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On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well.
The posterboy examples for the horseshoe theory are Hitler-Stalin and fascism-communism comparisons.
If you fear collaboration with the far-right you should be aware who actually shares a lot ofmviews with them, at least at the moment.
The reasons why they do these things are completely different. The far-left believe in political control over the economy, that's why they are often anti-EU. The current EU executives not only refuses to play that role, it is fundamentally built in a way to make it impossible to fullfill that role even if it was completely taken over by people who want to.
The far right just hates internationalism.
The CSU has, the CDU has and even Martin Schulz has copied parts of the AfD rhetoric on refugees. Welcome to the age of populism. If you don't want that, maybe fight oligarchs who control the media and who profit from this type of political language and if you don't use it your a big bad leftliberal mainstream candidate.
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On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well.
Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal
Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1
Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same
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On October 11 2017 07:44 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. The posterboy examples for the horseshoe theory are Hitler-Stalin and fascism-communism comparisons. If you fear collaboration with the far-right you should be aware who actually shares a lot ofmviews with them, at least at the moment. The reasons why they do these things are completely different. The far-left believe in political control over the economy, that's why they are often anti-EU. The current EU executives not only refuses to play that role, it is fundamentally built in a way to make it impossible to fullfill that role even if it was completely taken over by people who want to. The far right just hates internationalism. The CSU has, the CDU has and even Martin Schulz has copied parts of the AfD rhetoric on refugees. Welcome to the age of populism. If you don't want that, maybe fight oligarchs who control the media and who profit from this type of political language and if you don't use it your a big bad leftliberal mainstream candidate.
But the narrative is fundamentally untrue. Oligarchs don't control Europe or the media. The EU has a fairly reasonable track record on citizen and consumer interest, definitely not worse than any national government including the German one which is often way too eager to protect domestic business.
The idea that the world is somehow run by shadowy elites or oligarchs (they're doing a pretty bad job at controlling the narrative recently if that's true) is fundamentally conspiracy logic. And the idea that this is supposedly be combated by retreating to the nation state for whatever reasons is an anachronism.
On October 11 2017 08:04 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1 Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same
The left needs to produce a genuine alternative to the status quo. Complaining about neoliberalism is not enough.
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"Far-left" parties "burning" the EU flag. Nothing new here, smells like Kremlin as always.
Left-wing and right-wing... Some people still believe that such categories actually exist nowdays. LOL.
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On October 11 2017 08:04 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1 Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same
I think you're delusional; being against Syrian/Iraqi refugees isn't far-right. I'm against them and I never support far-right parties. I always vote for centre-right. Far-right would be to want to deport them. I'm against letting them in at all which is obviously too late now with Merkel's shitty decisions in 2015.
Edit: For some reason I thought you meant refugees. Migrants is just too vague for me to comment on.
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On October 11 2017 08:09 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 08:04 TheDwf wrote:On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1 Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same The left needs to produce a genuine alternative to the status quo. Complaining about neoliberalism is not enough. During times of uncertainty, the center needs to produce a genuine alternative to populism, not the other way around. And you won't get that praising the status quo.
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On October 11 2017 08:18 Pr0wler wrote:
"Far-left" parties "burning" the EU flag. Nothing new here, smells like Kremlin as always.
Left-wing and right-wing... Some people still believe that such categories actually exist nowdays. LOL.
It's weird how all the far left and right parties have similar goals and themes across nations and oceans. I wonder how that happened?
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On October 11 2017 08:41 Godwrath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 08:09 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2017 08:04 TheDwf wrote:On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1 Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same The left needs to produce a genuine alternative to the status quo. Complaining about neoliberalism is not enough. During times of uncertainty, the center needs to produce a genuine alternative to populism, not the other way around. And you won't get that praising the status quo.
It might very well be the case that situations arise in which no policy can satisfy the whole population or even a majority of it, and where people need to be able to take unsatisfying answers. So called 'neoliberalism', which is the main target of the right and left (and is more than just the refugee crisis) is for now at least the only game in town.
You can't really turn politics into an on-demand delivery system, where the population goes crazy just because politicians don't deliver on time. That is inherently unstable. You need to make the population 'populist resistant', rather than carrying populism over into the centre of politics.
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On October 11 2017 09:08 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 08:41 Godwrath wrote:On October 11 2017 08:09 Nyxisto wrote:On October 11 2017 08:04 TheDwf wrote:On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. Radical left: the European Union is antidemocratic and neoliberal Far-right: Europe brings too many migrants!1!1!1!1 Smart centrist: see? those populist extremes are all the same The left needs to produce a genuine alternative to the status quo. Complaining about neoliberalism is not enough. During times of uncertainty, the center needs to produce a genuine alternative to populism, not the other way around. And you won't get that praising the status quo. It might very well be the case that situations arise in which no policy can satisfy the whole population or even a majority of it, and where people need to be able to take unsatisfying answers. So called 'neoliberalism', which is the main target of the right and left (and is more than just the refugee crisis) is for now at least the only game in town. You can't really turn politics into an on-demand delivery system, where the population goes crazy just because politicians don't deliver on time. That is inherently unstable. You need to make the population 'populist resistant', rather than carrying populism over into the centre of politics. Who said the center should be more populist? Except if by populist you mean that maybe they should take the people whom they represent seriously, atleast from time to time.
But that's not the point i am making, the current neoliberal wave is all about fueling populism movements through job and social services uncertainty padding with corruption, financial crisis poorly handled, unsustainable austherity measures to guarantee to protect the private investors while they shit on the common man and a list that only goes on and goes on.
Neoliberal policies are the cause of populism.
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austerity is a political measure, but also is not really a synonym for populism, because some countries were hit by populism without actually practicing a lot of austerity at all, while countries like Spain or Portugal actually have not seen a rise in extremism.
The larger point, the uncertainty, is not going to go a way. It's not a feature of neoliberalism, it's a feature of technological change. People will not just work one job all of their life, their will not be a strong separation between work and home, women now enjoy a large degree of autonomy meaning that the nuclear family is not the only model around, and so forth. All of this is not going to be put back into the bottle.
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Neoliberal is the term that gets thrown around by populists who claim to champion the people, but really just want to see how much of the pie they can get before they also get thrown out.
Though I will say the fatalism of technology creating endless instability for working people while tech firms are run by billionaires has got to fucking go. That is some vestige of unchecked capitalism bullshit that the left picked at some point. technology is worthless if during "progress" it happens to spawn a reactionary political movement in its wake.
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I'm not advocating fatalism in the sense of "workers are screwed watcha gonna do huh", I'm saying that technology puts restraints on what politics can feasibly promise. And many of the changes that scare people right now are not primarily the result of bad politics but rather rapid change in how we relate to the changing technological landscape and emerging economies, who are going to do their thing no matter how much we complain about anything.
I think Macron did quite a good job by moving from politics of big promises coming from one ideological camp towards politics that tries to rally people from different positions around different topics. That would certainly be a good start to overcome some of the political divides we're more and more suffering from.
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On October 11 2017 08:53 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 08:18 Pr0wler wrote:
"Far-left" parties "burning" the EU flag. Nothing new here, smells like Kremlin as always.
Left-wing and right-wing... Some people still believe that such categories actually exist nowdays. LOL. It's weird how all the far left and right parties have similar goals and themes across nations and oceans. I wonder how that happened?
And their "themes" actually mean anything at all ? These "themes" are dictated by their donors and cores and are means to get elected. Other than that they are meaningless mantras - part of the game. The big old parties are trying to please the cores, the new parties are trying to steal radical parts of the cores of the old parties. Usually the established parties take turns in office through coalitions with the small parties that used to be "against the status quo" before the elections. Same old game repeating itself. In the background you have people trying to secure a piece of the pie for themselves.
As for their goals... In general the goal is the same. To serve their "sponsors" while staying in office for longer.
Of course the politicians can and will say whatever gets them elected, that doesn't mean that they are honest about it. I prefer to judge them by their actions.
In general, if you vote for one of the parties that are part of this "right-left" scheme, your vote is wasted. Even worse, it fuels the replication of this model.
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On October 11 2017 11:38 Nyxisto wrote:
austerity is a political measure, but also is not really a synonym for populism, because some countries were hit by populism without actually practicing a lot of austerity at all, while countries like Spain or Portugal actually have not seen a rise in extremism.
The larger point, the uncertainty, is not going to go a way. It's not a feature of neoliberalism, it's a feature of technological change. People will not just work one job all of their life, their will not be a strong separation between work and home, women now enjoy a large degree of autonomy meaning that the nuclear family is not the only model around, and so forth. All of this is not going to be put back into the bottle. We have some in Spain, not to speak a good chunk of our population at the brink of secession, but yeah man, everything is going fine. If you think what is going on in Catalonia is not a direct result of the austerity measures poorly handled, you have been missing a lot.
But then i have to ask you, why do you think populism is on the rise? And what are the goverments doing to make people "populists resistant"?
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On October 11 2017 08:09 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 07:44 Big J wrote:On October 11 2017 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:
I don't know how you two circled back to Hitler but the anti-EU strategy on both the far-right and left right now in contemporary Europe is very similar both in style and content. Obessing about a flag in a parliament and the constant de-legitimisation of elected officials is something one can expect from the right, but that the biggest left opposition party in France has nothing better to come up with is not good.
Same in Germany for that matter. Die Linke has tried to copy parts of the right-wing rhetoric as well. The posterboy examples for the horseshoe theory are Hitler-Stalin and fascism-communism comparisons. If you fear collaboration with the far-right you should be aware who actually shares a lot ofmviews with them, at least at the moment. The reasons why they do these things are completely different. The far-left believe in political control over the economy, that's why they are often anti-EU. The current EU executives not only refuses to play that role, it is fundamentally built in a way to make it impossible to fullfill that role even if it was completely taken over by people who want to. The far right just hates internationalism. The CSU has, the CDU has and even Martin Schulz has copied parts of the AfD rhetoric on refugees. Welcome to the age of populism. If you don't want that, maybe fight oligarchs who control the media and who profit from this type of political language and if you don't use it your a big bad leftliberal mainstream candidate. But the narrative is fundamentally untrue. Oligarchs don't control Europe or the media. The EU has a fairly reasonable track record on citizen and consumer interest, definitely not worse than any national government including the German one which is often way too eager to protect domestic business. The idea that the world is somehow run by shadowy elites or oligarchs (they're doing a pretty bad job at controlling the narrative recently if that's true) is fundamentally conspiracy logic. And the idea that this is supposedly be combated by retreating to the nation state for whatever reasons is an anachronism.
The EU has no teeth. It controls 1% of Europe's GDP and even that is hardly operational money but bound to agriculture. It has no say in most issues and for trying to coordinate Europe on that one conservative topic which keeps those parties alive the EU is now getting trashed by conservative interests. There is hardly a point in discussing whether what the EU wants is good or bad for as long as it has no teeth.
The European social-democrats have tried for a long time to get into power in the EU and give it more power, force more integration so that this phase of European self-destruction can come to an end. There has been no progress on that end and now some left-wingers have become angry. People like Blair and Schröder kept arguing that the countries needed to be competitive for the EU/EU expansion/globalization. It's not a surprise that now the people who lost out due to this are turning on globalization and away from soc-dem parties who say they want to but can't help them.
Do I believe taking back the full power to the nation state and closing the markets somewhat will be a gain for the people? Not in the slightest. But the status quo is not feasable any longer. I have to work 3 times more to buy property - not only in cities - than people had to some generations ago. Sorry, I don't buy into this stuff that inequality is not a problem for me because of market forces, I don't buy into this stuff that having regressive tax rates, i.e. rich people are paying like 25% of their income while I pay 40% is good for me because of market forces, I don't buy into this stuff that somehow it's ok to guarantee for state credits to rich investors, but when it comes to debt that the state has with the people (like pensions) breaking contracts is ok, I don't buy into this stuff that we need flexibilization of working hours without overpayment.
I personally don't identify as typical leftist that believes in sharing everything and having somewhat of a state run economy, I believe in the liberal principle of making your own prices and decisions. I don't even believe in the concept of income taxation except for having a mechanism to prevent going around other taxes. I believe that democracy is important but not that for some reason democratic state decisions would be representative for my personal needs. I don't want big states telling me what to do, but you have to tell me what the difference between such a state and an upper 2% who control 50% of the economy, the media and politics should be. And without using esoterics like "market forces". I believe in physics, contracts and executable laws, not in esoterics. If you want a market force that guarantees me that I profit from overall wealth then give me a (success based/dynamic) basic income financed by a wealth tax. (which should be there anyways, because why should I guarantee for property rights for free in a market economy? You want me to subscribe to that concept, then pay me a share of value of the thing I guarantee for.)
As it turns out we have a ton of conservative parties that all don't want a European democratic project that could change something, that are all happy with having elites controlling the economy - not some shadow elites, I can give you names. And no, I don't believe they are doing it out of being bad people, but simply because the rules allow for it. It's sad that in a gamer forum you have to tell people that having someone start with a massive base and a full grown carrier fleet because his father built that in the last game, against someone who inherited 6 workers and a CC will lead to a very predictable result, even if they are not allowed to fight and just see who can take the most expansions the fastest. And no, the map being taken faster overall because the one guy has the capability to do so does not help everyone overall, chances are pretty high that at some point the 6 worker start guy will have some form of competition with the other guy that he can't win completely disregarding skill and he would be better off if the other one simply had less, not even starting with the concept that the big base and carrier fleet could be free resources on the map to make it purely skill based to begin with. But hey "market forces", just believe in them.
For as long as the left and far-left seem to be the only reasonable people on this planet not telling me to believe in esoterical concepts and being vocal about the problems of inequality, for that long I don't see much of a choice in the political spectrum. Do they have working solutions (on a national level in Europe)? Not really. The idea of a democratic state economy is idiotic. But at least it's a consistent idea. When I look at "liberal" parties, they can't even voice their own, fundamental freedom concept anymore. They just believe in a hundret thousand different concepts that all clash with each other and then they make arbitrary decision which always happen to put big money interests ahead of everything else.
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Considering that the average (Western) European has never had a better life throughout history, I'd say it's fair to say that the status quo is working fine for the vast majority of the (Western) European population. That's not to say that there isn't a lot that can be improved, but why would you prefer a 'consistent story without working solutions' to what we have now: a working system that provides a good life for the average person?
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Because life is not neccesarily better than 20-30 years ago? Prospects of future uncertain, buying property gone out of the window, salaries in the same lvl or worse than 20 years ago while costs had adjusted to inflation are some examples i can give you, for starters.
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On October 11 2017 17:02 Godwrath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2017 11:38 Nyxisto wrote:
austerity is a political measure, but also is not really a synonym for populism, because some countries were hit by populism without actually practicing a lot of austerity at all, while countries like Spain or Portugal actually have not seen a rise in extremism.
The larger point, the uncertainty, is not going to go a way. It's not a feature of neoliberalism, it's a feature of technological change. People will not just work one job all of their life, their will not be a strong separation between work and home, women now enjoy a large degree of autonomy meaning that the nuclear family is not the only model around, and so forth. All of this is not going to be put back into the bottle. We have some in Spain, not to speak a good chunk of our population at the brink of secession, but yeah man, everything is going fine. If you think what is going on in Catalonia is not a direct result of the austerity measures poorly handled, you have been missing a lot. But then i have to ask you, why do you think populism is on the rise? And what are the goverments doing to make people "populists resistant"?
FTFY
If you think what is going on in Catalonia IS a direct result of the austerity measures poorly handled, you have been missing a lot.
The rise of Catalan independentism started much before Spanish austerity measures were approved.
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EPT
