European Right Wing

[edyzmedieval]

Right, (see what I did there?) I want to initiate a discussion on the European right wing / populist movement that has been spurred onwards in the past two years, especially by events such as Brexit, the Trump presidential victory and future events that will eventually shape up, some in due course immediately (Italian Referendum), some a bit more down the road (French Election).

But clearly not limited to those.

Most European countries have had considerable problems internally due to the refugee crisis, most of it due to internal backlash against the whole "open door" policy of the European Union. While most people speculate this to be the fuel for the rise of the right wing, populist movements, simply putting the focus on the refugee crisis does not explain the full picture, particularly given the fact that some of these movements have been active for a looong time now. Most of them predate the refugee crisis, and some were active even 20 - 30 years ago.

What caused them to rise and take once more centre stage?

We all know Europe had a number of right wing movements which some of them turned rather... disagreeable. I am sarcastic of course here, because some of them were beyond horrific. But given Europe's rather distaste for right wing, populist policies, especially during the years after the war, the return of right wing ideals has rather alarmed many and has caused quite a few questions. Let's be clear however on one thing - modern right wing is different than the xenophobic, racist and extremist ideals of the 1930's. We're a long way from there. But this has alarmed many people, despite the obvious differences.

Why? How come right wing movements gained traction once more?

Let the intellectual debate begin.

[Greyblades]

It's a simple vaccum; when only one party or section of political thought are presenting solutions to widespread problems people turn to them and as the problem's effects increase so does the popularity of those parties who become, or are seen to become the only sane choice.

The left mostly refuses to acknowledge the great problems of the age are actually problems and are thus allowing the reemergence of the right by being willfully blind.

[Strike For The South]

The left has a tendcy to tear down social mores and communities. That's why it's ok to import millions of refugees with no plan. Contential Europe has no identity outside of the superficial.

[Montmorency]

The left has a tendcy to tear down social mores and communities. That's why it's ok to import millions of refugees with no plan. Contential Europe has no identity outside of the superficial.

Compared to the manifestly conservative nature of the American "revolutionaries", who only in 1776 came to accept what British think-pieces had been predicting about the colonies since 1696, and who retroactively assigned their same dawdling selves a coherent republican identity in their post-war histories.

Anyway, I disagree. Leftists simply present too many competing alternatives. For conservatives, so to speak, there is no alternative. That's where the irony comes in.

[Beskar]

The left has a tendcy to tear down social mores and communities. That's why it's ok to import millions of refugees with no plan. Contential Europe has no identity outside of the superficial.

With a narrative like that, you can attribute everything bad to the left It is really easy to flip them too...

Given the 'left' has the tendency of creating communities. See: Trade Unions, Cooperatives, and other organisations which work on the concept of better together. On the otherhand, the right wants to divide and conquer, by empowering the elite and oppressing the masses, saying about how the individual should compete in the race to the top, stepping over their neighbour.

Given that Individualism was a push from the right-wing capitalism and Thatcherite policies. Sell off social housing reserves at a low value, in order to enrich themselves short-term, whilst making the greater population poorer by denying accessible accommodation for the poorer sectors, driving up deprivation.

Given left-wing tendency to establish new social mores based upon unity and equality, tearing down desive 'traditional' policies like black people to the back of the bus and segregated schools. They also removed laws which the right wanted in place like chemical castration of homosexuals and labelled mentally ill, and instead advocating accepting homosexuals as equal partners, and even allowing them to declare their love in marriage.

Syria is going through a bloody civil war, and the country is basically leveled ash-heap. The left dares to suggest we should try to help and support other people who are fleeing for their lives, being accepting of your fellow man, woman, and child. This is instead of having gun boats shooting and sinking them, establishing walls with machine gun posts, to gun down women and children like the right want.

[Kagemusha]

Im calling them populist conservatives, rather then using simplistic expressions like "left" and "right". The reason is that they are not necessarily from right, but can come from leftist circles as well. Of course unless one is not knowledgeable of social democracy, such might sound strange. But i am certain that at least in central and northern Europe the supporters of this group are against liberal economical policies as much as "leftist" idealism.

In any case i think lot of their support spring from traditional values, resistance towards change and wish for things to become like they were. Turning the clock back so does speak.The good questions is were things that great to begin with in the past? I agree that there is some truth in their narrative. In many instances the change has been rather rapid the last decades and also somewhat uncontrollable. This applies most of all to global economy, but it is such a beast that cannot hardly be moderated by policies of any single country, no matter how big.

The xenophobic aspect cant be denied, but in this issue , like so many others as well. I think the answer lies in moderation. If new people can be integrated in our societies, there is nothing bad about it. Though i do not agree to multiculturalism and that emigrants should form closed communities based on their countries of origin culture and have issues with interacting with the mainstream of the countries they have emigrated. In a way such behavior resembles the behavior of these populist conservatives and their wish for things to become like they were and such is futile for both groups in the end.

[rory_20_uk]

Any discussion that starts with the monikers right / left is doomed to end in a quagmire of misunderstandings since both labels are trying to cover a vast range of ideologies and it belies the complexity of this.

Are left wingers all Globalists who view every unit of humanity the same? Probably not.
Are all right wingers all Isolationists who would rather ignore everyone the other side of their palisade? Probably not.

Most countries have a history of integrating people into them. There was an interesting programme investigating what happened to Georgian black people in the UK? Short answer - they integrated and interbred until they are indistinguishable from everyone else. Like pretty much every other wave of immigrants historically.

So yes, multi-racial is fine. And accepting people that want to be UK citizens and a part of UK society is fine. Wanting to come here and form an enclave of the "old land" and form another "community" that exists in parallel with what is here is not.

[Gilrandir]

I want to initiate a discussion on the European right wing / populist movement that has been spurred onwards in the past two years

What caused them to rise and take once more centre stage?

Inability of those at power to address the challenges of today.

I believe that if the Right were at power they wouldn't do that either (too many and too inundating the challenges seem), so the pendulum would swing to the Left as the opposite to those who are not up to the task.

[Montmorency]

Any discussion that starts with the monikers right / left is doomed to end in a quagmire of misunderstandings since both labels are trying to cover a vast range of ideologies and it belies the complexity of this.

Are left wingers all Globalists who view every unit of humanity the same? Probably not.
Are all right wingers all Isolationists who would rather ignore everyone the other side of their palisade? Probably not.

Most countries have a history of integrating people into them. There was an interesting programme investigating what happened to Georgian black people in the UK? Short answer - they integrated and interbred until they are indistinguishable from everyone else. Like pretty much every other wave of immigrants historically.

So yes, multi-racial is fine. And accepting people that want to be UK citizens and a part of UK society is fine. Wanting to come here and form an enclave of the "old land" and form another "community" that exists in parallel with what is here is not.

At the risk of equivocation, I'd venture a trait of conservatism as requiring numerous interlocking preconditions to be met for the sake of reform or more generally action, a systematic order of operations.

As such, conservatives often act on conditions after the fact, when a situation has overturned them or changed their calculations, but the compensatory tendency after action is retrenchment toward the status quo ante.

[edyzmedieval]

Ability to effectively change policy relies very much on the power of the majority within the population and mandatory within the Parliament itself.

Inability to do some policy changes also boils down the opposition of the left or the right wing parties, depending on what side you are on.

[Sarmatian]

It really boils down to this - when things start going south, people blame anyone they perceive as different.

[edyzmedieval]

Which makes it a position to think about - how can you stop people from drifting over to extremism and to highlight the importance of balance?

[Montmorency]

Which makes it a position to think about - how can you stop people from drifting over to extremism and to highlight the importance of balance?

Come in after things have boiled over?

[Greyblades]

Dont be responsible for the actions that made things go south, that should do it.

[Sarmatian]

Which makes it a position to think about - how can you stop people from drifting over to extremism and to highlight the importance of balance?

Traditionally, it was supposed to the be job of the elite in the country, but at the moment, the elites have been discredited and the prevailing opinion among the unwashed masses is "we're sick of elites and experts, we don't need them!" <makes you wish they'd keep the same attitude when they have a medical procedure done on them and spare us all of their continuous drivel>

So, short of having a new world war with a few hundred million casualties, I'm really not sure.

[Husar]

Traditionally, it was supposed to the be job of the elite in the country, but at the moment, the elites have been discredited and the prevailing opinion among the unwashed masses is "we're sick of elites and experts, we don't need them!" <makes you wish they'd keep the same attitude when they have a medical procedure done on them and spare us all of their continuous drivel>

Some of them already do that, see anti-vaxer movement and all the alternative medicine and healing stuff.

[edyzmedieval]

Come in after things have boiled over?

I don't think that will work out too well - usually when things boil over in politics, something bad happened already.

[Brenus]

I was thinking about reactions to Trump’s election.
The rise of “populism” is due to the failure of the precedent regimes to address their population’s needs. H. Clinton lost because Obama’s failure. Compare the numbers who voted for Obama first season, then the numbers who voted for her.
What people need is a job, a future for their children. What the elites in France, UK and USA offer is TAFTA, CETA and TINA. And the ones like Sanders in USA, Corbyn in UK and Mélenchon in France are at best ignored and when it is impossible to do so, mocked and caricatured, described under the qualifications of “Populist”, “Marxist” and others by the media in general.
And then comes the moment to blame the voters, and to play emotional: Stop thinking, react. Trump is a racist, xenophobe, misogynistic con-artist. True. But when H Clinton was promising more TAFTA, more CETA, more TINA, he was saying they will have jobs.
When every day is a fight, when tomorrow is uncertain thanks to zero-hours contract, of temp contract renewed every 3 months, when you small salary is freeze for years and no prospect to be improved, when the price to your children to get education is increasing, when all the concern of your “leaders” is to break all form of resistance to money makers, more concern by social fraud than by tax evasions and fraud, to make your situation even more difficult by cutting all social protection, to carry-on like before, for whom will you vote? When “elites” choose to ignore the result of elections, lied deliberately and ignored the reality of daily life for their electors, first reaction is abstention, then vote of “Cocktail Molotov” vote, as described by Michael Moore when the possibility to vote of alternative has been eradicate.
Sanders and Corbyn had it. H Clinton’s supporters and Labour’s elites had de facto prohibited their electorate to vote for the candidate they didn’t want. They are doing the same in France. They tried to prevent these candidates even to reach the place where they can be elected, by rewriting the rules when necessary. Same was done much more brutally in the past. You do know why the Islamists took power in countries following the Arab Spring? Because all other forms of protest labelled as “communist” were repressed in blood by corrupted dictatorships supported and trained by our democracies, leaving the field opened for protest to religious fanatics.
The greatest numbers of voters are abstentionist. This should have been the alarm bell.
So, when stability means no job again, some choose chaos. Death is stable, life is chaos. If chaos means they might have a chance to finally have something, they choose chaos.
I read this: they don’t want to be protected when they lose their job, they want a job. And this simple thing has been ignored by all governments for now 30 years. So the ones, even if there is only a remote chance they keep their promises to do so, are better than the ones who even don’t think to build a future for them. And thanks to the “system” (a term which I will not explain here but it describes a complex interactions of “natural” allies, economic, political and media), all other options have been made out of option, the only one left is the “hand grenade”.

[edyzmedieval]

Some well thought out points Brenus, thank you for the post.

There's one thing I was to shine a light on - NAFTA, TAFTA and the rest of the free trade agreements. Protectionism does a lot of harm, and in the case of many products, prices will rise because of protectionist tariffs. The alternative is free trade agreements and free trade within economic blocs.

So how do we do free trade without harming jobs?

[Husar]

I've been saying that for a while, although I was expecting it to happen with someone like Sanders and not Trump...
This is where humanity disappoints me again, I guess.
To me, Sanders is more the "Change together" candidate and Trump the "Change by throwing them under the bus" candidate, although those are very generic terms considering both are willing to steal jobs from poor Chinese workers...
And then it remains to be seen whether Trump wasn't just a trojan horse given that he belongs to the billionaire class himself and may leave a lot of governing to republican establishment politicians.

[Pannonian]

I was thinking about reactions to Trump’s election.
The rise of “populism” is due to the failure of the precedent regimes to address their population’s needs. H. Clinton lost because Obama’s failure. Compare the numbers who voted for Obama first season, then the numbers who voted for her.
What people need is a job, a future for their children. What the elites in France, UK and USA offer is TAFTA, CETA and TINA. And the ones like Sanders in USA, Corbyn in UK and Mélenchon in France are at best ignored and when it is impossible to do so, mocked and caricatured, described under the qualifications of “Populist”, “Marxist” and others by the media in general.
And then comes the moment to blame the voters, and to play emotional: Stop thinking, react. Trump is a racist, xenophobe, misogynistic con-artist. True. But when H Clinton was promising more TAFTA, more CETA, more TINA, he was saying they will have jobs.
When every day is a fight, when tomorrow is uncertain thanks to zero-hours contract, of temp contract renewed every 3 months, when you small salary is freeze for years and no prospect to be improved, when the price to your children to get education is increasing, when all the concern of your “leaders” is to break all form of resistance to money makers, more concern by social fraud than by tax evasions and fraud, to make your situation even more difficult by cutting all social protection, to carry-on like before, for whom will you vote? When “elites” choose to ignore the result of elections, lied deliberately and ignored the reality of daily life for their electors, first reaction is abstention, then vote of “Cocktail Molotov” vote, as described by Michael Moore when the possibility to vote of alternative has been eradicate.
Sanders and Corbyn had it. H Clinton’s supporters and Labour’s elites had de facto prohibited their electorate to vote for the candidate they didn’t want. They are doing the same in France. They tried to prevent these candidates even to reach the place where they can be elected, by rewriting the rules when necessary. Same was done much more brutally in the past. You do know why the Islamists took power in countries following the Arab Spring? Because all other forms of protest labelled as “communist” were repressed in blood by corrupted dictatorships supported and trained by our democracies, leaving the field opened for protest to religious fanatics.
The greatest numbers of voters are abstentionist. This should have been the alarm bell.
So, when stability means no job again, some choose chaos. Death is stable, life is chaos. If chaos means they might have a chance to finally have something, they choose chaos.
I read this: they don’t want to be protected when they lose their job, they want a job. And this simple thing has been ignored by all governments for now 30 years. So the ones, even if there is only a remote chance they keep their promises to do so, are better than the ones who even don’t think to build a future for them. And thanks to the “system” (a term which I will not explain here but it describes a complex interactions of “natural” allies, economic, political and media), all other options have been made out of option, the only one left is the “hand grenade”.

Corbyn isn't "labelled as Communist". Corbyn follows the Communist creed, as described by Orwell back in the day when Uncle Joe was still alive. He even follows the modus operandi, memorably allegorised by Orwell in Animal Farm.

[Pannonian]

I've been saying that for a while, although I was expecting it to happen with someone like Sanders and not Trump...
This is where humanity disappoints me again, I guess.
To me, Sanders is more the "Change together" candidate and Trump the "Change by throwing them under the bus" candidate, although those are very generic terms considering both are willing to steal jobs from poor Chinese workers...
And then it remains to be seen whether Trump wasn't just a trojan horse given that he belongs to the billionaire class himself and may leave a lot of governing to republican establishment politicians.

You've got Corbyn in the UK: the pretend to be anti-establishment candidate who fattens himself at the trough, the Napoleon who chases out Blair's Snowball, standing indulgently while Momentum's sheeplike members baa out the latest version of Four Legs Good Two Legs Bad.

[Husar]

You've got Corbyn in the UK: the pretend to be anti-establishment candidate who fattens himself at the trough, the Napoleon who chases out Blair's Snowball, standing indulgently while Momentum's sheeplike members baa out the latest version of Four Legs Good Two Legs Bad.

I'm sorry, but the UK left my world by choice a couple of months ago.

As a personal advice, don't become like Gilrandir or me and try to bring your pet issue into every topic.
*insert rambling about the rich vs poor divide/greed being the root of all evil*

[Montmorency]

Brenus, from the 1930s to 1960s American socialists developed the term "politically correct" for American supporters of the CCCP that always upheld whatever dogma that party promulgated, regardless of local considerations and developments for example. That is to say, the term was reserved for those perceived to have limited political interests in mind rather than some broader socialist principles.

TBH Sanders seems like the sort who would have held out Corbyn as politically correct.

Agree that Pannonian needs to change the record a bit.

[Gilrandir]

As a personal advice, don't become like Gilrandir or me and try to bring your pet issue into every topic.

That's overstretching it. I have a pet thread for my pet topic, so it mostly stays there.

And what's your pet issue?

[Pannonian]

I'm sorry, but the UK left my world by choice a couple of months ago.

As a personal advice, don't become like Gilrandir or me and try to bring your pet issue into every topic.
*insert rambling about the rich vs poor divide/greed being the root of all evil*

The UK is proof that post-truth politics isn't restricted solely to the right. It certainly exists on the right, as seen in the enthusiasm for the manifestly incompetent UKIP. But the story that giving the left free rein will solve all problems is shown to be false by the experiment in the UK, where the supposed establishment left has been routed and the far left are in complete control. The far left has been given free rein in the UK, and all they're doing with it is entrenching their position within the political system, making sure that they and their friends will be in a position to benefit for years to come. Corbyn's Labour are no different from Farage's UKIP in this respect, and they share the same sentiments on the EU (better out than in).

Personally, I blame the move towards the fringes on the fanatical belief in the extremes of liberal democracy, the belief in rights without responsibilities, and the belief that one's voice, however ignorant and unresearched, counts just as much as those who've dedicated their lives to learning about these issues. Back in the day, socialists believed in bettering oneself through self-education. If one does not have access to the education system of the rich, one can still learn about the world through experience, or by reading books. Someone who has gone through that is more worthy than someone who hasn't gone through that. Nowadays, thanks to reality TV and such, people think their individual vote matters just as much as those who've slogged through these issues. They're not inclined to do the research or trust those that do, as they figure that their vote is worth just as much at the ballot box. And social media, that enabler of post-truth politics, makes it that much easier for them to complete that closed circle.

Which brings us back to Corbyn's Labour, AFAICS the most archetypal example of post-truth politics in the western world. At least the Trump and Brexit campaigns had to contend with a whole electorate. With Corbyn's Labour, there is already a self-selected sub-electorate. Which means the ideal conditions for the post-truth political campaign, which depends on subsets and self-selection.

[Husar]

That's overstretching it. I have a pet thread for my pet topic, so it mostly stays there.

And what's your pet issue?

Nowadays, but there was a time when you tried to link every second thread to Putin.
My pet issue is right below the sentence you quoted.

The UK is proof that post-truth politics isn't restricted solely to the right. It certainly exists on the right, as seen in the enthusiasm for the manifestly incompetent UKIP. But the story that giving the left free rein will solve all problems is shown to be false by the experiment in the UK, where the supposed establishment left has been routed and the far left are in complete control. The far left has been given free rein in the UK, and all they're doing with it is entrenching their position within the political system, making sure that they and their friends will be in a position to benefit for years to come. Corbyn's Labour are no different from Farage's UKIP in this respect, and they share the same sentiments on the EU (better out than in).

Personally, I blame the move towards the fringes on the fanatical belief in the extremes of liberal democracy, the belief in rights without responsibilities, and the belief that one's voice, however ignorant and unresearched, counts just as much as those who've dedicated their lives to learning about these issues. Back in the day, socialists believed in bettering oneself through self-education. If one does not have access to the education system of the rich, one can still learn about the world through experience, or by reading books. Someone who has gone through that is more worthy than someone who hasn't gone through that. Nowadays, thanks to reality TV and such, people think their individual vote matters just as much as those who've slogged through these issues. They're not inclined to do the research or trust those that do, as they figure that their vote is worth just as much at the ballot box. And social media, that enabler of post-truth politics, makes it that much easier for them to complete that closed circle.

Well, as much as I pass as a leftist for all the rightists, I have no doubt that the left can be just as bad. I also already said that people are idiots.
There are two kinds of people in the world, those that simplify the world into easy categories like left and right, good and bad, and those who can see the nuance in everything (theory of relativity).

Which brings us back to Corbyn's Labour, AFAICS the most archetypal example of post-truth politics in the western world. At least the Trump and Brexit campaigns had to contend with a whole electorate. With Corbyn's Labour, there is already a self-selected sub-electorate. Which means the ideal conditions for the post-truth political campaign, which depends on subsets and self-selection.

Somehow reminds me of the democratic primary as well. In that case you can also point out the obvious flaw in their thought process. The whole "Hillary is more electable than Sanders" even though some polls (read closely, Gilrandir!) said Sanders would fare much better against Trump than Clinton. Then again noone believed Trump could actually become the Republican nominee at that time either.
Of course I like Sanders because he always repeats what I've been saying for a long time, that a "system" where the "billionaire class" drains money from the 99% and tries to sell them "trickle down" economics in politics cannot have a very long future...
Even with Sanders a lot of people laugh about it or say it's just communist drivel that is not to be taken seriously, but now we have president-elect Trump...

And to try and connect the two things, I've long thought that one mistake a part of the left does is to focus too much on the socio-issues instead of the socio-economic ones. What good is equal pay for women if their jobs are rationalized away or it's just minimum wage either way? The issue is not just that blacks are kept in poverty, it's that escaping poverty is made almost impossible for everyone. I'd wager to say that quite a few of the societal issues would almost resolve themselves if the rich-poor divide were mitigated FOR EVERYONE.
While capitalism does have its virtues, it needs to be heavily restrained, mixed with heavy socialist cushions or replaced with the next economic system sooner or later.

The worst offenders in my book are still the Republicans and Libertarians who want to unshackle it even more. That will just screw over poor people even more. The whole support for small business is the worst idea when a lot of the successful business categories have such high entry barriers that you need to be a billionaire to be able to hire the required people (manufacturing chipsets in your garage? dream on...) or will nerver be able to compete with big businesses because they got more experts and economies of scale + resources on their side.

[Pannonian]

Nowadays, but there was a time when you tried to link every second thread to Putin.
My pet issue is right below the sentence you quoted.



Well, as much as I pass as a leftist for all the rightists, I have no doubt that the left can be just as bad. I also already said that people are idiots.
There are two kinds of people in the world, those that simplify the world into easy categories like left and right, good and bad, and those who can see the nuance in everything (theory of relativity).



Somehow reminds me of the democratic primary as well. In that case you can also point out the obvious flaw in their thought process. The whole "Hillary is more electable than Sanders" even though some polls (read closely, Gilrandir!) said Sanders would fare much better against Trump than Clinton. Then again noone believed Trump could actually become the Republican nominee at that time either.
Of course I like Sanders because he always repeats what I've been saying for a long time, that a "system" where the "billionaire class" drains money from the 99% and tries to sell them "trickle down" economics in politics cannot have a very long future...
Even with Sanders a lot of people laugh about it or say it's just communist drivel that is not to be taken seriously, but now we have president-elect Trump...

And to try and connect the two things, I've long thought that one mistake a part of the left does is to focus too much on the socio-issues instead of the socio-economic ones. What good is equal pay for women if their jobs are rationalized away or it's just minimum wage either way? The issue is not just that blacks are kept in poverty, it's that escaping poverty is made almost impossible for everyone. I'd wager to say that quite a few of the societal issues would almost resolve themselves if the rich-poor divide were mitigated FOR EVERYONE.
While capitalism does have its virtues, it needs to be heavily restrained, mixed with heavy socialist cushions or replaced with the next economic system sooner or later.

The worst offenders in my book are still the Republicans and Libertarians who want to unshackle it even more. That will just screw over poor people even more. The whole support for small business is the worst idea when a lot of the successful business categories have such high entry barriers that you need to be a billionaire to be able to hire the required people (manufacturing chipsets in your garage? dream on...) or will nerver be able to compete with big businesses because they got more experts and economies of scale + resources on their side.

The plus that the Trump and Brexit campaigns have going for them is that they've gone through the test of winning an argument that involves the whole electorate. Put aside left and right, and that's the fundamental difference between them and Corbyn's Labour. They had to engage an electorate that includes a substantial proportion of people who disagree with them, and however divisive their arguments, they've won. Compare with Corbyn, who competes only within a self-selecting sub-electorate, and who is interested only in strengthening his position within said self-selecting sub-electorate. For the forseeable future, and barring conditions that we've not seen in the UK for a century, Labour will be the main opposition to the Tories. Ergo the leader of the Labour party will be the Leader of the Opposition. That's all Corbyn aspires to. Thus he doesn't need to engage with Tory, UKIP, and other voters. All he has to do is engage with Labour voters, who by their nature will already be speaking his language. And by flooding the Labour members with his supporters, he will control the party without having to talk with anyone who may disagree with him.

See the parallel with social media and post-truth politics?

IIRC it was Witney, David Cameron's old constituency, where the new Corbynite Labour party doubled its number of members by a thousand, but lost thousands of votes to the Lib Dems in the actual election. That's the result of giving the far left free rein in the UK. Corbyn has total control of the party which now speaks the language of the far left fantasists, but there is no realistic alternative to the Tory government, whose only effective opposition is to their right flank. But that doesn't bother Corbyn or his supporters, one of whom stated that, were Labour to be reduced to 30-40 MPs, it would still be deemed a success, as long as they're all ideologically sound. Ie. it doesn't matter if the right has control of the country, as long as the far left has control of the Labour party.

[Gilrandir]

My pet issue is right below the sentence you quoted.

We may join efforts and philosophize on how under Putin the gap between the rich vs poor has grown and it was caused by the greed of Russian powers-that-be.

The whole "Hillary is more electable than Sanders" even though some polls (read closely, Gilrandir!) said Sanders would fare much better against Trump than Clinton.

A bad call. In view of what I said elsewhere I will no longer read sentences started with "polls say".

[Husar]

We may join efforts and philosophize on how under Putin the gap between the rich vs poor has grown and it was caused by the greed of Russian powers-that-be.

That's hardly surprising given that he is very authoritarian, I find it more surprising when people get to choose their leaders.
Especially if they choose far right to make up for monetary injustices. The far right is usually the first to collude with the billionaire class.

A bad call. In view of what I said elsewhere I will no longer read sentences started with "polls say".

On that note, a recent poll study by YouGov concludes that Germans are the least likely to fall for populist propaganda:

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/11/16...hes-same-tree/

If you want criticism, we can begin with the fact they called it "Holland" and not "The Netherlands", it does however support what I recently thought, that we Germans are somehow more mellow nowadays in general. We do have our PEGIDA and AfD, but they don't seem to gain traction quite so easily as Trump and populists elsewhere. The downside to this is that we get more mainstream politics. Then again Merkel does quite a few radical things anyway.
We still have a growing divide between rich and poor though.