The rise of the Far Right in Europe
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They are going to take over the whole world, and they are starting in those countries where the leftists have governed for several years. If China, Cuba and North Korea had election workers would elect the right wingers
In her column in the Times on Tuesday (28 November) their economics editor mentions a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which identifies a link between austerity and the rise of “extreme parties”:
“An MIT study covering more than 200 European elections between 1980-2015 found that deep fiscal consolidation ‘leads to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout and a rise in political fragmentation’. The paper estimated that a 1 per cent reduction in regional public spending translated into a three percentage-point increase in the vote share of extremist parties. The researchers noted that centre-left governments paid the highest political price for their austerity drives.”
I don’t know about such a precise link, and why just a cut in regional as opposed to national spending? But some link between austerity and the rise of extreme parties makes some sense.
The mainstream political parties, whether “centre-left” or “centre-right”, promise that, if elected, they will make things better. Voters believe them but these parties always fail to deliver but often end being forced by economic circumstances to protect profits by imposing austerity
When (inevitably due to the nature of capitalism) governments repeatedly fail to make things better, some voters blame not capitalism but the politicians who have failed to make it work for them and see conventional career politicians as a self-serving elite.
Unlike in the 1930s these parties are not blaming political democracy; they blame the conventional reformist politicians who currently operate within it. They are ‘extreme’ in the sense that, being xenophobic and ultra-nationalist, they are at one end of the nationalist spectrum on which the conventional parties situate themselves.
Conclusion: the growth of support for the “far-right” parties is a consequence of the (inevitable) failure of the mainstream reformist parties to make capitalism work for the majority. Reformism is not just a dead-end. It has dangerous consequences.
But they are not fascists as the left-wingers are propagating, they are not going to accept that due to their own failure and false promises these extreme groups are becoming popular, they dod not need coup any more when they have a large support within the working class and they can use the election system. It does prove our stand toward reformism
The actual ‘ideological’ situation of the workers is so bad and confusing that a proven criminal like Donald Trump is one of the most popular presidential candidate, and he is a member of the US capitalist class
Workers do not care if he is a thieve, a cheater, a liar, raper, xenophobic, racist, and millions are defending him and willing to kill for him.
Al Capone could have been the best presidential candidate, but the Black Panthers who were Boy Scouts compared with him most of them were sent to jail or executed
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