Europe’s fight on the right
One of the things that’s become even more clear after the recent EU elections is that in many countries in Europe, as what reporters like to call the “far right” is growing, the right itself is experiencing discord between the old line conventional right and this so-called “far right.” It somewhat mirrors a similar split that happened in this country in 2016 with the rise of Trump, and was likewise reflected in the move in the House against Speaker McCarthy.
At the moment in the US the Republicans, facing the prospect of Trump or another four dire years of Biden and/or his minions, are somewhat united. That unity is fragile, but it was exemplified by the recent meeting between Trump and the GOP in Congress:
Donald Trump made a triumphant return to Capitol Hill on Thursday, his first with lawmakers since the Jan.6, 2021 attacks, embraced by energized House and Senate Republicans who find themselves reinvigorated by his bid to retake the White House. …
… He has successfully purged the GOP of critics, silenced most skeptics and enticed once-critical lawmakers aboard his MAGA-fueled campaign.
A packed room of House Republicans sang “Happy Birthday” to Trump in a private breakfast meeting at GOP campaign headquarters across the street from the Capitol. The lawmakers gave him a baseball and bat from the annual congressional game, and senators later presented an American flag cake with “45” candles — and then “47″ — referring to the next presidency.
In contrast, the right in France, England, and several other countries of western Europe is experiencing a major rift between the old and new (Ace discusses the issues at some length in this post). If the right in the countries of western Europe tears itself apart, the result is that left wins in those countries where it has happened. Some people find that result acceptable, for a while at least:
With the right’s vote [in Britain] now evenly split between Reform and the Tories, neither party can win more than a couple of handfuls of parliamentary seats. Labour will win seats with just 20-30% of the vote.
But, as the right in the UK has realized: We have to beat our first enemy first, and our first enemy is the fake Conservative Party that we vote for only to see it implement the left’s agenda with gusto.
I know that plenty of people on the right in this country feel similarly. There’s one big problem with it, though: the left and the Democrats – at least in the US – are determined to make it impossible for the right to ever win. When I was growing up, the party out of power could bide its time and regroup till its turn came around again with the swing of the political pendulum. Today’s Democrats have become hard left, and the danger is that if they come to power they will fix it so that there will be no return pendulum swing. For example, they have made it clear that they intend to pass a law such as HR1 that will gut the voting security of the red states to match that of the blue states and enable vote fraud and/or “rigging” on a nationwide scale. They also plan to create a couple of new states that will be overwhelmingly blue, changing the balance in the Senate and the Electoral College. Court-packing is on their agenda, too, in order to destroy the conservative majority on SCOTUS. That’s not a complete list of their legislative agenda, but just those three changes would do the trick.
What are called “left” and “right” in Europe are somewhat different. But I wonder whether the nations of Europe could survive a victory by the left at this point without being irrevocably changed for the worse. I’m hoping that the old right and the new right in Europe manage to get their act together in time to prevent that.
I wonder if it’s not so much a fight between “left” and “right” as just a good old-fashioned class struggle.
It’s not left vs. right, so much as nationalists vs. globalists. This is easier to see in England, where very working class Tommy Robinson is a nationalist. I’d guess that many of the people who support him are on benefits and live in social housing, and want more of that. And I agree with them. It’s more complicated than people think. Here is an easy way to understand this: if some of your own people aren’t doing well, help them with food and housing. If foreigners come in and want food and housing, kick them out, there’s only so much to go around.
Yes, as I said, left and right are different in Euope vs. in the US. However, there are some commonalities between the parties in Europe and here. One of the main ones involves immigration and borders. It was especially the failure of the British right to limit “migrants” – as their constituents wanted them to do – that has caused their voters to abandon them.
Wasnt tommy robinson jailed under the tory government over rotherdam and rochdale im guessing his constituency are more working class men not those on the dole those are labour
The Left in America seeks its transformation (thanks, Barack) into an authoritarian nation.
I sense a second War Between the States a-coming.
I don’t know much about TR’s people except what I see on Youtube, except I know from personal experience how close working people always are to needing help from the government. A lot of people who work for a living in the USA are also “on the county,” meaning they get food stamps, housing and medical benefits.
It would be extremely odd if casual bricklayers and construction workers in England didn’t live in what they call council flats. Most likely, in every country, working people have a lot in common with welfare people, because unless you have a specialty, you’ll be poor, no matter how many hours you work.
Back in the day, Scandinavian style light socialism worked, because it was for locals. As soon as they opened everything to migrants, the whole society got wrecked. In my opinion, people who are completely against benefits don’t realize how good it can be to lift your own people up. Aren’t we glad to have universal literacy, clean streets and low infant mortality? It comes from the governnment. The challenge is to keep it on track, and not hand it out to enemies and grifters.
But it rarely works like that. Thats how the new deal began who can object well then they expanded the benefits ballooning the debt thats why we went off the gold standard in part
Europeans feel free to reject failed leaders. In the US, Biden can count on 38% of the population approving of him no matter how badly he’s failed.
The situation in Britain is different from how things are in France and Germany. It looks like the Gaullist French old right is making common cause with Marine Le Pen’s party. This is radically different from the elections 20 years ago when Chirac joined with all the other parties to defeat Le Pen’s father.
Germany won’t be having elections this year, so there’s time for the CDU/CSU to build up their strength. If they do go into coalition with AfD (and they may not have to), they will be the dominant partner.
In Britain, though, the Tories and Reform are going head to head, and the Tories are about as popular as George W. Bush was at the end of his term. That could mean a major sweep by Labour. I suppose, in the way the parties of the left have been lately, Starmer will disappoint the Labour’s old left, but do all he can to please the woke crowd.
The Republican House speaker replacement antics were a farce. You could be critical of McCarthy and Johnson and the other contenders, but still not have any love for Matt Gaetz or MTG.
According to the link at Ace, The Gaullist old right is being swamped by the Le Pen party, and is making an alliance with it to keep any relevance at all.
As to the Tories, they have dug their own grave with economic idiocy. Farage says he will welcome those who are actually conservative into Reform.
I think one of the reasons that the democrats don’t have Biden step down “with grace” is because they know they have the next election fixed already.
It’s interesting to consider these various national examples from European politics in light of the fact that they illustrate some EU-wide or Europe-wide political questions, but also some nation- or country-specific ones at the same time – the mixture of national and supranational political “wave functions”, so to speak.
Germany has state elections in Thüringen and Saxony coming up on September 1, then in Brandenburg three weeks after that. In considering the possible consequences of those elections on the composition of those states’ representation by party in the federal council (the other house of the parliament), I suppose it’s possible that the AfD, for example, could have some representation in the Bundesrat before the end of the year (am not sure exactly when, but let’s just suppose).
Thüringen, for example, has right now a minority government as far as the state legislature is concerned, consisting of The Left, Social Dems and Greens. Thüringen’s federal council representation (4 seats out of 69) roughly reflects that arrangement. Now, suppose CDU and AfD combined get enough votes on Sept. 1 to get a governing coalition together in the Thuringian state house. In theory, Thüringen’s Bundesrat contingent could completely flip to be 2 CDU + 2 AfD instead of 2 Left + 1 Social Dem + 1 Green as currently. However, I would have a suspicion that the CDU in Thüringen could give the AfD the back of its hand (again) and go for some kind of grand-coalition arrangement in the state house instead, in which case the alterations in Thüringen’s federal council delegation would be relatively minor and the AfD would still be frozen out.
In Saxony, the situation is similar, I believe: the AfD was shut out by the CDU and everybody else when it came time for state parliament coalition talks after the previous election there, so it could conceivably be similar this time around, even if AfD should get 40% or something in September. Now it’s true that if the CDU were to continue to freeze out the AfD even then, they might have to go for a minority government since CDU also had an exclusionary attitude toward the Left party in Saxony before.
Brandenburg looks also similar to me at the moment, at least to a first approximation.
Long story short, I’ve just spent the last two hours or so investigating some basic ideas about prospects of these three state elections providing an opening for the AfD to get one or more butts in seats in the German federal council. I come away from the exercise skeptical that this will happen this year.
Connecting back to Neo’s idea above about the rift between the old and new right factions in European politics, I suppose this analysis substantiates that, in that the CDU’s continued refusal to date to entertain the thought of coalition-building with the AfD at the state level, even in those German states in which the AfD is strongest and sometimes even outpolls the CDU, is still a feature of German federal politics. Granted that the state elections in question happened several years ago and the CDU’s stance may possibly have softened somewhat, maybe there will be a real change this time. But it really hinges, to me, on the CDU’s acceptance of the need for an attitude adjustment.
I doubt that McCabe would be talking about the need to flee the country if they thought the fix was in. I think as NB Forrest would say “Get ’em skeered and keep the skeer on ’em”.
Western Europe faces an authoritarian left that will be followed by its Islamization. Islamization may quite possibly force Eastern Europe within the arms of ‘mother’ Russia.
“I sense a second War Between the States a-coming.” Cicero
Not quite. If Trump is prevented from winning, it will be rural vs urban. As evidence, I offer this county map of the 2016 New York State electoral results.
https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/new-york/2016/11/11/nys-election-map-becomes-familiar/93664010/
The rural side has the guns, the means to self-defense. The urban side is more populous but has to import every single necessity of life. Water, food, energy & medicine. Supplies that can be easily disrupted. IF the radical left forces war upon us, it will not end well… for them.
“Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.” General Omar Bradley
Socialism can’t beat Communism. That’s why many citizens in the US are disgusted by the Republican/Socialist Party. The “new right” in Europe has no clue about limited government. They are “new Socialists”. And Europe is swirling down the toilet.