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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35517 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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The war between the future Italian Government and the EU is beginning.

After a question by a student, the Commission President von Der Leyen, said that the EU will use "all their instruments, as happened against Hungary and Poland" against Italy in the case of "democratic backsliding".

As always, after this, accusation from every part came, with the Left defending it and the Right attacking it. Notice that von Der Leyen is part of the CDU(PPE), but their policies have always been center-left.

Apart from this phrase (von Der Leyen is not new at speaking too much with the wrong words at the wrong time), it will be noteworthy to see what will happen if Italy enter the bad boy group with Poland and Hungary, especially when also Sweden and Spain will probably see governments with the hard-right inside or at the helm.

The instrument of "follow liberal human rights or sanctions" can work against Warsaw and Budapest, but against all these countries?

What will happen will define how democracy will function in the EU, and if parties that are not part of the PPE-PSE-Liberal-Green megagroup will bow and assimilate to the center-right, or will follow the Orban line.

For now, it looks like the Italian Goverment will follow a moderate line, considering that economic recession is behind the corner and the debt is exploding again.

I keep noticing people using the word "democratic" in place of "socially left". E.g.: if a middle eastern country, after elections and with parliamentary majority, passes a law forcing women to wear hijabs or whatever, that is democratic. If Slovenia votes in 3 separate referendums that they don't want gay marriage, and it still legalized, that is undemocratic. Yet people use the opposite labels to describe such events.

Like "liberal" it is one of those words that have lost all inherent meaning and can only be employed contextually.

In practice and in mouths such as VDL's both of these (sometimes together) mean friend, as opposed to enemy, of the Globalist American Empire.

Poland is a very firm ally of the GAE and functionally the enforcement arm in Eastern Europe- and they’re still being referred to as undemocratic for not being onboard with the gays.

Yeah, Warsaw hoped that, being the eastern vanguard and one of the biggest spenders-helpers on Ukraine they would receive something in exchange from Bruxelles-Washington

Nothing happened, and Bruxelles continued to go on

Gays are more important than NATO.

EU's (formal) line has always been that it's problem is the rule of law in Poland, such as the Polish government's court-packing plan. The gays and abortion stuff might be culture-war grist for the media mills, but it has never directly been the main onus of EU's viewpoint against Poland.

As such, if EU decided to now do a volte-face explicitly due to Polish militancy against Russia, it would just make EU's entire position hollow and destabilize the Union; "no, we don't care about that rule-of-the-law stuff after all, we explicitly just care about how zealous we are about the other things" (and, indeed, the Polish position regarding Russia is probably not all that aligned with EU's general line but is rather far more militant and aggressive than what Germany and France, for instance, are ready to countenance.)

Are they? I had the sense that since Ukraine started, all the focus (at least in the German press) on their internal politics evaporated, and generally Hungary (whose ruler is flirting with Russia or at least trying to dangle the spectre of it for concessions) is being singled out now. Of course this could be simply a stroke of opportunity, as Poland may have stopped playing tag team with Hungary and deadlocking the "all-versus-one" punishment mechanisms in the EU - perhaps as punishment for the Russia-flirting, demonstrating conversely that at least for Poland, NATO is more important than not-Gays.

Thing is, the "Bruxelles-Washington" can afford both the NATO and the gays in Poland, they aren’t really forced to choose

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