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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35165 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.

My prediction: Those rightwing governments will fail in many ways, like all governments do, but unlike others each mistake of theirs will be shouted from the rooftops and all their members will have their failings highlighted in minute detail by the media, until either these governments collapse under the stress or the voters learn to vote correctly next time.

This surge of rightwing election successes is a backlash to recent issues of immigration, covid hysteria and the usual culture war topics getting more attention - it will wane as the rightwing governments are discredited, but the aforementioned issues will continue unabated.

The EU will win this one thanks to having most media on their side.

Italy is definitely, absolutely, entirely not a nation where the media is on the side of the EU. And neither is Hungary's or Poland's, for that matter.

I meant not to imply that they were pro-EU but that the larger part are opposed to the rightwing governments and are helped by networking and signal boosting via their allies in other countries.

You'd be wrong to imply such a thing, because the media in those countries doesn't do that.

Fair enough, you may easily know it better than I.

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