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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25699 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I have a new post up on my Substack today, which is expanded from a comment I wrote replying to @FarNearEverywhere's comment (for which they won one of their whopping five AAQCs for December - congrats!).

Why do I find the premise of this novel so risible? It’s not just that the possibility of the Irish far-right seizing power and transforming the country into a fascist dystopia is so laughably remote as to be almost fantastical - if it’s a “warning”, then it’s of about as much use as a warning about a Dáil made up of a coalition of pixies and unicorns. It’s not just that, like most successful Irish writers of the last decade, [Paul] Lynch is clearly something of an East Yank whose political concerns were imported wholesale from across the pond - I would find this novel’s premise exactly as contrived and indigestible were it set in the US or Canada (for reasons I’ll get into shortly). No - it’s that Lynch is writing about a hypothetical authoritarian Ireland brought into being by a far-right administration, while ignoring the warning signs of actual democratic backsliding and authoritarianism ringing loudly in his ears every day.

...

“Freezing the bank accounts of anyone even suspected of having donated to a political cause you dislike, without ever arresting them or charging them with a crime” is the kind of behaviour we’d rightly expect from a Central African dictator. But it wasn’t a far-right Canadian prime minister who did such a thing - it was the genocide-apologising, knee-taking Justin Trudeau, who attends Pride parades and offered the smarmy explanation “because it’s 2015” for his decision to appoint a gender-balanced cabinet. Trudeau is living proof, if any were required, that there’s no conflict between a socially progressive worldview and repressive, dictatorial tactics straight out of the Erdoğan playbook - the iron fist in the rainbow glove.

"Leftists are the real authoritarians" plays about as well as "Democrats are the real racists". It is axiomatic that the right is authoritarian and the left is fighting against that.

I wouldn't even necessarily classify Leo Varadkar or Justin Trudeau as "leftists". I think both men would classify themselves as centre-left neoliberals.

Here's how Varadkar himself classifies his party:

Speaking at the launch of a book on former Fine Gael female politicians, the party leader said he believes the party is often wrongly perceived as a conservative party.

“We are not. We are very much a party that is a centre party, perhaps a centre-right party, but a centre party nonetheless. One that is, at least for the last few decades, economically and socially liberal,” he said.

Definitely has moved towards social liberalism, I wouldn't say so much on economic liberalism as traditionally they have been slightly more to the right (the party of the big farmers, etc.) than our other centrist-right party. But all the major parties, including Labour, have been rebranding themselves as business-friendly, pro-'light touch' regulation and so on. I do think Fine Gael went for Thatcherism-Lite there for a while, however Leo might describe them now.

What a confused statement. "We're not conservative, we're centre-right, but we're also economically and socially liberal." I've heard of politicians trying to be all things to all people, but usually not in the same paragraph.

Whatever the confusion, Varadkar certainly wouldn't be describe himself/his party as centre-left, and most observers would likewise not describe him as one. Within the political sphere of Ireland, the only way to describe him as one would be taking the point of reference that the only ones on the "right" are parties and movements that are so marginal that they aren't even represented in the Dáil.

Fine Gael were perceived as very socially conservative there for a long while (think Oliver J. Flanagan, for instance) and certainly under John Bruton as being pro-Unionist/West Brit tendency, and it really is only recently, as these things go, that they rowed in on contraception/divorce/gay marriage/abortion and all the other social liberal ideologies.

So keeping tight hold of the purse strings and being pro-capitalism as an economically conservative party, while flying the rainbow and other flags and having our First Gay Taoiseach as the socially liberal party, does put them right of centre on a scale. I definitely wouldn't describe them as economically liberal, but I imagine Leo is trying to claim credit, on that, as 'we reduced taxes, we increased payments' and so on (oh yeah? and what about the USC, huh, Leo?)

Remember, they're tussling with Sinn Féin and the other splinter parties like People Before Profit to claim to both represent the working class and the squeezed middle class, so "we don't tax you as hard as we might" is their idea of being 'economically liberal'.

Economic liberalism is associated with the center-right in European politics. It’s contrasted not with ‘economic conservatism’, which is ill-defined, but with economic leftism, which is clearer (more state control of the economy, more redistribution, higher taxes).

So sure, there are many countries in which the ‘center right’ is economically and socially liberal, while the ‘center left’ is economically (more) leftist and socially liberal. This is because social liberalism dominates elite opinion.

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