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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
By default, about 99% of mentions of the "far right" in the press means "not socialists". I mean, of course they could be really far right, and true far-right exists (even discounting widely accepted mis-classification of Nazis as "far-right") - but this term is so consistently and thoroughly abused that I want to see proof they are actually "far" before I make any judgement on the subject.
It's probably not good for Ukraine because for some reason beyond my comprehension both tribes framed the Ukraine issue as tribal, and since the pro-EU tribe is (at least in words, though much less in deeds) pro-Ukraine, that pushed the EU-skeptic tribe automatically to become Ukraine-skeptic (see Hungary). It doesn't always happen - e.g. as far as I know, UK conservatives are firmly pro-Ukraine, and actually help in deed much more, than EU does in speech and Macron in his "fireside chats with Putin" over the phone. So maybe Italy will resist the temptation of easy tribalism too.
As for the rest, a lot depends on what "far right" actually means in this case - as it means next to nothing specific in general.
Non-socialist parties which don't get the "far right" adjective in the press, off the top of my head (even using an inaccurately broad sense of socialism):
UK, Conservatives
UK, Lib Dems
France, Macron's party
France, Union of Democrats and Independents
France, Republicans
Germany, Christian Democrats
Germany, CSU
Germany, Free Democrats
And that's just the 3 biggest countries. I.e. every single major right-of-center party in these countries, excluding the French National Front.
Hence, your statement is false in a way that's clear to anyone with passing familiarity with the press.
(Meta-comment: another example of The Motte's descent into hysterical tribal right wing persecution complexes, and move away from Scott-style balanced, empiricial rationalism.)
You're confusing "the press is always calling everybody who's not socialist 'far right'" and "if the press is calling somebody 'far right', their actual political affiliation could be anywhere rightwards from socialists". Do I need to draw a Venn diagram to explain the difference?
The "99%" figure is clearly a rhetorical device (I can't believe I have to explain that) - I readily admit I did not make a compendium of all mentions of "far right" ever in the press and calculated how far from socialists they actually are. What I meant (I can't believe I have to explain that, again) by it that the accuracy of this label is overwhelmingly very low and most of the mentions of "far right" is nothing but the label, and can be attached to anybody on the right. And has been attached to Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, etc. I don't watch French and German politics that closely so I'm not sure how that label is being used there.
You sure know how to demonstrate that famous "balanced, empiricial rationalism" thing. Or maybe you do think that's what "balanced, empiricial rationalism" actually is? Oh my.
If "far right" were used to mean "not socialist" by the media, then the media would call non-socialist parties "far right".
If you're reacting in part to the emotional tone of my comment, then fair enough, I do have feelings about what's (in my personal perspective) happened to The Motte. So my phrasing is admittedly not emotionally balanced/level.
That would only be true if the media had to use only one single term to describe the whole spectrum of parties. Then this term would either be "far right" or not, and your claim would be correct. However, in reality it uses a variety of terms, and some of them are used without any accuracy, as general pejorative labels. That doesn't mean the media always wants to use general perjoratives when talking about every party, of course.
I am flattered to be elected (by a single vote, but apparently it's enough) a representative of the whole forum, but I think your lament is rather misguided and driven by misunderstanding more than anything. You may consider that if somebody tells you they didn't mean what you say they mean, then maybe they didn't mean what you say they mean.
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In most of Europe (ie. outside of countries with traditional Russia sympaties), the pro-Ukraine position is widely shared by essentially the entire political spectrum, apart from the far-right and far-left fringes (the exact size of those fringes depends on the country, for instance in Finland those fringes are very fringe indeed).
In Germany there's a very large part of the population who are deeply and solidly pro-russian, some out of anti-americanism and some out of genuine sympathy for russia (there are lots of russians and russo-Germans in Germany, after all), and this used to extend into politics as well. Those were not just the fringes, but large parts of all political parties - though the fringe parties had a larger share each, to be sure.
They're all silent now. They might emphasize the risks involved in prolonging the ukraine crisis, our dependency on russia or the need for peace, but always on the back foot and ready to go into hiding. The overton window here has grown very narrow very fast.
I think it's that the pro-Ukraine position has broad support but is also new enough that politicians have not yet figured out how it's sliced. It's less that 70% are for supporting Ukraine, and probably more that parties are uncomfortable with how many people in their own electorate support Ukraine. There's no "common knowledge" that any party's votership is pro-Ukraine or anti-Ukraine.
If 70% of people want a product with feature A, and 22% want a product with feature B, then 100% of products will have feature A unless a company can figure out how to target the B market segment reliably. (Preferably both at once, of course.)
I'm very sure it's possible to be in 22%, companies to know about it and still don't get the product. I wish a smartphone without silly notches or punchholes, and without glass
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People are arguing as if German-Russian interdependence is some vague deus ex machina. It was deliberately devised and implemented by several popular chancellors over three decades. Everyone understood that the goal was a Europe spanning Hamburg till Vladivostok or whatever. German industrial prosperity is in large part a consequence of cheap Russian energy and imports. Hell, it even used to be common knowledge that could be discussed on mainstream media that Ukraine is a very corrupt and oppressive state who coincidentally ended up with a lot of Russians within its borders.
I feel like the civ games are missing an important victory mode, the media victory. It’s when a country has such domination over your media that they can make your own population forget or come to believe anything overnight.
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Glad to hear that people there manage to have more sane politics than in the US, at least in that aspect of it.
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