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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.
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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