12 ms·

How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?

91 points by stared 10y ago

cperciva 10y ago
With the exception of Hungary, the graphs don't look to me like a "swing to the right" so much as a "swing to the margins"; the centrist parties are losing votes to both "far right" and "other" parties.
- scotty79 10y ago
  I'd say there are more exceptions. Every country seems to be bit different in who loses to whom. In Poland left-wing parties lost mostly to centrist parties, and right wing party just gradually gains support since its first rise to prominence.
- FloNeu 10y ago
  As Austrian, i am really glad about outcome of yesterdays election - still it was a really close one. And you are right - freedom party is far right imho - but they down-play that them selfs and gain a lot votes from people who are upset about the fact that the two big center parties didn't get any shit done in the last few years. And they have gotten good in playing that - just look at trump - telling the rage people what they want to here - even if it sounds irrational or are plain lies - just seems to work.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- evgen 10y ago
  As a a simple example, here in the UK the current Labour leadership is a throw-back to hard-left Labour and UKIP continues to gather support on the right. The current center-right Tories have enough support to govern and it looks like it will be at least another election cycle before center-left Blairites are in a position to challenge. Like US politics, sometimes changes at the upper levels can simply be the avalanche effect from a few shifts at the edges of the electorate.
- Scarblac 10y ago
  And _in principle_ I'd say that's a good thing. If all we have is a bunch of parties crowded around the center, there isn't anything left for voters to choose. I just wish they picked different margins to swing to...
  - cperciva 10y ago
    If all we have is a bunch of parties crowded around the center, there isn't anything left for voters to choose. Yes and no. The median voter theorem suggests that voters' choices were accounted for as parties put their platforms together -- effectively, voters chose, but not when they thought they were choosing. I just wish they picked different margins to swing to... I think there's a problem caused by voters swinging to margins, no matter which margins they swing to: It increases the gap between the voters and their government (either because extremist voters don't like a moderate government, or because one group of extremists hate a differently-extreme government), which diminishes public confidence in the state. Much like a lack of confidence in the justice system, a lack of confidence in the state tends to have very negative consequences, as people "take matters into their own hands".
    - vlehto 10y ago
      But there is always only so many topics any one party and median voter agrees on. Many don't really adopt party identity and live by it. So having only few big parties is likely to cause distrust to political parties in general, because nobody accurately represents you. Which ought to translate to distrust to goverment as the big players have the power.
      - cperciva 10y ago
        nobody accurately represents you Does it help if you have someone who accurately represents you, but she is marginalised within the legislature and has no chance of ever being part of the government? If anything, I'd expect that to make you trust the government even less.
    - Scarblac 10y ago
- IkmoIkmo 10y ago
  You're right, the charts don't show that. But the charts don't tell the actual story. Which is that all centrist parties have shifted right in their policy positions and rhetoric. The charts only show power shifts between parties, but ignore shifts within parties. There's a lot of centrist parties that were rooted in Christian values for example, that were reasonable on e.g. refugee issues in the 20th century (which were much more significant than today, by the way), that now want to amend laws, retract long-standing treaties, create walls and border fences, disallow schooling/work/status for those refugees who do get welcomed so as to send them right back asap in god knows when Syria recovers from being a failed state, paired with hints of xenophobic rhetoric akin to a far right party. Yet they're still deemed centrist parties, and would not show it on the chart. And that is precisely because the far right is on the rise, and the rest of the political spectrum is adjusting and compromising their stance, so as not to lose votes. That's a very clear shift to the right. Like take the Netherlands, it shows a drop in the right-wing PVV's size since 2010 (forget for a moment that the party's currently leading in the polls). You'd think, alright no shift to the far right here at all. What it doesn't tell you is that the current biggest party (a non far right wing, right wing party) has shifted much more to the right. Like recently we saw it's 2nd in command claim refugees were visiting the Netherlands to get plastic surgery, breasts corrections, face lifts etc... I mean this guy is just a ridiculous demagogue, instilling fear into the Dutch population that Syrian refugees aren't actually running away from a gruesome war, but are merely looking to exploit our medical system to get plastic surgery, it's insane. If you'd have set this about jews during the holocaust there'd be no discussion, you'd recognised as a clear far-right fascist. And this is the biggest party's 2nd in line, straight out the playbook of a far right-wing demagogue. Now this party isn't far-right for all intents and purposes, but it has very much shifted towards it on various policy positions and rhetoric, as have many centrist and right wing parties. And none of that shows up in the charts.
manuelflara 10y ago
Interesting to note that Spain, Portugal & Germany, countries with a long and famous history of right-wing dictatorships, are some of the countries that fare best. And Italy, also with a similar history, is seeing its right-wing party support go lower on each election. Only Britain and Czech Republic fare similarly well. Although me being Spanish I can say that while we may not have any party in congress "openly extreme right" (nazi like etc), our Partido Popular, one of our top 2 parties and currently in power, is definitely right wing and a direct descendant of franquism (dictatorship), since many of the top dogs in the party were ministers with Franco himself. In other words, here in Spain the right wing successfully camouflaged itself as democrat as to apparently mislead anyone that we don't have a problem here, when we actually do. Maybe the situation in Italy and Portugal is the same, I don't know. I'm also surprised to find out that while Golden Dawn's rise in Greece was all over the media as "the new rise of nazism etc", other countries have MUCH higher rates of right wing parties and nobody seems to care.
- willvarfar 10y ago
  Austria had Hitler. Now they have a party that has - presumably deliberately - making subtle links back to those days e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36342362 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36342362
  - stdclass 10y ago
    And thank god we dodged that bullet yesterday! It was a close call though - 50,3% to 49,7% (edited)
    - mherrmann 10y ago
      You mean 50,3% to 49,7% ;)
    - ck2 10y ago
      Two questions: 1. what percentage of the population turns out to vote in Austria? 2. what level of education is most common in Austria? I have a hard time believing well educated people turn out in droves to vote for the hard right - I mean sure, there is always a percentage and many fiscally conservative people come from money so they tend to be educated, but as I understand it, that's not what they were voting for in Austria, they were basically voting for social conservatism which is anti-immigration, etc. Then again that percentage is pretty much what the US faces in every Red vs Blue presidential election in the past half-century.
golemotron 10y ago
With Trump and Sanders in the US, Brexit in Britain and the rise of what's being called the "far right" in Europe, we're seeing a referendum on globalism. The pendulum swings back and forth and this move shouldn't be surprising to anyone who reads history. People who believe in a Fukuyama-style 'end of history' scenario are shocked that nationalism is bubbling up again, but it is a natural correction. Local governance, culture and economy have a de facto legitimacy among people that de jure unions never will. The Left's challenge is to acknowledge this and help create a framework for a peaceful world of disparate cultures and loose alliances.
- adwf 10y ago
  I wouldn't say it's globalism per se. More that in a recession everyone looks for someone to blame. It's far easier to blame "those dirty foreigners" than it is to accept the vagaries of economics. Or that maybe the blame is almost entirely on ourselves. It's a kind of fundamental attribution error [1]. People are very quick to blame others for their personal characteristics ie. lazy foreigners (personal), no good scroungers of welfare (personal), instead of the situational context of recession/war/etc. Whereas when it comes to talking about themselves, they're hard working people who just can't get a break (situational), the recession is at fault (situational), no education because my teachers were bad and the school was crap (situational), the foreigners took our jobs (situational)... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >I wouldn't say it's globalism per se. More that in a recession everyone looks for someone to blame. It's also globalism. It took jobs abroad and fucked up the working class royally -- and it didn't do much for the middle class either, which is also shrinking. The idea of a totally open market is bad if you also want to secure what you have here and now. Of course it makes big bucks for the rich doing the "opening" part (and keeping the market rigged in 100 other ways), so economists, one of the most whored out "scientific" professions, always sitting next to those in power as advisors, will just blab about how beneficial it is.
thomholwerda 10y ago
The graph for Britain is clearly wrong. David Cameron is clearly far-right by any European standard, so the country's swing to the right should be a lot more pronounced.
- adwf 10y ago
  Hmm, I wouldn't place Cameron as far-right. He's in charge of a right wing party with a large minority of far right members, but he's actually fighting his own party to stay in Europe. So Right, but not Far-Right. The far-right in the UK is UKIP and a bunch of Conservatives who are basically UKIP, but don't want to risk losing their seat by jumping ship.
- cperciva 10y ago
  By the standards of some European countries, Obama is far-right, but Obama becoming president was certainly not a sign of a shift to the right in American politics. What matters here is where parties and politicians lie compared to the historical norms of their country, and Cameron is far closer to that then, say, Thatcher.
  - realusername 10y ago
    How the parties are positioned depends indeed on the country. As an example, on our case in France, there is the "Front de Gauche" which would probably be considered communist in the US/UK whereas on our case, we have the actual communists, in the traditional sense. Religion also plays close to no parts in politics and conservative and republican means a very very different thing. Most of the English news I see report quite wrongly on the subject.
- devnull791101 10y ago
  cameron far-right? you're joking surely? if you truly believe this it just shows how shockingly far left we have gone that cameron is considered right wing at all.
tbarbugli 10y ago
By right the writer means extreme right wing. Lot of right parties (PdL in Italy, VVD in NL, ...) are not listed in that category (and least not in the fancy charts)
- seszett 10y ago
  On the other hand, in the French chart "DivD" is listed as far right when it's just a collection of non-affiliated right-wing candidates going from center-right to far-right.
- odabaxok 10y ago
  I am also curious of the author's definition of right-wing. For Slovakia KDH - Christian Democrats, SMK (later Party of Hungarian Community) and SDKU are all considered right-wing parties. However, the Hungarian Fidesz is definitely a right-wing party, but not an extreme right.
- Aoyagi 10y ago
  The charts are rubbish. Not only it lists e.g. parties with "socialist" in their name as "centrist", but they didn't do a "left-wing" colour to begin with, so e.g. communists parties are "other". That's not very balanced...
scotty79 10y ago
I wonder how they decided how to color each party. In Europe right-wing/left-wing are not as sharp terms as in US where these labels have been curated and polished for many decades.
- lgieron 10y ago
  > I wonder how they decided how to color each party. Exactly. It would make more sense if they used red for the left (due to their Bolshevik legacy).
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    This is an American news outlet. In the US the republicans ("right") are usually depicted in red, and democrats (slightly less "right") in blue. If you want really weird, consider Denmark where there is a right wing party called "Venstre" (meaning "the left") :)
    - vidarh 10y ago
      It's not that weird - it just reflects history. Norway as well as a centre-right party called Venstre and a right wing/conservative party called Høyre ("right"). In our case it dates straight back to the fight over parliamentarism in Norway, and the left/right naming took inspiration directly from the origin of the left/right axis in the aftermath of the French revolution (where those seated to the left were those against the monarchy and those seated to the left were supporters of the monarchy), so the most monarchy friendly party was "obviously" right wing. The name first started looking weird when the Labour Party (then revolutionary socialists, now social democrats) was formed well to their left, followed by further splits up until todays situation where there are - depending on how you place two of the more centrist parties - between four and six parties to the left of Venstre in Norway, counting parties that have or have had a member of parliament at some point. I don't know the history of the Danish party names, but I'm expecting it is a similar history of very literally being the left when formed only to have the balance shift substantially to the left since. The US colour use is different in that it was simply a matter of not taking historic use of the colours into account and arbitrarily applying it in election broadcasts, only to have it stick.
mrweasel 10y ago
"Far right" has become a synonym for racist/anti-immigration, but it's important to note that many of these parties aren't actually right wing parties in any other sense. Parties like "Dansk Folkeparti" in Denmark is pretty much Social Democrats, except they are harder on immigration. Leaving out the anti-immigration part, I would say that most of these parties are still to the left of both the Republican and Democratic party in the US.
- golemotron 10y ago
  It's a question whether many of them are actually racist too. People use 'racist' to marginalize discussion of cultural preferences.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    People aren't careful with the word racism. Claiming an inherent inferiority of a group of people or advocating for a seperate set of laws to be carved out, that's racism. For instance, police profiling or apartheid are real world, dictionary defined "racist" things. Using offensive language or mentioning someone by they're physical description is not. It's at best rude, but it's not a "racist" act. On the contrary, racism often comes on the backs of calm language with charts and graphs.
- ninjin 10y ago
  There are many issues with the one-dimensional left-right scale, but it is undeniable that they are right-wing in their strong social conservatism and nationalism. Note that there are also differences within these parties. An excellent example would be the Sweden Democrats, where a portion of the party is very much like what you describe, somewhat social democrat. While their youth organisation recently had a hard split due to its leader ship being essentially neo-fascist, which proved to be anathema for the main party.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >There are many issues with the one-dimensional left-right scale, but it is undeniable that they are right-wing in their strong social conservatism and nationalism. The USSR was conservative socially and nationalistic. Those are by no means a sign of being "right wing".
neoeldex 10y ago
Just checked the dutch data, it states that LPF won in 2002 by 17%. But that happened in 2003. [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_Pim_Fortuyn#Oppositiepartij https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_Pim_Fortuyn#Oppositiepar...] Just as the VVD, a right-wing liberal party is marked as center-left center-right. But if those are marked as center. Same with left wing parties, which show up as 'other'
- zephyrfalcon 10y ago
  The VVD is traditionally right-wing, but I think the article uses "right-wing" here to mean "extreme right" or perhaps "new right" or "non-traditional right" or whatever you would call it. Not sure really...
sveme 10y ago
What seems to be happening in the background is an increasing divide between rural and urban areas, where the rural areas vote for populist right-wing politicians (Trump, FPÖ, AfD, Front National) while the urban areas vote for left wing (in the European sense) or liberal (in the US sense) parties. Most illustrative for this are the results of sunday's Austrian presidential elections, where the voters had to choose between a right-wing, populist candidate (in blue) and a left-wing, liberal candidate (in green): http://derstandard.at/2000037433421/Ab-1700-Hochrechnungen-und-Gemeindeergebnisse http://derstandard.at/2000037433421/Ab-1700-Hochrechnungen-u... Overlay it with a map of Austria and the rural areas voted very strongly for the right-wing candidate while the larger cities (Vienna, Innsbruck, Graz,...) voted for the green candidate. I'd really like to find the chance to overlay the last elections results for UKIP, Sweden Democrats, Trump, AfD etc. with population density maps.
- golemotron 10y ago
  These demographics underline an interesting shift in Left and Right across the west. The Left used to align itself with the working class, struggling against capital. Now it aligns with the cosmopolitan and against the unsophisticated. In the US there has been a flight toward cities, increasing the numbers of people with a cosmopolitan perspective. These demographics are worth watching.
  - CarpetBench 10y ago
    > The Left used to align itself with the working class, struggling against capital. Now it aligns with the cosmopolitan and against the unsophisticated. Huh? That's not really true. Part of the reason the GOP is having such a hard time in the US right now is because minority populations are quickly starting to rise in numbers and they don't vote Republican for any number of reasons. These populations aren't what you'd consider traditionally "cosmopolitan" or "sophisticated" by any means. I mean, a voting base of cosmopolitans wouldn't really be enough to win an election anyway. There's a reason the GOP is trying really, really hard to win over more Hispanic voters lately. If you're arguing that minority populations are voting for the Left in spite of the Left being aligned with the elite, that's a fairly gross mischaracterization.
jimmytidey 10y ago
Yeah, it would have been interesting to see how many parties were on hard left too - not that I'm equating the two things morally. In the UK there is a lot of rhetoric that Europe is moving toward the far right rapidly. But if you look at the big players, in Germany, Italy and Spain the far right wing plays almost no role, in France it does but that has not changed appreciably over time. Meanwhile, in the UK I think story of UKIP is complicated because, while it is clearly appealing to far right themes, essentially it's a single issue party about EU membership. What UKIP would do if the UK decides to remain (or leave?) the EU is quite hard to foresee. I'd suggest the picture is messy enough that you can read whatever your pet theory is into it. If there is another deep recession then anything could happen, but you can always say that.
- 7952 10y ago
  Frankly it may be better for UKIP if the UK stays in the EU. The Brexit people are going to be angry, and will still want to vote for Euro sceptic parties. You could also see the Conservatives adopt a more Euro sceptic posture in trying to placate their more vocal Brexit supporters.
tbarbugli 10y ago
not the best job in the history of data collection. Lot of percentages are incorrect, categorization for many parties debatable (if not plain wrong)...
return0 10y ago
How far do we have to go before abolishing the 'right/left' distinction? It's very complicated nowadays. The US by european standards only has "conservative right" and progressive right". The far right in europe is actually national socialism. The far left (e.g. syriza in greece, maybe podemos in the future) caves in to market forces because it needs the market more than they need them. Centre-right germany is socialist according to americans. Communist china is way more capitalist than socialist sweden. Since most countries have become two-party systems, what does right/left dictate? social progress vs traditionalism? centralization vs the opposite? equal opportunity vs equal outcome? It sure as hell is not about the economic policies anymore.
- Aoyagi 10y ago
  I thought that left/right was originally and primarily about state involvement or not, so I guess centralisation/individuality.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Originally it was about who supported the monarchy in France, and who didn't in the constitutional assembly and first legislative assemblies after the French revolution. The constitutional monarchists and aristocrats sat on the right. Those opposing the monarchy sat on the left. Through the 19th century, the groups classifying themselves as left grew to encompass (going left to right) anarchists, left-libertarians (right-libertarianism wasn't founded until about a century later), communists and other revolutionary socialists, social democrats and classical liberals (in modern day Europe classical liberals sometimes are considered centre-right). On the right, the 19th century saw the collapse of support for absolutist monarchies and feudal systems, followed by the start of a splits along religious lines (many European countries have "Christan democrats" competing against usually mostly Christian but not religiously aligned conservatives) and between rural and urban forms of conservatism (e.g. special interest parties targeting farmers or rural populations are common many places), and eventually the rise of right-wing libertarianism and populism. State involvement or not is a red herring - e.g. a lot of the splits on the left have been about level of state involvement, ranging from wanting to destroy the state completely to wanting a strong state. Similarly on the right since the rise of right-wing libertarianism from the 50's-60's onwards. Basically you can't make sense of this on a single axis.
ThomPete 10y ago
The "moving to the right" analysis is wrong both in Europa and in the US where claims of Fascism seems to be the primary analysis of Trump. What we are seeing is an increasing number of people seeing no fundamental benefit of globalization or technology who are simply using their democratic voice to say "hey what about us?" These are voters who have been completely ignored by the politicians both in the US and in Europe who have been more busy with pushing technology, globalization, outsourcing and insourcing cheap labour. To confuse this with what we normally consider right-wing is not only getting the analysis wrong but also show why Trump so repeatedly have been underestimated. In Europe the "right wing" parties have repeatedly been doing better than any poll predicted I expect the same thing will happen in the US with Trump. They are not racist or facists. They are just afraid of the change that is hitting them and have no other way of expressing this fear. In Europe and in the US.
- teekert 10y ago
  Exactly. Here in the Netherlands people grow tired of the ever growing lust for EU power and the ever increasing amount of EU laws and rules. When we do get a chance to speak out like in the recent referendum about associating with the Ukraine, people's "No" vote is just ignored (like the vote about the EU constitution was ignored). Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia because they impact our economy, they don't like doing business with Erdogan, they don't like TTIP. But people are ignored by the politicians in the middle. So people start voting for less traditional, more polarized right or left (here that would be Geert Wilders, very anti EU) and Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals (oh yes we have that), who are very anti TTIP, bio-industry and globalization.) It just feels like those lefties and righties are better at listening to us and the middle parties are listining to the every growing group of bureaucrats from the EU. Maybe because the "extreme" left and right have much less affiliations and friends in the EU and in large corporations. To me, the EU adds a lot of politicians who are not chosen democratically, and are thus beyond the reach of normal citizens. They are however nicely within the reach of lobbyists.
  - niccolop 10y ago
    Demagogues will always find fertile ground when bashing the EU. It's been a long time since anyone has come out and defended it in a positivist way e.g. guarantor of democracy, free movement of labor, etc. In the current British debate leading up to the referendum, major campaigners in the 'Stay In' campaign rarely defend the EU, and rather take the line that the UK should stay in the EU despite all it's problems. What was the turnout at the referendum in the Netherlands?
parax 10y ago
PP at Spain marked as Center-right? Hahahaha.
davidiach 10y ago
The People's Party in Romania is a left-wing party, not a right-wing one.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
agentgt 10y ago
I have a two vague ideas of what left and right represent based on US current news / politics and some very hazy memories of a more precise definition in political science class. Perhaps someone can allude to me what this article means by right and left (not trying to be snide or anything). Is it compared to US or the more traditional academic version (or maybe I'm mistaken that there is an academic version)?
- vixen99 10y ago
  Why don't commenters skip these much-abused emotive references to '(far)right' --> '(far)left' and state what they admire or object to, regarding a group position? For the man in the street, far-right fascism and far-left communism equate to to more or less identical levels of coercion and control.
kriro 10y ago
Left/right is not the best distinction. I live in Germany and I'd characterize the trend as a move towards more authoritarian ideals. Right now it is mostly fueled by a right wing agenda (omg you should fear these evil immigrants) but the left has the same ideal (fight evil capitalism/globalisation via more state regulations). I think it is a very worrying trend because the hunger to outsource more life to the state for more piece of mind is actually pretty widespread I'd say. I feel like it is very easy to pass legislation that infringes on personal freedom in a tradeoff for "let the state take care of it" Just promising less change and more of the same or "back to the good old days" is a simple but unfortunately well working political platform. This is pretty alarming since I don't really see any counterarguments that ask for less state. We have one party that should nominally do it (FDP) but their agenda is not very liberal if you dig deeper (not very libertarian in the US sense I suppose). Edit: The other problem is disillusion about the elites not caring about the people which often leads to protest voting for more radical parties. A party that supports some sort of direct democracy and more personal freedom (and also responsibility) is needed and probably has the potential to be somewhat disruptive. I might just be naive but I feel like there's no good non radical offer for people who feel like what they say doesn't matter at all for the established parties.
joantune 10y ago
Hardly swinging to the right. For that, we must import US's talk radio shows and let it brew for years. Hope no right wing guy is seeing this.
Qantourisc 10y ago
My main beef with this article is : You really cannot define the entire political spectrum on 1 axis !
Aoyagi 10y ago
To the right? All I see is it moving to the left while a few countries detached from this.
joantune 10y ago
The rise of Trump was best summed by Vox's article and the radio talk shows that magnify that fear (short version: http://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11720276/donald-trump-authoritarianism http://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11720276/donald-trump-authorita... Long version: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism) The same is not happening as much in Europe, especially in countries where such fear propaganda didn't set in (like here, in Portugal)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
boertush 10y ago
There's a big anti EU sentiment in Europe after years of financial repercussions because of the financial crisis and the refugee crisis. And the only parties who are even critical of the EU are on the far right and on the far left.
lambdadmitry 10y ago
>Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia >people's "No" vote is just ignored >Maybe because the "extreme" left and right have much less affiliations and friends in the EU This points make me really sad. First, because right-wing parties are actively propped up by Russian govt [1]; second, because Russia openly engaged in propaganda and false flags campaign against Ukraine in EU [2]; third, because I'm Russian, an external pressure on the regime is one of the few hopes for a change, and it seems like Russian govt is strong at least in your network, so the pressure will not become stronger. Additionally, quite a few nice people will probably be infected by memes that poisoned Russian society for decades. It's really sad. [1]: http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2500-putinism-and-the-european-far-right http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2500-putinism-and-the-... [2]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azo...
- teekert 10y ago
  The way I see it, but please correct me if I'm wrong (don't hold back), Putin (and Russian politics in general) is caught between the old and new generations of Russia, during the Jeltsin era we saw that being an all out liberal, democrat, power to the people person did not land you at the top of the country at all. This is still true probably (because you need backing of the old powers) so what is currently at the top in Russia is probably what will keep Russia together. I think that with the younger generation growing up, Russia will become more and more liberal, it will take time. Yes, many things in Russia are as they were here in the 60's (gay rights etc) but here we also had the time to mature (especially regarding personal freedom) without much violence. Why does the west have to rush things, make a Woman with a mustache win the EU song festival in the Ukraine, make the world press photo a gay couple in Russia? Is such pressure really the best? Why not be friendly with Russia, show them the benefits of our society without enforcing our ethics? Why the war mongering? The EU also sneakily, under suspect circumstances put a pro EU person in Power in the Ukraine. This makes Russia afraid of the ever growing NATO. Are you part of a liberal minority? I can see you want change as fast as possible but what is as fast as possible? I apologize if I come across particularly ignorant, it's difficult to find the truth between western news and RT. whenever I read RT I can certainly see and understand the fear of the NATO. I'm currently reading the new Tsar (about Putin) so far he seems to be loyal to the wrong people sometimes but much less corrupt than he could have been given the people around him (but I'm only half way.) Also he didn't attack Turkey after they took down that fighter, even though Turkey is doing oil business with IS. I'm not pro-Russia or Pro-Putin, I think we are worse of if we don't try to be friends. (I think the Russians love their children too ;) )
discordianfish 10y ago
I'm a bit shocked how this issue is down played in the comments here. There are good reasons for people to be frustrated and if looking at this as a system, you can influence it in the right direction by listening to people and prevent the social downwards spiral. But there are banking bailout and massive cutbacks on social system which has direct effect on the European people. Yet nothing happened. There were some demonstrations and established parties might lost some votes but it's not comparable to the move to right we see right now. So is the refugee crisis more dangerous to the European people's safety and prosperity? I highly doubt that. Yes, 1.2M is a big number. But that's like 1 refugee per >400 'natives'. The reason why people are complaining and new right wing parties get established is because they are racist. And there are plenty of explanations for that, yet this is sometime that needs to be taken very seriously. And the worst thing we can do is just blaming politicians and ignoring how much suffering the new right wing causes.
- devnull791101 10y ago
  personal experience, a person my wife hardly knew begged us to let him come stay in england for a short while so he could establish himself here. where he was staying in rotterdam had been overrun with migrants, he was regularly getting mugged in the street and people were banging on the doors in the middle of the night aggressively demanding money. perhaps a distinction needs to be made between ideological racism and generalisation learnt from experience.
fauigerzigerk 10y ago
This article misses an important point. Many of the far right ideas and tactics are very much part of the agenda pushed by mainstream parties all over Europe and the US. For instance, spreading lies about immigration is the preferred tool of Tory brexiteers in the UK. The German CSU is not that different from the AfD either. And in many ways the GOP (even without Trump) is far more right wing than some of the parties considered to be on the extreme right in Europe
lisivka 10y ago
> Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia because they impact our economy I.e. they are collaborateurs. It seems that Russians use proper name "GAYrope" for part of Europe at least. Let me remember you that Russia shot civil plane MH17 from Amsterdam to "show that Donbass territory is not controlled by Ukraine anymore".
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760362 and marked it off-topic.
Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
It's not a swing towards the right. It is a swing towards parties and politicians that are anti-establishment and promise to actually listen to citizens rather than to the elites. While in the article's graphs they highlight the far right, in Spain, Portugal and Greece it is the left that has multiplied their support in recent years. In Italy it is M5S, which is hard to locate in a left-right spectrum. And in the US, it is arguably both sides: Trump has surpassed all expectations from the right, but Sanders has also done so from the left (Sanders would probably be considered center or even center-right by European standards, but he's clearly leftist for the US - and were not for the superdelegates of the democratic party apparatus, he would have decent chances of winning too). The establishment should really exercise self-criticism. I don't know how it feels in the US, but in Europe the system feels really inflexible. The establishment pushes their agenda (e.g. austerity) against the will of a majority of citizens, large demonstrations are totally ignored, referendums are made and the results ignored, mass media are becoming more and more unreliable, etc. A flexible beam will bend under pressure, an inflexible beam will not bend, but will suddenly break when the pressure is enough. I hope the system exercises some flexibility or we may be in for rough times...
norea-armozel 10y ago
All these parties who seem to fear globalism don't get that the real power isn't in their nation's capital but in the various financial districts across the world. London, New York, Beijing, and so on run the world. To turn back the clock in terms of the world economy to a world without free trade is impossible. The iPhone has components made from raw materials from all over the world. Sure it's assembled in China, but the ore comes from Africa. The designs come from Cupertino. And the marketing is done everywhere. The fact these parties are trying to push back is laughable to me. Short of a total revolution and ceasing of assets, which would include manufacturing, there's not going to be a reversal of globalism. It's full steam ahead regardless of their helpless mewling.

91 points by stared 10y ago

With the exception of Hungary, the graphs don't look to me like a "swing to the right" so much as a "swing to the margins"; the centrist parties are losing votes to both "far right" and "other" parties.

scotty79 10y ago
I'd say there are more exceptions. Every country seems to be bit different in who loses to whom. In Poland left-wing parties lost mostly to centrist parties, and right wing party just gradually gains support since its first rise to prominence.
FloNeu 10y ago
As Austrian, i am really glad about outcome of yesterdays election - still it was a really close one. And you are right - freedom party is far right imho - but they down-play that them selfs and gain a lot votes from people who are upset about the fact that the two big center parties didn't get any shit done in the last few years. And they have gotten good in playing that - just look at trump - telling the rage people what they want to here - even if it sounds irrational or are plain lies - just seems to work.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
evgen 10y ago
As a a simple example, here in the UK the current Labour leadership is a throw-back to hard-left Labour and UKIP continues to gather support on the right. The current center-right Tories have enough support to govern and it looks like it will be at least another election cycle before center-left Blairites are in a position to challenge. Like US politics, sometimes changes at the upper levels can simply be the avalanche effect from a few shifts at the edges of the electorate.
Scarblac 10y ago
And _in principle_ I'd say that's a good thing. If all we have is a bunch of parties crowded around the center, there isn't anything left for voters to choose. I just wish they picked different margins to swing to...
- cperciva 10y ago
  If all we have is a bunch of parties crowded around the center, there isn't anything left for voters to choose. Yes and no. The median voter theorem suggests that voters' choices were accounted for as parties put their platforms together -- effectively, voters chose, but not when they thought they were choosing. I just wish they picked different margins to swing to... I think there's a problem caused by voters swinging to margins, no matter which margins they swing to: It increases the gap between the voters and their government (either because extremist voters don't like a moderate government, or because one group of extremists hate a differently-extreme government), which diminishes public confidence in the state. Much like a lack of confidence in the justice system, a lack of confidence in the state tends to have very negative consequences, as people "take matters into their own hands".
  - vlehto 10y ago
    But there is always only so many topics any one party and median voter agrees on. Many don't really adopt party identity and live by it. So having only few big parties is likely to cause distrust to political parties in general, because nobody accurately represents you. Which ought to translate to distrust to goverment as the big players have the power.
    - cperciva 10y ago
      nobody accurately represents you Does it help if you have someone who accurately represents you, but she is marginalised within the legislature and has no chance of ever being part of the government? If anything, I'd expect that to make you trust the government even less.
  - Scarblac 10y ago
IkmoIkmo 10y ago
You're right, the charts don't show that. But the charts don't tell the actual story. Which is that all centrist parties have shifted right in their policy positions and rhetoric. The charts only show power shifts between parties, but ignore shifts within parties. There's a lot of centrist parties that were rooted in Christian values for example, that were reasonable on e.g. refugee issues in the 20th century (which were much more significant than today, by the way), that now want to amend laws, retract long-standing treaties, create walls and border fences, disallow schooling/work/status for those refugees who do get welcomed so as to send them right back asap in god knows when Syria recovers from being a failed state, paired with hints of xenophobic rhetoric akin to a far right party. Yet they're still deemed centrist parties, and would not show it on the chart. And that is precisely because the far right is on the rise, and the rest of the political spectrum is adjusting and compromising their stance, so as not to lose votes. That's a very clear shift to the right. Like take the Netherlands, it shows a drop in the right-wing PVV's size since 2010 (forget for a moment that the party's currently leading in the polls). You'd think, alright no shift to the far right here at all. What it doesn't tell you is that the current biggest party (a non far right wing, right wing party) has shifted much more to the right. Like recently we saw it's 2nd in command claim refugees were visiting the Netherlands to get plastic surgery, breasts corrections, face lifts etc... I mean this guy is just a ridiculous demagogue, instilling fear into the Dutch population that Syrian refugees aren't actually running away from a gruesome war, but are merely looking to exploit our medical system to get plastic surgery, it's insane. If you'd have set this about jews during the holocaust there'd be no discussion, you'd recognised as a clear far-right fascist. And this is the biggest party's 2nd in line, straight out the playbook of a far right-wing demagogue. Now this party isn't far-right for all intents and purposes, but it has very much shifted towards it on various policy positions and rhetoric, as have many centrist and right wing parties. And none of that shows up in the charts.

manuelflara 10y ago

Interesting to note that Spain, Portugal & Germany, countries with a long and famous history of right-wing dictatorships, are some of the countries that fare best. And Italy, also with a similar history, is seeing its right-wing party support go lower on each election. Only Britain and Czech Republic fare similarly well. Although me being Spanish I can say that while we may not have any party in congress "openly extreme right" (nazi like etc), our Partido Popular, one of our top 2 parties and currently in power, is definitely right wing and a direct descendant of franquism (dictatorship), since many of the top dogs in the party were ministers with Franco himself. In other words, here in Spain the right wing successfully camouflaged itself as democrat as to apparently mislead anyone that we don't have a problem here, when we actually do. Maybe the situation in Italy and Portugal is the same, I don't know. I'm also surprised to find out that while Golden Dawn's rise in Greece was all over the media as "the new rise of nazism etc", other countries have MUCH higher rates of right wing parties and nobody seems to care.

willvarfar 10y ago
Austria had Hitler. Now they have a party that has - presumably deliberately - making subtle links back to those days e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36342362 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36342362
- stdclass 10y ago
  And thank god we dodged that bullet yesterday! It was a close call though - 50,3% to 49,7% (edited)
  - mherrmann 10y ago
    You mean 50,3% to 49,7% ;)
  - ck2 10y ago
    Two questions: 1. what percentage of the population turns out to vote in Austria? 2. what level of education is most common in Austria? I have a hard time believing well educated people turn out in droves to vote for the hard right - I mean sure, there is always a percentage and many fiscally conservative people come from money so they tend to be educated, but as I understand it, that's not what they were voting for in Austria, they were basically voting for social conservatism which is anti-immigration, etc. Then again that percentage is pretty much what the US faces in every Red vs Blue presidential election in the past half-century.

golemotron 10y ago

With Trump and Sanders in the US, Brexit in Britain and the rise of what's being called the "far right" in Europe, we're seeing a referendum on globalism. The pendulum swings back and forth and this move shouldn't be surprising to anyone who reads history. People who believe in a Fukuyama-style 'end of history' scenario are shocked that nationalism is bubbling up again, but it is a natural correction. Local governance, culture and economy have a de facto legitimacy among people that de jure unions never will. The Left's challenge is to acknowledge this and help create a framework for a peaceful world of disparate cultures and loose alliances.

adwf 10y ago
I wouldn't say it's globalism per se. More that in a recession everyone looks for someone to blame. It's far easier to blame "those dirty foreigners" than it is to accept the vagaries of economics. Or that maybe the blame is almost entirely on ourselves. It's a kind of fundamental attribution error [1]. People are very quick to blame others for their personal characteristics ie. lazy foreigners (personal), no good scroungers of welfare (personal), instead of the situational context of recession/war/etc. Whereas when it comes to talking about themselves, they're hard working people who just can't get a break (situational), the recession is at fault (situational), no education because my teachers were bad and the school was crap (situational), the foreigners took our jobs (situational)... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I wouldn't say it's globalism per se. More that in a recession everyone looks for someone to blame. It's also globalism. It took jobs abroad and fucked up the working class royally -- and it didn't do much for the middle class either, which is also shrinking. The idea of a totally open market is bad if you also want to secure what you have here and now. Of course it makes big bucks for the rich doing the "opening" part (and keeping the market rigged in 100 other ways), so economists, one of the most whored out "scientific" professions, always sitting next to those in power as advisors, will just blab about how beneficial it is.

thomholwerda 10y ago

The graph for Britain is clearly wrong. David Cameron is clearly far-right by any European standard, so the country's swing to the right should be a lot more pronounced.

adwf 10y ago
Hmm, I wouldn't place Cameron as far-right. He's in charge of a right wing party with a large minority of far right members, but he's actually fighting his own party to stay in Europe. So Right, but not Far-Right. The far-right in the UK is UKIP and a bunch of Conservatives who are basically UKIP, but don't want to risk losing their seat by jumping ship.
cperciva 10y ago
By the standards of some European countries, Obama is far-right, but Obama becoming president was certainly not a sign of a shift to the right in American politics. What matters here is where parties and politicians lie compared to the historical norms of their country, and Cameron is far closer to that then, say, Thatcher.
- realusername 10y ago
  How the parties are positioned depends indeed on the country. As an example, on our case in France, there is the "Front de Gauche" which would probably be considered communist in the US/UK whereas on our case, we have the actual communists, in the traditional sense. Religion also plays close to no parts in politics and conservative and republican means a very very different thing. Most of the English news I see report quite wrongly on the subject.
devnull791101 10y ago
cameron far-right? you're joking surely? if you truly believe this it just shows how shockingly far left we have gone that cameron is considered right wing at all.

tbarbugli 10y ago

By right the writer means extreme right wing. Lot of right parties (PdL in Italy, VVD in NL, ...) are not listed in that category (and least not in the fancy charts)

seszett 10y ago
On the other hand, in the French chart "DivD" is listed as far right when it's just a collection of non-affiliated right-wing candidates going from center-right to far-right.
odabaxok 10y ago
I am also curious of the author's definition of right-wing. For Slovakia KDH - Christian Democrats, SMK (later Party of Hungarian Community) and SDKU are all considered right-wing parties. However, the Hungarian Fidesz is definitely a right-wing party, but not an extreme right.
Aoyagi 10y ago
The charts are rubbish. Not only it lists e.g. parties with "socialist" in their name as "centrist", but they didn't do a "left-wing" colour to begin with, so e.g. communists parties are "other". That's not very balanced...

scotty79 10y ago

I wonder how they decided how to color each party. In Europe right-wing/left-wing are not as sharp terms as in US where these labels have been curated and polished for many decades.

lgieron 10y ago
> I wonder how they decided how to color each party. Exactly. It would make more sense if they used red for the left (due to their Bolshevik legacy).
- alkonaut 10y ago
  This is an American news outlet. In the US the republicans ("right") are usually depicted in red, and democrats (slightly less "right") in blue. If you want really weird, consider Denmark where there is a right wing party called "Venstre" (meaning "the left") :)
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It's not that weird - it just reflects history. Norway as well as a centre-right party called Venstre and a right wing/conservative party called Høyre ("right"). In our case it dates straight back to the fight over parliamentarism in Norway, and the left/right naming took inspiration directly from the origin of the left/right axis in the aftermath of the French revolution (where those seated to the left were those against the monarchy and those seated to the left were supporters of the monarchy), so the most monarchy friendly party was "obviously" right wing. The name first started looking weird when the Labour Party (then revolutionary socialists, now social democrats) was formed well to their left, followed by further splits up until todays situation where there are - depending on how you place two of the more centrist parties - between four and six parties to the left of Venstre in Norway, counting parties that have or have had a member of parliament at some point. I don't know the history of the Danish party names, but I'm expecting it is a similar history of very literally being the left when formed only to have the balance shift substantially to the left since. The US colour use is different in that it was simply a matter of not taking historic use of the colours into account and arbitrarily applying it in election broadcasts, only to have it stick.

mrweasel 10y ago

"Far right" has become a synonym for racist/anti-immigration, but it's important to note that many of these parties aren't actually right wing parties in any other sense. Parties like "Dansk Folkeparti" in Denmark is pretty much Social Democrats, except they are harder on immigration. Leaving out the anti-immigration part, I would say that most of these parties are still to the left of both the Republican and Democratic party in the US.

golemotron 10y ago
It's a question whether many of them are actually racist too. People use 'racist' to marginalize discussion of cultural preferences.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  People aren't careful with the word racism. Claiming an inherent inferiority of a group of people or advocating for a seperate set of laws to be carved out, that's racism. For instance, police profiling or apartheid are real world, dictionary defined "racist" things. Using offensive language or mentioning someone by they're physical description is not. It's at best rude, but it's not a "racist" act. On the contrary, racism often comes on the backs of calm language with charts and graphs.
ninjin 10y ago
There are many issues with the one-dimensional left-right scale, but it is undeniable that they are right-wing in their strong social conservatism and nationalism. Note that there are also differences within these parties. An excellent example would be the Sweden Democrats, where a portion of the party is very much like what you describe, somewhat social democrat. While their youth organisation recently had a hard split due to its leader ship being essentially neo-fascist, which proved to be anathema for the main party.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >There are many issues with the one-dimensional left-right scale, but it is undeniable that they are right-wing in their strong social conservatism and nationalism. The USSR was conservative socially and nationalistic. Those are by no means a sign of being "right wing".

neoeldex 10y ago

Just checked the dutch data, it states that LPF won in 2002 by 17%. But that happened in 2003. [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_Pim_Fortuyn#Oppositiepartij https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_Pim_Fortuyn#Oppositiepar...] Just as the VVD, a right-wing liberal party is marked as center-left center-right. But if those are marked as center. Same with left wing parties, which show up as 'other'

zephyrfalcon 10y ago
The VVD is traditionally right-wing, but I think the article uses "right-wing" here to mean "extreme right" or perhaps "new right" or "non-traditional right" or whatever you would call it. Not sure really...

sveme 10y ago

What seems to be happening in the background is an increasing divide between rural and urban areas, where the rural areas vote for populist right-wing politicians (Trump, FPÖ, AfD, Front National) while the urban areas vote for left wing (in the European sense) or liberal (in the US sense) parties. Most illustrative for this are the results of sunday's Austrian presidential elections, where the voters had to choose between a right-wing, populist candidate (in blue) and a left-wing, liberal candidate (in green): http://derstandard.at/2000037433421/Ab-1700-Hochrechnungen-und-Gemeindeergebnisse http://derstandard.at/2000037433421/Ab-1700-Hochrechnungen-u... Overlay it with a map of Austria and the rural areas voted very strongly for the right-wing candidate while the larger cities (Vienna, Innsbruck, Graz,...) voted for the green candidate. I'd really like to find the chance to overlay the last elections results for UKIP, Sweden Democrats, Trump, AfD etc. with population density maps.

golemotron 10y ago
These demographics underline an interesting shift in Left and Right across the west. The Left used to align itself with the working class, struggling against capital. Now it aligns with the cosmopolitan and against the unsophisticated. In the US there has been a flight toward cities, increasing the numbers of people with a cosmopolitan perspective. These demographics are worth watching.
- CarpetBench 10y ago
  > The Left used to align itself with the working class, struggling against capital. Now it aligns with the cosmopolitan and against the unsophisticated. Huh? That's not really true. Part of the reason the GOP is having such a hard time in the US right now is because minority populations are quickly starting to rise in numbers and they don't vote Republican for any number of reasons. These populations aren't what you'd consider traditionally "cosmopolitan" or "sophisticated" by any means. I mean, a voting base of cosmopolitans wouldn't really be enough to win an election anyway. There's a reason the GOP is trying really, really hard to win over more Hispanic voters lately. If you're arguing that minority populations are voting for the Left in spite of the Left being aligned with the elite, that's a fairly gross mischaracterization.

jimmytidey 10y ago

Yeah, it would have been interesting to see how many parties were on hard left too - not that I'm equating the two things morally. In the UK there is a lot of rhetoric that Europe is moving toward the far right rapidly. But if you look at the big players, in Germany, Italy and Spain the far right wing plays almost no role, in France it does but that has not changed appreciably over time. Meanwhile, in the UK I think story of UKIP is complicated because, while it is clearly appealing to far right themes, essentially it's a single issue party about EU membership. What UKIP would do if the UK decides to remain (or leave?) the EU is quite hard to foresee. I'd suggest the picture is messy enough that you can read whatever your pet theory is into it. If there is another deep recession then anything could happen, but you can always say that.

7952 10y ago
Frankly it may be better for UKIP if the UK stays in the EU. The Brexit people are going to be angry, and will still want to vote for Euro sceptic parties. You could also see the Conservatives adopt a more Euro sceptic posture in trying to placate their more vocal Brexit supporters.

tbarbugli 10y ago

not the best job in the history of data collection. Lot of percentages are incorrect, categorization for many parties debatable (if not plain wrong)...

return0 10y ago

How far do we have to go before abolishing the 'right/left' distinction? It's very complicated nowadays. The US by european standards only has "conservative right" and progressive right". The far right in europe is actually national socialism. The far left (e.g. syriza in greece, maybe podemos in the future) caves in to market forces because it needs the market more than they need them. Centre-right germany is socialist according to americans. Communist china is way more capitalist than socialist sweden. Since most countries have become two-party systems, what does right/left dictate? social progress vs traditionalism? centralization vs the opposite? equal opportunity vs equal outcome? It sure as hell is not about the economic policies anymore.

Aoyagi 10y ago
I thought that left/right was originally and primarily about state involvement or not, so I guess centralisation/individuality.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Originally it was about who supported the monarchy in France, and who didn't in the constitutional assembly and first legislative assemblies after the French revolution. The constitutional monarchists and aristocrats sat on the right. Those opposing the monarchy sat on the left. Through the 19th century, the groups classifying themselves as left grew to encompass (going left to right) anarchists, left-libertarians (right-libertarianism wasn't founded until about a century later), communists and other revolutionary socialists, social democrats and classical liberals (in modern day Europe classical liberals sometimes are considered centre-right). On the right, the 19th century saw the collapse of support for absolutist monarchies and feudal systems, followed by the start of a splits along religious lines (many European countries have "Christan democrats" competing against usually mostly Christian but not religiously aligned conservatives) and between rural and urban forms of conservatism (e.g. special interest parties targeting farmers or rural populations are common many places), and eventually the rise of right-wing libertarianism and populism. State involvement or not is a red herring - e.g. a lot of the splits on the left have been about level of state involvement, ranging from wanting to destroy the state completely to wanting a strong state. Similarly on the right since the rise of right-wing libertarianism from the 50's-60's onwards. Basically you can't make sense of this on a single axis.

ThomPete 10y ago

The "moving to the right" analysis is wrong both in Europa and in the US where claims of Fascism seems to be the primary analysis of Trump. What we are seeing is an increasing number of people seeing no fundamental benefit of globalization or technology who are simply using their democratic voice to say "hey what about us?" These are voters who have been completely ignored by the politicians both in the US and in Europe who have been more busy with pushing technology, globalization, outsourcing and insourcing cheap labour. To confuse this with what we normally consider right-wing is not only getting the analysis wrong but also show why Trump so repeatedly have been underestimated. In Europe the "right wing" parties have repeatedly been doing better than any poll predicted I expect the same thing will happen in the US with Trump. They are not racist or facists. They are just afraid of the change that is hitting them and have no other way of expressing this fear. In Europe and in the US.

teekert 10y ago
Exactly. Here in the Netherlands people grow tired of the ever growing lust for EU power and the ever increasing amount of EU laws and rules. When we do get a chance to speak out like in the recent referendum about associating with the Ukraine, people's "No" vote is just ignored (like the vote about the EU constitution was ignored). Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia because they impact our economy, they don't like doing business with Erdogan, they don't like TTIP. But people are ignored by the politicians in the middle. So people start voting for less traditional, more polarized right or left (here that would be Geert Wilders, very anti EU) and Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals (oh yes we have that), who are very anti TTIP, bio-industry and globalization.) It just feels like those lefties and righties are better at listening to us and the middle parties are listining to the every growing group of bureaucrats from the EU. Maybe because the "extreme" left and right have much less affiliations and friends in the EU and in large corporations. To me, the EU adds a lot of politicians who are not chosen democratically, and are thus beyond the reach of normal citizens. They are however nicely within the reach of lobbyists.
- niccolop 10y ago
  Demagogues will always find fertile ground when bashing the EU. It's been a long time since anyone has come out and defended it in a positivist way e.g. guarantor of democracy, free movement of labor, etc. In the current British debate leading up to the referendum, major campaigners in the 'Stay In' campaign rarely defend the EU, and rather take the line that the UK should stay in the EU despite all it's problems. What was the turnout at the referendum in the Netherlands?

parax 10y ago

PP at Spain marked as Center-right? Hahahaha.

davidiach 10y ago

The People's Party in Romania is a left-wing party, not a right-wing one.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

agentgt 10y ago

I have a two vague ideas of what left and right represent based on US current news / politics and some very hazy memories of a more precise definition in political science class. Perhaps someone can allude to me what this article means by right and left (not trying to be snide or anything). Is it compared to US or the more traditional academic version (or maybe I'm mistaken that there is an academic version)?

vixen99 10y ago
Why don't commenters skip these much-abused emotive references to '(far)right' --> '(far)left' and state what they admire or object to, regarding a group position? For the man in the street, far-right fascism and far-left communism equate to to more or less identical levels of coercion and control.

kriro 10y ago

Left/right is not the best distinction. I live in Germany and I'd characterize the trend as a move towards more authoritarian ideals. Right now it is mostly fueled by a right wing agenda (omg you should fear these evil immigrants) but the left has the same ideal (fight evil capitalism/globalisation via more state regulations). I think it is a very worrying trend because the hunger to outsource more life to the state for more piece of mind is actually pretty widespread I'd say. I feel like it is very easy to pass legislation that infringes on personal freedom in a tradeoff for "let the state take care of it" Just promising less change and more of the same or "back to the good old days" is a simple but unfortunately well working political platform. This is pretty alarming since I don't really see any counterarguments that ask for less state. We have one party that should nominally do it (FDP) but their agenda is not very liberal if you dig deeper (not very libertarian in the US sense I suppose). Edit: The other problem is disillusion about the elites not caring about the people which often leads to protest voting for more radical parties. A party that supports some sort of direct democracy and more personal freedom (and also responsibility) is needed and probably has the potential to be somewhat disruptive. I might just be naive but I feel like there's no good non radical offer for people who feel like what they say doesn't matter at all for the established parties.

joantune 10y ago

Hardly swinging to the right. For that, we must import US's talk radio shows and let it brew for years. Hope no right wing guy is seeing this.

Qantourisc 10y ago

My main beef with this article is : You really cannot define the entire political spectrum on 1 axis !

Aoyagi 10y ago

To the right? All I see is it moving to the left while a few countries detached from this.

joantune 10y ago

The rise of Trump was best summed by Vox's article and the radio talk shows that magnify that fear (short version: http://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11720276/donald-trump-authoritarianism http://www.vox.com/2016/5/20/11720276/donald-trump-authorita... Long version: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism) The same is not happening as much in Europe, especially in countries where such fear propaganda didn't set in (like here, in Portugal)

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

boertush 10y ago

There's a big anti EU sentiment in Europe after years of financial repercussions because of the financial crisis and the refugee crisis. And the only parties who are even critical of the EU are on the far right and on the far left.

lambdadmitry 10y ago

>Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia >people's "No" vote is just ignored >Maybe because the "extreme" left and right have much less affiliations and friends in the EU This points make me really sad. First, because right-wing parties are actively propped up by Russian govt [1]; second, because Russia openly engaged in propaganda and false flags campaign against Ukraine in EU [2]; third, because I'm Russian, an external pressure on the regime is one of the few hopes for a change, and it seems like Russian govt is strong at least in your network, so the pressure will not become stronger. Additionally, quite a few nice people will probably be infected by memes that poisoned Russian society for decades. It's really sad. [1]: http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2500-putinism-and-the-european-far-right http://imrussia.org/en/analysis/world/2500-putinism-and-the-... [2]: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azov-video/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2016/04/03/azo...

teekert 10y ago
The way I see it, but please correct me if I'm wrong (don't hold back), Putin (and Russian politics in general) is caught between the old and new generations of Russia, during the Jeltsin era we saw that being an all out liberal, democrat, power to the people person did not land you at the top of the country at all. This is still true probably (because you need backing of the old powers) so what is currently at the top in Russia is probably what will keep Russia together. I think that with the younger generation growing up, Russia will become more and more liberal, it will take time. Yes, many things in Russia are as they were here in the 60's (gay rights etc) but here we also had the time to mature (especially regarding personal freedom) without much violence. Why does the west have to rush things, make a Woman with a mustache win the EU song festival in the Ukraine, make the world press photo a gay couple in Russia? Is such pressure really the best? Why not be friendly with Russia, show them the benefits of our society without enforcing our ethics? Why the war mongering? The EU also sneakily, under suspect circumstances put a pro EU person in Power in the Ukraine. This makes Russia afraid of the ever growing NATO. Are you part of a liberal minority? I can see you want change as fast as possible but what is as fast as possible? I apologize if I come across particularly ignorant, it's difficult to find the truth between western news and RT. whenever I read RT I can certainly see and understand the fear of the NATO. I'm currently reading the new Tsar (about Putin) so far he seems to be loyal to the wrong people sometimes but much less corrupt than he could have been given the people around him (but I'm only half way.) Also he didn't attack Turkey after they took down that fighter, even though Turkey is doing oil business with IS. I'm not pro-Russia or Pro-Putin, I think we are worse of if we don't try to be friends. (I think the Russians love their children too ;) )

discordianfish 10y ago

I'm a bit shocked how this issue is down played in the comments here. There are good reasons for people to be frustrated and if looking at this as a system, you can influence it in the right direction by listening to people and prevent the social downwards spiral. But there are banking bailout and massive cutbacks on social system which has direct effect on the European people. Yet nothing happened. There were some demonstrations and established parties might lost some votes but it's not comparable to the move to right we see right now. So is the refugee crisis more dangerous to the European people's safety and prosperity? I highly doubt that. Yes, 1.2M is a big number. But that's like 1 refugee per >400 'natives'. The reason why people are complaining and new right wing parties get established is because they are racist. And there are plenty of explanations for that, yet this is sometime that needs to be taken very seriously. And the worst thing we can do is just blaming politicians and ignoring how much suffering the new right wing causes.

devnull791101 10y ago
personal experience, a person my wife hardly knew begged us to let him come stay in england for a short while so he could establish himself here. where he was staying in rotterdam had been overrun with migrants, he was regularly getting mugged in the street and people were banging on the doors in the middle of the night aggressively demanding money. perhaps a distinction needs to be made between ideological racism and generalisation learnt from experience.

fauigerzigerk 10y ago

This article misses an important point. Many of the far right ideas and tactics are very much part of the agenda pushed by mainstream parties all over Europe and the US. For instance, spreading lies about immigration is the preferred tool of Tory brexiteers in the UK. The German CSU is not that different from the AfD either. And in many ways the GOP (even without Trump) is far more right wing than some of the parties considered to be on the extreme right in Europe

lisivka 10y ago

> Most people I know don't like the sanctions against Russia because they impact our economy I.e. they are collaborateurs. It seems that Russians use proper name "GAYrope" for part of Europe at least. Let me remember you that Russia shot civil plane MH17 from Amsterdam to "show that Donbass territory is not controlled by Ukraine anymore".

dang 10y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760362 and marked it off-topic.

Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago

It's not a swing towards the right. It is a swing towards parties and politicians that are anti-establishment and promise to actually listen to citizens rather than to the elites. While in the article's graphs they highlight the far right, in Spain, Portugal and Greece it is the left that has multiplied their support in recent years. In Italy it is M5S, which is hard to locate in a left-right spectrum. And in the US, it is arguably both sides: Trump has surpassed all expectations from the right, but Sanders has also done so from the left (Sanders would probably be considered center or even center-right by European standards, but he's clearly leftist for the US - and were not for the superdelegates of the democratic party apparatus, he would have decent chances of winning too). The establishment should really exercise self-criticism. I don't know how it feels in the US, but in Europe the system feels really inflexible. The establishment pushes their agenda (e.g. austerity) against the will of a majority of citizens, large demonstrations are totally ignored, referendums are made and the results ignored, mass media are becoming more and more unreliable, etc. A flexible beam will bend under pressure, an inflexible beam will not bend, but will suddenly break when the pressure is enough. I hope the system exercises some flexibility or we may be in for rough times...

norea-armozel 10y ago

All these parties who seem to fear globalism don't get that the real power isn't in their nation's capital but in the various financial districts across the world. London, New York, Beijing, and so on run the world. To turn back the clock in terms of the world economy to a world without free trade is impossible. The iPhone has components made from raw materials from all over the world. Sure it's assembled in China, but the ore comes from Africa. The designs come from Cupertino. And the marketing is done everywhere. The fact these parties are trying to push back is laughable to me. Short of a total revolution and ceasing of assets, which would include manufacturing, there's not going to be a reversal of globalism. It's full steam ahead regardless of their helpless mewling.