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Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:24:05 PM
Surprised the Golden Dawn hasn't poached them from the party....
I think we can all agree that the timing of these articles is not the finest.
The smear, whether justified or not, is a bit fishy, considering recent efforts by the government.
A procrastination in of itself
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Sure but when it's based (as in this instance) purely of anti-Israel actions it becomes a case of the boy who cried wolf. Wow, that's disturbing... Israel is actually approaching boy who cried wolf territory...
edited 5th Feb '15 2:13:00 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Speaking of neo-Nazis, Marine Le Pen of National Front projected to lead first round of the 2017 French election.
I know this is two years off, and that Le Pen is not going to win the runoff, but this is a somewhat worrying development.
V
Not the only one, from an American perspective. From the latest issue of The Economist — Ami Go Home: Anti-Americanism, always strong on the German left, is growing on the right
This new mood may even cloud Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Washington next week (see article). It affects everything from the West’s response to terrorism and Russian bullying to free-trade talks between America and the European Union, now in their eighth round.
Anti-Americanism has long been endemic in Germany. In West Germany in the cold war, it was found mainly on the left. The right saw America as a protector against communism and a post-war mentor in democracy. Yet even conservative West Germans combined love for things cowboy with disdain for an American way of life they saw as uncultured. East Germans were anti-American and pro-Russian as a matter of policy. Even today, with that ideological kinship gone, “a crude mixture of anti-Americanism and a bizarre romanticisation of Russo-German affinities” persists, says Heinrich August Winkler, a historian with an interest in Germany’s ambivalent integration into the West.
In theory reunification in 1990 anchored all of Germany firmly in the West, as defined by NATO, the European Union and shared values. And yet some old leftist anti-Americanism survived. Its political home became Die Linke (The Left), a party that descends from the communists of East Germany and has picked up a few western radicals. In a softer form, it persists among Social Democrats and Greens.
The newer element is anti-Americanism on the right. Once confined to the loony fringes of, say, Bavaria’s CSU, the conservative sister party to Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats, it has leapt beyond the CSU’s beer tents to a young ultraconservative party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). AfD started life as an anti-euro party but it has now become anti-immigrant and anti-American as well.
Mrs Merkel, like Mr Gauck, is a former East German who is pro-American by inclination. But America’s spy agencies have not helped relations by tapping her phone, as well as countless other electronic communications of ordinary Germans, as Edward Snowden revealed. Germans see this as a violation of sovereignty and feel betrayed by their ally. They also object to other American extraterritorial forays, such as checking airline passengers on German soil. All this has “created a toxic mistrust and fuelled anti-Americanism in Germany,” says Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Bundestag’s foreign-affairs committee.
Such mistrust now threatens the transatlantic free-trade deal. Most EU citizens back it. But support is lowest (at only 39%) in Germany and Austria, says one recent poll. In Germany the controversy has become both hysterical and illogical. Thus Germans worry about planned tribunals to arbitrate between companies and governments, even though these have been part of most other EU trade deals. “If this were an agreement with any other country, it would not have such a big place in the public debate,” argues Mr Röttgen. Increasingly, that is true of anything Germany and America try to do together.
edited 6th Feb '15 3:23:15 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
To be fair, Erfurt is in East Germany, so even the right ones there are more Russia leaning than elsewhere. Thankfully PEGIDA and its ilk are finally declining as it looks.
Now only the AFD must burn...
edited 6th Feb '15 3:37:01 AM by 3of4
"You can reply to this Message!"
Yes, the current government is handing them the 2017 election on a silver platter. Everyone, from left and right wings alike, are disillusioned with the "UMPS", and the far-right always had better scores in the Fifth Republic than the far left (being able to unite and present one unique presidential candidate is a big plus).
The "nouveau 21 avril" will happen.
Putain, sept ans...
edited 6th Feb '15 11:32:08 AM by Medinoc
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
So at the very least, France is going fascist-lite? Lovely. A few other countries have worryingly powerful parties of that flavor as well.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
V
And if I'm not mistaken, that situation is happening in least one country in Scandinavia?
United Earth
The Front National almost won these elections.
We're fucked.
People actually listen to those guys.
Whoever's actually in charge of the UMPS, do they think this is also part of the plan? Have they learned nothing from the thirties?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Anyone who learned anything from that time is very old or very dead. History books and word of mouth can only do so much unfortunately. Nothing beats personal experience....
Serious question: What the fuck is happening to Europe's socialists? These guys are elected on redistributive leftist platforms, then sit down to govern as center-right parties. Syriza is so far the only exception (though Pandemos and Five Star are looking like they might follow Syriza's lead instead of the UMPS), and they haven't held power for a month yet.
Krugman theorizes that these elected officials are actually angling for posts in the private sector and the Eurocracy, so they don't actually care about re-election. That simply doesn't make sense for France, though.
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
It's more likely that they're having to compromise on economic policy because the general direction of economic policy in Europe has been dragged so far right by Merkel and her buddies. A socialist government in an EU country would get pressure from the rest of the EU to follow the plan that's been set out for everybody by the right.
We should also remember that there was a swing to the right in a series of European elections recently, and there hasn't really been a swing back to the left across the board yet. I'm hopeful about this year, though - after Greece we'll also have elections in Estonia and Finland perhaps leading the way (by sustaining Greece's momentum) for elections in Portugal and the UK. Hopefully there'll be victories for the left so that we can start making decisions about economy.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Don't expect it to happen in Estonia.
@Ramidel: why wouldn't it make sense? The current and previous managing directors of the IMF are former French ministers of finance (Strauss-Kahn affiliated with the PS and Lagarde with the UMP).
Considering SK's and Lagarde's reputations nowadays, things aren't bright in that part of politics.
Podemos, not Pandemos ('Podemos' basically means 'We can' - no, it does not have anything to do with Obama's slogan).
edited 10th Feb '15 6:44:39 AM by Quag15
No one talks about Lagarde in France these days.
Fair enough. Still, her reputation is a bit tarnished.
Well, there's a surprise. So if the PS is becoming a farm team for EU institutions too, then yeah, France is doomed.
@Best Of: You'd think France would be able to tell Germany to tend to their own garden, though. If kicking Greece out of the eurozone is problematic, France's response to any troika efforts in that direction should be something along the lines of contemptuous laughter.
Except France benefits by having Germany call the shots, politically. Maybe not to the common man, but certainly among the elites.
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
Remember that France was one of the countries that had trouble getting through the 2009 recession. They would have lost some influence and credibility for that.
edited 10th Feb '15 10:32:25 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
The PS has been socialist In Name Only for some time (which is why I've never voted for them in the first turn of an election). They are still pretending (more like Insistent Terminology than anything else), but their policies are clearly the same as (if not worse than) those of the UMP (which, in turn, are getting closer to the FN's ideas).
Crossposting from the Russia thread:
Europe cries havoc, and lets slip the bureaucrats of war.
Brussels is reopening a court case against Gazprom, nixing plans for the South Stream pipeline, and working to establish an EU-wide energy union.
In other words, the EU is fighting Russia's expansion in Ukraine with a gray-suited army armed with red tape. Well done playing to your strengths.
Shameful Display
So how fascist are the national front exactly. Are they far right just by European standards, i.e wanting to cut welfare, or Neo Nazi's?
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
Anti-semitism isn't quite as thin a charge as you might think - some SYRIZA-ites have an uncomfortably close relationship
with some really nasty Russian neo-Nazis.
Schild und Schwert der Partei