Grand Coalitions are always problematic in parliamentarian systems, and this leaves the role of âloyalâ opposition to the extremists.
The EU was put in place to prevent war between European nations. To the extend that populists target the EU, and spend time and energy on dismantling its institutions it still fulfills its core function. It absorbs the extremists destructive energies and prevents them from doing the worst.
Thanks for this, Iâve never quite gotten a handle on parliamentary style governments.
Thank you, John Judis, for an informative and important article about politics beyond our borders. If only the incoming president and his administration had the same interest in our interconnected world. Or in anything beyond their own personal benefit.
Love your stuff John, but this sentence is really problematic: âThe migrants committed some very high-profile crimes, including a gang rape.â
That really should read âa migrantâ or âseveral migrantsâ. The way youâve written it inadvertently reinforces the racism of the right wingersâŠ
The confusion of the left on the changes in Europe continue to amuse me. The right-wing ascendancy is SOLELY due to the globalist nonsense of the Eurocrats, and to the insanity of the welcome given to the invaders. They are not migrants, they are invaders. When Merkel opened the door and ended any figment of checking on the invaders, she created the conditions for the ascendancy of the right. Much as the Democrats in the US created Trump by pimping for illegals here.
And as to the crimes and other issues, these are pervasive and very common. Last New Years Eve in Koln, last week in Freiberg (young woman raped and murdered), rapes of children, rapes of young boys. In many places, women cannot walk around after dark any more. Sweden is in a rape crisis situation due to invaders from Afghanistan and Iraq. Italy is in particular under siege, and it is getting worse, since no one in the EU is any longer stupid enough to resettle the invaders. Unlike the nonsense of other commenters, it is clearly NOT racist to call a spade a spade - the invaders are committing multiple sex crimes, and in many European countries, the police and others are forbidden to acknowledge this dreadful situation.
Continue the globalist nonsense of helping the invaders, and help the right to triumph.
âThe police claimed that there were ârelatively few crimes and arrests considering the number of participantsâ. Internal reports told a different story. The police were shocked enough by the harassment to try to come up with a strategy to handle the groups of molesters at the festival â a strategy that was evidently unsuccessful. The trouble was that they were trying to deal with a problem but would not speak its name. As Peter Ă gren, police chief in central Stockholm, put it: âSometimes we do not dare to say how things really are because we believe it will play into the hands of the Sweden Democrats.â As we now know, police officers in Stockholm are instructed not to reveal the ethnicity or nationality of any suspects lest they be accused of racism.â
Police are not allowed to actually state what is going on - sex attacks by invaders from Africa and Syria and Iraq are common.
Oh yes, I agree about the problem with the âinvadersâ, not sure I like that term, but ok for sake of this reply. Muslim men coming into these countries seeing women with freedom to move about and wearing mini skirts, etc., must be shocking to the back ass customs they grew up with. I can see where this is a big, big problem. Probably a fair amount of PTSD with the refugees as well. I donât know how theyâre going to deal with that and Swedenâs response is not very wise.
As a woman, if it were up to me Iâd be so damn hard core on these men that Iâd make Genghis Khan look mild, politics be damned. The rapists would wish they were never even born.
The term used for classes of people is important. These invaders are pretending to be refugees. They are not refugees. If you go from Syria to Turkey, you arrive as a refugee. When you leave Turkey, you are not a refugee. You are an economic migrant at best.
I use the term âinvaderâ because the impact of migrants depends on the numbers. If you have 1 migrant, you can deal with that person. 2, 3, 4, OK, again, you can deal with them.
But when you get 900,000 in a year in Germany, itâs an invasion. When you get 200,000 in a year in Italy, itâs an invasion. These people are there and it is a threat to the locals. Iâve gotten very tired of the nonsense by the open-borders folks about these invaders. Europe is under threat. Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, they all want to live in Germany. Germans had better repel boarders, because the onslaught has just begun.
I think this article VASTLY undersells the danger of what almost happened in Austria (âmild-manneredâ or not, a Nazi is a Nazi) and across Europe. Whether grounded in some rational policy grievances or not, this is authoritarianism at best, and something much darker at worst (and I believe âworstâ is closer to the truth). It spilled over to our shores.
To label it âpopulism with a twistâ and try to implicitly say, hey, wouldnât this really be ripe for a Bernie or a Corbyn if people would just listenâŠis pissing in the wind.
imo - Judisâ analysis of right-wing populism sweeping western countries leaves out a key component: authoritarianism.
âLiberal democracy is facing its worst crisis since the 1930sâ
Do not be reassured by false hope. The center is not holding.
âExtremists Turn to a Leader to Protect Western Values: Vladimir Putinâ
Fascination with and, in many cases, adoration of Mr. Putin â or at least a distorted image of him â first took hold among far-right politicians in Europe, many of whom have since developed close relations with their brethren in the United States. Such ties across the Atlantic have helped spread the view of Mr. Putinâs Russia as an ideal model.
You comment is hard right wing BS and I am surprised to find it here on TPM.
This is just sad. A plebiscite is not an election. Come on people.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
Rather than trying to understand my comments, which are complicated and difficult for the simple-minded to follow, you might consider subscribing, instead of free-loading and bitching. TPM is not solely a refuge for special snowflake alt-left losers.
Yeah, Right. Whatever. Being called out on your uninformed BS obviously stings.
Glad to see you pay in though. I happen to be German and donât think I need to subsidies your media (although the US really needs more of it).
Faux populism ginned up by the billionaire class to keep everyone else at each otherâs throats instead of turning on them. Austria did very well; I donât think the Italian situation is the least bit comparable, since some of the âreformsâ would have repealed laws that were put in place to prevent the return of dictators to ItalyâŠ
Das ist aber sehr schon. Sind Sie mit PEGIDA?
Nein Danke, die können mir gestohlen bleiben. Obwohl meine Mutter wahrscheinlich mitmarschieren wĂŒrde. Der BDM war ihr nie ganz auszutreiben. Im Osten haben sie leider Demokratie nie gelernt.
This sounds like somebody who reads the Daily Express â and believes it. What about Hillaryâs alien baby and those three towers on Mars?
So, with Merkel looking for Term #4, what does the political landscape look like? It is 10 months to the election. Does anyone know at this time what is going on? Will the big issue be the migrant invasion wave?
I know nothing about the Italian referendum, and Iâm not an Austrian; but I followed the Austrian election closely because I have family there. Iâd say your characterization of the proceedings is of a piece with your twice-repeated failure to get Norbert Hoferâs name right.
By convention, the Austrian presidency is a âlargely ceremonial jobâ, but the Constitution invests the president with very great power which previous presidents have refrained from using. In the recent election both Hofer and Van der Bellen declared their intention to abrogate that tradition â Hofer to dissolve the National Council and install an FPĂ government even if the left and centrist parties won the ensuing election, and Van der Bellen to prevent the formation of an FPĂ government if Hoferâs party wins the legislative elections expected in late 2017 or early 2018.
Particularly misleading is the characterization of the FPĂ as âpretty much a standard anti-immigrant populist partyâ. Hofer and his lieutenants in the FPĂ and Parliament have made a point of displaying the blue cornflower (known as the âNaziblumeâ in Austria because it was the non-so-secret symbol of the underground Nazi Party before the Anschluss) â though four days before the election he asked them to knock it off because he feared it might be impairing his chances. Hofer associates openly with neo-Nazi businessmen, has attended a reunion of Wehrmacht and SS veterans praising them for their service to the country, expressed approval of Hitlerâs domestic policies, and given interviews to overtly Nazi periodicals. Along with FPĂ Chairman Heinz-Christian Strache and other FPĂ officials, Hofer is a member of the Burschenschaft, an avowedly pan-German organization whose charter explicitly denies that there is any such thing as an Austrian nation, meets annually at the Opera to bewail the German loss in World War 2 and mourn the deaths of major Nazi figures, and created a furor in 2013 with a proposal to exclude non-Aryans from membership, and to brand as âtraitorsâ those who opposed Adolf Hitler.
This is all about as far removed from âa standard anti-immigrant populist party without a pan-German ideologyâ as I can imagine (though Iâll certainly stipulate the âanti-immigrantâ bit). The FPĂ likes to describe itself in those terms, just as Trump likes to pose as the champion of the white working class; but nobody should believe them.