Elections in various countries

[xxx]

In a sense, it's an improvement on those, like Didier Raoult, who go out of their domain of expertise and find themselves out of their depth.

yeah, well, Raoult is not out of his depth when it comes to epidemiology,
and all he did was relay the results of Chinese studies...
unfortunately, like some scientists, particularly in the medical sphere,
he has an ego incompatible with systematic scientific fallibility,
and with the established order...

[MacAnDàil]

In a sense, it's an improvement on those, like Didier Raoult, who go out of their domain of expertise and find themselves out of their depth.

yeah, well, Raoult is not out of his depth when it comes to epidemiology,
and all he did was relay the results of Chinese studies...
unfortunately, like some scientists, particularly in the medical sphere,
he has an ego incompatible with systematic scientific fallibility,
and with the established order...

He had several dozen articles retracted and spouted misinformation on climatology. And yes for the ego.

[rotting bones]

Given the radical secularism of the Bengali intellectual climate, I'm curious what a Bangladesh taken over by Islamists would look like. Even Bengali religious leaders have been preaching against tradition for centuries. Of course, Islamists do exist there and will try to take it over, but Pakistan has already failed once. I guess we'll find out how powerful they really are as a global force.

If the Islamists succeed, I'm guessing it will take the form of a military junta and freedom of expression will be abolished. I'm not sure what economic base will give them so much power. IIRC Burma has a relatively low population, and the regime was supported by forcing the poor to work in mines. By contrast, Bangladeshis are industrial workers.

[keenir]

Given the radical secularism of the Bengali intellectual climate, I'm curious what a Bangladesh taken over by Islamists would look like. Even Bengali religious leaders have been preaching against tradition for centuries. Of course, Islamists do exist there and will try to take it over,

So, if they exist, they must try to take over wherever they live? Don't they run into the obstacle that, as you say, "Bengali religious leaders have been preaching against tradition for centuries" ?

I realize that the Shah of Iran was terrified of the power of Tudeh (Communists), and so said he preferred an Islamist rule of his country...but that doesn't mean every country will become Islamist.

[Ares Land]

Oh, in French election news... Still no government or prime minister.

Macron is basically trying to find a candidate that suits him. Such move is widely regarded as, if not quite dictatorial, at least authoritarian/illiberal.

Just to be contrarian, I'd add it's not just Macron trying to hold on to power. There's no clear mechanism in the French constitution for coalition building across the political spectrum; the constitution was designed for an authoritarian president.

There's a certain amount of restlessness which feels a little silly. Belgium or Germany have taken far longer to build a coalition and a government in the past, in similar circumstances -- both countries are obviously doing fine!


Oh, speaking of Germany -- and looking at the AFD recent electoral success in Thuringia; my understanding is that there are provisions in the German constitution aiming at preventing the far right from taking power. Can anything be conceivably done against the AFD?

[bradrn]

Oh, in French election news... Still no government or prime minister.

Wait, so when Le Parisien (or the news site of your choice) talks about the futur Premier ministre, they do literally mean that the PM still hasn’t been chosen? How about that…

(Not that I care hugely about French politics now that I’m out of the country, but reading the news is good for language practice.)

[Ares Land]

Oh, in French election news... Still no government or prime minister.

Wait, so when Le Parisien (or the news site of your choice) talks about the futur Premier ministre, they do literally mean that the PM still hasn’t been chosen? How about that…

(Not that I care hugely about French politics now that I’m out of the country, but reading the news is good for language practice.)

Yes, this is literal! No new PM, beyond various rumors that are probably 'leaked' to the media by the president's office.

I'm not surprised, really. None of the people involved ever had to compromise in their political life, and the political debate is more polarized than ever.
(Some of the polarization was good and a natural move, especially on the left; I remember the candidates for the 2007 election were more or less interchangeable. But we've probably gone a little too far. Just hint that you may have to occasionally talk to, or even work with a few centrists, and you're either Pinochet or Javier Milei to some people.)

[WeepingElf]

Oh, speaking of Germany -- and looking at the AFD recent electoral success in Thuringia; my understanding is that there are provisions in the German constitution aiming at preventing the far right from taking power. Can anything be conceivably done against the AFD?

It is difficult. The constitution allows to ban parties that aim at overthrowing democracy, but the hurdles are very high - it has been tried four times, and succeeded only twice (the two successful bans were both in the 1950s: against the neo-Nazi Sozialistische Reichspartei in 1952 and against the Communist Party in 1956; the two failed attempts were in 2001 and 2013, both against the same party, the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, with the second attempt basically failing due to "insignificance" - the party was essentially bankrupt). Also, banning a party of course doesn't mean that the threat goes away: nobody can stop the extremists from founding yet another party, and there are already several minor far-right parties that would gladly take over the AfD electorate in case the AfD was banned. But as a last-ditch defense, article 20.4 provides the right to resistance if other measures fail.

Thus, the discussion among the democratic parties is not as much about how to ban the AfD but how to win back their voters (which is indeed the better strategy, I think). I think there are several factors in play here. One is frustration about the ruling coalition, which indeed performs badly, but that alone wouldn't explain it, as there is a viable democratic alternative, namely the center-right CDU/CSU. Many people apparently yearn back to a past when things weren't so complicated, when there were no gay marriages, no gender ambiguities, no mosques in German towns and nobody talked about such things as climate change (the AfD denies the existence of the climate crisis). And many feel that democracy was complicated: you have to worry about which party to vote, a concern that an authoritarian government would take from the people.

Fortunately, no democratic party has the slightest inclination to form a coalition with the AfD. Not even that cranky left-populist new formation BSW (a breakaway from The Left). But with the AfD so strong, building viable coalition governments will be difficult.

[Raphael]

I don't have much to add to WeepingElf's excellent post, except that, while it might be legally possible to ban a party that is represented in all the state legislatures, it's probably politically impossible.

[Raphael]

I'm not surprised, really. None of the people involved ever had to compromise in their political life, and the political debate is more polarized than ever.

Wow. That explains a lot.

[WeepingElf]

I don't have much to add to WeepingElf's excellent post, except that, while it might be legally possible to ban a party that is represented in all the state legislatures, it's probably politically impossible.

And, as I said, it wouldn't really help much, as there are enough other far-right parties just waiting to take over what the banned party would leave behind. All it effects would be that the financial resources of the banned party would be turned in. The 1952 ban of the SRP did not end neo-Nazism, nor did the 1956 ban of the KPD end Communism in West Germany. A new neo-Nazi party (the NPD) and a new Communist party (the DKP) were founded in the 1960s. Also, it may backfire: a failed ban attempt like the two attempts to ban the NPD could be interpreted as a "proof" that the party in question was legitimate.

[Raphael]

I have a political question for Ares Land, only very tangentially related to the current discussion:

Years ago, you posted a post in response to a question about the meaning of terms like "left" and "right" in politics, in which you explained what you saw as the basic difference between the political Left and the political Right. That post was, in my opinion, the best summary of that matter that I have ever seen, although it was only a few paragraphs long. Unfortunately, it later got deleted during one of the cleanups of the Board.

So, I wonder: could you try to re-write what you wrote back then?

[WeepingElf]

I am not Ares Land, but I think the simplest way to put it is that the Left is egalitarian and the Right is anti-egalitarian (or at least admissive of social inequality). Note that "egalitarian" doesn't necessarily mean "democratic" - an egalitarian society can be brutally totalitarian, just think of place like North Korea or the USSR, especially under Stalin.

[Raphael]

I am not Ares Land, but I think the simplest way to put it is that the Left is egalitarian and the Right is anti-egalitarian (or at least admissive of social inequality). Note that "egalitarian" doesn't necessarily mean "democratic" - an egalitarian society can be brutally totalitarian, just think of place like North Korea or the USSR, especially under Stalin.

Well, that is, frankly, not quite what I meant. Ares Land's point was a bit more subtle, and, IMO, a bit more accurate than that.

[Travis B.]

I am not Ares Land, but I think the simplest way to put it is that the Left is egalitarian and the Right is anti-egalitarian (or at least admissive of social inequality). Note that "egalitarian" doesn't necessarily mean "democratic" - an egalitarian society can be brutally totalitarian, just think of place like North Korea or the USSR, especially under Stalin.

Mind you that Stalinism is commonly associated with the establishment of an anti-egalitarian new class in the form of the Party membership and especially the nomenklatura.

[WeepingElf]

I am not Ares Land, but I think the simplest way to put it is that the Left is egalitarian and the Right is anti-egalitarian (or at least admissive of social inequality). Note that "egalitarian" doesn't necessarily mean "democratic" - an egalitarian society can be brutally totalitarian, just think of place like North Korea or the USSR, especially under Stalin.

Mind you that Stalinism is commonly associated with the establishment of an anti-egalitarian new class in the form of the Party membership and especially the nomenklatura.

Problems like this just show how ill-defined the terms "left" and "right" are

[Raphael]

Mind you that Stalinism is commonly associated with the establishment of an anti-egalitarian new class in the form of the Party membership and especially the nomenklatura.

Then again, while those groups, to some extent, did form a new ruling class under Stalin, they did not exactly have enviable lives, given that each individual member was always in danger of getting purged next.

Problems like this just show how ill-defined the terms "left" and "right" are

I don't really agree, and to make my point, I'll try to reconstruct Ares Land's old point from memory:

The basic idea is that the Right sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something "given" - depending on individual religious beliefs, provided by either Nature or God - while the Left sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something created by human beings, who might well have messed up, or made self-serving decisions.

Therefore, right-wingers tend to think that social institutions - except for those about which they know that they were created by left-wingers in the past - should be preserved, cherished, respected, and kept sacred, while left-wingers tend to think that social institutions should be at least questioned, and perhaps reformed or even overthrown.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that a distinction needs to be made between the libertarian left and the authoritarian left. Of course, this is a continuum rather than a firm demarcation. Note that when people speak of the "political spectrum" being like a "horseshoe", what they really speak of is the authoritarian left in many ways being similar to the right, which belies that the libertarian left does not generally behave in the same fashion.

[Travis B.]

I don't really agree, and to make my point, I'll try to reconstruct Ares Land's old point from memory:

The basic idea is that the Right sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something "given" - depending on individual religious beliefs, provided by either Nature or God - while the Left sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something created by human beings, who might well have messed up, or made self-serving decisions.

Therefore, right-wingers tend to think that social institutions - except for those about which they know that they were created by left-wingers in the past - should be preserved, cherished, respected, and kept sacred, while left-wingers tend to think that social institutions should be at least questioned, and perhaps reformed or even overthrown.

In general this is probably it, but one should consider the existence of revolutionary right-wing ideologies, e.g. fascism, which seek to create a New Order of one sort or another rather than uphold a traditional order.

[WeepingElf]

I don't really agree, and to make my point, I'll try to reconstruct Ares Land's old point from memory:

The basic idea is that the Right sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something "given" - depending on individual religious beliefs, provided by either Nature or God - while the Left sees society's traditions and traditional behaviors, including the traditional hierarchies and power structures, as something created by human beings, who might well have messed up, or made self-serving decisions.

Therefore, right-wingers tend to think that social institutions - except for those about which they know that they were created by left-wingers in the past - should be preserved, cherished, respected, and kept sacred, while left-wingers tend to think that social institutions should be at least questioned, and perhaps reformed or even overthrown.

In general this is probably it, but one should consider the existence of revolutionary right-wing ideologies, e.g. fascism, which seek to create a New Order of one sort or another rather than uphold a traditional order.

Yes. Though most revolutionary right-wing ideologies at least tend to glorify the past and claim to restore a lost ancient greatness. The Italian fascists liked to refer back to the greatness of the Roman Empire, while the Nazis glorified the Germanic conquests of the Völkerwanderung and Arminius's successful resistance against the Roman conquest of Germany.