Elections in various countries

[Raphael]

Does anyone know enough about the situation in Ireland to make an educated guess about how big the risk is that the far right actually gets somewhere in the next Irish election?

Post EU-election update: The Irish part of the EU parliamentary election resulted in one member of the right-wing Independent Ireland party getting elected to the EU Parliament. The election used multi-member constituency STV; the guy in question, Ciaran Mullooly, got elected in the fife-seat constituency of Midlands North-West on the 21st count, without meeting the quota.

The local elections saw some anti-immigration candidates elected, but I'm not sure how many.

[xxx]

Why is their being Muslim salient to you? In America, Muslims are not especially poor immigrants. Many of them have higher median household income than the national average. Indians are the richest immigrants in the US, but they are a poor minority in Malaysia.

I'm not talking about Muslims,
but about migrants
who are so poor that they emigrate...

Very good, you have expressed the core of this insanity. "The poor are poor because the poor poor at them" is nonsense because the working poor are the source of all social goods. By contrast, the rich consume more than they produce. Capitalism cannot support wealthy classes without poor classes. Money is not real. There is no substance called "wealth" that rich people have. Depending on how the poor choose to resist working for the rich, they would either starve or be beaten up by the police. That's capitalism. The system is built on exploitation from bottom up. One reason people keep forgetting this is that relational systems are apparently not as intuitive as Platonic ideas. People think that because poor people look scrappy, they are vectors exuding a Platonic essence of poverty. However, a sane person who thinks for 2 seconds about who does the actual work will remember that that's not how reality works. If anything, the idea that the rich, despite their glossy sheen, are the vectors of poverty is closer to the truth (though this whole approach is sloppy thinking).

no, i just talking about the increase of the number of poor by immigration...

they are the victims of decolonization,
forced to leave their country
and live in a sub-proletariat abroad

As opposed to what, living as the gloriously colonized?

yes, develop the country in partnership with local authorities
rather than exploiting it by putting puppet despot in charge
and forcing its population onto the roads in order to survive...

where, with the same logic,
the poorest nationals are asked to share
and the middle classes to make sacrifices
to increase the foreign assets of an oligarchy
promoting this internationalism...

The Muslims you are talking about are also among the weakest citizens of your country. Why do they not count?

the leftwing has tipped over into essentialism and sentimentalism for elections
and internationalist business for its wallet...

the left wing, after having encouraged colonialism, encourages decolonialism,
replaces the export of its ideals with the import of misery,
and in the process promotes the accumulation of wealth
plundered in decolonized countries,
in this modern triangular trade...

Which left supported colonialism?

it's historical,

Lenin was calling colonialism "imperialism" more than a century ago.

yes the heir to the Czarist empire,
and father of the USSR empire,
whose grandson Putin is still entangled in his imperialist wars,
is credible on this subject...

Are you sure? https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/u- ... battalion/

American foreign policy has always been cynical like policy of More's Utopia...

[Ares Land]

Doomscrolling reports!

Okay, things are getting back to normal as leftists have turned to fight their natural enemy, other leftists.
Not to bore people with the excruciating debates, there are disputes over a number of consistuencies. They're not terribly important (they're all safe seats for the left, which is why they're so viciously fought for) but the media were busy over this all weekend.
The upside of the whole sorry mess is that it's clear that nobody really wants Mélenchon around anymore.
Oh, former president Hollande is a Front Populaire candidate.
There have been demonstrations against the far right, but I found them pretty anticlimatic.

Macron's been pretty unsufferable lately. It's not pleasant when a narcissist doesn't get his way. It seems clear that the strategy of the presidential camp is to claim that they're the only sane people and that both the left-wing and the RN are equally dangerous.

All in all, I'm guessing we're headed either for a RN assembly and government, or complete chaos with no majority at all and no new elections possible for a year. Yeah!
Most people on the left are doing what they can... But our billionaire-funded media is not eager to see the left wing, plus the voters are eager for blood now I think. There's some sort of collective madness that has taken over.

[Raphael]

Sorry to hear that, Ares Land.

[WeepingElf]

I guess that in a lot of constituencies, there will be a run-off between FP and RN - let's hope the FP wins most of these.

[xxx]

two-round elections to elect local representatives are difficult to predict,
but the notoriety of MPs has been reduced by the ban on multiple mandates,
which encourages off-the-ground candidates...

if we add pre-election alliances,
which consist in representing only one candidate per constituency,
and thus deciding without a vote the weight of each party in the alliance,
then in both alliances on the rightwing,
but also surprisingly on the leftwing,
the extremes dominate...

so the choice of representation will be
between plebisciting Macron nobody wants,
or 2 extremist parties...
between charybdis and scylla
I don't know which is worse......

[Ares Land]

I guess that in a lot of constituencies, there will be a run-off between FP and RN - let's hope the FP wins most of these.

Yes... The problem is, given a choice between RN and a left-wing party, right-wing voters, or even more centrist types prefer the far right.
People come up with various excuses but that's the end result.

xxx's describing it as 'far left' or 'extremist' is pretty typical, I'm afraid.

That's why I'm ultimately rather pessimistic. But, that's democracy for you: the majority would rather go for, well not fascism, but a clownish parody of it rather than even a modest attempt at redistributing wealth, or addressing environmental issues, so I'll guess we'll have to live with that. Other happy thoughts: except the RN to hang there for years. We're looking at ten to twenty years of RN 'governments.' Also, fascism (or second-rate fascism) is contagious: I expect most of Europe to follow suit.

In other words: this is 1933, but this time as farce.

[bradrn]

The upside of the whole sorry mess is that it's clear that nobody really wants Mélenchon around anymore.

Precisely what happened here? I’ve been trying to follow the news but my French is still too poor to understand it properly. (The other day I saw something about him saying ‘I won’t be PM if people don’t want me’, but I couldn’t understand the significance of it.)

[xxx]

no one can,
melanchon is in purge mode within his party,
to get rid of any opponents
who wouldn't want him as prime minister,
he'll be left with the two self-proclaimed Léon Blum,
and himself...
a marxist farce ...

[Ares Land]

The upside of the whole sorry mess is that it's clear that nobody really wants Mélenchon around anymore.

Precisely what happened here? I’ve been trying to follow the news but my French is still too poor to understand it properly. (The other day I saw something about him saying ‘I won’t be PM if people don’t want me’, but I couldn’t understand the significance of it.)

Four LFI MPs (well, ex-MPs as of last Sunday ) weren't nominated as candidates. This is often analyzed as Mélenchon 'punishing', or more darkly, 'purging' LFI cadres he didn't like.
For what it's worth, I don't believe in some dark Stalinian purge. I think it's just a case of leftists fighting other leftists (insert relevant scene from Life of Brian here). And the disputed consistuences are extremely safe left-wing seats.

Be that as it may,now is not the right time, nobody can stand Mélenchon anymore and he's seriously hurting the left's chances, which aren't great to begin with.

[bradrn]

he'll be left with the two self-proclaimed Léon Blum,

And this is meant to be a reference to… what, exactly?

Four LFI MPs (well, ex-MPs as of last Sunday ) weren't nominated as candidates. This is often analyzed as Mélenchon 'punishing', or more darkly, 'purging' LFI cadres he didn't like.
For what it's worth, I don't believe in some dark Stalinian purge. I think it's just a case of leftists fighting other leftists (insert relevant scene from Life of Brian here). And the disputed consistuences are extremely safe left-wing seats.

I see. It would be nice if they could stop infighting, wouldn’t it…

[Ares Land]

I see. It would be nice if they could stop infighting, wouldn’t it…

Tell me about it. Though there is an unprecedented level of unity(*); this is way more than anyone expected -- and there are no serious consequences, so this is all still in the voters' hands.



(*) The usual level of infighting is truly something insane. If you can locate any member of a left-wing party, they'll tell you all about incredible, irreconcilable differences, but the truth is since 2016 it's been usual to have three or four left-wing candidates/lists with almost the same damn electoral platform.

[alice]

(*) The usual level of infighting is truly something insane. If you can locate any member of a left-wing party, they'll tell you all about incredible, irreconcilable differences, but the truth is since 2016 it's been usual to have three or four left-wing candidates/lists with almost the same damn electoral platform.

You've heard of the People's Front of Judaea, I take it?

[bradrn]

(*) The usual level of infighting is truly something insane. If you can locate any member of a left-wing party, they'll tell you all about incredible, irreconcilable differences, but the truth is since 2016 it's been usual to have three or four left-wing candidates/lists with almost the same damn electoral platform.

You've heard of the People's Front of Judaea, I take it?

Splitter!

(Also, aargh, you beat me to it…)

[xxx]

he'll be left with the two self-proclaimed Léon Blum,

And this is meant to be a reference to… what, exactly?

the man of steel's bodyguard...

[bradrn]

This image doesn’t work for me.