If you took a break from politics over the weekend, you may not have noticed the wind is at fascism’s back. Nowhere is this truer than France, where “the far-right National Rally, led by Euroskeptic and NATO-skeptic firebrands, completely crushed [President Emmanuel] Macron’s liberal Renaissance and all other contenders.” Macron was so rattled by the results in the European Union elections that he immediately dissolved France’s parliament and called for new elections, which seems risky considering the prevailing mood of the electorate. In Italy, fascist Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “more than doubled her seats in the EU parliament.” In Germany, the Alternative for Germany, an extreme right-wing party of latter-day Nazis, finished ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. Austria’s latter-day Nazis, the Freedom Party (FPO), came in first place.
Fascists run Hungary, Slovakia and Italy, and are part (or soon to be a part) of governing coalitions in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the American Republican Party is led by a fascist Russophile and that is just fine with many actors on Wall Street. Even many financial masters who shunned Trump after January 6th, 2021, have come around to support him in 2024.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise. Fascism’s power came from capitalists who were more concerned about the labor movement and communism than they were about civil and human rights or the rule of law. Their shortsightedness doomed them in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and enough time has passed that the lessons have been forgotten.
I don’t know if the Western World is going to be able to hold its shit together and protect all it has accomplished since the fall of the last global fascist movement.
This isn’t a normal election cycle, folks. This is about more than control of the Supreme Court or climate policy. It’s about more than reproductive rights and social welfare.
This election cycle is more of a do or die situation for our whole way of life, our rights, freedoms, system of justice, and representative democracies.
And the wind is in our faces.
We’ve been here before. More precisely, our grandparents and great grandparents had to fight this fight, and now their victories are in doubt due to our generation’s amnesia and apathy.
If your hair wasn’t on fire last week, after the events of the weekend, you have no excuse to be complacent.
I think this (hopefully) is just the Brexitication of the rest of the EU. When still in the EU, Britain would routinely elect UKIP members to the European Parliament, but not to their own Parliament. This was a reflection of widespread Euroskepticism in Britain, but until Cameron launched the biggest own goal in recent political history with the Brexit referendum, it largely meant little for domestic politics.
The test will be the snap elections in France. If Le Pen wins a majority, then I’d be worried, but the real message so far is simply a LOT of people unhappy with incumbent parties everywhere. Modi’s declining numbers, the ANC losing a majority for the first time…people are vaguely pissed. That’s not great! But I don’t think the French are on the verge of electing fascists to control their legislature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ivBhmJVlnA