European Union elections 2014

[The Marquis de Leech]

Nazis don't, fascists can, or perhaps that should be, did. The Italian, Spanish and Argentinian versions were brutal and authoritarian, but not particularly racially obsessed.They even had a distinct corporatist economic policy.

Italian fascism was an incoherent mess that didn't actually stand for anything beyond power for power's sake (one rather suspects Mussolini made it up as he went along). Spain and Portugal were tricky, because the likes of Franco weren't genuinely fascist. They were extreme reactionaries, who carried with them reactionary distaste for mobilisation of the masses. The great cognitive dissonance of fascism in the Italian and German varieties was that it sought to mobilise the people (an Enlightenment idea) to attack Enlightenment projects. Franco and Salazar were more consistent there, since they believed traditional social orders must be upheld.

[Lummel]

This strikes me as interesting:

France's Front National leader Marine Le Pen will meet other far-right and eurosceptic leaders on Wednesday in an attempt to create a powerful bloc in the European parliament.

However, Le Pen ruled out joining forces with the extreme-right Golden Dawn in Greece, the Hungarian party Jobbik or Ataka in Bulgaria.

Having spent years trying to shake off the FN's reputation as a refuge for Nazi sympathisers – her father, the party's founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, once dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" – Le Pen said she did not envisage meeting newly elected German MEP Udo Voigt of the neo-Nazi NPD.

"There are a whole group of movements that, in my opinion, are interested in taking part in a large political force whose aim would be to prevent any new move towards European federalism," she told a press conference on Tuesday morning.

After Reuters reported that the FN was considering an alliance with certain extreme-right European groups, Le Pen issued an angry statement. "Following a serious error, Reuters suggested that I envisaged alliances with Jobbik and Golden Dawn. I have declared exactly the opposite...," she wrote. "Asked 'with whom will you not ally yourselves?', I replied: Jobbik, Ataka and Golden Dawn among others."

Le Pen requires the support of 25 MEPs from seven different countries to form a political group in the European parliament.

The success of the more extreme parties seems to be leading to further splintering and I suppose quite possibly the dissolution or radical rearrangement of some of the current right wing groupings. The British Conservatives are in the European Conservatives and Reformist Group and UKIP in Europe of Freedom and Democracy, I can't see either as being entirely happy at being in a grouping with Mme Le Pen, so that means another even further right grouping presumably taking some members from the existing not quite so far right groupings since she doesn't want to play with parties which explicitly deny the Holocaust.

[Happy Ent]

Italian fascism was …

and so on. Apparently, real existing communist regimes may not be used as examples of communism (they were too evil) and fascist regimes may not be used as examples of fascism (they were too good).

On the other hand, “appeal to Europe in the 1930s” seems to be valid. I tire of this.

I fail to grasp how anybody gets anything out of this kind of reasoning. Why do intelligent people like you, Roose, choose to take this obviously self-flattering route?

Why are you deluding yourself?

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

What differentiates fascists from other flavours of group opposition is that for fascists, hate-filled rhetoric is all they have.

I would definitely disagree with this opinion.

The Italian, Spanish and Argentinian versions were brutal and authoritarian, but not particularly racially obsessed.They even had a distinct corporatist economic policy.

Indeed. Although I would be careful with calling Franco regime fascist.

The great cognitive dissonance of fascism in the Italian and German varieties was that it sought to mobilise the people (an Enlightenment idea) to attack Enlightenment projects.

Problem is that ideas behind German national socialism, and Italian fascism was clearly taken from variety of Enlightement ideas, not reactionary ones. Futurism, corporationism, nationalism, statolatry, social darwinism, racism - that's all modern post-Enlightement ideas. So it was one kind of modern ideas attacking the other kind (and also reactionary ones).

[Rorshach]

and so on. Apparently, real existing communist regimes may not be used as examples of communism (they were too evil) and fascist regimes may not be used as examples of fascism (they were too good).

On the other hand, “appeal to Europe in the 1930s” seems to be valid. I tire of this.

I fail to grasp how anybody gets anything out of this kind of reasoning. Why do intelligent people like you, Roose, choose to take this obviously self-flattering route?

Why are you deluding yourself?

I would hazard a guess: communism exist (and existed) in a theoretical form before it was ever tried as a government. Thus, there is a theory behind it that is (or seems to be) unsullied by the practical experiments.

Fascism, on the other hand, doesn't have any such theoretical starting point. Instead, it's a grab-bag from diverse sources, executed differently.

That doesn't mean, to me, that communism is inherently better. The fact that it has never been done right indicates that doing it right is quite hard, if not impossible. I lean towards a thinking that people really aren't as collective as communism wants and needs us to be. The man in the street tends to look out for himself first, not his group, and leaders tend to seek power for its own sake as well as for doing good.

There's more to be said, but I'll leave it there - too tired to try to reason further.

[The Marquis de Leech]

and so on. Apparently, real existing communist regimes may not be used as examples of communism (they were too evil) and fascist regimes may not be used as examples of fascism (they were too good).

On the other hand, “appeal to Europe in the 1930s” seems to be valid. I tire of this.

I fail to grasp how anybody gets anything out of this kind of reasoning. Why do intelligent people like you, Roose, choose to take this obviously self-flattering route?

Why are you deluding yourself?

HE,

It is a matter of definitions. I don't consider Franco or Salazar fascist, just extremely conservative, so I exclude them from consideration. Hitler and Mussolini were, of course, fascist, though only the former had anything like an actual idea of what he wanted to achieve. So you've got one genocidal nutjob and one lesser nutjob for whom fascism was power for power's sake. This ties in with my earlier point that the only thing unifying fascism is hatred.

I also never at any point raised the issue of whether the Real Existing Socialist Regimes were/are truly Communist: I merely stated that Communists have a purpose outside crushing the bourgeoisie. I happen to think the RESR have very little in common with Communism as Marx and Engels described it in 1848, but that is really irrelevant to the question at hand, and thus a straw man on your part.

[Lyanna Stark]

I read Avpixlat pretty much every day. I don’t agree with your assessment at all.

0.o why on earth do you read Avpixlat every day? I mean, I have some masochistic tendencies occasionally (like Pottersues) but that sounds....pretty painful. Why do you do it? :(

[Happy Ent]

I find it informative and interesting. I suggest you do the same.

I read expo every day as well. (Which I find dumb.)

[Lykos]

HE, I can´t comment on the swedish sites, as I can´t red swedish well enough, but I often find the german Antifa publications dogmatic and boring.

With regard to the aims of the nationalist parties you seem to find worthy of discussion, I was reminded of Heiner Geißler from the german CDU, who represented conservative values.

Thank you. Exactly. For instance, the Sweden Democrats (that I can see many problems with) are specifically nationalistic in much the same way that the United States are nationalistic. One of their core concepts is open Swedishness, which is ethnically inclusive but requires fidelity to Swedish values. (In this point they radically differ from all other Swedish parties.)

Conceptually, the Sweden Democrats aim to replace the cohesive function of homogenuous ethnicity with nationalism. It is argued that the welfare state, which requires broad acceptance of rather sever economic redistribution, requires some mechanism of social cohesion to be accepted by the population. The very homogenous, tiny Scandinavian countries successfully implemented the welfare state in the latter half of the 20th century. The stability of this model is severely challenged by multiculturalism. The Sweden Democrats propose to solve this by nationalism. This makes them explicitly nationalist and non-racist. These ideas are largely orthogonal to the authoritarian–liberal axis; but if anything relevant can be said, SD is not fascist.

(To avoid an unproductive sidetrack: I can see fascist tendencies everywhere, including in SD. Or the Feminists. Or the Greens. Or the Social Democrats. I worry a lot about it. But pointing these things out about party X is not conductive to debate.)

Geißler joined Attac in 2007 and his reasons show why national seclusion and selfreliance are an impractical path in a globalised world.

In an interview (Die Zeit, Zuender) Geißler called an economical system

"in which Hedgfonds can work without controll, in which so called vulturefonds can generate huge profits at the expense of highly indebted african countries and the market value of companies is increased, the more employees are made "redundant" on account of rationalisation" in addition as "unsound, immoral and economically wrong."

Capitalism is, since it knows "no values besides supply and demand" just as wrong as communism. "The old germman social market economy" coul serve as an example for a compromise, but since the markets are globalised, the nation state cannot offer a solution anymore, in consequence politics needs to be internationlised. The impulses for this must come - instead of a centralism of nation states - from regional, substate levels; since "only they can convey a sense of home, only here people will find themselves represented." However the confidence of the population in the EU as supernational organisation has dropped, since it is exceedingly economy oriented.

It´s as if the phrase "think globally, act locally" has been turned on its head in our world of globalised capitalism. It works even better with the german "global denken, lokal handeln", which has been turned into trade globally, think locally.

I feel no need to delve any further into narrowminded nationalist arguementation though. If multiculturalism has failed, it´s not because of immigrants unwilling to comply to local social norms, but due to the inequality created by the global economic system that causes inhuman living conditions, that are the reason for migration and the pressure on the labourmarket that is created in the low-wage countries and not by the immigrants.

ETA: I hope the European council nominates someone different than Schulz or Juncker just to see the parliament reject that candidate. I want to see the european parliament in action. :devil:

[Opisthokont!]

ETA: I hope the European council nominates someone different than Schulz or Juncker just to see the parliament reject that candidate. I want to see the european parliament in action. :devil:

That would be silly of them.

I don't understand why they're moaning about the parliament putting forward their own candidates and expecting them to be appointed. If the rules say that the parliament has to approve the council's appointment for commission president, then clearly the intention is that the council should appoint someone that they think the parliament will approve of, which basically gives the parliament all the power over the appointment unless the council are fine with not having a president at all. It's no different from most national parliaments where the speaker formally selects the prime minister and the parliament votes to accept or reject ver - the speaker wouldn't complain about not getting to choose whomever ve wants.

[Lykos]

Opisthokont!, I guess moaning is part of the political process, but it looks as if Merkel will be "reasonable" and back Juncker. The reason why I´d like to see a conflict is that it would take away a bit of the taste of backroom mingling that Schulz declaring for Juncker has.

In my opinion democracy should be transparent and that means conflicts should be settled publically by the parties legitimised by the voters (i.e parliament and comission of elected heads of state), it doesn´t need to go smoothly, though there seems to be a widespread urge for "strong" leadership in europe. :dunno:

[Orcrist]

This strikes me as interesting:

The success of the more extreme parties seems to be leading to further splintering and I suppose quite possibly the dissolution or radical rearrangement of some of the current right wing groupings. The British Conservatives are in the European Conservatives and Reformist Group and UKIP in Europe of Freedom and Democracy, I can't see either as being entirely happy at being in a grouping with Mme Le Pen, so that means another even further right grouping presumably taking some members from the existing not quite so far right groupings since she doesn't want to play with parties which explicitly deny the Holocaust.

I think you are right about this, I saw Nigel Farage (who is the leader of UKIP) on TV the other day explicitly rule out any kind of grouping with the national front.

It actually makes perfect sense. Firstly Farage doesn't want to be associated with the NP, since in the UK they are seen ss being fascistic to a much greater extent than UKIP is. Also, UKIP is definitely a libertarian party when it comes to issues not related to Europe and immigration, whereas the NP are actually somewhat to the left on issues such as healthcare. Basically, fascism =/= far right, although they share some common ground in certain areas.So I suppose the two parties would not do well in an alliance.

It's kind of amusing actually, since Farage portrays himself as someone who is not afraid to talk about taboo subjects and is obviously very against political correctness, but when it comes to the NF he seems quite worried of being seen as a fascist or racist.

[Galactus]

, though only the former had anything like an actual idea of what he wanted to achieve.

I'd actually argue the reverse, Mussolini's fascism was muddled in practice, but there was actually some serious ideology there. Hitler's ideology is far less developed.

[The onion wight]

I would hazard a guess: communism exist (and existed) in a theoretical form before it was ever tried as a government. Thus, there is a theory behind it that is (or seems to be) unsullied by the practical experiments.

Fascism, on the other hand, doesn't have any such theoretical starting point. Instead, it's a grab-bag from diverse sources, executed differently.

That doesn't mean, to me, that communism is inherently better. The fact that it has never been done right indicates that doing it right is quite hard, if not impossible. I lean towards a thinking that people really aren't as collective as communism wants and needs us to be. The man in the street tends to look out for himself first, not his group, and leaders tend to seek power for its own sake as well as for doing good.

There's more to be said, but I'll leave it there - too tired to try to reason further.

Communism is a very broad term. Marxism was mostly made up by followers after the mans death, he certainly did not provide a comprehensive how to map on constructing a socialist utopia. It's amusing to listen to fellow travellers distance Marxism from the Soviet slave states by saying they did not adhere to Marxism.

[Lummel]

...It actually makes perfect sense. Firstly Farage doesn't want to be associated with the NP, since in the UK they are seen ss being fascistic to a much greater extent than UKIP is. Also, UKIP is definitely a libertarian party when it comes to issues not related to Europe and immigration, whereas the NP are actually somewhat to the left on issues such as healthcare...

I imagine the root cause is more of a clash of personalities than anything ideological. Farage seems to find it impossible to work with anyone as an equal partner which probably makes things a bit difficult too.

Their ideological differences probably wouldn't cause much of a problem, if any, to their collaborating in the European Parliament, since healthcare for instance is the province of the national governments and in any case the UKIP voting record is pretty poor.

[mormont]

Also, UKIP is definitely a libertarian party when it comes to issues not related to Europe and immigration, whereas the NP are actually somewhat to the left on issues such as healthcare.

Well... UKIP certainly has libertarians in it, but on the whole it is not a 'libertarian party'. For a start, no party that is fundamentally founded on opposition to immigration can really claim to be 'libertarian', since libertarian philosophy believes in free movement of both capital and labour. But even leaving that aside (since in practice many libertarian parties ignore this), the bulk of UKIP members and voters are very socially conservative. They have libertarian policies on some issues - drugs, smoking, fox-hunting - but these sit alongside very right-wing, anti-libertarian policies on law and order, prisons, defence, gender equality, gay rights, religious freedom for anyone except Christians... actually, that last is a clue to the party's 'libertarian' approach - basically, they adopt it as a justification for policies that allow rich straight white men to do whatever they like.

[The onion wight]

Well... UKIP certainly has libertarians in it, but on the whole it is not a 'libertarian party'. For a start, no party that is fundamentally founded on opposition to immigration can really claim to be 'libertarian', since libertarian philosophy believes in free movement of both capital and labour. But even leaving that aside (since in practice many libertarian parties ignore this), the bulk of UKIP members and voters are very socially conservative. They have libertarian policies on some issues - drugs, smoking, fox-hunting - but these sit alongside very right-wing, anti-libertarian policies on law and order, prisons, defence, gender equality, gay rights, religious freedom for anyone except Christians... actually, that last is a clue to the party's 'libertarian' approach - basically, they adopt it as a justification for policies that allow rich straight white men to do whatever they like.

Paleolibertarianism is increasingly the dominant intellectual force in right wing politics. I would put UKIP somewhere on that spectrum, they're definitely not the stoner Libbies who bother to post on here.

[Opisthokont!]

Looks like ECR (the group that the UK Conservative party are in) are trying to move from being the 'we're-not-racists-but' group to the 'yeah-we're-racists-so-what' group, leaving UKIP's EFD without any purpose. ECR has accepted the obvious racists Danish People's Party and the True Finns as members, one Tory MEP saying "There is a clear distinction that the left-wing media often fails to make between a party that wants to control immigration and one that seeks to demonise immigrants. The DPP is the former."

Just for contrast, here is the cover of an old campaign booklet from DPP from the website of the former party leader: http://www.piadf.dk/pictures_ed/largeclick_Danmark.jpg

And Beppe Grillo' Italian populist party has, in a weird display of schizophrenia, tried to join both EFD and Greens/EFA, the latter probably being the group with the most liberal immigration policies. It took G/EFA less than a couple of hours to publish a rejection.

The Sweden Democrats seem to be too racist even for EFD (Swedish link). Though Farage is probably likely to change his mind about that if he needs them in order to keep a group at all, since so many of his former buddies are leaving (the aforementioned Danish People's Party and the True Finns to ECR, Italian Lega Nord possibly to Front National's even more racist group if they manage to get enough members).

If most of these nutjobs marginalise themselves we might actually survive the next five years. Thank FSM for right-wing sectarianism.

But fuck the Tories for joining up with racists.

[Commodore]

Well... UKIP certainly has libertarians in it, but on the whole it is not a 'libertarian party'. For a start, no party that is fundamentally founded on opposition to immigration can really claim to be 'libertarian', since libertarian philosophy believes in free movement of both capital and labour.

In theory this might be true, but if you allow the latter, you lose the former.

[The Iceman of the North]

In theory this might be true, but if you allow the latter, you lose the former.

You lose free movement of capital if you allow free movement of people? How does that follow?