International Events Next-

[Erik of Hazelfield]

I think we tend to view all the right wing parties of Europe as similar, but they aren’t always. Some are mostly populists with an anti-immigrant touch, some are downright fascist, some are trying to destroy the democratic institutions while  others have no such tendencies. Also their party histories are different - the Swedish one, for instance, has a particularly nasty background (founded by Nazis in the 90s) while the Norwegian one was founded in the 70s and were against high taxes at the time. They also have vastly different party organisations and competence. I think the ones that have started as populist movements and have grown very fast have a higher probability of imploding after having gained power, but I can’t back this up with any concrete evidence. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Erik of Hazelfield
Spelling

[Fragile Bird]

What the hell happened in Dublin? Some guy stabbed 4 children, and he’s also been injured. Did the bystanders who grabbed him also stab him? Did he stab himself? A suicide attempt?

Reading between the lines (he was a naturalized citizen, which happened 20 years ago), was he, uh, from the Middle East? Is that why right-wing mobs rioted in central Dublin? The reports I’ve seen mention the mob was anti-immigration. Very circumspect, very careful language being used.

I hope all our boarders are okay, safe and nowhere near the riots.

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

What the hell happened in Dublin?

Far right extremists rioted after putting up bs on media.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/24/ireland-dublin-riots-stabbing/

Quote

 

.... People the police later described as far-right protesters disrupted the crime scene, chanting anti-immigrant slogans and took to the streets of Dublin, setting vehicles ablaze and clashing with police.

A Brazilian Deliveroo driver has spoken about intervening in the knife attack. Ciao Benicio told the Irish Times that the subsequent anti-immigration protests “[do not] make sense at all. … I’m an immigrant myself and I was the one who helped out.”

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that the unrest was “not who we are” and that those involved in the riots had “brought shame on Ireland.”

The rioters did not do what they did “out of any sense of patriotism, however warped; they did so because they are filled with hate,” he said. ....

.... Police blamed a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology” for the violence that broke out after a small group of anti-immigrant protesters arrived at the scene of the knife attack. ....

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

Sadly they're everywhere. The violent, bigoted, extremist minority. 

 

[Zorral]

This our MSM is right on for coverage, though the Netherland's election, well, not so much.  Not as entertaining video presumably as seeing extremist hooligan assholes being what they are with violence and fire.

[Darryk]

Far right making progress all over the place, scary times.

I know Netherland's political system is apparently good at preventing absolute power but it's scary that so many people voted for this psychopath.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Far right making progress all over the place, scary times.

I know Netherland's political system is apparently good at preventing absolute power but it's scary that so many people voted for this psychopath.

It's only going to get worse over the next few decades as so many people are expected to be displaced. This will trigger a massive rightwing backlash and the squishy people in the middle will likely side with them. 

[Denvek]

Wilders' path to being Dutch PM appears to have got harder, as the VVD (mainstream centre-right, party of the current PM, came third this time) have ruled out joining a PVV-led coalition.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67517742

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, Denvek said:

Wilders' path to being Dutch PM appears to have got harder, as the VVD (mainstream centre-right, party of the current PM, came third this time) have ruled out joining a PVV-led coalition.

I would say the opposite sadly.  The VVD has said it wouldn't join the next government but it wouldn't block it either.  So that makes it much more likely that the PVV will get the numbers it needs.  The NSC and BBB seem willing to go along with a VVD government.  It may not be a stable government but it will be a government with Wilders presumably as PM.

The political parties in the Netherlands can easily decide not to let VVD take power but it seems that enough parties are ok with it.  They have more in common with VVD than alternatives.

4 hours ago, Darryk said:

Far right making progress all over the place, scary times.

All times are scary.  While the Dutch news is very disappointing, we shouldn't forget the better results more recently in Poland or in Spain, where Vox did worse than expected or in Brazil last year.

That said, inflation has meant that mainstream parties in power are vulnerable.  And it is fair to say that the consequences of climate change will make us all very vulnerable.  So I wouldn't be too positive...

[Heartofice]

As always, the first action is just to blame this all on the far right, whilst never considering  what might be happening to enable the far right to gather support. Mostly we just see news stories about gullible thugs being taken in by social media, and we can satisfy ourselves into thinking if we just censor Tik Tok or something this will all go away.

But these events didn’t happen in a vacuum. The incident that caused the riot in Dublin was truly shocking, a man stabbing children is horrific.

The media have tried to downplay the attackers nationality, pointing to him being an Irish national for 20 years, and making sure to not mention his Algerian origins. It seems that he may well have been apprehended for knife offences only recently however, and many are suggesting he should not have been in the country at all. 
 

Plus this is just another horrible stabbing incident recently , there have been a few over the past year.

And this is in a backdrop of huge levels of immigration into Ireland over the past 20 years, where even Varadkar has said there is an issue. Layer that onto a housing crisis and policing issues and you get a hole for the far right to fill. 
 

But as is normal, and as is the general pattern, the issues of housing and immigration etc are downplayed and those complaining get labelled as bigots and racists. 
 

When that happens people are even more likely to turn to the far right, if it means something actually gets done. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by Heartofice

[Padraig]

52 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

As always, the first action is just to blame this all on the far right, whilst never considering  what might be happening to enable the far right to gather support.

Oh come on.

I can assure you that people are well aware of the housing crisis and that immigration is a major challenge also.  So no, I wouldn't be thanking a far right mob for raising awareness of them.

Making some sort of moral judgment regarding immigration because of the behaviour of one person (who we still know very little about if you ignore the mess that is social media) is as silly as focusing only on the other immigrant who helped save people's lives during the attack.

And actually, in Ireland, it is the left which have benefited from the perceived incompetence of the government in managing the housing crisis.  There is no significant far right party here, as of yet.

While Varadkar is the head of a centre-right party.  Par for the course for such parties to try to play to their right.

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

As always, the first action is just to blame this all on the far right, whilst never considering  what might be happening to enable the far right to gather support.

Ironic.

[Heartofice]

4 hours ago, Padraig said:

There is no significant far right party here, as of yet.

But there has been an increase in far right activity and marches recently right? 

 

4 hours ago, Padraig said:

I can assure you that people are well aware of the housing crisis and that immigration is a major challenge also.  So no, I wouldn't be thanking a far right mob for raising awareness of them.

 

And what are the major parties doing about immigration?

[Padraig]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

But there has been an increase in far right activity and marches recently right? 

Yes.  Nobody is immune from real life.

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

And what are the major parties doing about immigration?

Do you have a solution to share with us?

[Heartofice]

19 minutes ago, Padraig said:

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

 

Yes.  Nobody is immune from real life.

And why do you think there has been a rise in far right activity?

 

19 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Do you have a solution to share with us?

Less immigration? 

[Maltaran]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

 

Less immigration? 

That’s more of an aspiration than a solution.

[Padraig]

6 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Less immigration? 

Thanks for sharing that insight.

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, Padraig said:

Thanks for sharing that insight.

Ask a silly question and all that…

Edited November 26, 2023 by Heartofice

[Werthead]

The problem is that people don't seem to want immigration and they also don't seem to want to deal with the negative fallout from reducing immigration, the Conservatives in the UK and the Irish political parties least of all. So until they do, the issue will continue to percolate.

The overwhelming majority of immigration to the UK is from people attending UK universities and working in the NHS, which has massive shortfalls in staffing. To a lesser extent they are also recruiting for teachers from abroad, but that is less effective because the British teaching system is well-known to both be utter dogshit and pay horrendously, so that's not really working (my American friend currently working as a teacher in an Essex school is planning to do one year and move on, because conditions are unbearable). Reducing immigration is fine if we want to bankrupt our HE system (and foreign students are helping subsidise teaching for British students) or bankrupt the NHS or simply make it impossible to operate, which would kill a whole ton of people unnecessarily. Oddly nobody wants to do either of those things.

I remember during the whole Brexit debate it was repeatedly pointed out that European countries, and the UK in particular, were not geared to deal with the massive challenges of a declining population and a resultingly shrinking economy if immigration was to be blocked or even reduced significantly. If Brexiters had made arguments for whole new economic paradigms to square this circle, the situation could have been addressed. But they chose not to even engage with the question, I suspect because it's insurmountable. Under our current economic-political makeup, we require an expanding population to drive an expanding economy. Since British people are not having children for a variety of reasons (mostly the sheer cost and lack of housing), immigration is the only way of achieving that.

There is also the issue that one of the major drivers of immigration to the UK at the moment is increasing ties with India. Britain sees a geopolitical necessity in forming a strong alliance with India (to counterbalance China in Asia), the next major growing economy, and our current political leadership has personal and professional ties with India that makes halting immigration from that country politically non-viable. Many people don't care about that, of course, they have instead seen us leave the EU to stop immigration from mostly white, mostly Christian countries and replace them with mostly non-white, mostly non-Christian countries, which is even less to their liking, despite it being repeatedly pointed out this would be an inevitable consequence of undertaking Brexit without a total reconsideration of how our economy works, from the ground up.

To properly reduce immigration, political parties could propose to build immense numbers of houses to drive down house prices (which they won't, as too many voters benefit from keeping demand and thus costs sky-high) so British people could afford to have a home and a family in a decently-sized property, make working in the NHS and care professions far more attractive than they are at the moment (so British people will apply and not instead get less-stressful office jobs for more money), dramatically improve the schools (to improve our academic output and produce more people of becoming doctors, nurses etc). But they're not really doing those things either, or if they are, just as an aspiration without a concrete plan of how to do it.

[Heartofice]

I agree the 'system' is set up in such a way that countries are dependent on large scale immigration to maintain their current standards. The flipside of that of course is that immigration is the band aid / quick fix solution to the real problems. Governments are either unwilling or unable to actually take measures to create a society that isn't reliant on importing hundreds of thousands of people a year, and there is no real incentive to make any hard decisions because there is always the easy solution of just opening the immigration tap and bringing people in.

Why do anything about chronically low wages or poor working conditions when you can just bring in people from abroad who will be much more grateful and less demanding. Why look at long term solutions when you can find one now and look like you did your job?

Apparently while there might be a handful of people in the UK government who want to actually reduce immigration, and the overwhelming majority of government departments are trying to increase numbers. This is in direct contradiction to what most voters are asking for. 
 

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The overwhelming majority of immigration to the UK is from people attending UK universities and working in the NHS, which has massive shortfalls in staffing.

It's worth pointing out that coming to the UK on a student VISA is a known method to get around immigration limits, and is often used to simply get into the country, before trying to find another method to stay long term or just disappear. So while a majority of Visas are for students, that number is not as clear cut as it seems.

https://news.sky.com/story/i-had-no-idea-how-life-would-be-inside-the-lives-of-those-who-overstay-their-visas-and-go-underground-12931042#:~:text=The most recent statistics available,visa expired in that period.

 

Quote

The government is allowing people to come as students - they want more people to come as skilled workers but people are misusing the system to enter the UK.

"Some people are coming knowing they can overstay and no one can do anything."

 

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

To properly reduce immigration, political parties could propose to build immense numbers of houses to drive down house prices (which they won't, as too many voters benefit from keeping demand and thus costs sky-high) so British people could afford to have a home and a family in a decently-sized property, make working in the NHS and care professions far more attractive than they are at the moment (so British people will apply and not instead get less-stressful office jobs for more money), dramatically improve the schools (to improve our academic output and produce more people of becoming doctors, nurses etc). But they're not really doing those things either, or if they are, just as an aspiration without a concrete plan of how to do it.

On top of that encouraging mothers to be able to get back into work, shared leave, far highers subsidies for nurseries. The problem with housing is not just one of supply either, it's hard to create enough supply when an entire monetary system creates housing that is one of the only real sources of wealth.

Another point is that Brexit was a shock to the system, because the current system wasn't working for people. There may need to be more shocks to the system in order to create real change, because governments are motivated to just keep doing the same thing repeatedly.