Left-wing parties in France, Sweden, Italy, Finland, and now Spain have been facing electoral wipeouts, while conservative parties, such as Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, gain popularity. The Left’s obsession with demonising conservatives and its failure to address real issues means it only has itself to blame, argues Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator.
Nine months after Giorgia Meloni was elected Prime Minister – remember the hysterical warnings about her being Mussolini in heels – the only horror the Italian Left has experienced is electoral wipeout. At last weekend’s local elections, Meloni’s conservative Brothers of Italy party romped to victory in many towns that were once staunchly Socialist. As a jubilant Meloni crowed: “Strongholds [of the left] no longer exist.” At the same time Italians were endorsing Meloni, Spanish voters showed what they thought of the ruling Socialist Workers’ party in their local and religion elections. Not much. The big winners were the Popular party and Vox, prompting a rattled Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to call a snap general election. According to El Pais his Socialist party needs “a miracle to halt the conservative wave that has already swept through several European countries”.
Vox have in the past been compared to the Nazi party, though these days the Left sees Hitler and Mussolini on every street corner. Querying the wisdom of mass immigration is one short goosestep from fascism, as is sticking up for the traditional family structure or simply waving your country’s flag.
When Meloni was elected Prime Minister of Italy in September the news wasn’t well received by her French counterpart. One might have expected Elisabeth Borne – a Socialist by breeding before she jumped ship to Macro’s centrist party – to be the first on the phone to celebrate Girl Power. Instead Borne gave a masterclass in pomposity, declaring that Meloni better adhere to European ‘values’, or else.
Borne was on her high horse again on Sunday, using an interview to describe Marine Le Pen’s National Rally as the “heir to Pétain”, and warning against any “normalisation” of the party.
Borne’s reference to Marshal Philippe Pétain’s wartime Vichy government has infuriated Le Pen’s party, and even irritated Emmanuel Macron. During a Council of Ministers on Tuesday the president upbraided his Prime Minister by stating that “you won’t be able to make millions of French people who voted for the far Right believe that they are fascists”.
Such tactics might have worked in the 1990s, added the president, “but the fight against the far Right no longer involves moral arguments”.
Macron is correct. Had Borne, the daughter of a holocaust survivor, made her comments three decades earlier she would have been on firmer ground. When Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, founded the National Front in 1972 it contained some very unpleasant individuals, including the Vice-President, who served in the Milice, Vichy’s paramilitary wing, and the Treasurer, who fought for the French Charlemagne Division in the Waffen SS.
Then again, the Socialist party of the 1970s also contained some dubious characters, such as its leader, Francois Mitterrand. He worked for the Vichy regime in the early years of the war and, during his 14 years as President, he steadfastly refused to apologise for the complicity of France in deporting 74,100 Jews to concentration camps. The Vichy police chief who organised the deportation, Rene Bousquet, was a friend of Mitterrand after the war.
The Vichy period was a complex one for the Republic. As Julian Jackson wrote in France: The Dark Years 1940-1944: “The collaborationist world was not homogeneous – it contained pacifists and fascists, Socialists and Catholics… collaborationist politics was a vipers’ nest of hatreds.”
More to the point, that period is in in the past and it is best left alone by 21st Century politicians. The same is true in Italy; it’s the present that matters and Meloni’s popularity tells its own story.
Worth reading in full.
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It is misguided to think that this is about left or right.
What is observed is simply change.
In Britain in the next election the “left” will come sweeping in and it will have nothing to do with them being leftists, which they aren’t really, but about people being fed up with the Conservative Party.
Our system is a con. Andit exists precisely to create this sort of misdirection, the sense that people are choosing something.
The only thing they are chosing is “not this”, which happens to be almost exactly the same as what was there before.
But the media apparatus amplifies the minuscule differences and fools people into thinking there are substantial differences.
Oh, and if by any chance a party goes rogue and actually tries to do something differently the state and international bureaucracies and established powers put and end to it quickly.
Left and right.. what a joke.
Hear hear
Be leaderless.
Our political parties are meaningless because the underlying ‘government’ is the Civil Service and multi national corporations. The new power structures are alarming in that we have the large IT corporations in bed with the CCP. The large IT corporations must be looking at China as a growing market considering its 700 million (and growing) middle class. And then there is the loose alliance with Russia, China and the Islamic Fundamentalist countries. All of these, including the global corporations are, or behave as, autocracies. I can’t understand the behaviour of our Civil Service as they appear to do everything they can to undermine this country. Are they useful idiots or self serving bureaucrats?
‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings.’
George Orwell
‘You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.’
Thomas Sowell
Political Parties mean something, but not what they claim in totality. Many people probably understand this, and don’t bother to vote in local elections, perhaps. You’re right to observe that a lot of real world influence is with undemocratic organisations – corporate and state owned ones (which we tend to support via our financial deals with them).
If only there were a word to describe the above situation. Maybe even one that has been in use for a long time, yet is frequently misused, although the most accurate description is a melding and mutual co operation between the state and big business (often to the detriment, and resulting disenfranchisement of the electorate).
Leaving aside ‘the system’, name one political Party that stands for sovereignty of the individual and property rights, free market capitalism, unilateral free trade, supremacy of the Common Law, reduced government + reduced spending + reduced taxation by returning public services to the competitive private sector, end to the welfare State and slaying the NHS dinosaur, immediate repatriation of illegal immigrants.
The Internet has lead to policy by emotional appeal and it seems there has been an almost complete loss of understanding of the history and principles that are required to underpin a free and democratic society. I am not religious, but I note this decline has occurred in step with the rise of secular society. Upholding the principles of free speech, respect for private property and equality before the law, all of which are clearly no longer respected or understood by society as a whole requires upholding and respecting principles which extend beyond the person and the ego. I respect x owns y and will not attempt to vote his wealth into my pocket. I respect x is free to say y and, though I disagree, defend his right to say it. I respect x, who is labelled a far right extremist, has no more committed a breach of the peace than Extinction Rebellion and will uphold the law equally and fairly for all. Or I respect y anti-lockdown protesters have just as much right to protest as Just Stop Oil and will defend their right to protest.
All my life as an atheist I have believed it is possible and important to think beyond the ego and protect these principles. Depressingly the evidence seems to suggest, practically speaking, for most people (probably because most engage in emotion based reasoning), this seems not to be the case. Now I find myself as an atheist wishing for the resurrection of the Christian culture our now lost ancient democracy was based upon.
The power of corporations is really captured state power,. Otherwise, their only power comes from their ability to satisfy their customers.
Pfizer will try to influence governments to make everyone take their jabs if the state has the power to a. buy jabs (with our money) and b. force us to take them.
Without state power to wield they are left to persuade us that their jabs work which wouldn’t have gone well.
It’s all state power, ever more reliant on brute force.
Heritage,Reclaim and Reform do most of thise things, but they need to submerge their differences to achieve real power.
Political Poker————“I will go 2 billion on Onshore wind”. ———–“Ok I will see your 2 billion on Onshore wind and I will raise you 5 billion on North Sea gas and Stopping the boats”. ————-Voting gives the illusion of choice. Or as Mark Twain pointed out “Politicians and diapers need chaged often and for the same reason”
Meanwhile, here in the Anglosphere all major parties head as on the the far reaches of the radical left.
“‘but the fight against the far right no longer involves moral arguments.’” Since when has the word right always been gratuitously preceded by the word far?
I suspect this started at a joint BBC/Guardian editorial style conference about a decade ago.
Almost certainly. And remember people like the trolls ‘Adam Hill’ and ‘Yvonne Johnson’ on the Telegraph below-the-line comments continually associating libertarianism with the ‘far right’?
It’s the old Big Lie scheme at work: repeat the same falsehood often enough and people will end up believing it’s the truth. The aim is to create a narrative that the ‘far right’ is an evil force that is everywhere – ‘Blues under the bed!’ – shaming people into supporting leftist causes, because the right is being associated with Nazism.
The modern left has shifted the cultural centre so far to the extremes of left wing ideology, while no one else has changed his position. So, from the point of view of a modern progressivist, a moderate centre-right option is now extreme ‘far right’ ideology. Even what was a moderate left wing opinion a decade ago is now way to the right.
The ‘far right’ is no longer the preserve of neo-Nazism and anti-semitism: it’s ordinary people with extremely milquetoast points of view!
It’s not that right of centre parties are winning but that the parties incumbent at the time of the lockdowns are being kicked out. We can expect Labour to win in the next UK general election despite the fact that many of them called for faster, more restrictive lockdowns. Although this is to be expected it does mean that very soon we’ll have inexperienced governments throughout the nominally democratic world – and that is a recipe for further economic chaos and, quite possibly, war.
This is the puzzle about Bunter and the Conservative party.
The left in Britain had a wipe out moment in 2019.
Britain quite clearly voted for reduced regulation in the shape of Brexit and reduced immigration.
What they got instead was socialist fascism.
As a consequence, the Conservatives are facing their own wipe out.
But that will simply be another left wipe out.
When will the political class in this country get the message: Blair’s socialist fascist Britain, shambolic, incompetently and expensively administered by a bloated, arrogant, out of touch public sector, is not what the electorate want from either of the main parties.
Socialist Fascism is tautological in that Fascism is at root Socialism – empowerment of the State over the individual, central economic planning and control. Mussolini was an International Socialist, but experience in WWI changed his outlook. Socialism was no longer a class struggle which needed to develop a community of nations – Workers of the World Unite – but was a struggle between nations.
Hitler, also a Socialist, saw this too, plus a struggle between races, and his brand became National Socialism.
If Socialism and its radical form Communism, Fascism and National Socialism were put in their proper place, grouped together just different flavours of the same thing, Far Right would be what it really is, the antithesis to this ugly, evil, murderous Left ideology.
It is a very clever move to make Socialism the antithesis of evil, the saviour, and make Socialism’s real enemy the very politic which fights its evil.
That is certainly not how Mussolini defined fascism:
‘Fascism also denies the immutable and irreparable character of the class struggle which is the natural outcome of this economic conception of history; above all it denies that the class struggle is the preponderating agent in social transformations. Having thus struck a blow at socialism in the two main points of its doctrine, all that remains of it is the sentimental aspiration-old as humanity itself-toward social relations in which the sufferings and sorrows of the humbler folk will be alleviated.
But here again Fascism rejects the economic interpretation of felicity as something to be secured socialistically, almost automatically, at a given stage of economic evolution when all will be assured a maximum of material comfort. Fascism denies the materialistic conception of happiness as a possibility….’
So fascism, as defined by its inventor, is clearly not socialism
‘Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people. No individuals or groups (political parties, cultural associations, economic unions, social classes) outside the State. Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle.’
‘The Doctrine of Fascism’ Benito Mussolini 1932
What we suffer under at the moment is not fascism or national socialism but rather ‘totalitarian socialism’ which I prefer to call socialist fascism.
Totalitarian socialism is a political ideology based upon state controlled economics, nationalism, the total involvement of the state in internal affairs and the importance of the state in preserving socialism.
In my view, describing totalitarian socialism as socialist fascism makes it more readily comprehensible, identifying, as it does, the true nature of today’s socialism and clearly distinguishing it from the silly, impractical, unattainable but, at least in concept, rather wonderful, ideal of pure socialism – in reality nothing more than a pipe dream.
‘….in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia of 1968……many intellectuals in what is nowadays known as Central and Eastern Europe began to use the term totalitarianism in a different way from that favoured by Western (esp. American) observers. These East Europeans tended to focus less on political institutions, and more on the political use of language—not merely to indoctrinate citizens, but to limit the scope of discussion (discourse) and hence the parameters within which thought could roam. They also criticized the methods used by totalitarian—here, basically meaning communist—regimes for suppressing knowledge of the past that did not suit those regimes. Totalitarianism was, thus, seen to be intent on destroying historical memories, and hence culture, that did not suit the rulers.’
‘Totalitarianism’ L. Holmes 2001
Outstanding comment!
Correct. It takes a special level of arrogance and incompetence to throw away an 80 seat majority in just 3 years – in order to maintain Blair’s disastrous settlement.
In Britain there is no Right wing Party to sweep away the current left wing Party of Government.
The so-called Reform Party is disappointingly centrist, meaning they stand for nothing much.
Yes I was ready to vote Reform for lack of anyone else to vote for, but then Richard Tice made it clear Andrew Bridgen would never be welcome in the party. Not only did he say he wasn’t welcome he showed real malice towards his position. Since I agree with almost everything Bridgen says and since I know, not think or opine, but know (because unlike many – but like most on here, I have actually done the legwork, checked the data for myself and check the sources for all I read) Bridgen is right, Tice, at a stroke had lost my vote completely and forever.
The idiocy of vilifying a view held by a significant portion of the electorate soon became clear to him on Twitter (so far as Twitter is representative – which of course it isn’t but it does nevertheless represent many people out there) and he started trying to reverse ferret, making sceptical noises about the vaccines, emphasising how much he questioned mandates etc., but all without withdrawing what he said about Bridgen or apologising. It reached the ridiculous stage that he started agreeing more investigation into safety should be done, which is actually no more and no less what Bridgen has asked for of the government (though he does personally think the vaccines should be withdrawn until the investigation is complete). So the fool ended up vilifying Bridgen for calling for what he ended-up, within five minutes of his misstep, calling for, then, because of the absurdity of this (which many were pointing out to him) he attempted to imply Bridgen is an extreme anti-vaxxer, without presenting any evidence for saying so (thereby illustrating he was prepared to smear rather than admit to his misstep). The whole spectacle revealed him to be someone who will in an instant become an inauthentic plastic triangulating politician. Precisely the kind of person I have vowed never to vote for again.
The Reform Party under Tice is very obviously aligning itself with the Frost and Redwood element of the Not-a-Conservative-Party. The strategy, if you can call it that, seems to be to try and force the NaCP to move more to the right and/or to be in a position to unite with the Frost/Redwood element when the NaCP is hammered in 2024.
I have a degree of sympathy: Farage has said several times recently that breaking the two-party system under FPTP is virtually impossible.
But Tice made a huge mistake attacking Bridgen when he is quite obviously right about the gene therapies: the WHO recently admitted that they can cause Multiple Sclerosis in addition to the other well-known and admitted adverse effects.
The headline is slightly off. What’s being electorally wiped-out (to the degree that that’s possible in all these electoral systems carefully tuned such that voters never exercise any influence on politics) are the Shrink the STATEEEEE!!2127 neoliberals. Corona was the culmination of the neoliberal project — imprison whole populations for private profiteering — and its sibling, the Nut Zero project, uninvent modern society so that people can sell heat pumps and other nonsense technology, will hopefully never really see the light of the day.
Please get hit by the door on the way out. Repeatedly. Calling everyone and his dog a fascist at every opportunity isn’t an argument.
I agree with this assessment apart from the fact that none of the burgeoning leaders are “far right” they are conservative (real ones) or center right , far right and fascists are words used a bit to regularly to keep their real meaning like Mussolini’s or the nazis far right fascism, now thats real hatred!
Meanwhile Britons will vote en masse against the allegedly right wing part of the ruling uniparty in favour of the Marxist branch of the ruling uniparty. God help us all in Europe and America shift to the right, but we’re stuck with the left!!
Meanwhile, here in the UK we have the Unaparty. Exemplified by my own MP Chris Heaton Harris, with whom I personally worked to secure a Brexit he’s now betrayed (Northern Ireland sellout). He’s also dissed the traditional family, enforced covidism, greenism, wokism, as well as supporting the WHO powergrab. Polishing his badge for a knighthood, no doubt.
Treacherous.
You can’t see the join when it comes to lockdowns, forced vaxxing, climatism, wokism, open borders.
It really is time to get radical with your vote folks.
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/poll-shock-for-toxic-greens-as-nearly-half-the-public-dont-want-election-until-2025/a2144974434.html
You heard it hear first!
Eamon Ryan is the most toxic puppet Green party leader that ireland has ever known! With his three seats in the Dail(irish parliament) he wields the total backing of Brussels! Hence, policies like the culling of 10s of thousands of cattle, and the absolute cancellation of irish sea gas and oil licences!
This ..thing.. is a traitor to ireland!
He’d might as well cull irish people!