I think he’s referring to this quote from their Wiki page, which he presumably didn’t read very closely:
You know, there’s far more to political leanings than right and left.
AFAIK, Europeans of either political side tend more towards government control than Americans of either side. So a far right European will tend towards authoritarianism while a far right American will tends towards liberalism.
Then there is the divide between economic right wing and social right wing. European economic right wing would be, at most, the fuzzy center for an American. The European social right wing is just plain racist compared to US social right wing.
As for the op, Europe seems to be more racist than the US, thus racist politicians do better. Although the US does have times when it comes pretty close to matching Europe for pure racial hatred.
All of the above is are VERY generalized statements, ones that are so broad they’re almost meaningless. Then again, the question in the OP was so broad it was almost meaningless, so answers like that should be fine.
What’s odd is that the US social right wing is just plain racist itself.
Except that SF for all their myriad sins have an avowedly multicultural and leftwing philosophy.
And they sit on the exact same demographic as the BNP.
It’s the one useful thing about SF.
I won’t disagree, but I do note that in America arguments against a mosque start with “They have the right to build it, but they shouldn’t because…” while is Switzerland arguments against a mosque start with “Lets ban minaret’s so they won’t have the right to build it…”
Both are racist, but there’s a large difference of degree there.
Well yes and no. You definitely hear from people “They have a right to build the mosque but they shouldn’t have that right.” And also, the First Amendment is an established part of politics here - it’s quite permissable to piss on it from a great height, but you have to at least pay it lip service. The message is the same - “these darkies shouldn’t be here.”
That’s 24 more than Ireland have. Which demonstrates the point I was *actually * making, whatever about any points you think I was making.
And I agree with Laudenum to some extent, though I also think the peculiarly clientelist nature of Irish politics has something to do with it.
I was going to say - Irish politics developed very differently. From talking to friends (who may well be wrong of course) they see the current crisis, combined with a lesser importance of the North to politics, as breaking the old political dividing lines (which I think have their basis in the Civil War) and the development of a more ‘traditional’ left-right divide. Unfortunately, the downside of that is the possibility of the development of a far right party. There’s certainly the anger at immigrants to take advantage of, and it isn’t like Ireland hasn’t had arguably fascist politicians before.
It is always embarassing to have to explain to tourists that our ‘fascist’ party is our second biggest party - but they were never really fascists.
If the US had proportional representation, so that 10% of the public could vote for a racist party, is there any doubt that David Duke et al would be seated in Congress? Our first-past-the-post / winner-take-all / plurality voting system tends to squeeze out extremists as it pushes forward the populists.
To me if anything it seems to encourage the success of general extremism on the Right since instead of forming their own little party and electing David Duke by his lonesome, they pour themselves into Republicans and take over. I’d far prefer a system where there was just one or two racist representatives, instead of a whole major party using them as part of its collective base and thus dependent on them.
It’s hard to say what would happen in the US.
Most PR systems actually use super-proportional representation, so that tiny parties don’t get disproportionate influence. Those that do not such as Israel (or Italy?) find themselves beholden to small pressure groups that will join your coalition if you agree to do just one thing (or a small set of things). My take is that groups polling under 5% should be ignored and those in the 5-15% range deserve a voice, but not power. Truck drivers and teachers really shouldn’t have their own separate parties: viable parties should be forced to build upon reasonably broad ideological coalitions.
I should concede here that ruadh’s point remains valid: there are FPTP countries that nonetheless sustain extremist parties. In the US, Ron Paul is not a racist, but he’s certainly represents a squirrelly ideology, albeit an unusually coherent one for an elected representative.