# Hotel California Redux - Another 1979-like Right Wing Shift? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 16, 2023, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotel-california-redux-another-1979-like-right-wing-shift/991674 "2023-10-16T21:42:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 64
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2023, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotel-california-redux-another-1979-like-right-wing-shift/991674/64 "2023-10-19T04:27:18Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It seems to me that the _world_ is shifting to the right. […] The Netherlands forced their progressive leader to resign, as did New Zealand […] What “progressive leader” in the Netherlands are you talking about? Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who recently announced his retirement after the collapse of his latest coalition government, is a longstanding leader of the VVD, a conservative-liberal center-right party that has led governing coalitions for the past decade-plus. The VVD’s current coalition partners are other centrist to center-right parties, including the socially conservative Christian Union party. Moreover, AFAICT VVD is projected to lead the polls again in the next Dutch elections. So I don’t see by what tortured logic you managed to twist Rutte’s ouster into any kind of alleged rejection of “progressivism” on the part of the Netherlands. Similarly, New Zealand did not in any way “force” Labour PM Jacinda Ardern (who is an actual progressive) to resign earlier this year; at the time of her spontaneous and voluntary resignation, she was still widely popular and projected to win the next election. Her Labour successors lost widely to their more right-wing National Party rivals in the recent elections, but that’s a very far cry from your claim of a “forced” resignation by Ardern. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Maybe I missed it, but has a left-wing government been elected anywhere in the world in the past two years? As Exapno\_Mapcase pointed out, that rather narrow two-year sample window seems rather… arbitrary. Even so, [yeah, you missed a few.](https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/pink-tide-south-america-politics-economy/) > [@](#): > > In October 2020, Bolivia returned the Movement Toward Socialism to power in the first presidential election since Evo Morales was ousted, and the following year Pedro Castillo, a far-left teacher with no previous experience as an elected official, won Peru’s presidential election. Gabriel Boric, a former student protest leader and leftist legislator, became the youngest president in Chile’s history after taking office in March 2022, while Gustavo Petro became the first leftist president in Colombia’s modern history last August. And former Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva returned to office this year after defeating the far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro in last October’s election. You also seem to have missed [Estonia’s liberal Reform Party victory at the polls this past March.](https://neweasterneurope.eu/2023/06/14/estonias-urban-rural-divide-cracks-at-home-become-a-chasm-abroad/) What we do seem to be seeing worldwide is a doubling-down on the part of authoritarian-conservative movements, and a renewed tendency on their part to blame intractable global problems (climate change, COVID-19, refugee issues) on liberals. A lot of voters in troubled times are reassured and inspired by exhortations to “just throw out those cosmopolitan egghead elitists and put us regular folks in charge, and we’ll return you to the good old days”, but that says more about their sentimental delusions than their realistic judgement. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hotel-california-redux-another-1979-like-right-wing-shift/991674)._