There’s a trend towards in Australia too, with the right-wing nationalist One Nation Party recently getting re-elected to the senate here.
The party’s leader, Pauline Hanson, was quick to offer her congratulations to Donald Trump when it looked like he was going to win, incidentally.
Poland and Hungary have all taken sharp turns into the far right recently. At this point we’re on a trajectory where the whole world will be under fascism.
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Ya know, I think this is part of the internet age. "“news” has morphed into opinions. Maybe this is specific to the US? You get people that listen to talk radio, and a lot of it skews to sensationalist conservative topics, watch Fox News (which is a lot more skewed than the lamestream media and often seems like a giant infomercial), follow the drudge report or more extreme stuff like Breitbart or other alt.right sources, and then live in your own facebook echo chamber. In such an environment, there are no “facts” only opinions. No fact checking. “news” is now propaganda masquerading as equal opinions with a dose of “balance”.
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all stink.
So, we just raise the drawbridge and all those jobs, all that wealth, will magically re-appear?
If you want American/British/French/German jobs back - buy the products made in your own damned country!
But - we love our Chinese products - we go past the over-priced “Made in USA” products and buy the “good enough” crap from China.
At one time, there was a huge US tariff on heavy motorcycles - to protect Harley-Davidson.
This ended in 1987: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/18/business/harley-asks-end-to-tariff-aid.html
At the time (per article), a Harley cost between $4,000 and $10,000 more than an equivalent Japanese bike.
That was Reagan.
Do you really think Americans would tolerate being told that all manufactured goods (light bulbs included) will now cost 40-50% more?
Wal-Mart would not fold; Macy’s would not come back. Your local “Upscale” department store would not magically re-appear. Retail wages would continue to be under minimum wage wherever that was tolerated (keep electing GOP State governments!).
So: we add huge tariffs to all imported stuff; that Ford assembled in Mexico would cost more than the Honda assembled in Ohio. This, of course, makes Ford realize the error of its ways and bring that work back to Detroit. But: half of the work is now done by robot. No $30/hour to sweep the floor.
Then, we pass new laws mandating a living wage for all retail workers.
Yeah, the GOP LOVES “living wage” laws.
Just where/how do we get back to the 1950’s when white males all made good money, owned two houses, sent their kids to college so they can have a better life than their parents?
Just what kind of shit are these people smoking?
Whose niece is apparently agreeing to collaborate with Breitbart leader Bannon. (Wonder if that is as Chief of Staff or Chairman of Breitbart?)
This has a truly huge amount to do with it. Here is an excellent analysis of how information flow is changing. Note this was written almost a year ago. Amorphous Dispersal: How Information And Influence Spreads Online - Associate's Mind
A conclusion that article doesn’t include is that there’s sort of a Gresham’s Law operating now in the infosphere. Real facts about the messy reality of the world will be discarded in favor of simplified flavor-enhanced BS-labeled-as-fact which both tastes great and is less filling.
The ability of democracies around the globe to survive in this environment is far from guaranteed.
It’s certainly happening elsewhere, but the Trump phenomenon was unusually fast because of our primary system. In a lot of other countries, a Trump-like figure would probably have to build an entire party from the ground up, and then compete with the other established parties. But Trump was able to commandeer an entire 162 year old major party and get it to work for him in the space of about a year.
Something like that worked for Belinda Stronach, didn’t it?
Well, it’s a rejection of neoliberalism and the erstwhile accepted consequences of huggy huggy gobalisation - but hey, no good liberal narrative is complete without a jackboot or several.
There is nothing particularly new about Trump, ethnic nationalism, and class warfare. (I live in Quebec, where an arguably ethnic nationalist party is marking the 40th anniversary of the first time it formed the government.)
What is new is how the communications structures we grew up with have been displaced, so that what was once easily isolated can now find country- and worldwide support networks.
The positive aspect was seen with the #itgetsbetter or #beenrapedneverreported movements.
However these support groups can be taken over – or socially hacked if you prefer that term. The highly filtered media bubbles that a plurality of citizens now use has created three problems.
a) a lack of unity in basic facts regarding the world (e.g. Was Donald Trump a birther?)
b) the infiltration of social networks by subversive elements
c) misinformation campaigns involving fake news sites, some of which are designed solely to garner advertising revenue.
If I was a communications student looking for a thesis, I’d look at how, over the past two years, Conservative America decided to embrace Russian propaganda and conspiracy theorists as being more trustworthy than anything produced in the United States.
Trump is America’s Berlusconi. The parallels are striking.
Ahh, someone else catching up to the new 2015 standard!
If we’re lucky he turns out to be Berlusconi.
If we’re not he turns out to be Mussolini. Maybe not the Mussolini who worked arm in arm with Hitler and invaded Africa, but very possibly the one that consolidated his power via thuggish means throughout the 1920s & 30s.
If you think Hungary’s current government is ‘far right’, wait twenty years or so. The largest opposition party thinks Orban is too soft on ethnic minorities (although they’re also probably the furthest left / most anticapitalist major party on economic issues), and they have an absolute majority of support among 15-35 year olds. The liberals / social democrats’ electorate is by contrast disproportionately older people.
Hungary also has a small rump communist party (not to be confused with the former communists who transformed themselves into liberal social democrats), and they actually agree with Orban about multiculturalism and immigration.
“Past”? What is this “past”? I don’t think I’ve ever found a “Made in USA” product, no matter the price, when I’ve specifically looked for it to purchase. You can’t go past something if it’s not on the shelves.
bolding mine
Isn’t the rise of AL Qaeda and ISL arguably a form of authoritarian ethnic nationalism?
Religious fundamentalism and right wing authoritarianism are correlated.
http://scp.sagepub.com/content/61/1/92.abstract
On the subject of this debate topic, most of latin america underwent a leftward political trend about 10 years ago. It was called the pink tide.
I think people know the problem exists, but what can we do about it?
I saw a blurb on TV recently, it discussed how since Obama came into office about 8,400,000 jobs were created that require a college degree or higher, but only 80,000 jobs that require a high school degree.
I have no idea if that is true, but things like that make it understandable why the working class are so angry.
However in the US, it is only the white working class who support this movement. Non-white working class tend to be leftist like like middle class non-whites, poor non-whites, upper class non-whites, etc.
I occasionally listen to David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast. but I’ve listened to the one he did with Jon Stewart many times over. One of the points they touched on is that nationalism/nativism is steadily creeping throughout Western society. Everybody’s talking about Donald Trump because we’re the noisiest about it, but as Axelrod pointed out there are Trump-like figures throughout Europe. Besides “Brexit,” you have people like the aforementioned Marine Le Pen and Norbert Hofer.
Indeed.
On top of that you have some of the more odious reptiles of the ilk of David Leyonhjelm, George Christensen and Cory Bernardi though they probably think Trump represents the triumph of the Tea Party and the Fundamentalist Christian Right. Which it doesn’t.
Leyonhjelm only won a seat because he was lucky enough to draw 1st column on the ballot paper and his party name (Liberal Democrats) confused people who thought they were actually voting for the Liberal Party.
Then you have the right wing populist ratbags of the Shooters, Fisher & Farmers Party in NSW who leveraged all the Trump/Brexit angst and antipathy in by-election for safe conservative seat of Orange last weekend, picked up a massive swing against the incumbent Nationals (33.8%) and won it on Labor Party preferences.