Hillman avenger wrote: ↑Wed Jan 20, 2021 9:54 am
I Can't think of any major country currently led by a left-wing movement.
Good news, though, is how populist parties are largely in decline.
As for the Netherlands, there is much we could learn from their pragmatism and tolerance, but probably won't.
I wouldn’t say that populist parties are largely in decline. That’s just dismissing the undercurrent of anti-establishment, anti-immigrant and anti-Liberal sentiment that exists and to pretend otherwise is quite worrying. We have far-right parties in power in Hungary, Poland and Austria. Fringe populist parties in Parliament in Spain, far right, nationalist parties in Serbia, other eastern countries as well as in Germany and even typically liberal democracies like Holland and Scandinavia.
As anti-EU feeling rises with the UK setting a precedent other sceptics will try to follow. Trump has shown that if you’re a demagogue, you can tear up the rule book and get into power where you can really tap into people's’ fears. What Trump has done will take probably a decade or two to reverse.
On what do you base your comments that populist parties are in decline? They’ve not really gone anywhere, there haven't melted away in the bat of an eyelid. Just because the BBC doesn’t report it, doesn’t mean that divisive movements have disappeared. I'd actually say that in the US, there are about seventy million people who voted for Trump whose figurehead is about to leave the white House. What happens to them? It's easy for us to just say fuck 'em, but not all of them are thick blue collar workers who haven't had a decent education.