Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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I mean, here's the issue for the far-right - there is majority support for their harsh treatment of immigrants (and I say that openly as a dirty soft hearted liberal), but even in Europe, the far-right is dominated by weirdoes and people with reactionary social views people don't want to vote for.
An actual successful anti-immigration party would be basically be moderate to center-left or center-right on most issues, while also being wildly far-right on immigration, but of course, most of the people who deeply care about immigration are also right-wing on other issues.
Polling seems to suggest the opposite. More conservative social views better align with the average voter, it's generally the economic views that they disagree with. The problem isn't the policies it's just the elites have exclusive access to all the npc programming devices via their choke hold on information. Far right is weird not because of it's policy, it's weird because the authorities say it's weird.
The median voter is to the right of the median college-educated center-left politician but to the left of the median far-right politician, and in general, people are more scared of people trying to ban things they see as basically harmless or not that important than people who will allow it, especially when they people opposed to something seem obsessed with it.
I'm not under the assumption that the median American voter is super pro-trans for example, but they largely don't care plus American's inherent libertarianism on a lot of issues (which hurts the Right & Left at times) means it seems weird when somebody seems obsessed with it and acts like it's one of the most important issues in America. Again, ironically, not talking about it and quietly passing a law that does 80% of what Florida did would go over fine in probably 30 out of 50 states, but when you start talking about it, people get freaked out.
Like, in the US, abortion restriction referendums are losing by 10 to 15 points in states Trump won by 20. There are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with social liberalism, but find what actual social conservatives want to do far more scary when they try to put it in practice.
This is all doubly true in Europe, where there really is no socially conservative movement, so when far-righters end up saying out there things like women's basic rights and such, people decide to swallow their anger and vote for the boring centrist parties.
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Geert Wilders is now PM of the Netherlands.
Except Wilders isn't the PM and had to actually step back from wanting to be PM despite his party doing well, because of his wackiness on a variety of issues, and compared to other right-wing parties, he at least attempts to portray himself as anti-Islam/immigration for culturally liberal reasons, just not bigotry.
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No he is not.
Dick Schoof is the prime minister of the Netherlands
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