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Notes -
As a dissident rightist I’d offer a different point of view.
It’s not only that center-right parties in (at least) France and Germany (in this context) never work with far-right parties; that’s just the less important half of the story. It’s that they’re willing to cooperate with any sort of left-wing extremist groups – i.e. withdrawing their candidates in the 2nd round and calling on their supporters to vote for the leftist bloc that includes those extremists, for example – in order to keep the far right in a political quarantine. Again, I’m sure there’s a lot more delicate context to this whole issue and I’m not well-versed in these political events anyway, but that appears to be the crux of the issue.
If these trends continue, and I see no reason to believe that they won’t, we’ll see situations where center-right parties enter governing coalitions with Islamic fundamentalists, Trotskyites, hard-liner Greens, Maoists, various Communists and whatnot just to maintain this political line.
This, in effect, is the mirror image of the Communist argument that imperialism/fascism is capitalism in decay i.e. that the capitalist class will sooner side with literal fascists than to cede power to their class enemies when their regime enters a crisis.
On the flip side, I think the reason there's so much appetite for shunning the AfD is because a lot of center-right voters and politicians have left and joined AfD, so what remains of the center-right has shifted to the left.
That's my guess, anyway.
I think it's a chicken and egg problem. The regime is set up to ostracize and otherwise punish anyone to the right of the center-right, which statistically means there'll only be one prominent party there, which in turn will be the only one that dissident right-wingers will gravitate to.
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It is worth noting that other right-populist parties have joined in shunning AfD. They were kicked out of the right-wing Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament (which is dominated by Marine Le Pen's RN) for being too tolerant of actual brownshirts-and-swastikas neo-Nazis.
Less obnoxious right-populist parties like the Dutch PVV are in government.
Ah.
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