The West was moving to the right — and then Donald Trump got elected again

The West was moving to the right — and then Donald Trump got elected again

…

Something is happening among America’s allies, and it’s a tremendous relief. For some years now, we’ve seen the MAGA-infused global right gaining a foothold amongst western democracies, largely driven by the same demagogic, nationalist, pseudo-populism that has fueled Donald Trump’s dominance on the American right.

Some countries like Hungary have served as a sort of experiment for the kind of post-democratic autocracies dreamt of by the modern right wing in which government co-opts, intimidates and de-legitimizes the political opposition to create an authoritarianism that dominates the culture and the politics without a lot of overt violence.

But the rise of the far right among the Western allies seems to be stalling out.

  • DarkGamer@fedia.io
    0·
    4 hours ago

    This American situation is partly the long tail of the failure of reconstruction; Confederates got their asses handed to them but they were never properly removed from power. Now the racists are once again in charge, their monuments still stand, their flag is still flown, and the southern strategy is central to their political power.

    Compare this to Germany, who stripped Nazis from power, outlawed their symbols, and have guard rails to prevent fascist movements from rising again. (They are now being used against AfD.)

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      4 hours ago

      That combined with the fact that the US in many ways is a confederation jury rigged into a federation doesn’t help. Even if we killed every white person in the South after the civil war I suspect we would still be dealing with the same basil issues just with a different coat of paint. Most of the issues are caused by regional issues, proto-nationalism, and a failing Imperial identity.

      • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 hours ago

        While it’s true that tribalism is essentially a human, if not evolutionary trait, we could have made it damn near harder for fascists from gaining power. To start, stripping them from any political office (local or federal) and then banning them or any soldier that fought for the Confederacy.

        States that seceded basically should have been converted to non-voting territories unless they agreed whole cloth to codify abolition into the Constitution, reparations to the North and to their slaves.