(Some reasons) Why people vote for right wing populists:
billionaires are above the law
be it a pandemic, recession, whatever, billionaires profit from all crises
there are two strata in society: people who have to work and people who choose whether to work. So long as the latter exists and invests all their time into ensuring that the former will forever be the vast majority of society, people will protest vote
worse, the billionaires pay millionaires to tell thousandaires what the various classes in society are and who the ‘real’ enemy is and it will always be foreigners or the gays or some BS like that (an enemy that’s always simultaneously infinitely strong and weak)
there’s billionaires in the first place
(I’m well aware that other things can be reasons, too, like perceived loss of living standards, increased political corruption etc. But honestly, I think it’s all down to rich people fucking things up…see below for some proposed fixes)
Approaches that could fix this (good luck trying that in the arch-neoliberal EU):
ALL wealth above X amount simply gets taken from you. I know it’s complicated with shares in companies etc. But I’m sure where there’s a will there’s a way. Cap wealth at €100mil or whatever
inheritance tax becomes 99% above £1million
remuneration ratios: CEOs cannot earn more / hold more shares than 10x more than the lowest earning employee in the company. This has to include subsidiaries and 3rd parties, otherwise companies will just hire other companies to get around this
The above and the fallout from it, would instantly free up money for public services, free education and healthcare and eradicate homelessnes. You wouldn’t need a UBI, if public services were good enough and well funded.
Technically I’m far more radical in my opinions and think that housing should be declared a human right and all drugs legalised and all those fancy things, but honestly, it feels we have more pressing matters at hand, namely, inequality. Until that gets fixed, we can’t really progress as a society.
My main worry here being that it can’t be done. I simply don’t see how, as a society, we will ever gain the cohesion to implement decisive action against the ruling classes. They have become untouchable and would rather burn the whole thing down than give an inch.
Now that was a truly fascinating read. Thank you for sharing. Though maybe they should pick Guam next time. Hawaii gets power within the government, like others. They voted to join. Guam doesn’t, and they probably have soldiers training to fight China too.
Much closer to China’s shores.
But you will never need to meet them, if you do not pursue bloodshed. So perhaps there can be peace, if China is willing.
Turkiye doesn’t care about a second cold war. Erdogan is using this as leverage to try and force Sweden to get tougher on Kurdish militants. In other words Turkiye cares about Turkiye and nothing more (which is fine … most countries do that).
I’m not Spanish and I don’t live in Spain either, I regret not having been exposed to the latest election campaign because it would have been super-interesting. In Italy, we are already experiencing a radical government change with far-right parties leading the coalition (and center-right becoming less and less significant progressively). Nonetheless, as far as foreign politics is concerned, there have been negligible changes compared to the previous governments in extra-European affairs, and no changes at all in European affairs in general. Despite all the pro/con narrative.
The SBU accused them of being propagandists holding pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views with the goal of destabilizing the internal situation in Ukraine and creating a “necessary information picture” for Russian and Belarusian channels.
During their trial, the brothers stated that “our case is completely fabricated from start to finish. What are we charged with? Pro-Belarussian views are being charged. We are being tried for our views. What kind of democracy can we talk about?”
Regarding the ban on KPU, Mykhail Kononovich had told Peoples Dispatch in an interview in February 2021, “I emphasize that the communist ideology, the idea, cannot be banned by any laws. So it is impossible to ban common sense and science. It is simply impossible to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) because we are a party with more than a hundred years of history, a party that has an experience of subterranean struggles. We, communists, have fought and will continue to fight for the benefit of our people!”
In case you have misread. They never said what you claim, being communists and oppossing NATO is not some oxymoron that denies the other. In fact the position held by most communist parties in the Global South at the moment is this one, it is certainly the reality I’ve seen in Latinoamerica.
In many cases yes. Currently it’s also a needed defense for it’s members from other invaders and destroyers. Ideally NATO wouldn’t be needed. Dismantling it would be great, simultaneously or after the other rogue powers.
edit: absolutely love how rediquette is getting normalized here now, post a factual comment with a source and a bunch of chuds run in to downvote because they have trouble engaging with reality
Both communist parties in Belarus and Russia are the second party with most members and are highly active in comparison to for example here in Latinamerica after the instalment of fascists regime by the US, where most were massacred in secret torture houses. So I’m not sure what you mean by there’s no communism in Belarus or Russia.
From what I’m seeing support was voiced for the state, not for it’s communist party. In Russia they have 57 out of 450 in the lower chamber and 4 out of 178 in the higher chamber, in Belarus it’s 11 out of 110 and 17 out of 64 (thanks to over-representation of state sanctioned trade unions, independent ones were destroyed after last elections). So what exact power over state politics do you expect they have and how representative is these states policy for communism?
I get the NATO bashing, but thinking either Russia or Belarus have anything in common with the concept of communism, other than history, is hilarious and strongly encourage you to discuss this with Russia-based communists. Wont go into discussing the nature of post-soviet communist parties as I have no time to educate westeners on the complex realities of this region, please do find someone from the region who you will trust enough to actually consider what they tell you.
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