Ahead of June’s EU election, we’re again seeing alarmist rhetoric about far-right insurgents. But the authoritarian turn is happening already — driven by the conservative forces at the heart of the European institutions.
There was no real left in Europe after WW2 and the Marshall Plan. Only social democrats, which really are right-wing since they defend capitalism.
Well France is pretty left, even still :P We’re all pretty jealous of their worker rights. My own country the Netherlands was socialist too but the neoliberals indeed kicked in and screwed everything up. Which then turned the worker demography to anger and now they are massively voting for the fascists. As if that will help… But yes especially Holland is very beholden to the US. England too. But the rest of Europe not as much.
I don’t see a big American-led conspiracy here though. I think the worker community just got so rich they became conservative. And started wanting more and more and looking towards the glamour of the US (while completely ignoring the huge problems in their society among those who are not so lucky to ‘make it’).
China is far far ahead when it comes to developing society for the people. The government there is spending trillions investing in infrastructure, health, education, housing.
Society for those who don’t step out of line even a little though. There’s a big difference in caring about your population and just making sure your worker cattle is fed enough not to stir trouble. They have had a huge scare with the mass protests of their draconic covid measures which had the potential to really get out of hand. They are super afraid of this, after all revolution is how they got to power themselves.
They recently declared housing to be a human right and started decommodifying it.
Meh if they’d care about human rights they’d actually respect them. If you see how they treated people during covid with zero respect for individual rights, how they treat the Uyghurs, what they did during the olympics. Mass surveillance is rampant. You can’t say anything that steps on the CCP’s toes or you get silenced (look at what happened to Naomi Wu). I agree they do manage some things better but their society is not one I want to live in or even consider visiting.
Decommodifying housing is good though, I agree. In Europe only Vienna really does that with a great public housing programme and it works really well. Holland used to do this too but things are really messed up now after 3 decades of neoliberal regime.
You can check any major city in China nowadays and they all have much better quality of life than any comparable city. That meaning major metropolises in developing countries (so places like São Paulo, Buenos Aires, México City, Johannesburg, Jakarta etc.). Housing is much cheaper in China, salaries are higher, cost of living is lower…
All those places are incredibly unsafe and have huge income inequality. You can’t call those socialist :) I have been around the world a lot and lived in different places. These don’t offer welfare for the poor.
I mean Johannesburg is where they sell car-mounted flamethrowers to fend off carjackers. São Paulo where the police don’t even dare to follow suspects into the favelas. Mexico with its cartels that have actual armies. Socialist paradises they are not.
China is doing better because they are not really a developing country anymore. They have much more money than any of those because we’ve moved all our factories there.
The one developing country that I do look up to is Cuba. They have the second-highest amount of doctors per capita in the world, after a middle-eastern country, I forget which. Despite their authoritarian regime (and all the boycots from the US for no reason at all) people seem to do pretty well. I hope to visit it some time to see if things are really as good there on the ground.
Well France is pretty left, even still :P We’re all pretty jealous of their worker rights. My own country the Netherlands was socialist too but the neoliberals indeed kicked in and screwed everything up. Which then turned the worker demography to anger and now they are massively voting for the fascists. As if that will help… But yes especially Holland is very beholden to the US. England too. But the rest of Europe not as much.
I don’t see a big American-led conspiracy here though. I think the worker community just got so rich they became conservative. And started wanting more and more and looking towards the glamour of the US (while completely ignoring the huge problems in their society among those who are not so lucky to ‘make it’).
Society for those who don’t step out of line even a little though. There’s a big difference in caring about your population and just making sure your worker cattle is fed enough not to stir trouble. They have had a huge scare with the mass protests of their draconic covid measures which had the potential to really get out of hand. They are super afraid of this, after all revolution is how they got to power themselves.
Meh if they’d care about human rights they’d actually respect them. If you see how they treated people during covid with zero respect for individual rights, how they treat the Uyghurs, what they did during the olympics. Mass surveillance is rampant. You can’t say anything that steps on the CCP’s toes or you get silenced (look at what happened to Naomi Wu). I agree they do manage some things better but their society is not one I want to live in or even consider visiting.
Decommodifying housing is good though, I agree. In Europe only Vienna really does that with a great public housing programme and it works really well. Holland used to do this too but things are really messed up now after 3 decades of neoliberal regime.
All those places are incredibly unsafe and have huge income inequality. You can’t call those socialist :) I have been around the world a lot and lived in different places. These don’t offer welfare for the poor.
I mean Johannesburg is where they sell car-mounted flamethrowers to fend off carjackers. São Paulo where the police don’t even dare to follow suspects into the favelas. Mexico with its cartels that have actual armies. Socialist paradises they are not.
China is doing better because they are not really a developing country anymore. They have much more money than any of those because we’ve moved all our factories there.
The one developing country that I do look up to is Cuba. They have the second-highest amount of doctors per capita in the world, after a middle-eastern country, I forget which. Despite their authoritarian regime (and all the boycots from the US for no reason at all) people seem to do pretty well. I hope to visit it some time to see if things are really as good there on the ground.