I mean there are people that don't fully embrace the hard left or right ideologies... and just because a centre party embrace a certain policy that align with either left or right doesn't make them 'have to chose' imo.
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Centrism in Europe vs US
- Thread starter fanboi
- Start date
I mean there are people that don't fully embrace the hard left or right ideologies... and just because a centre party embrace a certain policy that align with either left or right doesn't make them 'have to chose' imo.
Imho in Europe you have a full political spectrum with: far left - left - middle (leftish / rightish) - right - far right.
While in the US you have basically something like: moderate right - middle - far right (compared to the european scale).
I have no idea what the US middle / centrism is supposed to be sitting there between the only two, rightish parties.
Edit: it's also always confusing to see the US Democrats getting called "the left" but I guess everything becomes left by default if you stand wide enough on the right side.
While in the US you have basically something like: moderate right - middle - far right (compared to the european scale).
I have no idea what the US middle / centrism is supposed to be sitting there between the only two, rightish parties.
Edit: it's also always confusing to see the US Democrats getting called "the left" but I guess everything becomes left by default if you stand wide enough on the right side.
Oh yeah the AfD... when I visited Berlin last year they were having some kind of demonstration. Half of the people attending were bikers with some really questionable outfits and flags. No swastikas of course... but some German crosses and eagles that looked rather suspicious
They'll also carry around flags reminiscent of the Reichskriegsflagge, their rallies are always something else.
I looked it up...yep that is exactly the flag I was referring to.
Plenty of icons and runes related to the Nazis, some of their variations, there's a huge catalogue of things banned related to the Nazis. The lightning rune, for example, the SA insignia, Swastika, variations of the eagle icons and flags related to it.
I don't really think you should oversell it since I don't think the political and ideological dynamics are that different compared to the United States. Overall things have been moving in the same direction with neoliberalism and free market dogma slowly eroding welfare systems and traditional social democrat policies. It's just a question of different degrees of the same trend and how strong the initial foundation was.
It works more or less the same throughout all of Europe with rural demographics left behind by globalized capitalism and deprecated social safety nets making them feel like right wing populists are the only channel for voicing their discontent because the traditional worker oriented left wing parties are long since part of the neoliberal establishment.
It works more or less the same throughout all of Europe with rural demographics left behind by globalized capitalism and deprecated social safety nets making them feel like right wing populists are the only channel for voicing their discontent because the traditional worker oriented left wing parties are long since part of the neoliberal establishment.
France : One recession away from far right since 1990.
It's the nintendoomed of politics.
Yeah. You cannot do good comparison between what is called centrist in American political discourse and what is traditionally seen center leaning parties. It varies from parties to parties and between countries. It is a very relative term especially in Europe. In some cases they can lean more to the left or right.
The popular American party system has always been flawed. The same can be said about the British too. There is little diversity and if there is there is almost no gains for anyone except the sole winner. I have always found it very undemocratic and silly with mostly two parties competing. Republican vs Democrats or Tories vs Labour. The good thing with many European party systems is the diversity and the ability to share and have an influence without winning all the votes.
In Norway most governments the past decades has been either Center-Left or Center-Right coalitions. In reality it has been leaning more center on the spectrum of politics (with the exception of conservative and populist party ruling the last 6 years here).
I agree. I have studied Nordic politics and especially the Norwegian one at university. I also see the trend of social democracy is decreasing over time. Norway tends to be the last country to follow new political waves in Scandinavia. There is on average cut backs and our governments are leaning gradually towards more privatization with healthcare, education, care while providing tax benefits for the richer.
I am tired of the buzzword "efficiency" used as an excuse to cut spending on important programs. Norway might still be among the countries who have the best prison rehabilitation success, but we are already seeing cuts in these programs that are successful for both prisoners and society at large. I do not see the social democratic system being much alive soon. It has not been very "social-democratic" since the 1980s I would argue.
I mean, saying "the Swedish right isn't that right if you ignore the right wing party" seems silly. If you eliminate the actual right wing party, then yes, centrism between moderate left and left isn't that bad. But that's not exactly realistic.
Well the conservative block that is right winged, or at least a counter weight vs the traditional left, don't want to touch the far right party. Allthough that is starting to change now, since the liberals and centerpartiet went with the goverment that was formed based on left leaning parties.
EU centrism has been killing thousands of people in the Mediterranean sea and in Northern Africa. They also help bomb and invade different Middle Eastern aand African countries when it fits their agenda. And then there's the whole austerity and neoliberalism thing they love so much, while giving way for fascists to gain popularity and channel the public discontent towards fascism and neo-nazism.
School vouchers and unequal segregated schools. Lowered pensions. Raised retirement age. Systematically denying disability benefits to people who are disabled. Adopting far right anti-immigrant stances. Not investing in public housing.
Sounds like moving away from social democracy to me.
I mean ideally you should just vote for the party that best represents your political views be it right, left, center or whatever. Where on the political scale you end up is relative anyway and someone with views that would make them centrist in Europe would most likely be leftist in the US. What I find troubling in our social media driven political climate is that people seem to be dismissing compromise as something inherently bad and that politicians that do that are sell outs or what have you. Since we all have different beliefs a democracy won't work very well without compromises.
OP, worth noting that there is a distinction between moderate and centrist. Sweden seems to have some moderate parties but not really a centrist party per se. I think that's an area where you might be getting confused as well. Moderates generally lean towards either hierarchy or equality but just in a small amount, whereas centrism believes that both a hierarchy and equality must be maintained and is aggressively against a push in either direction. Moderates can be swayed to vote for the direction that they're leaning towards, whereas centrists in theory won't, but in practice usually end up voting towards hierarchy.
Well I think one of the biggest differences is that in the Europe centrists are what the US considers leftists. The US is on a severely right-wing spectrum that our idea of leftists would be fucking laughed at in Europe.
Thanks, good post.
But isn't it then per country basis what centrism is? Since I would say the current centre parties in Sweden is as you say.
This is also something I believe. Bernie Sanders is something like a normal social democrat in Sweden imo.
Depends on who you're compromising with, never compromise with fascists. At that point you're just compromising for compromising's sake instead of protecting the core ideas of democracy. That's how liberal democracies slip into authoritarianism. Hungary, Poland have made that slip already. The US, Brazil and India are slipping. UK was slipping but managed to stop their slide for a few weeks so far but they're not out of the woods yet.
The problem with "compromise" is when politicians assume every idea is worth compromising with, and fascism is definitely not one of those ideas.
For example, let's say there's a refugee crisis and a homeless crisis. One faction wants to focus on integrating the refugees and one faction wants to focus on aid for the homeless. A decent compromise would be a social integration/reintegration that accepts both refugees and homeless to set them up with temporary shelter and vocational training. Now, let's rewind and say there's one faction that wants to help the refugees and the homeless and another faction that wants to exile the refugees and deport anyone with the wrong skin color/language and give their housing to white homeless people. Compromise? Absolutely fucking not, the second faction should be told to kick rocks.
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This is actually wrong. French european elections:
2014:
Far left=4 seats
Left=13 seats
Green=6 seats
Centre=7 seats
Right=20 seats
Far Right=24 seats
2019:
Far Left=6
Left=5
Green=12 seats
Centre=21 seats
Right=8 seats
Far Right=22 seats
The regular left lost seats to the greens/Far Left, the far-right lost seats to the regular right which itself lost seats to the centre
Primary schools are decided based on address (as it has been for more than half a century), so yes there can be problems when disadvantaged demographic groups are centralised in certain area codes, but the left block is working on reducing that by introducing methods to diversify the student bodies across the city schools. High schools are increasingly becoming free choice. Raising retirement age is not ideal, but until one is able to stabilise the aging population it's difficult to retain the pension levels and quality of elderly care without the population working longer (age of pension here is 62, but you're able to work until 67 if you choose to). As I said earlier, I won't defend the anti-immigration stances, and I haven't heard much about lack of investment in public houses, is that a local issue? I'd be happy to read any literature on it.
Denmark and Norway had been under right/center-right rule for the last couple of terms so it should be unsurprising that right policies have been adopted during their leadership. This does not mean that it will be continued under a left-block government.
The Wikipedia article for centrism doesn't list a Swedish centrist party and looking at the platforms of Swedish parties the moderate party seems moderate right, Swedish Democrats are far right, Christian Democrats seem moderate right, and the rest are varieties of left leaning parties. The center party seems like the one that's closest to being actual centrists, but they seem more libertarian - fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which like I outlined earlier is simply a contradictory position.
note that this is based on 5 minutes of googling and I don't have a deep understanding of Swedish politics. I just looked at the party platforms.
It's a given that not all compromises are good or something that you necessarily will like. And just because you have to compromise doesn't mean you have to compromise about everything. As for your refugee example of course no one should be deported based on their skin color but often the alternatives aren't as clear cut as you make them in your example.
Another example could be:
Party A wants open borders with free immigration.
Party B wants to grant political asylum and accept refugees from war zones but wants no other immigration.
Party C wants no immigration at all and thinks political asylum was a thing during the cold war but not something to be bothered with anymore.
If they all get more or less equal votes how would you like party A and B to act?
Well the problem is that the alternatives are pretty clear cut these days but you still are people yelling about how we need compromise. It makes people think that the compromisers have no morals of their own and just want to compromise for compromises sake. This is why there's so much disdain for "centrism" in popular discourse. We live in unprecedented times but the centrists think/want to think we're living in the world of 20-30 years ago.
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Pretty much then again do you even remember a time when the general opinion in France wasn't that the country was going badly and on the verge of collapse anyway?
That's certainly what the media, the opposition (whoever was inside at any moment), the extremes and even apolitical people drilled into the general consciousness.
I'm not sure the alternatives are that clear cut at all, at least not in countries with multiparty parliaments. In most of these countries compromise to some extent is the only way to rule since no party is able to get a majority on their own. Also if you value political stability compromise across the political spectrum, so that you get a majority so big that it is unlikely to be overturned in the next couple of elections, is the way to achieve this.