Yeah Macron had his people craft this awful law to have it voted by the the right wing parliamentaries, the far right voted for it as well saying it was everything they ever wanted, but Macron and his government actually wanted/expected the constitutional court to take down most of the bad stuff they accepted in the law which is what happened. The government think it's genius because they court the far right voters by showing them that they too are racist but don't actually have to put in place too many racist measures. What's actually happening is that far right propositions are being normalized, the far right is now saying that the constitution is stopping good measures backed by the vast majority of parliament and that therefore the constitution needs to be put aside. They've enabled the far right, and have been enabling them for years now. Things are bad.
General Politics Three: But what is left/right?
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Yeah Macron had his people craft this awful law to have it voted by the the right wing parliamentaries, the far right voted for it as well saying it was everything they ever wanted, but Macron and his government actually wanted/expected the constitutional court to take down most of the bad stuff they accepted in the law which is what happened. The government think it's genius because they court the far right voters by showing them that they too are racist but don't actually have to put in place too many racist measures. What's actually happening is that far right propositions are being normalized, the far right is now saying that the constitution is stopping good measures backed by the vast majority of parliament and that therefore the constitution needs to be put aside. They've enabled the far right, and have been enabling them for years now. Things are bad.
Welcome to the party.
25 Republican Governors have signed a letter supporting Texas.
Republican Governors Band Together, Issue Joint Statement Supporting Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense
WASHINGTON, D.C. – 25 Republican governors released the following joint statement in support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Texas’ constitutional right to self-defense. The statement comes as the Biden Administration continues to attack Texas and refuses to take action or responsibility for...
www.rga.org
So does Speaker of the House Johnson.
Speaker Johnson backs Abbott’s border ‘invasion’ decree
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sided with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in his feud with the federal government over razor wire along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying Thursday that he would “back him up.”…
thehill.com
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
25 Republican governors back Texas in escalating border standoff with US government
Republican governors in half of the US have backed Texas in an intensifying standoff with the federal government over illegal immigration.The Supreme Court ruled this week against Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who has strung razor wire along miles of the frontier with Mexico.
But the Republican has vowed to add more razor wire to crack down on what he calls an invasion.
A record 225,000-plus illegal migrants crossed the border in December alone.
On Thursday, 25 Republican governors released a joint statement of solidarity with Mr Abbott for "stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country".
The latest border flashpoint focuses on a small stretch of the Rio Grande River that has become one of the busiest spots for migrants crossing illegally from Mexico.
As part of his Operation Lone Star, Mr Abbott has sought to block or deter entry into his state, including by installing about 30 miles (48km) of razor wire barriers along the city of Eagle Pass.
On Monday the Supreme Court handed a victory to the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in its standoff with Texas.
The justices ruled by 5-4 that US Border Patrol, a federal agency, could cut or clear out the concertina wire set up by the Texas National Guard.
The justice department had argued the fencing hampers the work of Border Patrol agents in that it poses a danger to both migrants and law enforcement. Some of the illegal migrants have cut themselves on the wire.
Appearing on Fox News on Thursday, Mr Abbott said: "Because the Biden administration has really, truly abdicated its responsibility to secure the border and enforce the laws, Texas, very simply, is securing the border."
He has posted photos of the Texas National Guard laying down new razor wire along the river.
The move does not appear to violate the Supreme Court order, which granted permission for the removal of existing wire, while saying nothing about adding new barriers.
Democrats are urging the president to take a tougher stance against Texas.
"Governor Greg Abbott is using the Texas National Guard to obstruct and create chaos at the border," congressman Joaquin Castro wrote on X, calling for federal control over the guardsmen.
Governor Abbott is also facing legal challenges from the Biden White House over his orders to install floating barriers in the Rio Grande and to jail thousands of migrants on trespassing charges.
And, as the governor continues to bus migrants to Democratic cities and states, pressure is mounting on Mr Biden to take drastic action to stem the flow of arrivals.
Last week, Mr Biden said he was "ready to act", but argued lawmakers on Capitol Hill must first agree on significant policy reforms.
The prospects of a grand bargain, however, in either chamber of Congress, let alone both, appear slim.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives are currently leading an effort to impeach and remove the president's top border official, Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
An emerging bipartisan border deal in the US Senate meanwhile faces objections from right and left.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican White House frontrunner, has reportedly pressured allies to kill the bill to avoid giving Mr Biden a win in an election year.
Immigration is a central issue ahead of the November 2024 general election, with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire delivering primary victories to Mr Trump in part due to their concerns over the border.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68101927
Akka
Moody old mage.
The thing is, there is a DEEP disconnect between the political class and the population. Most of the propositions that are described as being from the far-right, are actually massively supported by the public opinion (in the vicinity of about 70 %).
The law was described as being incredibly harsh and going "too far", but the actual reality is that it was considered "adequate" by nearly half the population, "not going far enough" by over a third, and only "going too far" by one sixth. So on the whole, it was actually on the lenient side if you take into account what should be the actual defining median of a democracy.
I don't get how the political parties can expect to NOT see a rise of the far-right when they basically seem to live in a different reality than their voters, and going against them while leaving only said far-right parties getting the easy picks.
Akka
Moody old mage.
It just sounds like you are trapped in the same circular reasoning that led to this very situation and are just as unable to see it as the political class.
Feels like you're projecting a bit. I didn't pass any value judgement, I'm just saying that if right-wing policies are popular, then the voting classes are by definition into right-wing policies. The policies being "massively supported by public opinion" isn't actually a counterargument to what Adrienler said.
Well there's a deep disconnect between both of them and reality, so I'd rather be on the side of what's really happening, what's an actual problem, and what's needed to address it than to chase after the unbased fears our capitalist society create so people won't question the real issues. I'd also prefer for the political class to not be so enclined to address those fake fears and normalize stuff that would have been completely unthinkable 20 years ago. But that would require them to actually oppose the very rich and their lackeys, which is dangerous when the press is 99% owned by these very people.
Akka
Moody old mage.
You didn't seem to have gotten my point, so let me spell it out a bit more clearly : what defines a policy as "far-right" ?
If most parties refuse to deal with a situation and only the far-right ones do, is the situation inherently a far-right policy or just a failure from the others to do their job ?
If an opinion is widely shared in a population, can it be considered "extreme" or is it just the actual social consensus ?
It wasn't unthinkable 20 years ago. Immigration has been a hot potatoe for over 40 years, and in fact the population today is MORE tolerant to immigrants than it was 20 years ago, and many mores that were completely acceptable a long time ago would be considered massively racist today (just rewatch several family-friendly youth show from the 80-90, it's pretty stark).
It's just the cumulative effect of not actually dealing with the problem for decades and kicking the can down the road, plus the widening gap between what the political class sees as the norm compared to what the general population does.
Clearly yes. Many extreme positions have been held widely in certain populations at certain times.
It can definitely be considered extreme, with the most obvious example being Germany in the 30s. The fact that it's popular doesn't change its political definition.
Yes there were things that were accepted 20 years ago that aren't, but they usually amount to individual practices. The proposed changes here are systemic : changes in global policy, changing the constitution etc. Those would never have been proposed 20 years ago.
It's funny how people don't like to be given the far right label. People on the far left are totally fine with being far left, because they found a coherent world view and have coherent positions that are definitely outside the mainstream or what people would call reasonable. They know where their ideology leads, what kind of road leads to it and find that place to be desirable compared to what we have. Many people who support far right ideas don't want to look at what their ideas lead to, and prefer not to see what it means to follow that road. They reject the label to avoid looking at what they actually stand for.
soundjata
hole in cheese
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Interesting post @AdrienIer. May I attempt a simple summary?
Far right = very egoistic = shameful.
Far left = very altruistic = nothing to be ashamed of.
Far right = very egoistic = shameful.
Far left = very altruistic = nothing to be ashamed of.
A policy is defined as far-right when it comes from the far-right. The same as any other part of the political spectrum. Just because it's an answer to an apparent problem, it doesn't make it magically apolitical. It was designed, drawn-up and agreed either by or to appease right-wingers. This makes it right-wing in both form and function.
As for "extreme", again, yes. Something being popular doesn't alter its severity in tackling a particular problem.
Akka
Moody old mage.
You went from "far-right" to "right-wing" here. Also, the "if it comes from the far-right it's far-right" is a gross oversimplification. Our far-right party also promote reduction of VAT, privatization of television channels, renationalization of highways and scaling retirement pensions on inflation, none of which you would probably label as "far-right".
Certainly, anti-immigration stances are typically from the right, but it's precisely my point that they ended up as a "far right territory" because the whole immigration situation has been avoided by everyone but the far-right, hence the circular reasoning ("it's only the far-right which talki about immigration, hence it's an inherently far-right subject, hence only the far-right speaks about it, etc.").
Okay, what makes something "extreme" then ? I mean, if you manage to define a position as "extreme" without comparing it to the relative social consensus of a time, good luck.
Because 20 years ago, it hadn't been left to fester for 20 more years. As I pointed, immigration has been a societal problem for at least 40 years. The situation has barely changed since then. If you leave a problem unaddressed and it grows over time, very obviously it will radicalize people over it.
I would roll my eyes at the idea that people on the far-left have a coherent worldview considering how much any "far" ideology is always tripping over itself in self-contradiction and simply chose to ignore it (people on the far-right also don't mind banging their chest about their ideas and think that "their" ideas are totally self-consistent will fix the world overnight, don't worry).
The problem here is rather exactly what I described above : surrendering a social problem to the far-right, and then calling everything relative to it "far-right', and then lamenting that everybody is leaning "far-right". It's exactly the same (and the same level of idiocy) as the habits of US rednecks calling "communism" anything that is related to taxes, public services or the like.
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I always like checking the three major cable news sources most Americans go to (CNN, MSNBC, FOX) when things like this happen.
Basically 25 governors have told the President of the United States to kick rocks. In my mind, something rather newsworthy regardless of what side you're on about the matter.
Last night neither CNN.com nor MSNBC.com had a peep about it on their main page. This morning MSNBC has it in a tiny link off to the side. Fox of course has it front and center.
Apparently Biden is giving Texas until today to relent or face serious consequences, which, again, you'd think would be more newsworthy. But the bottom line here is it's not a great look for Biden and it won't be on CNN or MSNBC front and center until they figure out a way to spin it as a win.
Anyway, no wonder people like twitter for news.
(This post is made with the full acknowledgement that I'm beyond certain one could find the exact situation in reverse with Fox at any given moment).
And? Does it matter what position on the spectrum I define when it comes to how the policy originates? It applies to left-wingers, centrists, you name it.
And? They're still policies from that part of the political spectrum. They cannot be analysed independently of context. If a party wanted to (completely hypothetically) reduce VAT, but deport all black people, you can't say reducing VAT is a positive for black people. What does the fact that one of more of your far-right parties have other policies? What relevance does it have to what was being discussed?
The definition of the word? What are you trying to argue? You asked if something can be both extreme and popular. The answer is yes. Why are you now trying to define what "extreme" means? What are you actually objecting to?
Words mean what people understand them to mean. There are loads of different definitions, the UK gov one is "Extremism is the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values or killing squadies". That is a bit specific but captures the idea that is based on the positions, not how popular they are. Killing squadies has been quite popular in certain bits of the UK at certain times for example.
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