{"id":83750,"date":"2023-07-22T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-07-22T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=83750"},"modified":"2024-12-20T13:49:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T18:49:33","slug":"in-european-politics-far-right-doesnt-mean-what-americans-think-it-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/07\/22\/in-european-politics-far-right-doesnt-mean-what-americans-think-it-means\/","title":{"rendered":"In European politics, “far right” doesn’t mean what Americans think it means"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The European Conservative<\/em>, Rod Dreher<\/a> tries to put the various “far right” European political parties into context for North American readers:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you are an American who depends on the U.S. and other English-language media for news about continental European politics \u2014 and most Americans obviously do \u2014 then you might well be afraid that a wave of fascism is poised to sweep Europe.<\/p>\n

The European Conservative<\/em>, obviously, is a great source of news and information about Europe for our American readers \u2014 and I hope with this column to help American conservatives better understand what’s going on with the European Right \u2014 because there are very few venues for them to do so.<\/p>\n

American and British news agencies are reporting that the “far-right” party VOX is likely to do well in this weekend’s Spanish elections. The “far-right” Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> (AfD) is surging in German opinion polls. It seems like just yesterday that the “far-right” party of Giorgia Meloni topped Italian elections. “Far-right” parties are key to governing coalitions in Finland and Sweden.<\/p>\n

And, of course, the BBC website informs its readers to mind “the ultra-conservative, authoritarian-leaning governments in Poland and in Hungary”. Far-rightists to the fingertips, the lot, right?<\/p>\n

Well, no. Not even close. American conservatives should understand that by U.S. standards, the “far-right” parties are basically center-right contemporary Republicans. The declining establishment conservative parties of the European continent are more or less Clinton-style Democrats. There do exist genuinely far-right parties in Europe, but they aren’t anywhere near government.<\/p>\n

(Though in this spring’s Hungarian elections, the actually far-right party Jobbik, which considers Viktor Orban to be a squish, went into coalition with the left-wing parties. This caused the coalition prime ministerial candidate to boast moronically that his side was truly diverse, because it spanned the ideological spectrum from communist to fascist.)<\/p>\n

When U.S. journalists describe these nationalist and populist parties as “far-right”, they intend to call up images of burly fascists marching down cobblestone streets in hobnail boots, shouting abuse at Jews and minorities. I can’t decide if they do this deliberately to mislead American readers into thinking Europe is two tics away from a gran mal<\/em> Nazi seizure, or if the reporters themselves are so absorbed in the ideology of their class that they honestly cannot discern gradations of right-wing politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Blazing Cat Fur<\/em><\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The European Conservative, Rod Dreher tries to put the various “far right” European political parties into context for North American readers: If you are an American who depends on the U.S. and other English-language media for news about continental European politics \u2014 and most Americans obviously do \u2014 then you might well be afraid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1118,339,28,53],"tags":[1577,431,457,723,1171,335],"class_list":["post-83750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-germany","category-italy","category-media","category-politics","tag-afd","tag-conservatism","tag-fascism","tag-hungary","tag-populism","tag-spain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lMO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83750"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83753,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83750\/revisions\/83753"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}