I can't help feeling that the article may have missed some of the heart of the matter, along with one of the (other) lessons of history: that if scared, aggrieved people feel they are not being heard, they will seek out politicians who are prepared to listen.
As often as not, such actors are found on the extreme ends of politics. Some such politicians are acting in good faith. Many are not, and in the game for more complicated, frightening reasons. But in a democracy, they are (for now) reliant on willing voters. And they have found a lot of them, not all of whom regard themselves as stupid or gulled.
That should cause more soul-searching among the bien pensants than it appears to have done. Because that's precisely part of where Weimar went wrong - vast disparities of wealth and well-being coupled with perceptions of a tone-deaf political elite. You also needed crazed ideologues adept in clever communications strategies and murder, but the two things had to come together, and they did.
Not all the politicians lumped as 'hard right' are the same, and the piece indeed alludes to massive policy differences on substantial matters. But the term is nevertheless a greatly over-simplified one, and risks not taking these differences as seriously as they ought to be - if indeed the grievance that fuels the extreme constituencies is to be addressed in practical terms, rather than with wishful thinking.
An airy call for national governments to coalesce and provide cheaper housing, green transition and life chances is drastically, fatally light on detail, though we might all agree on them as brilliant goals. The question is not whether these things are needed, but how to achieve them, and a good place to start would be to get more of the population on board for some inevitably tough choices by listening more closely to what worries them enough to make them vote for such people.
That would spike the guns of the true extremists, and do genuine justice to the memory of the men who stepped out of landing craft on D-Day.
Many were from British towns and cities where urban neglect and dysfunctional politics are today making themselves so fiercely felt - and which will erupt into expressions of exasperation at UK ballot boxes, or in 'none of the above' stay-at-home no-shows, next month.
Never ceases to amaze me how short our memory can be or how difficult it is to draw the proper lessons from our common history even if it is only of 80 years ago, widespread and duly documented.
How can anyone doubt where things could lead to if you take the far right/ nationalistic road.
And why go to the extremes and not just keep it within the democratic span - left , center or right ?
I dont think the extreme right are listening I think they are weoponising something real. The sense of local, pungent, rural de-gentrification and the wasteland of many small towns across the UK and France and Italy (Sabine Hills could be Tuscany they are beuatiful but pensioners and gangsters alone left there) is resented. Men resent and feel lost in a novel industrial world.
I can't help feeling that the article may have missed some of the heart of the matter, along with one of the (other) lessons of history: that if scared, aggrieved people feel they are not being heard, they will seek out politicians who are prepared to listen.
As often as not, such actors are found on the extreme ends of politics. Some such politicians are acting in good faith. Many are not, and in the game for more complicated, frightening reasons. But in a democracy, they are (for now) reliant on willing voters. And they have found a lot of them, not all of whom regard themselves as stupid or gulled.
That should cause more soul-searching among the bien pensants than it appears to have done. Because that's precisely part of where Weimar went wrong - vast disparities of wealth and well-being coupled with perceptions of a tone-deaf political elite. You also needed crazed ideologues adept in clever communications strategies and murder, but the two things had to come together, and they did.
Not all the politicians lumped as 'hard right' are the same, and the piece indeed alludes to massive policy differences on substantial matters. But the term is nevertheless a greatly over-simplified one, and risks not taking these differences as seriously as they ought to be - if indeed the grievance that fuels the extreme constituencies is to be addressed in practical terms, rather than with wishful thinking.
An airy call for national governments to coalesce and provide cheaper housing, green transition and life chances is drastically, fatally light on detail, though we might all agree on them as brilliant goals. The question is not whether these things are needed, but how to achieve them, and a good place to start would be to get more of the population on board for some inevitably tough choices by listening more closely to what worries them enough to make them vote for such people.
That would spike the guns of the true extremists, and do genuine justice to the memory of the men who stepped out of landing craft on D-Day.
Many were from British towns and cities where urban neglect and dysfunctional politics are today making themselves so fiercely felt - and which will erupt into expressions of exasperation at UK ballot boxes, or in 'none of the above' stay-at-home no-shows, next month.
A more subtle interpretation of the European results. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/06/european-union-2024-parliamentary-election/678654/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK31RPNPAxYHVjzyid3OM0iOI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Never ceases to amaze me how short our memory can be or how difficult it is to draw the proper lessons from our common history even if it is only of 80 years ago, widespread and duly documented.
How can anyone doubt where things could lead to if you take the far right/ nationalistic road.
And why go to the extremes and not just keep it within the democratic span - left , center or right ?
History has a habit of being repeated, our leaders, US, UK and EU, need to give 100% support to Ukraine to prevent it.
On target as always! We live in depressing times...
I dont think the extreme right are listening I think they are weoponising something real. The sense of local, pungent, rural de-gentrification and the wasteland of many small towns across the UK and France and Italy (Sabine Hills could be Tuscany they are beuatiful but pensioners and gangsters alone left there) is resented. Men resent and feel lost in a novel industrial world.