Finland’s results in the European election bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party.
Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election.
This warms my hearth.
I’m actual a member of a small leftwing party in my own country and (having lived 2 decades abroad and seen other political realities and even been a member of the Green Party in Britain) have concluded they suffer exactly from the problem that well entrenched leadership are not “straight shooters calling bullshit out”, and instead their style of discourse “avoids giving offense”, sounding far too much (IMHO) like the mainstream supposedly-left party we have here and leaving an impression about the party (to those who aren’t tribalists predisposed to support and believe in anything the party’s leadership says) that they’re just another group looking to suckle from the tit of the state.
I think the problem in my party is due to the leadership being a very uniform group of 30-something well-off scions of the Middle Class (which, in a country that until the revolution of 74 that overthrew Fascism had very little Middle class, shows that they’re hardly coming “from the people”) who got to the leadership mainly due to nepotism (often being the sons and daughters of party founders) or by going to the same shcools and being similar to each other and talking the same talk as the rest - i.e. cronysm - and who, from the explanations I got from one of the party’s members of parliament for certain anti-Democratic practices inside the party, see themselves as superior to the rest of the members of the party (which probably explains why they listen - if at all - very little to the rest of the party and seem unable to change even after losing between half and two thirds of the vote).
So I hope I can use the example of the Left in Finland to internally push for a kind of change in leadership and discourse, towards one much more broadly representative of people in this country and who is willing to talk about how parts of the machine are broken and need replacing (and do so anchored on a proactivelly tought through vision for the future, rather than the mere reactivelly “complain about things blowing up after they blew up” so common in my country) rather than the current mild-mannered, frustrating reactive discourse that amounts to little more than “the car is fine, it’s just some some screws that need tightenning”.
“straight shooters calling bullshit out”, and instead their style of discourse “avoids giving offense”,
I want to highlight that Andersson is still respectful and not offensive. The callouts are done honestly
Totally agree that leftism in a global sense needs to shift communication towards a more active and hopeful future. Everyone else is just sticking to the status quo or worse.
I’ll give you an example:
I would like to see more pointing out that most members of Parliament, government ministers and heads of city halls from the two main parties are also “housing investors” so it makes absolute sense that they voted for all kinds of measures over the last decade that pumped up even higher the gigantic house bubble in Portugal, which is making young people in Portugal stay with their parent’s until their mid 30s and, in a country with one of the most aged populations in Europe, delaying childbirth and having fewers children, and even to leave the country by their hundreds of thousands each year.
Instead all we get is something around “house prices are too high that’s bad for the young” and only started getting it recently when even the Middle Class started hurting - I mean, the guys at the mainstream parties also say that at this point because it’s got the a level were it’s well beyond undeniable. I mean, I moved back to Portugal 5 years ago from the UK and it was already painfully obvious to me that there as a massive housing bubble and the politicians in power were passing measures to pump it up even further and faster.
Similarly the non-mainstream Left seldom talks about Corruption and the systemic structural reasons for it (from a Judicial system which is slow, underinvested in and partly subverted by the dominant political parties, to a widespread nationwide culture of Nepotism and Cronyism), not least because the party with the biggest problem in that domain at the moment is the supposedly leftwing mainstream one with whom these parties aimed to make a cohalition in the last Parliamentary elections. Refraining from overtly and unwavering standing by the principle that politicians abusing the powers they’ve been delegated to by voters in unacceptable no matter the party of those politicians at the time when the far-right was (with tremendous hypocrisy) was making a lot of noise about it, just made those leftwing parties look like either accomplices, unprincipled and/or just looking to feed of the tit of the state like the rest.
(It also doesn’t help that in my experience those leftwing parties also internally suffer massivelly from Cronyism and Nepotism)
IMHO to be a proper leftwing party you don’t really need to go around calling other people assholes, you just need to point out that many if not most of the greatest problems that affect all society weren’t born from immaculate conception: they are the result of choices and actions for personal gain of people entrusted by voters with powers that can impact everybody else. Merelly “This is bad and needs changing” from the mouths of a politician with no pointing of fingers doesn’t mean much because they all say that when things get to the point of being undeniable, even the very same politicians that caused that problem in the first place and such stuff only real works for tribalists who are already convinced that “the leaders of my Party are trustworthy and it’s those other people who are not” (which has the curious effect of making most party members thinks those speeches are amazing and insightful when comming from those they see as they leaders, without noticing the deep similarity with what is said by the leaders of other parties, even while outsiders and non-tribalists are hearing everybody saying the same stuff and thus not trusting any one group more than another and even thinking “they’re all the same”).
No.
Livre are Liberals cosplaying as Lefties.
In a genuine fight for Equality you don’t go around segregating people by identities and deeming some more deserving to fight for than others because of the identity you think that they belong to: you fight for everybody who is being treated unfairly, ideally going after that which is causing greatest pain first.
Split people by the genetics they were born with and treating them differently based on that is not the path to Equality and Fairness, it’s just a different kind of Inequality and Unfairness, so those doing such dividing and segregated treatment are either fighting for something else - say, “everybody should be free to do what they want with consenting adults”, which is fine, but at times incompatible with the core leftwing principle of “the best possible life for the greatest number”, especially when it comes to money (were the latter principle would go against the Freedom of some to accumulate as much wealth as they want), so that’s not Leftwing, that’s just Liberalism - or they’re tribalist fad followers, who don’t think when it comes to politics.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Livre end up turning out to be just as much a bunch of self-serving assholes seeking “jobs for the boys” by ridding a fashionable political strain imported from elsewhere as Portugal’s newest “Green Party” cosplayers, PAN, turned out to be.
I’ll read your comment in more detail later but who were you talking about then?
