If you live in Europe and think your democratic system is resistant to these things: itâs not.
Donât wait until your version of Trump gets elected. Start organizing now.
Italy elected Berlusconi (a corrupted tycoon who had ties with the mafia and bribed his way to the top of the Italian broadcasting world) in 1994. Yâall just catching up.
Donât wait until your version of Trump gets elected. Start organizing now.
No worries, he already has been elected last year!
Dick Schoof (yes, English speakers, that really is his legal name) is our Trump?
Iâd say Geert Wilders matches that description, and he did not become PMâŚ
Dick Schoof didnât get elected though, at least not by the people⌠Wilders was
Absolutely, over here weâve recently elected a horrible party as the biggest one, with 25% of the votes. Dark times.
The difference is that in many European countries the head of state is more of a ceremonial position (at least in practice) and the head of the government holds nowhere near the amount of power a US president does. With proportional representation, the biggest party often doesnât have an absolute majority and needs to form a government together with other parties, or might even end up in the opposition. Together they agree on whoâs going to be the head of government (usually the head of the largest party), who will be the ministers and what will be the policy. If it doesnât work out because of disagreements, the government breaks up and new elections will be held.
My point is: the risk is real, populism is growing, policy is shifting, but the dynamics are different. Having a first past the post system and concentrating so much power into a single political position feels like an accelerator.
And yet the âblame everything on immigrantsâ strategy seems to work quite well here too.
far less trusts politicians
crazy thing is⌠that is the exact reason why trump is winning in the States. Someone comes along, crass, rude, claiming to be a layman and the people here ate that up, thinking ânow here is a person like us, not like the established politician classâ and despite the rhetoric, or due to it, along with suppression and disinformation, he got elected.
This is fascism 101.
Fascism is at least as much an economic system as a political one, or more precisely, itâs more like an economic system hiding behind a political system.
And the way the economic system works is very simple - private ownership of the means of production combined with an overt and institutionalized revolving door between business and government, so that the end result is plutocratic oligarchy.
Basically, itâs taking the system that already existed in the US, by which the wealthy bought access to political power mostly surreptitiously and nominally illegally unless they followed specific restrictions, and legitimizes and formalizes and institutionalizes it and moves it right out into the open.
And behind all of the white supremacist and christian nationalist and reactionary conservative rhetoric, this was always the real goal.
If the numbers are true it costed him less than 0.1% of his wealth which is surprising how little it takes. Would you spend 0.1% of your wealth to elect a President and gain a government post that will bring you more wealth? Would you spend 1% of your wealth to become insanely rich? 10%?
In the society where power is measured by wealth ultra rich should not exist. Or better such society should not exist.
Also Musk wasnât even the biggest donor. And Harris was okay with this whole thing, she also received enormous donations. Who was against ultra rich? Bernie Sanders. No wonder he was sacked despite popular support.
What an absolute treasure Robert and Sam Reich are.
Speedrunning the decline and fall of the Roman empire.
