"Trump supporters are xenophobic like this, and Cruz supporters are xenophobic like this."
I think the stated beliefs of these kinds of idiots about politics are not worth attention. People choose an existing side in a political debate to identify with, and "beliefs" follow from the identification.
Partly the choice of a side is a consequence of how screwed the believers are economically and how disconnected from the forces that run their country or the world, so some common origins of xenophobia to be found there. Maybe a common anger at actual or perceived disrespect of a culture the believers identify with. But what people say they're angry about is not going to be stable-- it'll depend on the question and on recent events. I'd guess most people in the countryside would like a world that is not run by capital controlled from the cities, while still wanting very cheap energy, manufactured goods, and insurance against bad weather or financial crisis.
It's not at all easy to get something close enough culturally and linguistically to make the kinds of comparisons the OP is talking about. You'd need to get down like 7 or 8 layers of turtles.
We're all assuming that Republicans and ISIS are twinsies, right?
They're twin sets. One is the sleeveless undersweater and the outer cardigan.
This from Jacobin was an interesting and detailed discussion of the Austrian far right, its history and sub-currents. (Via Trapnel elsewhere.) I suspect that comparing American politics to some other country's politics is often going to obscure issues, because those the other politics has its own contingent histories and forms. There is wisdom to the analogy ban. OTOH multiple cross-national comparisons can illuminate if you don't get hung up on them.
I thought this had been settled a long time ago. Everyone is like the Nazis except for liberals, who are like the Bolsheviks.
It seems to me like this would be most useful for a country-by-country comparison, especially with just a little more detail. For an intro to France, the Front National is most like Trump supporters, the Socialist Party is roughly as powerful and influential as the Democratic Party at the moment but its positions are well to the left of Sanders, the French Republican Party is a little like Rockefeller Republicans, and so on.
I realize that gets a lot of details wrong, but it's a start, and it's a lot more useful than "Trump is like Golden Dawn, Cruz is like Putin, etc." would be.
The Professional has your taxonomy right here. Dave Niewert, since y'all ignore my links. Long as fuck.
Trump is Proto-fascist. Incompetent clown. A John-the-Baptist, maybe Mussolini, to the real deal.
Ted Cruz is gonna rock your world.
I haven't read it, but have been reliably informed that White Supremacy : A Comparative Study
of American and South African
History by George Frederickson is insightful. I also read a book comparing fascism in Germany, Italy and France. The title was simply 'Fascism' and I can't remember the author, but it seemed useful .
The Niewert piece bob links is very good.
I've been moaning on about the horrifying inevitability of the loathsome Cruz for months now, so intensely depressing.
I'm sort of surprised we don't yet have any pool for the order the republican candidates get knocked out. I guess there's Roberto's bets on Trump, but we could go so much more into this.
Wow, Bob, good essay.
Ogged, I think you're sneaking around the analogy ban by calling this a taxonomy. ;-) It's a veiled call for comparisons & analogies.
The comparison to the rise of right wing anti-immigrant parties in EU parliamentary democracies has been done by Thomas Edsall in the (NYTimes and a Harvard political scientist in the Washington Post (I can't find her essay, which argues the 2 party system can't absorb this movement as well as a parliamentary system where they remain capped at natural support levels of 25%). Also interesting, this paper claims anti-immigrant parties don't succeed unless they have a "reputational shield" that protects them from charges of racism. I see the author is cotinues to study right-wing extremism.
I suppose the crux of the debate is how much this is changing.
I find my acquaintances here in Italy are vaguely interested in the rise of Trump but are allergic to comparisons to european politics. Many reject the comparison to Berlusconi. I haven't tried the Lega Nord or UKIP analogy.
The Neiwert piece is good, so is the Edsall.
At the moment the New Right, whether in America or Europe is not classically fascist, for all that, as Neiwert points out, it dangerously enables fascist elements. A typology would be difficult and probably not particularly helpful, because the unique characteristics of the populist right in every country are largely due to their creating a narrative which reflects the imaginary golden age and/or national excellence specific to each.
Once you dispense with that, you're left with a set of programmes which are surprisingly unambitious compared with classical Fascism, and which don't really go much further than an utterly naive economic wish list and a large dose of xenophobia.
15 makes a good point. Fascism is so bound to national corporate interests, but there aren't any national corporate interests anymore. No Western capitalist cares about whether his company does most of its business in America or Poland or Malaysia or wherever else. And of course Western capitalists want to avoid at all costs having their own countrymen as employees. The idea of "autarky" is completely obsolete.
"the Socialist Party is roughly as powerful and influential as the Democratic Party at the moment but its positions are well to the left of Sanders"
I always think these kinds of statements are misleading, like "Nixon was to the Left of Obama on economic policy". Parties operate in a context, and the context in contemporary France is of a large public sector. Within that context, however, the Socialist party is an establishment party happy with privatizing a ton of services, bombing Syria, and generally serving an established status quo, much like our own Democratic party. Put Bernie Sanders the person in France and he would certainly advocate for positions to the left of the Socialist party.
17. last. Well. on the left of the Socialist Party- the PSF covers quite a wide spectrum of views and I don't think Sanders, at least these days, would be up for joining Lutte Ouvriere.
But your main point is quite right. Once more with feeling, we need a new set of cliches for this stuff. Every time I say this people tell me that "left" and "right" are still meaningful concepts and people understand them. And then they say things like "Nixon was to the Left of Obama on economic policy". Utter bollox. The past is another country too. Nixon was an opportunist whose economic policies were formed by the contingencies of his time. Roman emperors used to hand out free bread to selected categories of proletarii; it didn't make them Social Democrats.
18.1: fair point. The parliamentary, coalition-based system scrambles the analogies between France and the U.S. even more.
17-19: These are all problems with analogies in general, and a good reason for the analogy ban. Whoever originally proposed the ban probably wants to have strong words with the idiot who wrote this post.
On the topic of "political science research that I would like somebody to produce" I had a thought last night.
I was thinking about the adage, "taxes as the price for a civilized society" and realized that I would really like to see a simple chart showing how government tax and spending policy has changed over the years. I'm imagining something broken down by decade (50's through 2000's)* which would give
Federal Income Tax collected (in real dollars and also % of GDP)
Federal Combined Tax (Income + SS/Medicare) collected (same)
Military Spending (as % of tax dollars collected)
SS Spending (as % of tax dollars)
Medicare/Medicaid Spending (as % of tax dollars)
Average Income Tax rate for somebody in the 40th percentile of income* (rate as a % of total income, not marginal rate)
Average Combined Tax rate for somebody in the 40th percentile of income** (rate as a % of total income, not marginal rate)
Average rates for somebody in the 60th, 80th, 90th, 95th percentile of income
Finally, as long as I'm asking, a summary statistic for wealth inequality (gini coefficient?)
* I'm imagining values averaged over the decade, but I'd be perfectly happy just taking the individual years 1952, 1962, . . . 2012 if that was easier.
** I realize that this could be difficult to calculate. Because tax rates depend on so many things other than total income I don't know how easy it is to create a profile for an average of typical person in the 40th percentile for income. But
OT: Have the Three Wolf Moon shirts already been appropriated into hipster wear? Isn't that too recent for irony?
Do you have a funding source?
How long would it take to compile the data?
I'd believe anything from, "it already exists, here's a link" to "It would take somebody familiar with the data sources a day or two to put it together" to "there are so many undefined terms it would be a nightmare to attempt that."
25: I think pretty easy except for the "Average tax rates" ones. Those I have no idea about.
Especially the combined tax rate. Because that depends not just on what state you live in but how you live. You'd have to make a bunch of assumptions and calculate for a weighted basket of taxpayers. Or you'd have to make a couple of really huge assumptions that would make the whole thing not much different than calculating government spending and dividing by number of taxpayers. Which might be sufficient.
25: I think pretty easy except for the "Average tax rates" ones. Those I have no idea about.
Yeah, looking around a bit, it looks like most of the tax/expenditure numbers are available on FRED.
But, of course, when I throw a graph together it's not at all obvious what it means. It will take a bit of puzzling to figure out what I actually want to be seeing.
OT: Have the Three Wolf Moon shirts already been appropriated into hipster wear?
Yeah, that's done and gone. The current hipster-wear trend is complaining that corporate America has ruined Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties by making such sweaters widely available for purchase. (See, e.g.)
||
This is interesting -- 538 put together a tool that lets you see how election results would change if you change voter turnout or partisan preferences among various demographic groups.
For example, If you raise the voter turnout for Hispanic/Latino voters you have to increase it by almost 20 percentage points before it changes the outcome of any state (North Carolina), but if you drop the voter turnout for African-American voters by 16 percentage points it would swing two key states (FL & OH).
|>