Friday, 16 September 2022

The Age Of Nationalism

Once, not so long ago, two old established parties, the Republicans and Socialists used to run France ....

Frances Traditional Left And Right Beaten
Frances Traditional Left And Right Beaten ..

.... but in a sign of what is happening in many states worldwide (such as India where the Indian National Congress party is on life support with just 19.5% of the popular vote), the old political consensus is breaking down, and in the recent French Presidential elections, both the two old parties lost their deposits. 

So the two mainstream parties, that traditionally had ran France, had actually attracted a little over two million votes between them. Remember, it was only a decade ago the Socialist Francois Hollande was voted President of France, and in 2016 Republican Nicolas Sarkozy was voted President ....

How the mighty have tumbled .... in 2022 in the first round Marine Le Pen of the old National Front (now rebranded as national Rally) was second, while incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, was first with his new party 'En marche,' that was created just before the 2017 election (in which he was elected with 66.1% of the vote in the second round beating Marine Le Pen). Now in the 2022 second round voting, Macron got home with 58.5% against Le Pen's 41.5%. but apparently only on an apathy turnout aimed at stopping Le Pen.

In the USA, Donald Trumps idiocentric, nationalist brand of politics under the slogan, 'Make America Great Again (MAGA),' whilst beaten in the last election, has not gone away, and the Republican Party is still deeply in its thrall, to the benefit of neither the USA's domestic politics, nor the rest of the democratic worlds democracies.

In Turkey, the two traditional ruling parties, the Republican People's Party, and Peoples' Democratic Party only got 39.4% of the vote between them in the 2018 presidential elections, with Islamic nationalist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party winning with 52.59% of the vote. While in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, who are often described as right-wing, for their views on the failures of Swedish immigration/asylum policies, are now the largest party in the coalition that has narrowly won the latest elections. Far-right parties have also entered governing coalitions in Finland, Austria and Italy in recent times.

.... There's no doubt that from the USA, South Asia, to Europe, many of the long established traditional political parties, and democracy itself, are being shaken up by the emergence of a new type of nationalism or party politics. Where it all ends is actually hard to predict ... but the last time something similar happened to the old order, it was dictatorships, fascism, communism and war.

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