... and their route to authoritarian government with oligarch-dominated economies:
I like to comment on the recent scandal that crashed the radical right's leadership in Austria:
This
is the modus operandi of many radical right wing parties in Europe.
They mix neoliberalism (which garners support by the very rich) with politics of aversion, solve no real problems for 90+% of the people and since they solve almost no real problems they need to exploit hate if not cheat to stay in power. The voters might otherwise try some political alternative in hope for better results.
The
tendency to get in bed with the super rich leads to the rise of
oligarchs who get unfair competitive advantages by their
connections to law-disrespecting politicians.
The
threat of losing elections leads to aggressive attacks on the
non-aligned news media by right wingers (this already begun in Austria and is a well-known story in Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, U.S.) while
oligarchs provide a radical pro right wing "news" media alternative (Rupert
et al/Sinclair, also media control established in Russia, Hungary,
Turkey) to support their political allies.
Later,
the judicial branch begins to prosecute the corruption or at least to
get in the way of unconstitutional laws and governance. This leads to
radical right wing attacks on the independence of the judicial branch
and the radical right attempts to politicise the judiciary branch in its
own favour (see U.S., Turkey, Poland, Russia etc.).
A terminal stage for democracy strangled by right wing radicals features that political opponents are getting jailed (usual excuses are corruption or terrorism), gerrymandering, vote suppression, election fraud and sometimes when they misjudged how much they would achieve by cheating, they refuse to recognise election defeats and deny the orderly and peaceful transition of power to the political opponents.
A terminal stage for democracy strangled by right wing radicals features that political opponents are getting jailed (usual excuses are corruption or terrorism), gerrymandering, vote suppression, election fraud and sometimes when they misjudged how much they would achieve by cheating, they refuse to recognise election defeats and deny the orderly and peaceful transition of power to the political opponents.
- - - - -
Some
of those right wing radical governments benefited from rapid economic
growth as their well-educated populations caught up in GDP per capita by
modernising and enjoying capital influx. This was particularly true of
Turkey, to a lesser extent Poland. Russia recovered economically by mere
export commodity price luck. These largely unearned or unsustainable
economic successes sometimes stabilise such far right governments long
enough to enable them to dismantle the rule of law and establish an
oligarchy with an unhealthy marriage of right wing radical politicians
and billionaires.
The problem with
this is that without the protective rule of law and political attention on developing the middle class and lower class (education, health, opportunities, security of businesses
against the oligarchs' foul play) the nation's future economic growth potential suffers badly. The
nations eventually begin to stagnate economically (just look at Russia's inability to build
competitive industries outside of arms and gas turbines). Additionally,
economic successes that were partially bubbles (such as in Turkey's debt-dependent development)
threaten to collapse, which leads to frantic efforts by the right wing
radicals to subjugate the remnants of democracy in order to stay in
power.
The
pattern is astonishingly universal. What differs between countries is merely the order of events and
whether and how the right wing politicians achieve economic policy
success for a couple years.
The variety in regard to economics shouldn't surprise, as neoliberalism isn't really a
growth-inducing ideology unless the previous economic policy was truly
awful in terms of making markets rigid and access to capital for
investment scarce. Most cases for neoliberal policies depend on incomplete (kind of naive) analysis of the consequences (example; privatisation of postal services) if not on outright wishful thinking (voodoo economics). The U.S. government these days use simple fiscal expansionism because its voodoo economics never work, and that's despite the very same politicians vilifying fiscal expansionism a few years ago when macroeconomics actually offered a good case for it due to the then depressed private demand.
- - - - -
Well, it appears this cup passed away from Austria this time.
The Austrian right wing radicals got caught by some sting op (and it
really doesn't matter by whom - what matters is their behaviour on the
undisputed tape) at the "cuddling with oligarchs and plotting illegal
favouritism (tilting the playing field in favour of oligarchs instead of
rule of law)" stage.
Similarly,
the judicial branches in Italy (Berlusconi), Spain (Correa), Israel
(Netanyahu) and the U.S. (Trump) were or are being challenged very much
by corrupt right wing politicians and those countries have not fallen
completely to authoritarian radical right wing political systems with
oligarch-controlled economies yet.
S O
P.S.: It should be noted that neither CDU nor CSU are right wing radical parties as described in this article. (The AfD is such a party, though. It already employs neoliberalism ideology and began with the cuddling with rich people, illegal party financing and most of all attacks on non-aligned news media outlets.)
I still think of both CDU and CSU as awful. The CSU is awful because of the kind of politicians it brings to power (too many very poor character individuals) and the CDU is awful because it's a true conservative "reform nothing, only administrate" party, and we've had too much of that in the past 40 years. Merkel herself is not a true conservative; she does occasionally reform in order to vent problem pressure that built up and could become a risk to continued political dominance of the CDU. Her refugee policy was a most untypical attempt to make actual policy (and a poorly-devised one at that).
Both CDU and CSU fiddled with rigging the government in their favour together with industry captains a long time ago, but the young Western German democracy resisted this seemingly for good more than fifty years ago already. The CDU has since adopted neoliberalism, passes laws that benefit most of all a reliably right wing publishing house and had its party financing/corruption scandals, has always an ear for billionaires and industry captains, but it does nothing really in regard to straight march into authoritarianism.
About Czech Republic:
I don't know enough about its politics to put ANO into the radical right wing category. It does partially fit my description of those, and there are similarities between Babiš and Berlusconi.
added next day: This BoingBoing article is related.
.
About Czech Republic:
I don't know enough about its politics to put ANO into the radical right wing category. It does partially fit my description of those, and there are similarities between Babiš and Berlusconi.
added next day: This BoingBoing article is related.
