TR Foreign Policy & Geopolitics

[what]

Do you seriously think the Mullahs would allow someone to run and win that would change anything for the positive with Turkey?

 

[Hari Sud]

Changing politics in Europe - it is a political mess

Is Europe shifting rightward? It seems so.

Right-wing parties almost seized parliamentary power in France. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has resulted in the emergence of many Europeans as anti-immigrants, with excessive Islamist and anti-war sentiments. This war is losing its initial appeal.

In the Netherlands, forming a government was challenging after right-wing parties won but couldn't govern alone. Dick Schoof, a center-right politician, became Prime Minister on July 2nd, with right-wing support. As PM, he represents the Netherlands in the European Council, likely pushing against liberalism.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán leads a right-wing populist and national-conservative party, influencing Central Europe. He won an ultra-conservative mandate in 2024 and, holding the rotating EU presidency, seeks peace talks with Russia, despite other countries' disapproval.

In Germany, right-wing parties have no governmental control but are gaining support with their anti-immigration and anti-war stance. Their party is under police surveillance for extremist views. It is polling second place hence is challenging the ruling Social Democrats.

Poland, once a social democracy post-communism, now sees right-wing dominance, mobilizing three-quarters of the electorate. Though not facing significant immigration backlash, the war in Ukraine boosts right-wing support. The party that garnered only 7% of votes four years ago secured 15% in 2023, showing conservatism's rise.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni's far-right party, in power for over a year, leads the third-largest European economy with an anti-immigration and anti-war platform. Her rhetoric aligns her with Hungary's Viktor Orbán in seeking an end to the Ukraine conflict.

In Britain, the center-right Conservatives lost power on July 4th elections, after a decade in control and managing Brexit. With Labour now in charge, economic recovery is prioritized over tackling immigration and Islamism, despite their importance to voters.

For decades, political alliances kept the hard-right from power. Today, this strategy is failing as populist and nationalist parties gain strength across Europe. Six EU countries — Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic — have hard-right parties in government, with many others dominating polls continent-wide.

What was once envisioned as a European superstate has fragmented into political disarray. For centuries, Europe has been divided, largely along Roman Catholic and Protestant lines. World War I was meant to end all wars, but it didn't. World War II sought to correct the aftermath of WWI.

Remarkably, Europe has enjoyed 75 years of peace, a rarity in its history, despite the so-called Cold War. Liberal ideologies have dominated European politics, successfully maintaining stability. However, this cohesion is now unraveling due to factors such as immigration, rising Islamism, and the war in Ukraine. The U.S. can exert influence, but with the potential election of right-winger Donald Trump, who has connections with European right-wing leaders, the situation in Europe may change further to the right.

 

[what]

UK, France and Poland have recently voted left and Spain was left too. Germany is a centre-left coalition.
Thats like the majority of the European population and economic power.

If we go by GDP or population of Europe, I'd argue that: Is Europe shifting rightward? No, not really.

Edit: Poland is not leftist, but compared to the previous government less right than before.

 

[Kartal1]

Journalist Kurtuluş Demirbaş was detained in Saudi Arabia, where he went on duty to cover U19 football matches.

Diplomatic sources: Information was officially requested from the Saudi Arabian authorities without delay. The issue is being followed closely and our citizen's family is informed regularly.

Local sources state that Demirbaş was detained due to some of his statements regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Diplomatic sources: Turkish journalist Kurtuluş Demirbaş, who was detained in Taif city of Saudi Arabia, was released as a result of the initiatives of the Turkish authorities.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1811451147598565581

 

[YeşilVatan]

UK, France and Poland have recently voted left and Spain was left too. Germany is a centre-left coalition.
Thats like the majority of the European population and economic power.

If we go by GDP or population of Europe, I'd argue that: Is Europe shifting rightward? No, not really.

Edit: Poland is not leftist, but compared to the previous government less right than before.

I think this is a faulty reading of the situation. European politics is going trough a transitionary stage right now. As the far right gains momentum, they eat into the center right's vote share, which causes left to take power. But the structural issues that empower far right remain unresolved.

• In the UK, centuries long Tory tradition is on the verge of collapse. Reform UK is overtaking them as the opposition. They still have to contend with deindustrialization, mass immigration, demographic winter and Brexit fallout.
• In France, Le Pen's party lost the election with a very small amount of votes. But they will have a budgetary crisis in the coming months and the left coalition is very, very unstable. And the president is a lame duck now.
• Germany still has rapid deindustrialization. AfD still has a chance to gain votes by utilizing the coming crises.
• Italy is still governed by Meloni and co.
• I don't know much about Spain tbh so I'll refrain from commenting on that.

European society is still moving to the right. But the electoral systems gave power to leftists. My conclusion; this is temporary.

 

[Afif]

I think this is a faulty reading of the situation. European politics is going trough a transitionary stage right now. As the far right gains momentum, they eat into the center right's vote share, which causes left to take power. But the structural issues that empower far right remain unresolved.

• In the UK, centuries long Tory tradition is on the verge of collapse. Reform UK is overtaking them as the opposition. They still have to contend with deindustrialization, mass immigration, demographic winter and Brexit fallout.
• In France, Le Pen's party lost the election with a very small amount of votes. But they will have a budgetary crisis in the coming months and the left coalition is very, very unstable. And the president is a lame duck now.
• Germany still has rapid deindustrialization. AfD still has a chance to gain votes by utilizing the coming crises.
• Italy is still governed by Meloni and co.
• I don't know much about Spain tbh so I'll refrain from commenting on that.

European society is still moving to the right. But the electoral systems gave power to leftists. My conclusion; this is temporary.

New generation of voters are majority leftwing. There isn't anything to suggest this will change in the future. Any other movement toward right is temporary. At least that's how i see it. (@Rooxbar may have something interesting to say.)

 

[YeşilVatan]

New generation of voters are majority leftwing. There isn't anything to suggest this will change in the future. Any other movement toward right is temporary. At least that's how i see it. (@Rooxbar may have something interesting to say.)

Young people always vote more to the left. They also age out of it. Also, take a look at the population pyramids in those countries. The crux of the issue is left politics offer no real solutions to the profound problems of European nations. So they spend every little ounce of political capital trying to keep the far right out of power, but all this effort does is empower the far right.

Only country that managed this situation is Denmark, in which the center right enjoys a stable, comfortable lead.

 

[Rooxbar]

New generation of voters are majority leftwing. There isn't anything to suggest this will change in the future. Any other movement toward right is temporary. At least that's how i see it. (@Rooxbar may have something interesting to say.)

Political categorizations like any categorization has to meet certain criteria. The criteria are: completeness (that the whole domain under discussion should be covered by the n number of categories chosen), mutual exclusivity (each object or entity should unambiguously belong to only one category, i.e. categories should have no intersection), proportionality (categories should be of similar size and have objects of similar granularity), relevance (objects should be of the same type), and parsimony (the lowest number of categories that can meet the other criteria should be used.)

The categorization of the landscape of political positions, ideologies, ideals, policies and values into a single axis left-right spectrum obviously doesn't meet any of the criteria mentioned. It is not complete as it is only one-dimensional. The objects of the domain (ideals, policies, values) are not well-defined which means they cannot be mutually exclusive. They are also not proportional (many right-wing values and ideals are mostly default reactions of humans to certain phenomena making them contain a larger array of objects; the debate is how much we can stray from the path our evolutionary past has carved for us towards objective rationality without breaking things: so a compromise is needed between traditional more simple right-wing values which are mostly a result of human reactions, and left values which result from theory-crafting and defying nature; the baseline human condition has been to lean into the more immediate reactions until the past 300 years. The theory-crafting can also be vulnerable to straying from the path towards rationality, coming up with dangerous detours). Relevance is the weakest point of this categorization as the ideals, values and policies the categories lump together mostly have no rhyme or reason in what components they share, let alone the fact that the ideals and policy-positions change based on spatial and temporal context. I will not enumerate the other ways the categories don't meet the criteria for brevity, but you get the point.


Now one might object that a categorization that perfectly meets all the criteria is not possible. That's true, and most natural language categorizations are done for their utility in communication more than for objective categorization. So does this categorization have utility? Yes, but with a gaping caveat: it has made itself useful as the categorization itself has shaped perceptions about political alignments historically in its own image through adoption by parties, factions, etc. Hence the utility is contingent, the same way the categorization of late romans into green and blue based on the color of charioteer teams they supported was contingently useful.

The historical roots of the utility of this categorization makes it a point of team-sports for those who adopt it to the point of seeing themselves as sharing the whole package of disparate ideals and policy-positions associated with these categories uncritically and having a common cause and history with the groups, parties and political factions who have adopted the monikers, hence making this a point of pride and identity, further enhancing grouping cohesion, adding to the practical utility of seeing political actors in the light of this originally pretty bad categorization.

Say these things to any left-winger or right-winger and most will scoff at you and say: "What the fuck are you on about, it's not that serious". Now I say that to show my main point: both left and right will share in that response because culture is like a tsunami wave that hauls everything on its way all together. The left and right share much more than they think they do. If culture moves in ways that I think is wrong, both the left and the right will inherit it irrespective of their positions. I think certain aspects of culture have been moving in wrong directions (in other aspects the trend towards better directions has been proven inevitable; will touch on this later). Anti-intellectualism (populism), thinking in preconceived notions and molds, ready-made answers, aversion to suspension of judgement, intolerance of intellectual curiosity, an obsession with identity and an insistence on metaphysical reality of these fictitious identities; these are all things the left and the right share. I don't like this general cultural trend, and the fact that the left-right categorization has no way of taking these values and my dislike of them into account is the ultimate point I'm making here. What am I if I don't like the left and the right in this way?

Some will say you are at the center. Others will say that the right does oppose these cultural trends. In the case of the latter, there's a tangible increase in chatter about these things from the right (and they seem to have taken the mantel of blabbing about things like "freedom of speech" and "values of civilization" from the left which historically has been the side that tries to claim some of these values), but wherever there's a lot of blabber about something, there's a decided lack of the same thing also (which is exactly why there's a need to emphasize it a lot) and this is extra true for many right-wingers who seem to be the most incurious, ready-made answer having, least tolerant, judgment-suspending critters on earth. But there are right-wingers who are the opposite of this as well (Peter Hitchens comes to mind) but we have to lump them together unfortunately as the result of this historically adopted categorization.

About the former position of people like me being center because we're against left or right because of their practical (irrespective of lip-service) aversion to the ideals mentioned, I have to disagree. Center is about stability, and protection of status-quo. There was before the 1970s and esp. before 1990s prior to the fall of soviets, a real sense of insecurity on both sides about their truths as there was an opposing camp out there that could not be silenced. With the fall of soviets, the liberal and conservative side (the right-wing) lost this insecurity (cf. Huntington, Fukuyama) and this has been mirrored in culture and political discourse moving the Overton window to the right. The old center-right (liberals) has become center in many parts of Europe (and in U.S. and some other places they are even considered center-left because of perceptions of progressiveness in social policy; or even by some they are considered far left, which is a joke as there's nothing far or subversive about liberals; conservatives are liberals themselves, they just don't know it and think just because they disagree with the socially liberal liberals on a couple of cultural issues that they, the socially conservative liberals are drastically different).

Before this upwelling of liberal confidence which dragged the center towards it, the center-right was pro-market liberals (Neo-classical Marshallians, Jevonians, Walrasians in a sense), the center-left was pro-mixed economy social democrats (Keynesians, Pigouvians, Kahnians if you will) and the center was much more opaque. Now what people call center is just a pale shade of right and the attitudes of ready-made answers (talking heads with talking points) is as prevalent among them as it is with cultural vogue leftists or those who worship at the altar of Marx (or Adam Smith, same difference).

I said I will touch on those aspects of culture which I think are going in the right direction and these are the things which seem to be long trends which depend on modern institutions and modes of life rather than spontaneous changes of mentality. This will pertain to your point more directly. Until a couple decades ago in many underdeveloped parts of the world (and even to this day in some places), and until 70, 80 years ago in many western cultures, torturing animals and laughing at freaks in circuses was the favorite pastime of the populace. But through what Norbert Elias calls the civilizing process, these acts of violence and other mentalities of cruelty and lack of compassion and tolerance are in a general downtrend in the world and this trend is continuing, albeit maybe with some local and temporal breaks in the trend here and there.

This is not however paralleled in personal attitudes following a similar trend when biases and intellectual honesty, curiosity and pro-intellectualism are in question. The civilizing process, hence is more a result of deeper societal factors like the monopoly of state on violence, urbanization, a minimum level of education for all, food security due to chemical fertilizers and pesticides etc. and it will continue independent of other less appealing cultural trends that I talked about previously. What many see as a conspiracy and a left-wing shift in culture is a byproduct of this process. I'm talking about the topic of culture wars in the west, lgbt rights, abortion, multiculturalism, social justice, etc. What many perceive as attempts at propagandizing them about these issues, is just a function of high concentration of abnormal and marginal groups in big urban centers and the further fact of these big urban centers being also centers of entertainment industry coupled with the fact that everyone writes themselves and their environment into their fiction.

Other part of this civilizing process that is seen as a promotion of left-wing values is its effect on women, age of marriage, their income and the level of control they have over their relations. Incidentally there was a debate about the age of Aisha when she married the prophet in our country a week or so ago. Funnily enough this was first used by mainly British orientalists like Sir William Muir and David Margoliouth to attack Islam, when debutante balls in Britain paraded 12 year old girls to their prospect suitors in their 30s up until like 1920s. A change in socio-economic conditions (transition from agricultural production, and also that agricultural production being guaranteed to surpass subsistence levels due to technological advances, making the obtaining of numerous male children as early as possible not as necessary is the main reason getting rid of useless daughters as early as possible for parents, and getting married as soon as possible to girls as soon as they hit puberty to guarantee maximum amount of sons, waned as a practice, coupled with the fact that with the new opportunities of education and employment, girls were not seen necessary as a burden by their parents, and they also didn't see their best prospects as exclusively marrying to the highest bidder and becoming a comfortable housewife.) necessitates changes in culture henceforth. These trends will continue. The frustrations with the change of trend to those born to a different world, or to parents with values from a different world has only lead to the defeat of those resisting in the past couple of centuries.

Now what this means for younger voters, and their preferences isn't straight-forward; esp. regarding anything other than cultural strife. For cultural strife, though, my prediction is that the civilizing trend will continue although local over-extensions (for instance what some see as propagandizing of lgbt groups in entertainment or excessive power of females in deciding for their relationships and their bodies leading to antagonism towards and caricaturization of portraitures of feminism and women's rights, the excesses themselves a byproduct of newfound confidence borne out of new socioeconomic realities) may lead to correction intervals (where the reaction succeeds for a decade or so to reverse the effect). As I said, since the civilizing effect is seen as correlated with left-wing cultural ideals, the continuation of the trend will mean a more "left-wing" trend in those areas, if you will. But such cultural ideals are tied at the hip with other ideals of multiculturalism (which also means a more tolerant attitude toward migrants, refugees, etc.) since they all have their roots in the hodgepodge of big urban center life. The contrasts in these areas can be more stark (esp. in the west as it can turn into the easily tangible contrast between white vs brown, or western vs Muslim) and the adoption of those ideals might not have the same socio-economic force behind it that the other aforementioned stuff does. In fact the opposite might be true, and you might get people who are "left" on lgbt, abortion and feminism issues, but right-wing on immigration and multiculturalism. I'm not sure about this, I haven't really thought about it that deeply.

In terms of the economic side of things, my prediction depends on the assumption that left economics is kind of dead. But since the decades ahead will be times of turmoil whatever the status quo is will lose power. The status quo by an Austrian will be perceived to be Keynesian and what alternative they will demand will be (surprise!) libertarianism, but the status quo that the Marxist sees will be neoliberalism and the alternative they demand will be (surprise!) Marxism, and some liberals will agree with the Austrian, some with the Marxist and some will think the status quo is liberal and good actually (absolute minority). I think since I proclaimed that left economics is dead, then we have to conclude that in this scenario the Austrian will prevail in persuading larger swathes of people and a period of central bank abolishment and privatization of all will ensue; the nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw period (I see it happening around 2040) will not be pretty; the pendulum swing will probably revive some sort of violent reaction to the other side and Marxism may be on the scene again, as historical alternatives have staying power as they form political traditions. But if conditions go haywire due to climate change more than it's predicted and our institutions collapse and we revert to a less-educated populace the absolute primacy of previously mentioned immediate reactions might take over again. It's all vain speculation anyway. Other than the continuation of the civilizing process in the long run (with local setbacks here and there due to weakening of socioeconomic factors making it possible), I have not much else substantial to say.

 

[Rooxbar]

Also:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1811591635748192653

 

[uçuyorum]

Political categorizations like any categorization has to meet certain criteria. The criteria are: completeness (that the whole domain under discussion should be covered by the n number of categories chosen), mutual exclusivity (each object or entity should unambiguously belong to only one category, i.e. categories should have no intersection), proportionality (categories should be of similar size and have objects of similar granularity), relevance (objects should be of the same type), and parsimony (the lowest number of categories that can meet the other criteria should be used.)

The categorization of the landscape of political positions, ideologies, ideals, policies and values into a single axis left-right spectrum obviously doesn't meet any of the criteria mentioned. It is not complete as it is only one-dimensional. The objects of the domain (ideals, policies, values) are not well-defined which means they cannot be mutually exclusive. They are also not proportional (many right-wing values and ideals are mostly default reactions of humans to certain phenomena [the debate is how much we can stray from the path our evolutionary past has carved for us towards objective rationality without breaking things so a compromise is needed between traditional more simple right-wing values mostly a result of human reactions, and left values which result from theory-crafting and defying nature; the baseline human condition has been to lean into the more immediate reactions until the past 300 years, and the theory-crafting has alsoe seen itself be vulnerable from straying for the path towards rationality], making them contain a larger array of objects). Relevance is the weakest point of this categorization as the ideals, values and policies the categories lump together mostly have no rhyme or reason in what components they share, let alone the fact that the ideals and policy-positions change based on spatial and temporal context. I will not enumerate the other ways the categories don't meet the criteria for brevity, but you get the point.


Now one might object that a categorization that perfectly meets all the criteria is not possible. That's true, and most natural language categorizations are done for their utility in communication more than for objective categorization. So does this categorization have utility? Yes but with a gaping caveat: it has made itself useful as the categorization itself has shaped perceptions about political alignments historically in its own image through adoption by parties, factions, etc. Hence the utility is contingent, the same way the categorization of late romans into green and blue based on the color of charioteer teams they supported was contingently useful.

The historical roots of the utility of this categorization makes it a point of team-sports for those who adopt it to the point of seeing themselves as sharing the disparate ideals and policy-positions associated with these categories and having a common cause and history with the groups, parties and political factions who have adopted the monikers, hence making this a point of pride and identity, further enhancing grouping cohesion, adding to the practical utility of seeing political actors in the light of this originally pretty bad categorization.

Now say these things to any right-winger or left-winger and most scoff at you and say to you: "What the fuck are you on about, it's not that serious". Now I'm say that to show my main point: both left and right will share in that response because culture is a tsunami wave that hauls everything on its way together. The left and right share much more than they think they do. If culture moves in ways that I think is wrong, both the left and the right will inherit it irrespective of their positions. I think certain aspects of culture have been moving in wrong directions (in other aspects the trend towards better directions has been proven inevitable; will touch on this later). Anti-intellectualism, thinking in preconceived notions and molds, ready-made answers, aversion to suspension of judgement, intolerance of intellectual curiosity, an obsession with identity and an insistence on metaphysical reality of these fictitious identities; these are all things the left and the right share. I don't like this general cultural trend, and the fact that the left-right categorization has no way of taking these values and my dislike of them into account is the ultimate point I'm making here. What am I if I don't like left and right in this way?

Some will say you are at the center. Others will say that the right do oppose these cultural trends. In the case of the latter, there's a tangible increase in chatter about these things from the right (and they seem to have taken the mantel of blabbing about things like "freedom of speech" and "values of civilization" from the left which historically has been the side that tries to claim some of these values), but wherever there's a lot of blabber about something, there's a decided lack of the same thing also (which is exactly why there's a need to emphasize it a lot) and this is extra true for many right-wingers who seem to be the most incurious, ready-made answer having, least tolerant, judgment-suspending critters on earth. But there are right-wingers who are the opposite of this as well (Peter Hitchens comes to mind) but we have to lump them together unfortunately as the result of this historically adopted categorization.

About the former position of people like me being center because we're against left or right because of their practical (irrespective of lip-service) aversion to the ideals mentioned, I have to disagree. Center is about stability, and protection of status-quo. There was before the 1970s and esp. 1990s after the fall of soviets a real sense of insecurity on both sides about their truths as there was an opposing camp out there that could not be silenced. With the fall of soviets, the liberal and conservative side (the right-wing) lost this insecurity (cf. Huntington, Fukuyama) and this has been mirrored in culture and political discourse moving the Overton window to the right. So the old center-right (liberals) has become center in many parts of Europe (and in U.S. and some other places they are even considered center-left because of perceptions of progressiveness in social policy; or even by some they are considered far left, which is a joke as there's nothing far or subversive about liberals; conservatives are liberals themselves, they just don't know it and think just because they disagree with the socially liberal liberals on a couple of cultural issues that they, the socially conservative liberals are drastically different).

Before this upwelling of liberal confidence which dragged the center towards it, the center-right was pro-market liberals (Neo-classical Marshallians, Jevonians, Walrasians in a sense), the center-left was pro-mixed economy social democrats (Keynesians, Pigouvians, Kahnians if you will) and the center was much more opaque. Now what people call center is just a pale shade of right and the attitudes of ready-made answers (talking heads with talking points) is as prevalent among them as it is with cultural vogue leftists or those who worship at the altar of Marx (or Adam Smith, same difference).

I said I will touch on those aspects of culture which I think are going in the right direction and these are the things which seem to be long trends which depend on modern institutions and modes of life rather than spontaneous changes of mentality. This will pertain to your point more directly. Until a couple decades ago in many underdeveloped parts of the world (and even to this day in some places), and until 70, 80 years ago in many western cultures, torturing animals and laughing at freaks in circuses was the favorite pastime of the populace. But through what Norbert Elias calls the civilizing process, these acts of violence and other mentalities of cruelty and lack of compassion and tolerance are in a general downtrend in the world and this trend is continuing, albeit maybe with some local and temporal breaks in the trend here and there.

This is not however paralleled in personal attitudes following a similar trend when biases and intellectual honesty, curiosity and pro-intellectualism are in question. The civilizing process, hence is more a result of deeper societal factors like the monopoly of state on violence, urbanization, a minimum level of education for all, food security due to chemical fertilizers and pesticides etc. and it will continue independent of other less appealing cultural trends that I talked about previously. What many see as a conspiracy and a left-wing shift in culture is a byproduct of this process. I'm talking about the topic of culture wars in the west, lgbt rights, abortion, multiculturalism, social justice, etc. What many perceive as attempts at propagandizing them about these issues, is just a function of high concentration of abnormal and marginal groups in big urban centers and the further fact of these big urban centers being also centers of entertainment industry coupled with the fact that everyone writes themselves and their environment into their fiction.

Other part of this civilizing process that is seen as a promotion of left-wing values is its effect on women, age of marriage, their income and the level of control they have over their relations. Incidentally there was a debate about the age of Aisha when she married the prophet in our country a week or so ago. Funnily enough this was first used by mainly British orientalists like Sir William Muir and David Margoliouth to attack Islam, when debutante balls in Britain paraded 12 year old girls to their prospect suitors in their 30s up until like 1920s. A change in socio-economic conditions (transition from agricultural production, and also that agricultural production being guaranteed to surpass subsistence levels due to technological advances, making the obtaining of numerous male children as early as possible not as necessary is the main reason getting rid of useless daughters as early as possible for parents, and getting married as soon as possible to girls as soon as they hit puberty to guarantee maximum amount of sons, waned as a practice, coupled with the fact that with the new opportunities of education and employment, girls were not seen necessary as a burden by their parents, and they also didn't see their best prospects as exclusively marrying to the highest bidder and becoming a comfortable housewife.) necessitates changes in culture henceforth. These trends will continue. The frustrations with the change of trend to those born to a different world, or to parents with values from a different world has only lead to the defeat of those resisting in the past couple of centuries.

Now what this means for younger voters, and their preferences isn't straight-forward; esp. regarding anything other than cultural strife. For cultural strife, though, my prediction is that the civilizing trend will continue although local over-extensions (for instance what some see as propagandizing of lgbt groups in entertainment or excessive power of females in deciding for their relationships and their bodies leading to antagonism towards and caricaturization of portraitures of feminism and women's rights, the excesses themselves a byproduct of newfound confidence borne out of new socioeconomic realities) may lead to correction intervals (where the reaction succeeds for a decade or so to reverse the effect). As I said, since the civilizing effect is seen as correlated with left-wing cultural ideals, the continuation of the trend will mean a more "left-wing" trend in those areas, if you will. But such cultural ideals are tied at the hip with other ideals of multiculturalism (which also means a more tolerant attitude toward migrants, refugees, etc.) since they all have their roots in the hodgepodge of big urban center life. The contrasts in these areas can be more stark (esp. in the west as it can turn into the easily tangible contrast between white vs brown, or western vs Muslim) and the adoption of those ideals might not have the same socio-economic force behind it that the other aforementioned stuff does. In fact the opposite might be true, and you might get people who are "left" on lgbt, abortion and feminism issues, but right-wing on immigration and multiculturalism. I'm not sure about this, I haven't really thought about it that deeply.

In terms of the economic side of things, my prediction depends on the assumption that left economics is kind of dead. But since the decades ahead will be times of turmoil whatever the status quo is will lose power. The status quo by an Austrian will be perceived to be Keynesian and what alternative they will demand will be (surprise!) libertarianism, but the status quo that the Marxist sees will be neoliberalism and the alternative they demand will be (surprise!) Marxism, and some liberals will agree with the Austrian, some with the Marxist and some will think the status quo is liberal and good actually (absolute minority). I think since I proclaimed that left economics is dead, then we have to conclude that in this scenario the Austrian will prevail in persuading larger swathes of people and a period of central bank abolishment and privatization of all will ensue; the nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw period (I see it happening around 2040) will not be pretty; the pendulum swing will probably revive some sort of violent reaction to the other side and Marxism may be on the scene again, as historical alternatives have staying power as they form political traditions. But if conditions go haywire due to climate change more than it's predicted and our institutions collapse and we revert to a less-educated populace the absolute primacy of previously mentioned immediate reactions might take over again. It's all vain speculation anyway. Other than the continuation of the civilizing process in the long run (with local setbacks here and there due to weakening of socioeconomic factors making it possible), I have not much else substantial to say.

I'm glad others agree with me on this issue. The entire left and right terminology acts as an anti concept that only serves to really polarize masses and put people into camps to sinplify the message. Secularism vs religious rule, socialism vs free market etc have nothing to do with each other.

 

[uçuyorum]

Imterview from Nato summit including Aselsan CEO

 

[Afif]

Political categorizations like any categorization has to meet certain criteria. The criteria are: completeness (that the whole domain under discussion should be covered by the n number of categories chosen), mutual exclusivity (each object or entity should unambiguously belong to only one category, i.e. categories should have no intersection), proportionality (categories should be of similar size and have objects of similar granularity), relevance (objects should be of the same type), and parsimony (the lowest number of categories that can meet the other criteria should be used.)

The categorization of the landscape of political positions, ideologies, ideals, policies and values into a single axis left-right spectrum obviously doesn't meet any of the criteria mentioned. It is not complete as it is only one-dimensional. The objects of the domain (ideals, policies, values) are not well-defined which means they cannot be mutually exclusive. They are also not proportional (many right-wing values and ideals are mostly default reactions of humans to certain phenomena [the debate is how much we can stray from the path our evolutionary past has carved for us towards objective rationality without breaking things so a compromise is needed between traditional more simple right-wing values mostly a result of human reactions, and left values which result from theory-crafting and defying nature; the baseline human condition has been to lean into the more immediate reactions until the past 300 years, and the theory-crafting has alsoe seen itself be vulnerable from straying for the path towards rationality], making them contain a larger array of objects). Relevance is the weakest point of this categorization as the ideals, values and policies the categories lump together mostly have no rhyme or reason in what components they share, let alone the fact that the ideals and policy-positions change based on spatial and temporal context. I will not enumerate the other ways the categories don't meet the criteria for brevity, but you get the point.


Now one might object that a categorization that perfectly meets all the criteria is not possible. That's true, and most natural language categorizations are done for their utility in communication more than for objective categorization. So does this categorization have utility? Yes but with a gaping caveat: it has made itself useful as the categorization itself has shaped perceptions about political alignments historically in its own image through adoption by parties, factions, etc. Hence the utility is contingent, the same way the categorization of late romans into green and blue based on the color of charioteer teams they supported was contingently useful.

The historical roots of the utility of this categorization makes it a point of team-sports for those who adopt it to the point of seeing themselves as sharing the disparate ideals and policy-positions associated with these categories and having a common cause and history with the groups, parties and political factions who have adopted the monikers, hence making this a point of pride and identity, further enhancing grouping cohesion, adding to the practical utility of seeing political actors in the light of this originally pretty bad categorization.

Now say these things to any right-winger or left-winger and most scoff at you and say to you: "What the fuck are you on about, it's not that serious". Now I'm say that to show my main point: both left and right will share in that response because culture is a tsunami wave that hauls everything on its way together. The left and right share much more than they think they do. If culture moves in ways that I think is wrong, both the left and the right will inherit it irrespective of their positions. I think certain aspects of culture have been moving in wrong directions (in other aspects the trend towards better directions has been proven inevitable; will touch on this later). Anti-intellectualism, thinking in preconceived notions and molds, ready-made answers, aversion to suspension of judgement, intolerance of intellectual curiosity, an obsession with identity and an insistence on metaphysical reality of these fictitious identities; these are all things the left and the right share. I don't like this general cultural trend, and the fact that the left-right categorization has no way of taking these values and my dislike of them into account is the ultimate point I'm making here. What am I if I don't like left and right in this way?

Some will say you are at the center. Others will say that the right do oppose these cultural trends. In the case of the latter, there's a tangible increase in chatter about these things from the right (and they seem to have taken the mantel of blabbing about things like "freedom of speech" and "values of civilization" from the left which historically has been the side that tries to claim some of these values), but wherever there's a lot of blabber about something, there's a decided lack of the same thing also (which is exactly why there's a need to emphasize it a lot) and this is extra true for many right-wingers who seem to be the most incurious, ready-made answer having, least tolerant, judgment-suspending critters on earth. But there are right-wingers who are the opposite of this as well (Peter Hitchens comes to mind) but we have to lump them together unfortunately as the result of this historically adopted categorization.

About the former position of people like me being center because we're against left or right because of their practical (irrespective of lip-service) aversion to the ideals mentioned, I have to disagree. Center is about stability, and protection of status-quo. There was before the 1970s and esp. 1990s after the fall of soviets a real sense of insecurity on both sides about their truths as there was an opposing camp out there that could not be silenced. With the fall of soviets, the liberal and conservative side (the right-wing) lost this insecurity (cf. Huntington, Fukuyama) and this has been mirrored in culture and political discourse moving the Overton window to the right. So the old center-right (liberals) has become center in many parts of Europe (and in U.S. and some other places they are even considered center-left because of perceptions of progressiveness in social policy; or even by some they are considered far left, which is a joke as there's nothing far or subversive about liberals; conservatives are liberals themselves, they just don't know it and think just because they disagree with the socially liberal liberals on a couple of cultural issues that they, the socially conservative liberals are drastically different).

Before this upwelling of liberal confidence which dragged the center towards it, the center-right was pro-market liberals (Neo-classical Marshallians, Jevonians, Walrasians in a sense), the center-left was pro-mixed economy social democrats (Keynesians, Pigouvians, Kahnians if you will) and the center was much more opaque. Now what people call center is just a pale shade of right and the attitudes of ready-made answers (talking heads with talking points) is as prevalent among them as it is with cultural vogue leftists or those who worship at the altar of Marx (or Adam Smith, same difference).

I said I will touch on those aspects of culture which I think are going in the right direction and these are the things which seem to be long trends which depend on modern institutions and modes of life rather than spontaneous changes of mentality. This will pertain to your point more directly. Until a couple decades ago in many underdeveloped parts of the world (and even to this day in some places), and until 70, 80 years ago in many western cultures, torturing animals and laughing at freaks in circuses was the favorite pastime of the populace. But through what Norbert Elias calls the civilizing process, these acts of violence and other mentalities of cruelty and lack of compassion and tolerance are in a general downtrend in the world and this trend is continuing, albeit maybe with some local and temporal breaks in the trend here and there.

This is not however paralleled in personal attitudes following a similar trend when biases and intellectual honesty, curiosity and pro-intellectualism are in question. The civilizing process, hence is more a result of deeper societal factors like the monopoly of state on violence, urbanization, a minimum level of education for all, food security due to chemical fertilizers and pesticides etc. and it will continue independent of other less appealing cultural trends that I talked about previously. What many see as a conspiracy and a left-wing shift in culture is a byproduct of this process. I'm talking about the topic of culture wars in the west, lgbt rights, abortion, multiculturalism, social justice, etc. What many perceive as attempts at propagandizing them about these issues, is just a function of high concentration of abnormal and marginal groups in big urban centers and the further fact of these big urban centers being also centers of entertainment industry coupled with the fact that everyone writes themselves and their environment into their fiction.

Other part of this civilizing process that is seen as a promotion of left-wing values is its effect on women, age of marriage, their income and the level of control they have over their relations. Incidentally there was a debate about the age of Aisha when she married the prophet in our country a week or so ago. Funnily enough this was first used by mainly British orientalists like Sir William Muir and David Margoliouth to attack Islam, when debutante balls in Britain paraded 12 year old girls to their prospect suitors in their 30s up until like 1920s. A change in socio-economic conditions (transition from agricultural production, and also that agricultural production being guaranteed to surpass subsistence levels due to technological advances, making the obtaining of numerous male children as early as possible not as necessary is the main reason getting rid of useless daughters as early as possible for parents, and getting married as soon as possible to girls as soon as they hit puberty to guarantee maximum amount of sons, waned as a practice, coupled with the fact that with the new opportunities of education and employment, girls were not seen necessary as a burden by their parents, and they also didn't see their best prospects as exclusively marrying to the highest bidder and becoming a comfortable housewife.) necessitates changes in culture henceforth. These trends will continue. The frustrations with the change of trend to those born to a different world, or to parents with values from a different world has only lead to the defeat of those resisting in the past couple of centuries.

Now what this means for younger voters, and their preferences isn't straight-forward; esp. regarding anything other than cultural strife. For cultural strife, though, my prediction is that the civilizing trend will continue although local over-extensions (for instance what some see as propagandizing of lgbt groups in entertainment or excessive power of females in deciding for their relationships and their bodies leading to antagonism towards and caricaturization of portraitures of feminism and women's rights, the excesses themselves a byproduct of newfound confidence borne out of new socioeconomic realities) may lead to correction intervals (where the reaction succeeds for a decade or so to reverse the effect). As I said, since the civilizing effect is seen as correlated with left-wing cultural ideals, the continuation of the trend will mean a more "left-wing" trend in those areas, if you will. But such cultural ideals are tied at the hip with other ideals of multiculturalism (which also means a more tolerant attitude toward migrants, refugees, etc.) since they all have their roots in the hodgepodge of big urban center life. The contrasts in these areas can be more stark (esp. in the west as it can turn into the easily tangible contrast between white vs brown, or western vs Muslim) and the adoption of those ideals might not have the same socio-economic force behind it that the other aforementioned stuff does. In fact the opposite might be true, and you might get people who are "left" on lgbt, abortion and feminism issues, but right-wing on immigration and multiculturalism. I'm not sure about this, I haven't really thought about it that deeply.

In terms of the economic side of things, my prediction depends on the assumption that left economics is kind of dead. But since the decades ahead will be times of turmoil whatever the status quo is will lose power. The status quo by an Austrian will be perceived to be Keynesian and what alternative they will demand will be (surprise!) libertarianism, but the status quo that the Marxist sees will be neoliberalism and the alternative they demand will be (surprise!) Marxism, and some liberals will agree with the Austrian, some with the Marxist and some will think the status quo is liberal and good actually (absolute minority). I think since I proclaimed that left economics is dead, then we have to conclude that in this scenario the Austrian will prevail in persuading larger swathes of people and a period of central bank abolishment and privatization of all will ensue; the nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw period (I see it happening around 2040) will not be pretty; the pendulum swing will probably revive some sort of violent reaction to the other side and Marxism may be on the scene again, as historical alternatives have staying power as they form political traditions. But if conditions go haywire due to climate change more than it's predicted and our institutions collapse and we revert to a less-educated populace the absolute primacy of previously mentioned immediate reactions might take over again. It's all vain speculation anyway. Other than the continuation of the civilizing process in the long run (with local setbacks here and there due to weakening of socioeconomic factors making it possible), I have not much else substantial to say.

This is exactly what I had in mind. This 'Civilizing' process and its long term direction. You put it better than I could. IMO, it needs to be emphasised more often that this process is not some unique discovery or innovation in the moral realm that led us to be objectively better than the people before us, as many progressive make it out to be. Rather, is it largely dirven by the unprecedented meterial changes that has taken place in recent periods.


In general one cannot agure against how much internet revolution and social media has advanced the cause of this process worldwide in 21th century. But interestingly also, I came to observe, perhaps how as an unintended consequence of this the elite lost much of their cultural control and grip over societies within short period of time. I mean, even two decades ago when most news and informations were being channelled through traditional media outlets, (both electronic and print media) everything was much more sanitized. Obviously back then (just as now) most of them were bias and policitally motivated, (each owning their loyalties to their respective side of the political spectrum) still it had some standard. However, when excessive democratization of information happened through social media revolution, two things occured.

First, vast amount of accessable unfiltered raw information rapidly overwhelmed most peoples capacity to comprehend, and it became much harder to tell the truth from half-truth. Blatant disinformation and misinformation played and conntinue to play a bigger role. Previously at least most people would grasped the sanitized and selected versions that traditional media would tell. But this is no more. (To make it even worse, to compete with social media, traditional outlets has only gone more and more to the extreme end of their respective sides. Ironically, but somewhat predictably it only hurt their own credibility.) This mess only amplflied the immediate reactionary tendencies in masses due to a higher level of confusion, and greater level of exposure to basically all the bad things happening everywhere.

Secondly, social media gave everyone a voice (which was previously carefully controlled and sanitized by the elite in traditional media) and people got to say what they wanted to say wihtout any consequences. Hence, there may appear to be a recent shift toward right wing ideology and the hateful stuff, the fact is, it was always there and only coming out now due to the access and means.

 

[contricusc]

There is a huge misunderstanding when it comes to European politics as to what “hard right” or “extrreme right“ means. Because the mainstream media is left wing, they have promoted a left wing narative for decades, which in turn resulted in a move to the left of all political parties.

What used to be center-right parties (like the Conservatives in Britain, Les Republicans in France or CDU in Germany) turned to center-left parties, because of constant mediatic pressure. The media constantly promoted the wants of the left wing (more social benefits, more money to education and healthcare, higher pensions, etc.) while denigrating the wants of the right wing (less regulation, lower taxes, less immigration, more order, less crime).

Because politicians hate to be criticized by the media, they tend to appease the media at the expense of their electorate. So what happened is people voted for center-right electoral platforms, and once their party won the election, it delivered a center-left government, as politicians simply obeyed the media, instead of keeping their promises to the electorate.

Being dissatisfied with the so called traditional center-right parties, people started looking at new options on the right. The new center-right parties that appeared (Fratelli d’Italia, Vox, AFD, Reform, National Rally, etc.) simply filled the void left by the former center-right parties who moved to the left. They tapped the former electorate of the traditional parties.

Since the media‘s objective is to control the political narrative and move it always to the left, they labeled the new center-right parties as “far right” or “extreme right”, in order to associate them with the madness of WW2 and scare away the electorate.

But the truth is that the so called “far right” European parties are just the center-right parties of 40 years ago (in terms of doctrine), while the traditional center-right parties ae now center-left parties. The former center-left parties are now hard left parties, and we can see that by how easily they can form alliances with downright communist parties (see the current alliance in France, that comprises the Communist Party and Holland’s Socialists).

The conclusion is, “hard right” is just a label invented by the mainstream media to scare away the electorate from these new center right parties, in order to defend their center-left uniparty that has ruled for decades.

It would actually be healthy for Europe to have these parties dominate politics for a while, as they would shift the narrative more to the center of the political spectrum.

 

[Rooxbar]

There is a huge misunderstanding when it comes to European politics as to what “hard right” or “extrreme right“ means. Because the mainstream media is left wing, they have promoted a left wing narative for decades, which in turn resulted in a move to the left of all political parties.

What used to be center-right parties (like the Conservatives in Britain, Les Republicans in France or CDU in Germany) turned to center-left parties, because of constant mediatic pressure. The media constantly promoted the wants of the left wing (more social benefits, more money to education and healthcare, higher pensions, etc.) while denigrating the wants of the right wing (less regulation, lower taxes, less immigration, more order, less crime).

Because politicians hate to be criticized by the media, they tend to appease the media at the expense of their electorate. So what happened is people voted for center-right electoral platforms, and once their party won the election, it delivered a center-left government, as politicians simply obeyed the media, instead of keeping their promises to the electorate.

Being dissatisfied with the so called traditional center-right parties, people started looking at new options on the right. The new center-right parties that appeared (Fratelli d’Italia, Vox, AFD, Reform, National Rally, etc.) simply filled the void left by the former center-right parties who moved to the left. They tapped the former electorate of the traditional parties.

Since the media‘s objective is to control the political narrative and move it always to the left, they labeled the new center-right parties as “far right” or “extreme right”, in order to associate them with the madness of WW2 and scare away the electorate.

But the truth is that the so called “far right” European parties are just the center-right parties of 40 years ago (in terms of doctrine), while the traditional center-right parties ae now center-left parties. The former center-left parties are now hard left parties, and we can see that by how easily they can form alliances with downright communist parties (see the current alliance in France, that comprises the Communist Party and Holland’s Socialists).

The conclusion is, “hard right” is just a label invented by the mainstream media to scare away the electorate from these new center right parties, in order to defend their center-left uniparty that has ruled for decades.

It would actually be healthy for Europe to have these parties dominate politics for a while, as they would shift the narrative more to the center of the political spectrum.

 

[Huelague]

Is Europe shifting rightward? It seems so.

The answer of this question is a clearly, YES!
Their is one important point more. It doesnt matter if you are a lefty or right in germany. They almost all anti Muslims and racists.

 

[Baryshx]

Erdogan expects positive and intensive development of relations with Iran after the presidential elections there and the victory of Masoud Pezeshkian.
Erdogan: “Masud Pezeshkian is actually a Turk of Azerbaijani origin. In Tabriz he speaks Turkic, but when he comes to the Kurdish regions, he can speak Kurdish there. He also uses Farsi well. I will contact him and congratulate him. We hope that relations between Turkey and Iran will improve in the future."

Pezeshkian's predecessor, the late Raisi, never found time to go to Turkey, despite the invitation and promise to come.

Over the course of several days, I read many articles from different sources. It is surprising that here, in Britain, in America and even in Russia, no one expects anything... new from the new president. Everyone is unanimous that he will not be able to change this stupid system in Iran. Moreover, the country's foreign policy.
You can easily die of sadness
Especially after the goals conceded yesterday

In Iran, presidents are puppets. Just like in the UK...

In Iran, the supreme leader has the real power.

 

[Sanchez]

In Iran, presidents are puppets. Just like in the UK...

In Iran, the supreme leader has the real power.

There are no presidents in the UK.

 

[Baryshx]

There are no presidents in the UK.

You upset me. You think I don't know that? The members know what I mean.

 

[Huelague]

The members know what I mean.

No. What do you mean?

 

[YeşilVatan]

No. What do you mean?

He means elected officials. Try to keep this in good faith please.