Posts
Macron is the ultimate populist. So said Daniel Hannan the other day.
In many ways this is true. He is up there with Napoleon III. But no-one calls him one.
His left-wing opponent, Jean-Luc Melenchon, was also a populist and his right-wing opponent, Marine Le Pen.
And Charles de Gaulle?
His left-wing opponent, Jean-Luc Melenchon, was also a populist and his right-wing opponent, Marine Le Pen.
And Charles de Gaulle?
Macron had political experience, unlike Donald Trump, but had not been elected to anything before becoming President. The two men have a fair amount in common.
Bernie Sanders is a populist too, and was sometimes called one but not often.
Bernie Sanders is a populist too, and was sometimes called one but not often.
I always thought populist implied a politician who offers attractive but specious solutions to complicated problems, with perhaps the further implication that he does so to win votes, indifferent to whether or not they would do any good.
I don't think this is exactly what Macron does. He has principles: closer European integration; immigration as an inherently good thing; a sense of shame for France's colonial past; the need for free market reforms.
Nor is it what the League in Italy do. Their opponents dislike them because of their principles not their lack of them.
The same is true of UKIP. UKIP was based on a principle - whatever you think of it - the wish to leave the EU. This is a sincerely held and intellectually respectable policy, as is their desire to limit immigration.
Why aren't the pupils striking in schools in America as a demand for gun control called populists? Gun control is certainly very popular.
In fact, populist, as the word is used by journalists, means someone who wants to do what the electors want but of which journalists disapprove. The implication is that many electors are a bad bunch who harbour many unworthy impulses, especially when it comes to preventing their country being changed by foreigners, whether by the ones in charge of the European Union or by migrants.
It is at least less objectionable than 'far right' that once meant supporters of dictatorship or fascism -like General Franco or Sir Oswald Mosley - but now means people who are not just conservative about economics (which is permitted) but want to stop or sharply reduce immigration from other continents.
I don't think this is exactly what Macron does. He has principles: closer European integration; immigration as an inherently good thing; a sense of shame for France's colonial past; the need for free market reforms.
Nor is it what the League in Italy do. Their opponents dislike them because of their principles not their lack of them.
The same is true of UKIP. UKIP was based on a principle - whatever you think of it - the wish to leave the EU. This is a sincerely held and intellectually respectable policy, as is their desire to limit immigration.
Why aren't the pupils striking in schools in America as a demand for gun control called populists? Gun control is certainly very popular.
In fact, populist, as the word is used by journalists, means someone who wants to do what the electors want but of which journalists disapprove. The implication is that many electors are a bad bunch who harbour many unworthy impulses, especially when it comes to preventing their country being changed by foreigners, whether by the ones in charge of the European Union or by migrants.
It is at least less objectionable than 'far right' that once meant supporters of dictatorship or fascism -like General Franco or Sir Oswald Mosley - but now means people who are not just conservative about economics (which is permitted) but want to stop or sharply reduce immigration from other continents.
‘The bigger threat we have got than socialism is state-controlled capitalism, which is where we’re headed, where we have big government and a handful of big companies. That’s what you’re seeing in technology right now with these massive companies. It’s the biggest danger we have.
ReplyDelete‘Listen, I think our problem is [not just] the cultural Marxist left, but state capitalism on finance. That’s what we’re fighting right now.
They absolutely control our borders. They debase your currency, they debase your citizenship, and they take your personhood digitally.
‘This is the new serfdom. We’re just a collection of serfs — serfs living at a higher standard of living, but vis-à-vis what the total economic pie is, you’re still a serf, and that’s exactly where the modern state wants to keep you.’
Steve Bannon
https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/03/steve-bannon-interview-im-fascinated-by-mussolini/
Thank you. Very apposite. Bannon is always very interesting and worth heeding, even. Today's Spectator is full of good thing's starting with the leading article about more white girls being raped by Muslims over many years, this time in Telford, and how it was ignored.
DeleteHere it is. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/a-dangerous-silence-over-telford/
DeleteIn the pleasant and leafy high street, baking in the heat, I spoke to a woman doing her shopping. She would have been about 80, I’d guess. I asked her if she liked Orania. Yes, she did indeed. But what about the fact that there are no black people allowed into the place? ‘That, young man, is the very best thing about it,’ she replied.
DeleteRod Liddle
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/genocide-in-south-africa-now-thats-a-black-and-white-issue/
UK government imports millions of Muslims completely against the will of the local people.
DeleteThey rape tens of thousands of English girls over decades. 1000 girls in just one town.
Authorities cover it up.
Media don't report it.
Government jails people who talk about it.
Government detains young American women for wanting to talk about the state jailing people for talking about it.
Government plans to jail people who look at websites talking about it for up to 15 years.
Government tells us that the real tyrant who threatens Britain is not themselves but Mr. Putin who for no reason, ordered a sensationally amateurish botched assassination of a useless old retired spy using a nerve agent that can be traced directly back to Russia. He apparently did this only a couple of months before a prestigious World Cup that is supposed to showcase his country. Why? Because he's bad.
Government, MPs and media attack anyone who asks for evidence for this crackpot story as being a traitor or conspiracy theorist.
This is the state of the UK today. What a dark country Britain has become. A country sinking into its own excrement.
Excrement poured from the mouths of Kremlin apologists like you.
DeleteYou forgot to add that one of the ringleaders of the Telford rape gangs is being let out after serving 5 years of a 22 year sentence. But he’s not being let back into Telford so that’s ok according to our MPs.
Deletehttps://www.shropshirestar.com/news/crime/2017/10/11/mubarek-ali-mp-welcomes-telford-child-sex-gang-ringleaders-town-ban/
Of course the media are hardly covering it at all. Just the local papers.
David, are you David formerly in Moscow?
DeleteI am not sure what to make of the Salisbury poisonings frankly. Russians were certainly guilty - res ipsa loquitur - but I do not know for sure if the Russian state was. I can imagine why they would do such a thing but not why they would do it in such a way.
DeleteYour other points have pith, unfortunately.
"David, are you David formerly in Moscow?"
DeleteNo, its not me.
I wouldn't get into bed with Putin but I respect him more than May, Merkel, Macron, Obama, Cameron, Blair, etc.
I realised it wasn't you. I was thinking recently that though I certainly would not say I like Donald Trump I like him much more than Angela Merkel, Macron, Timmermans, Guy Verhofstadt, Juncker or Justin Trudeau. I like him infinitely more than Justin Trudeau.
DeleteOr the new Southern Irish Prime Minister.
DeleteAnd I do agree about Theresa May.
Delete'I am not sure what to make of the Salisbury poisonings frankly. Russians were certainly guilty...'
DeleteDirect evidence:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYhL_BZU0AAc8fT.jpg
What is state capitalism other than socialism. In effect, since the political class is becoming more powerful and somewhat richer than 'capitalists' we are actually talking of socialism already. Many investors have been talking about the upcoming failure of socialism, as capitalism has been long subdued.
ReplyDeleteLooking at things from a distance, it is not about the 'isms' it's about us being duped into a state of stupor by propaganda. It's about Machiavelli. He is said to have been the father of modern liberalism.
Capitalism and socialism are actually like apples and oranges. Capitalism is an economic system, with the only social angle of people associating and investing into this or the other enterprise. Socialism is a political system that wants to take control of the economy, with very little regard for the economy, being driven by the quest for power, hence the regulatory pitfalls of socialism. The only way it can achieve this takeover and can hold on to it, is via state socialist capitalism, which what is happening. It comes with a lot of lying deceit and propaganda, Steve Bannon included.
What was the Communist economy other that the ultimate monopoly?
Off topic:
ReplyDeleteAlive, but declared dead, lost the process of seeking the annulment of death
"Constantin Reliu, aged 63, lost the process by which he tried to prove that although he was declared dead by court, he is alive. Judges at the Vaslui Tribunal dismissed the man's appeal against the decision of 10 August 2016, in which the Barlad Court established that he had died."
https://www.cotidianul.ro/viu-dar-declarat-mort-a-pierdut-procesul-prin-care-solicita-anularea-decesului/
Kafkaesque.
DeleteHow odd.
ReplyDelete