In good news this weekend, Poland voted to dump the anti-democratic Law and Justice Party, one of Europe's most dangerous. Like Donald Trump, Poland's current strongarm prime minister immediately announced that the election had been rigged and he was the real winner. This probably won't stand up even though virtually every branch of government has been stuffed with Law and Justice appointees over the past eight years, and in the end the opposition will take over and begin the long and laborious of fixing Poland's government:
The big question now, however, is not only whether the opposition can form a government but, if it does manage to take power, can it actually wield it in a system where public broadcasting, the constitutional court, the judiciary in general, the central bank, the national prosecutor’s office and other branches of state have been packed with Law and Justice loyalists who, in many cases, cannot be easily dislodged?
....Lech Walesa, the leader in the 1980s of Solidarity, the trade union movement that opened the way to the 1989 election that toppled communism, warned in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, that Mr. Kaczynski, a former ally turned bitter enemy, “has definitely come up with something, he has definitely prepared something. He will not want — and will not be able — to give up power.”
Even with all this standing in the way, it remains the case that Poland's voters turned decisively against the right-wing populist Law and Justice agenda. This is yet another sign that the world is not turning steadily toward authoritarian rule. Rather, politics, as usual, continues to swing like a pendulum between liberal and conservative parties. Lately, it's been swinging considerably more in the liberal than the conservative direction.
Yes there are back and forth swings, and it's good to see that those who try to rig the system can still be tripped up--now if that could only happen in Wisconsin.
But then there's New Zealand. I mean...it's New Zealand....
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/asia/new-zealand-general-election-labour-national-intl-hnk/index.html
There is a huge difference between a center right (centre right, I guess) party that upholds democracy, and an authoritarian party that works to circumvent it. National is the former. It's victory signals a move to the right, but not one away from democracy.
Plus, the center-right in New Zealand is still *way* to the left of the US GOP on most issues. Nobody in NZ is talking about walking away from climate treaties, banning all abortions, and targeting trans youth.
Women in Poland could be winning more rights than American women living in red states.
Democracy. What a concept.
According to V-Dem the number of people living in autocracy has grown and continues to grow. It is now back to 1989 levels. All post cold war Democratic gains are gone. In 2021 they put 33 states moving toward autocracy and 5 moving towards democracy.
I don't expect you to respond to anything I've written you have done it once in 15+ years but you really should tackle what these numbers mean for your theory.
We’re in the end stage of capitalism. First they worked to destroy the coherency of the republic with judicial rulings and policies that undermined confidence in government. Then they worked to control and compromise elections by not accepting and literally denying results. They made it legal to buy elected representatives and jurists though the concept that money=“free” speech. And over the years they systematically cut taxes on the wealthy, increased the budget deficit and then claimed that we’re in great debt and worked to increase the tax burden of the middle and lower income earners. They rigged the system to assure that the rich got richer and the rest of us ….. we’re left to eat cake on the trash heap of history.
"Law and Justice" isn't any more "populist" in Poland than the GOP is in the USA. They are both Straight, White, Christian, Male supremacist parties. It is more galling in the US as the "populists" lose the one nationwide popular vote we have on a regular basis. I wish journalists including Kevin Drum would stop using populist to describe politicians that sometimes represent the preferences of 1/2 of the population.
We should be keeping an eye on Argentina as well, which looks like it could elect another Bolosinaro-type populist kook next week. If elected, he promises to eliminate all government spending on health, science, and the environment. And then his ideas start getting *really* extreme.
Flirting with fascism is not "swinging between liberal and conservative parties".