Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he would step down following accusations of corruption less than two years after his re-election.
Mr. Kurz’s departure is the latest blow for conservatives in Western Europe, who have been struggling in recent years. Germany’s Christian Democratic Union lost a national election last month after leading the government for the past 16 years under Chancellor Angela Merkel. Conservatives are in the opposition from France to Spain and Portugal.
A couple of years ago democracy was on the run as right-wing parties around the world took power. Today they're all struggling to remain relevant. It's remarkable how times change, isn't it?
KD's been getting pretty pollyannish of late...wish I could be so positive
There’s a logic to it, I think. It’s a lot like whistling past the graveyard. The leadership of the main opposition party have basically decided not to take any steps to strengthen the democratic institutions of the country even though it must be obvious to the leaders of the Democratic Party that their failure will almost certainly result in the party being removed (perhaps permanently) from power in 2022. Under those circumstances the only choices are fatalistic optimism or making preparations to flee the country.
Given what you quoted, are you really meaning to suggest that Angela Merkel and Germany's CDU was putting democracy on the run? I don't know how much further to the right Kurz is/isn't and what he/his party were doing in Austria, but you seem to be lumping many things together which may not belong that way.
Very good point. I have to wonder, though, whether right-wing nationalism is damaging moderate conservative politics in Europe and North America.
Kurz is... half non-Q republican, half European conservative. That is against gay marriage and immigration, cut taxes and spending.
The conservatives needs to be out of government in Germany.
This Swede just hates the US description of European parties as “center left” and “center right” . CDU is a Conservative party and their “sister” party CSU in Bavaria is a black-and-brown party.
Merkel acted bravely during the refugee crisis but aside from that has the German conservatives not been good for Europe.
CDU has stalled E.U on climate action , effectively slowed down new stricter regulations on emissions from cars simply because WV&Mercedes&BMW are making good profits on large fossil fuel powered cars . We could have had a lot more small EV’s earlier if it wasn’t for Merkel, model’s that are crucial but not as profitable. The sad truth is that China can offer them from next year but European manufacturers will not be able to do so until 2025.
CDU did also cuddle, a lot , with Victor Orbán at the start of his dismantling of democracy in Hungary something that has ended up in a lot of trouble.
Also remember that Merkel voted against same sex marriages..
Germany will probably also take a tougher stance against Putin&Co if CDU is out ..
I hope for a new government where the Green Party is having a lot of influence
A coalition of Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Liberals (a right leaning company friendly party in Germany but their votes is needed) is the most likely and the best possible outcome
Greetings from your Swedish friend
What is a black-and-brown party?
Brown is agreed on being the color of Nazis …
Rick, the CDU is center right, not right wing (that would be the AfD). It is not even in the neighborhood of the modern GOP.
Much more accurate to say that social-democratic parties were on the run. Kurz went further than some other conservative leaders by forming a coalition with the Freedom Party (FPÖ), and adopting and implementing some of the latter’s anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic policy positions. I believe this makes Austria the only European country outside of the former Soviet bloc to have had a far-right party in government.
I don’t know exactly where to draw the line between ‘conservative party with some illiberal policies’ and ‘right-wing party with anti-democratic policies’, but I’m certain the US GOP has crossed it.
Not correct.
Both Norway (Framskrittspartiet) and Finland ( Perussuomalaiset ) has had similar parties represented in government , for extended periods.
Denmark, who actually was the birth place of the modern European “populists party” (Dansk Folkeparti) hasn’t had them represented in government but has had them as “king makers” on and of for decades.
Top results in elections has been Denmark 21,1% (2015) Finland 19,05% (2011) and Norway 22,9% (2009 … but just 11,6% this year, their worst result since 1993)
In my opinion has the Danish version been the most successful one. Much of the damage is caused by how the others are reacting to the success of these parties. Denmark has presently a government lead by the Social Democrats but they have “stolen” the anti immigration ideas from the right wing extremists in order to win back the votes meaning Denmark are presently having draconian immigration laws second only to Hungary in an European comparison
Thanks for the corrections; unfortunate that they are all in the negative direction.
Not entirely, all three parties are presently (mostly) out of influence.
Our neighbors haven’t benefited from it but our more advanced political systems, proportional representation, has protected them from the disastrous effects you have suffered from
Have a nice day
OK, good news but I worry about Poland, Hungary and Turkey.
I assume Vik Orban has already closed the border with Austria, following the brutal de-platforming of Mr. Kurz.
Also,India, Philippines, Brésil, and the US of A.
Democracy and Capitalism are tied together by intricate markets. It's like reading the young Hegelians post Hegel death in the 1830's/40's. The Right and Left flanks with of course centre would power politics for the next 100 years. Guess who My favorite 2 were. Hint: one of them wasn't even part of the group.
I suspect that properly interpreting any political reporting above the fold -- not the events per se -- requires, shall we say, 'domain specific knowledge'. Someone casually following U.S. news from afar could easily be forgiven if, for example, they thought our Democratic party was in chronic disarray. If you get my drift 😉
My impression is that Angela Merkel's CDU ran a relatively tight ship, but one thing all these neo-populist right-wing parties share -- including Trump's Republicans -- is a simply breathtaking tolerance for corruption. Indeed, it seems to be a feature rather than a bug with them. Even then, Kurz is simply a piker when compared to hoodlums like Trump, Bolsonaro, or Orban.
IOW -- if I take your meaning correctly -- party unity among disparate factions can only be enforced with a combination of carrots and sticks. Ah, but what kind of carrot and what kind of stick? I admit this is an off-the-cuff speculation, but offhand I'd guess that the, um 'character' of a political party that relies on earmarks as a carrot might be just a leetle different from one that promises to look the other way, just so long as you get with the party program.
They're fine with it as long as you're getting away with it.
It's not a tolerance of corruption, it's corruption as the normative state, because they think they're clever.
I think its more an attitude that there's really no problem using the state and levers of government to promote the power of the governing party and its leader, almost out of spite. Some alt-right influencers, like Steve Bannon, advocate for actively sabotaging the institutions of governance and gleefully promote corruption and self-dealing as a kind of resistance to the administrative state. This is precisely what you saw with Trump, appointing oil lobbyists to the EPA, Louie Dejoy to the Post Office, Barr to Justice, etc., and openly using his DC hotel to launder bribes from both foreign and domestic suitors.
Bannon is an actual fascist as he openly advocates for a complete transformation of society as opposed to authoritarians who as long as you're not a minority will leave you alone if you leave them alone.
Since this is about Europe…
Many Americans believe Bannon is an important political influencer in Europe.
He isn’t!
When Trump kicked him out and the Mercer’s stopped financing him did he turn to Europe claiming he could lead the divided European right wingers and help them take control of EU in the EU election back in 2019.
His campaign was a joke , a total failure.
That election was a success for the Green Parties , the most important political influencer was Ms Greta Thunberg
Greetings from your Swedish friend
In George W. Bush's GQP or even I am sure Angela Merkel's CDU*, a reprobate derelict functionary would have to keep his perversions, deviance, & graft on the low, as with the Larry Craig Tapdance Extravaganza. But in El Jefe's GQP or the Alternative for Deutschland or the Pinoy or Brazilian or Russian autocracies, everything is fair game, since extracurriculars don't matter, as long as the NAACP, ethnic Turks, homosexuals, MILF**, & recalcitrant children in the near-abroad are being kept in their place.
*While Merkel's party is rightwing, it's closer to Mexico's PAN than Spain's People's Party or France's Frente National. & I think the Christian Democrats lost mostly for being in power for 16 years in a row.
**Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Though I would think Duterte likes to keep all MILVES in line.
The Russian influence in all these movements really is striking.
Yes, I think you’re absolutely right about that. It’s essentially the role Russia/USSR wanted to play in the international communist movement but was never really able to do so.
Rather intriguingly, Putin and Russia have used oil money and their spending on real estate and finance/money laundering to corrupt western businesses and enlisted their aid in legitimizing the extreme right. And those same business interests have allowed Russia to intervene to subvert election or murder political enemies without fear of reprisals.
Funny how it all makes sense once you think of Putin as the de facto head of SPECTRE.
Where are the rightwing world leaders with the gumption of Tito & Ceausescu to tell the Soviets to bugger off?
There are none. Neither of the two great far right success (Brexit and Trump’s “election”) would’ve been possible without massive Russian support.
As the recent financial scandals have shown, the far right grifters want and need Russian money. Even as wealthy as party as France’s Front National is hugely dependent upon Russian money. Some say that’s it’s only with Russian money that Le Pen can pay the taxes and upkeep on her castle.
It’s a commonly known “secret”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39478066
Social conservatism in society,
https://i.redd.it/kt69hsolbqs71.gif
Not here it's not, haha.
Your democracy won't last long if one of the major sides isn't committed to Democracy. The'll be back.
I think it’s more accurate to say that neither party is really committed to democracy. The Republicans are actively looking to overthrow it and the Democrats are whistling past the graveyard, passively hoping against hope that the referees/villagers will step in to save the day.
There it is.
Sometimes, the Lester Maddox Democrat #OurRevolution left is as prone to bothsidesings an issue as Chuck Todd from the middle or Newton Leroy Gingrich from the right.
I don’t think that’s a fair criticism, if I understand it correctly. I doubt very seriously if there’s any commentator on this blog who is unaware of the dangers facing both the Democrats and the country. Respected experts on election law and the constitution are surprisingly agreed on the points of vulnerability and on what must be done before the 2022 midterm elections. Legislation has been proposed, executive actions suggested, but exactly nothing has been done even though it’s now very likely that Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives based solely on new Republican gerrymandering alone; voter suppression, and “audits “ will likely give them the senate, too.
The Democrats nominally “control” two of the three branches of government. But they’ve done exactly nothing to safeguard our democracy. Pointing out that glaring deficiency is hardly radical bothsidersim unless you think that the likes of Lawrence Tribe and David Frum are leftist radicals.
It's worth remembering that "conservative" and "liberal" are relative terms. If you look at actual policy, Germany's Christian Democrats are well to the left of the US's Democrats. They're described as "conservative" or "right wing" (those two terms are NOT synonyms) only in comparison to the other major party.
LOL.
This canard again.
(If you take away health care, CDU is well right of the US Democrat Party.)
It’s actually impossible to compare.Your political parties isn’t exactly political parties in the same way as political parties are in more advanced democracies.
Your “parties” are more like “election coalition’s” hopeful contestants with a wide variety of opinions and no mutual agenda. All of them are individually trying to adapt to the opinions of their local voters but supposed to cooperate in the Congress in order to get anything done. It seems as if in these last years has the diversity of opinions widened considerably
Generally speaking I would say that someone like Biden is comparable to a right wing conservative in Europe
Greetings from your Swedish friend
“Impossible to compare’ - yet you continually compare American democracy unfavorably to the ‘advanced’ democracies of Western Europe. Perhaps someday you might tell us what your criteria are for rating democracies.
But your description of US parties is correct. I heard an interviewee (a political scientist?) say that in Westminster systems, there are elections, then a coalition is formed, then they govern. In the US, coalitions form, then there is an election, then the winner governs. Not all that different.
I am not using my (biased?) opinion but the opinion of unbiased international experts…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
https://www.v-dem.net/en/
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/angela-merkel-politics/
It’s very difficult to compare two political system as different as USA and Europe.
The modern European (despicable ) right wing extremists (“populists”) are xenophobic racists with a mania for authoritarianism but they are advocating social benefits that would appear shocking even to AOC.
(…. but only for people of the correct “ethnicity”)
If they're "advocating social benefits that would appear shocking even to AOC" then by definition they're NOT right wing. Stalin also had a mania for authoritarianism but he was certainly not right wing.
A quibble: Germany has had universal health care since 1884, as the article states, but it is not a ‘single-payer’ system. Rather, there are IIRC over 200 ‘Krankenkassen’ - nonprofit insurers - paid by employers, the self-employed, or the government.
This despicable person may be out of the game.. if we are lucky.
He has been considered to be the “golden boy” by right wingers in Europe, PM at the age of 31 but he isn’t truly out yet. He is still leader of the party and leader of the conservatives group in the parliament. The new MP is his stooge… but let’s hope the courts get him . The evidence seems to be overwhelming
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/10/sebastian-kurz-departure-further-blow-europe-centre-right
But things are improving in Europe.
The Conservative government in Norway is out and will be replaced with a government lead by the Social Democrats ( the Conservatives was dependent on a party of right wing extremists as support)
Andrej Babiš another right wing clown, lost the election in the Czech Republic
… and most important, CDU is finally out of power in Germany and Merkel is history.
It’s looking good!
A comment from a happy Swede
The demise of the moderate right is NOT good news for democracy when it is largely caused by the rise of the far right as is certainly the case in France, to some extent in Germany and Spain, and elsewhere. As for Austria, it was the centre left which lost hugely in the 2019 elections while the right (traditional right and far right) took 54 of the vote.
US mainstream media loves the narrative of far right extremists taking control of Europe.
AfD and Le Pen are their favorites.
How much influence has they had so far in Germany and France until today?
None !
AfD has had no influence whatsoever in the Reichstag and they was slipping in the recent German election. … and no other parties are willing to cooperate with them.
Forget about them.
National Rally (French: Rassemblement national,) has never actually been represented in the National Assembly, they are having some seats in the EU but was slipping in the latest EU election (2019) . Le Pen is presently polling at 16% and a new even more radical right wing party is polling at 15% … meaning they won’t be a problem in the upcoming presidential election (remember a no electoral college and a second round of “face of”)
The countries that has had the most influential “populists parties” are actually Denmark, Norway and Finland (SIC!) … but I have never seen US media ever writing about those parties
Check my comment above
Second comment on this because I still can't wrap my head around the post. Austria's PM resigned because of a scandal, not loss of support for his policies. He's OVP which did ally with the far-right FPO in the past but now governs with the Greens. Its sister parties in Germany and France were beaten, but in Germany that was normal alternance of power and in France it was, again, because of a scandal, and the winner Macron is center-right too. And none of the "losing" conservative parties in those countries are anti-democratic in the least. I know that in the US the moderate right no longer exists, or goes along with Trumpism, but let's not make that a general rule. In Europe there is a very stark difference between traditional conservatives, who are very supportive of democracy, and the far right.