Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

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I guess your definition of "right-wing" is a bit different from mine. "Centrists" in post-WW2 Europe are largely conservative: fundamentally religious, pro-business, anti-immigration. That, to me, is right-wing - respectable, not touting nazi tattoos (mostly), but still fundamentally reactionary in nature. Those blocs are usually allied with "liberal" parties, a term which in Europe carries right-wing connotations because "liberalism" is meant in the original economic sense: free-trade, unbridled capitalism, etc. Occasionally they ally even with ultra-right parties, which often include real neofascist / neonazis.

If you consider them like that, traditionally-conservative parties account for over 65% of current MEPs.

Predictably, someone comes along to argue that anyone who is not fully in the left must therefore be right-wing. Don't you see that the word 'centrist' indicates people who are in the center, and therefore by definition not right-wing?

Oh, and that 'mostly'? Take it down a notch. There are no actual nazis in the European Parliament.

Neonazi maybe not (yet), but neofascists for sure: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23248823.2023.22...

The "centrism" framing, btw, is fundamentally useless. In postwar Europe, PSE parties are left-wing and PPE parties are right-wing; other parties are fundamentally defined by their primary relationship with one of these two. The "centrism" mantra is reactionary twaddle to justify one's ideological vacuum.

If only EPP parties were really right-wing. I say this as an actual conservative. EPP parties generally are "our position is whatever the left espoused ten years ago". Which is, basically, a very progressive position.

Traditional European parties have been converging towards the center. That's largely thanks to the EU, which is a centrist project founded on ideas such as social liberalism and pro-market policies. Social democratic parties have also become pretty right-wing by their traditional standards, largely due to Third Way politics that have been dominant since the late 90s.

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