Is the West Experiencing a Right-Wing Drift?

Sweeping Win for Cameron in Britain: Conservative Party Secures Majority

Netanyahu’s new government is more right, more religious than last

Liberal Party in charge in Australia, Conservative Party in Canada.

Lawmakers in France Move to Vastly Expand Surveillance

And if so, why?

I don't think so. The United States has a president, who, for all that leftists dislike him, is probably the most left-wing President since the 1970s. In England, the Conservative majority will be smaller than the center-right Conservative-LD coalition that was in charge before, and my sense is that the massive swing from Scottish Labour to SNP is in no way a move to the right. In Canada, NDP just took over one of the most conservative provinces in the country, and Liberals are polling way better than they were back in 2011 when Harper won his current majority; I don't think people are projecting he'll keep that majority in the upcoming election. I don't know much about Australia or France.

I don't think so either. Bibi's coalition not likely to last long, US drifting towards the left afaict. Europe's rightward drift seems largely driven by xenophobia (always with the petty regionalism/nationalism over there) which is sad to watch.

I don't think Canada is more right-wing that it was 10 or 20 years ago. It's just that the more left-leaning vote is split between two parties. Also the Liberals have had terrible leadership in the last decade or so.

The conservatives have been pretty good at keeping everyone together and keeping internal dissent to a minimum.

based on comments in this thread obv the answer is "hell yes"

XP xenophobia of Scots towards the english, maybe

other answer is "because the further right we go the further right people think of as 'left wing'"

Renzi's performance in the Euro elections seemed significant. Huge victory for pro-austerity leader who was thought to be much more divisive. It's mostly fiscal conservatism on the rise in Europe. Despite the growth of the far right the mainstream tends to be more socially liberal I think.

dont forget Greece lol

I guess if you look at the actual governments in place, they are more right-wing, but that feels more like the left not getting their shit together rather than the actual people being more conservative. I don't know. We probably don't have the best systems for electing governments.

XP xenophobia of Scots towards the english, maybe

You're making the assumption that people who vote SNP are nationalists... for a start.

just playing with the yanks tom

Suspected as much, but I remember them having difficulty understanding the concept to left wing nationalists during the referendum, bless 'em.

concept of

theyre some craic hey

The United States has a president, who, for all that leftists dislike him, is probably the most left-wing President since the 1970s

lol, picked that decade due to that anarchist Jimmy Carter? (who ruled out reparations to Vietnam because "the destruction was mutual")

the last liberal POTUS was a man named Lyndon Johnson.

both houses of congress and most of the state houses in the u.s. are controlled by a class of republicans who are probably the most right-wing major faction in america since the southern democrats of the antebellum era. i think the u.s. actually is drifting to the left in a lot of ways, but it's not always perceptible in our elections.

it seems hard to dispute that obama's the most progressive president since johnson, his foreign policy's certainly better.

yeah idk if electorates are drifting right as much as right-wing oligarchs are just tightening their reigns of power

xp

xp

well that's a high raw body count to match even when you bomb 7 Muslim countries

and have prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents in history

and

"progressive" sure is a versatile word is all im sayin'

I don't think Canada is more right-wing that it was 10 or 20 years ago. It's just that the more left-leaning vote is split between two parties.

Why do people always say this? The NDP has been around since 1961; before it, the CCF was winning seats in federal elections since 1935. The Liberals still managed to thoroughly dominate Canada in the 20th century, even with a single 'united' PC or Conservative party until the 90s.

In terms of economic policy, I still think the Liberals of the 90s were at least as right-wing as any other post-war federal government. I actually feel like the mood is shifting left these days (which the AB election demonstrates).

I specified "10 or 20 years" specifically because I didn't really follow politics before that. I think the fact that there were multiple right-wing parties in the 90s is a pretty significant reason as to why the Liberals were able to win elections with such large majorities back then.

Here in Quebec it definitely feels like we have shifted to the right. Every successive Liberal leader has been more right-wing than his predecessor.

The West is definitely rightward leaning. The US left is more or less non-existent, beholden to the same corporate interests as the right. They dangle civil rights issues like gay marriage as a carrot to voters, because they know without those issues, nothing much separates their war-and-banks-driven governmental style from the right's. The hope that Obama will close gitmo is certainly worth more monetarily than him actually closing it down.

The question is: is this a recent development or a general tendency of US representative democracy? I suppose it began as representing mainly the interests of those who could legally vote (white male landowners/oligarchs), which you could say is a rightward position. Since then women have been granted the vote and minorities as well, but is their vote worth the same as the oligarchs that have always monopolized representation? No way in hell.

Perhaps in a way we have become more socially liberal, but the systems of control and oppression are working against that development in a way that greatly negates it. Corporate personhood imo continues to devalue "free speech" and the spits at the virtue of representative democracy.

Going by Wiki numbers, the combined popular vote of the Reform and PC parties was still less than the Liberals' share of the popular vote in the 93 and 97 elections. The combined total of the Alliance's and PCs' share of the popular vote in 2000 was just under the Liberals' share and was well under the combined total of the Liberals and NDP. (I also doubt that all PC voters would have chosen the Alliance over the Liberals if they had to choose. Clark himself preferred the Liberals.) King's, St. Laurent's, Pearson's, and Pierre Trudeau's Liberals all managed to win elections (after elections) despite facing left-wing competition.

I get resentful about 'vote-splitting' arguments for a few reasons but especially because I feel that they are usually made by Liberals to unfairly marginalize/minimize/accuse any progressive alternative.

The Liberals lost in 2006 because they were corrupt, arrogant, and entitled. They haven't managed to convince the voting public since then.

for the record, I agree with you re: vote-splitting. I don't want any kind of NDP/Liberals merger and will most likely vote NDP in the next election.

Still, I think it's difficult to argue that the Conservatives being the only viable party right of center doesn't benefit them enormously, allowing them to form majority governments despite not being able to get beyond 40% support.

The real problem is a lack of any kind of proportional representation.

I don't have the nuanced take on what is left wing, probably a bit dated & old fashioned. Indiscriminately killing civilians with drones and police does throw up some red flags though

most nuanced take

It is all shifted right in the context of most other Western countries.

it seems hard to dispute that obama's the most progressive president since johnson

Obama Lashes Out at Liberal Foes of Pacific Trade Deal
By PETER BAKER 3:07 PM ET
At Nike headquarters in Oregon, the president lashed out at critics within his own party, accusing Democrats of deliberately distorting the impact of the trade agreement he is negotiating with Asia.

i didn't think it'd be terribly controversial to say that obama was more progressive than carter or clinton. but yes i'm aware that the guy isn't bernie sanders.

you are also aware some people never get tired of criticizing him

I don't think the left's popularity is waning. It's just that their appeal is becoming more selective.

http://i.imgur.com/OGFBhT3.jpg

Here in Quebec it definitely feels like we have shifted to the right. Every successive Liberal leader has been more right-wing than his predecessor.

― silverfish, Friday, May 8, 2015 2:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not only that, but like in many places across the West, our de facto left wing party has slowly and steadily become right wing.

love the passive voice thread question

plz put the q in active voice for me

present progressive, not passive

de facto left wing party

Had sort of a hollow lol when I realized that this probably refers to the PQ.

h/t the donald trump thread

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_MxkTUjnGeBaoavzdNapdX_UqkI=/1600x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4082854/Figure_7_.0.png

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by "shift in the percentage replying..." -- e.g. if 1000 respondents were surveyed from the United States in 1995 and 50 said "good or very good" then, does the chart mean that the number/1000 increased to 55 in 2014, or does it mean it increased to 150?

i.e. are we talking percent change or percentage point change?

the way i understand it, if in 1955 20% said army rule is good, and then in 2015 30% said so, there would be an increase of 10%? does that make sense?

btw i think the premise of this thread is true more than ever right now.

I don't think there's an overall rightward drift in the US. I do think there's a rightward drift on the right.

xp that makes sense, as long as that's what vox means

btw i think the premise of this thread is true more than ever right now.

― Mordy

I dunno. hard to say. to play devil's advocate:

likelihood is the United States will elect a democrat next year for the third election in a row.

Canada just voted out the conservatives in an election where the conservatives purposefully used wedge issues and stoked islamophobia as a vote-winning tactic.

The ruling party the conservative PP in Spain failed to return a majority in the election on Sunday.

I do think there's a rightward drift on the right.

^^^this

otoh france has moved so far to the right that the socialists had to throw their support behind the republicans to keep the national front out of power

On a better front, looks like a good amount of Geert Wilders's Dutch electorate a couple of years back vanished

They lost quite a lot of seats, but there's still a lot of idiots in this country thinking that a vote for Wilders leads to something positive; his party is still on course to become the biggest after all. The final votes are coming in and it's extremely close with the central/progressive liberal party D66.

I think D66 leader Rob Jetten is a really great guy, very intelligent and probably the best speaker in the House. I find myself often agreeing with him, although D66 is not really my party (I vote more left wing). I am looking forward to seeing him become our new prime minister - which is likely to happen, as several key parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Wilders' PVV.
Unfortunately, Jetten's success is the only good news of this election. The left-wing parties combined have never had as few seats as they'll get now. The biggest left party lost 5 seats and their leader Frans Timmermans resigned as a result. Timmermans is IMO another great speaker & good guy, but he seems to be downright loathed by many opponents.

My vote went to the relatively new left-wing party Volt, but they also went down from 2 seats to only 1.

Looks like finding a majority for the coalition will be a nigh-impossible puzzle...

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/1101/1541586-fire-louth-ipas

Asylum centre set on fire in Drogheda, Ireland.
Nothing new sadly, people have done this many times. But this time there were people actually inside it, though at least they were rescued.
The troubling thing is, I see the news reports on Facebook, and so many people are leaving 'laugh' emojis on there.
They think it's hilarious that the asylum seekers nearly got burned to death.

I’ve only met one person from Drogheda in my life and he was an absolute cockfarmer

im not sure that that is the takeaway tbh

He’s probably dead now tbf

Anyway it’s fucking horrible and I hope they catch the people who did it and punish them for a very long time

On a better front, looks like a good amount of Geert Wilders's Dutch electorate a couple of years back vanished

it looks like pretty much all the votes lost by wilders' pvv went to other far right parties - ja21 (who unfortunately are reported to have a solid chance of ending up in government?), and fvd who are the most extreme right party, so the far-right vote hasn't even gone anywhere, just fragmented a little more than last time

He’s probably dead now tbf

Was he in the hotel?

... oops, fucked that up.

If Le Pen or Bardella wins the next presidential election, all bets are off. Although I agree EU freedom of movement would hardly be their first target.

― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 9 October 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Seismic poll in France

Jordan Bardella would win every single runoff scenario he'd face.

He'd win 74-26 against Mélenchon! pic.twitter.com/zwrb3XGAFf

— François Valentin (@Valen10Francois) November 25, 2025

This is an excellent, detailed account of the right-wing drift in Latin Am

https://archive.ph/OgJu1

Written just as Kast wins power in Chile.

Marine Le Pen will know on the 7th of July if she can be a presidential candidate. Everyone expects a confirmation of her sentence and RN politicians seem to be actively preparing her succession and ready to "bury" her. This time the prosecutors have not asked for the immediate application of the ineligibility sentence: it is unclear and debated if the ineligibility will be temporarily lifted until the final decision by the Cour de Cassation - her last chance (whose decision should be guaranteed to happen before the election).

For context: she is being sentenced because she is accused, as president of her party, of having organized and maintained a system whereby the RN was using EU money destined for parliamentary assistants in Brussels for people who were working mostly exclusively for their party in France. The cases were damning and the RN defense flimsy.

wow obvious corruption being punished? what a country!

The Berlin Film Festival got off to a political start as the competition jury, led by Wim Wenders, fielded several questions about Israel and Palestine.

“We have to stay out of politics," Wenders said. "We are the counterweight of politics, we are the opposite of politics. We have to do the work of people, not the work of politicians.”

The work of the timorous pro-Israel/pro-genocide German state apparatus is done!

Meanwhile in non-west drift news: Takaichi wins resounding victory in latest Japanese elections.

disappointed in Wenders

Europe about the shift further right

Erika Kirk is going to Northern Ireland to meet with Ian Paisley Jr. and set up Turning Point Ulster https://t.co/pLOGwEgzyT

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 11, 2026

Why not go to Northern Ireland, Ulster Scots invented most of this stuff.

Talk about teaching your Grandma to suck eggs.

Isn’t she Catholic

Don't tell Junior.

idk if the right thread really but Meloni defeated in her judiciary overhaul referendum seems good, not least for the knock to her inflated rep (in the context of an unusually stable government..for now)

Also the left wing vote in France has held up..

"Almost one-third (31%) of Gen
Z men believe wives should
"obey" their husbands, compared to just 13% of Baby Boomer men, according to a study by Ipsos and King's College London."

There's gotta be something the matter with the methodology here because even though the study's conclusions always just contrast boomers and gen z, the charts include other generations too, and portray the thing as a rising tendency - i.e. more gen x respondents believe wives should obey their husbands than boomers, more millenials than gen x, more zoomers than millenials.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/almost-a-third-of-gen-z-men-agree-a-wife-should-obey-her-husband

I thought boomers were supposed to be the bad guys?

Not huge on generational warfare but the idea that the boomers hold the most progressive views on gender of anyone around feels...off, to say the least.

To me that study mostly shows how worthless it is to assume generational similarity across the entire globe -- do we really think attitudes towards gender can be so easily conflated in the UK, China, India, Argentina, etc.?

The other thing I thought about last time this finding crossed my radar is that a major difference between Boomer men and Gen Z men isn't their 'generation', it's the fact that Boomer men are far morel likely to have been married for decades and Gen Z men are far more likely to have never been — it seems p obvious to me that the former are going to have a different view on marriage / wives than the latter, one better informed by actually being in a long-term relationship with a real person.

also what kind of person born after 1965 actually answers a survey lol

Why are they hyping the minority response, is the real question. Using the exact same stats you could just as easily write a story that says "69% of Gen Z men believe in gender equality in marriage." But alarmism (these young men! so sexist! so dumb!) gets clicks.

Well no that wouldn't really make sense, if you want to hype the majority response "87% of boomer men believe in gender equality in marriage" would be both a more impressive figure and more surprising.

bye bye, Orban

Later, asshole. Amusing pre-defeat Guardian headline and subhed:

Hungary election live: Polls in Hungary close in tightly fought election after 16 years under Viktor Orbán

Prime minister has been trailing in the polls to Péter Magyar in race that could have repercussions for Europe, the US and Russia

If he'd been trailing in the polls, by double digits, was it really a tightly fought election?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/10/peter-magyar-leading-polls-hungary-election-tisza-opposition

Right let's keep the racist shit. Fine with European liberals.

With the exception of migration, where he has vowed to take a harder line than Orbán by scrapping the country’s guest worker scheme, Magyar has committed to doing away with many of the most problematic parts of Orbán’s programme.

yeah the celebrations seem a little premature

What a dummy.

Today could be a big turning-point. If Hungary votes to oust Viktor Orbán, Putin’s (and, weirdly, Trump’s) ally inside the EU and NATO will be gone. The EU can give more help to Ukraine, which is anyway doing better on the battlefield. And the tide could turn against populism.

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) April 12, 2026

that's why he gets the big bucks

oh is "populism" a political ideology now?

Really want to see the EU giving more help to Ukraine now I'm sure Orban was the only blocker there.

US and Russia picked the wrong racist huh

Yeah Magyar doesn’t seem like a Good Guy. Obviously Orban losing seems objectively good though. Including as a fuck-you to all the American right-wing weirdos who have latched onto him.

This thread of real time reactions from someone there is pretty great, I think:

https://bsky.app/profile/youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com/post/3mjd3busdyk2j

Saw that (you may be aware that most UK politics ilxors think she’s a melt).

Lol what a pathetic shit.

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT HE SAID BUT PRETTY SURE MAGYAR JUST MENTIONED MAGDA SZABO WE LOVE A LEADER WHO BIGS UP LITERATURE"

‪Olga Nesterova‬
✧@onestpr✧✧✧.onestnetw✧✧✧.c✧✧‬
· 5h
Peter Magyar confirmed that Szijjarto, Orbán's FM, has barricaded himself with some of his closest colleagues and is shredding documents related to the sanctions on Russia any other evidence of treason.

https://www.lilyslynch.com/p/the-end-of-orban

Good on the wider implications for the region

Lily Lynch lol

What's the gossip? I just came across that..