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

Donald Tusk sounds like the name of a Steely Dan-Fleetwood Mac tribute band

The New Yorker profile of Curtis Yarvin is really something. The guy is just unbelievably fucking dumb. But he knows how to rim tech billionaires, so now he's a court philosopher.

Good analysis on Poland's presidential election.

When we say right-wing drift its mostly a drift from this hell of democratic centrist muddle.

https://balkaninsight.com/2025/06/04/nawrockis-victory-may-prove-pyrrhic-for-polands-pis-party/

Poland has a Donald Tusk *and* a Pis party.

hmm

Are there actually any left-wing governments anywhere? Piss-weak centrism seems to be the only thing we're allowed to hope for these days. Dark times indeed.

Cuba? If that's 'the west'

Are there actually any left-wing governments anywhere?

There seem to be several in Latin America. (semi-xp)

The new president of South Korea (elected yesterday) has said he models himself after Bernie Sanders

South Korea has some of the highest union membership in the world

Xxpost Just about every place I wanted to escape to went right. But differing degrees of course. The right winger running New Zealand isn't exactly anything like Viktor Orban.

Fascists successfully won huge chunks of the youth around the globe while everyone else was assuming this shit would die with the old guard.

Left-Right-Center-Nationalist are just shortcuts from a traditional, imprecise and partially obsolete lens. It can't stand for analysis. It applies differently for every country. The "West" has fractured in a number of ways. There are dynamics, but counting places that can represent a global left VS a global right makes zero sense imo.

I don't know about that. Things may have fractured, but there are still clear metrics that can be used, ie how progressive/regressive a tax system is, how extensive the welfare state is, what the gini coefficient is etc etc

Progressive tax system and welfare state are pretty universal concepts in developed countries though. Maybe they are challenged by the right in the US, which does not even have a full welfare state in the first place anyway. But in many places that's not the case, because those systems were won over and solidified decades ago, and there is a broad left-right consensus about what welfare should look like, how to prevent abuse, that it should be financially stable, etc. People still haggle over it, but at a technical level. I live in a super-liberal, right-leaning country, and even the far-right does not seriously attack our welfare system because it's balanced, works, etc, it's not a good target and they have other priorities. Obviously it will be very different elsewhere.

Just to make clear, I am not saying there are not common dynamics that can be read through the right-left wing lens, you can trace certain things historically, politicians tend to eye on the neighbor country and copy each other. But the way people conflate even "left" and "progressive", or "liberal" and "right-wing" always makes me cringe. There are so many instances where it's the left that has to defend historical gains against the reactionary right, there's a conservative left. You have so many aspects of governing a country (economics, foreign affairs, etc), where there's not a single left-right dividing line. And we are generally very far from big monolithic visions: politicians tear each other apart, they agree on feminism but not the environment, or it's the opposite, and besides they're simply not driven by a big ideology by which they will abide consistently.

Progressive tax system and welfare state are pretty universal concepts in developed countries though. Maybe they are challenged by the right in the US, which does not even have a full welfare state in the first place anyway. But in many places that's not the case, because those systems were won over and solidified decades ago, and there is a broad left-right consensus about what welfare should look like, how to prevent abuse, that it should be financially stable, etc. People still haggle over it, but at a technical level. I live in a super-liberal, right-leaning country, and even the far-right does not seriously attack our welfare system because it's balanced, works, etc, it's not a good target and they have other priorities. Obviously it will be very different elsewhere.

My best hope for the future at the moment is that other countries will become more stable and prosperous by using the USA as a negative example. "Don't elect that guy — do you want to end up like America?"

There's plenty of political will (and more importantly money) invested in fighting progressive tax systems and the welfare state in Europe at the moment, it just doesn't get openly pitched as such because the population in general does indeed value the welfare state regardless of political orientation. So instead the approach is to privatize bit by bit and underfund so that, at some point, the state services become so overwhelmed that you can go ahead and say "well this clearly doesn't work, full privatization is the only way to go". The pro-welfare state political consensus strikes me as much more of a 20th century anachronism than any left/right divide.

I think the onus is on politicians and I guess ourselves to be strident and define those universally left values? Tho I don't disagree there's some fragmentation and we are talking in such broad macro terms that ignore all the many tiny decisions that happen at local level etc.

xpost

The pro-welfare state political consensus strikes me as much more of a 20th century anachronism than any left/right divide.

I think this is pretty key, I think a lot of what we think of as a left/right divide or even any kind of faultline is a product of the anomaly of the aftermath of World War II. We view these lines as natural in some way because we haven't experienced anything different, but that world is fading and its still not that clear what exactly is replacing it. I think there can be a tendency to view concepts in a kind of conceptual unchanging abstract, this is x, this is y, when it can be more like a series of anachronisms (even if those anachronisms can be lifetime long, it doesn't mean they are permanent)

Think we have a consensus on migration in most countries in the West. Naledi's 'analysis' of "fragmentation" is not v useful either.

"So instead the approach is to privatize bit by bit and underfund so that, at some point, the state services become so overwhelmed that you can go ahead and say "well this clearly doesn't work, full privatization is the only way to go"."

More difficult to do this here given what happened to the railways but government ministers are paid a dinner by private healthcare to argue for it and chip away.

Think we have a consensus on migration in most countries in the West.

I feel like this less true than it initially appears. There's quite a bit of variance when it comes to migration between Canada, Portugal, South Korea, Croatia, Australia, Latvia not just in terms of consensus but also policy implementation

I recognise different people have different interpretations of what 'the west' actually is, so feel free to exclude/include to own preference

Croatia and Latvia. Lol, yeah I think I have my preferences.

Weirdly enough, given the horrendous things Australia has done in the past (ie longterm detention of refugees on small islands in the middle of nowhere), immigration just wasn't much of an issue in the most recent Australian general election.

Joyce Carol Oates on Curtis Yarvin:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:t3xjn23vkpk3hwwfmqwmrlmk/bafkreihpjbls5liovqznhbb44ox42eqanolnilurs5sgyy2gk45sdxo5tu@jpeg

Text in case it doesn't show up for you:

"over-all takeaway from the Curtis Yarvin profile is that there must be millions of smart-aleck show-offy kids who annoy their teachers & go on to annoy other adults through their lives with their "contrarian" pose that hardens to a carapace over their faces; until, as adults, they still harbor a delusion that, if there is a king, or a führer, he'd be impressed with the guy's motor mouth & appoint him to his cabinet rather than deleting him with a negligent swipe of his wrist as Stalin did routinely."

idk to me Yarvin is the classic Gifted Kid, specifically gifted _boy_. it's a well-established trope by this point - the guy who just wants his daddy to praise him. it's learned behavior. in my community we got a meme, "the gifted boy -> burnout girl with a praise kink pipeline". to me, yarvin is a victim - in the same sense that roy cohn was.

Yeah in that profile Yarvin makes some sniffy comment about how he started turning to the right when he turned away from the "pat on the head" culture of getting rewarded for going along with the system and its preferred narratives. And it's like, oh buddy, you didn't go feral, and you definitely didn't become the leader of some new pack — you just found some new rich masters to skritch behind your ears.

Working for some of the richest people on earth and he thinks he’s anti-system? Lol.

Interestingly, someone with whom I went to gifted camp was briefly married to Yarvin, and pretty much alienated every one of her old friends as a result.

Oh great now he has Divorced Man brain too

one of the things I recently learned about Yarvin is that his parents were Jewish-American communists. I think they done fucked up somewhere along the line.

See also David Horowitz. One could speculate about the family dynamics behind it all.

Horowitz's transition was wrapped up in his feelings of guilt over recommending a woman to work for the Black Panthers and her ending up murdered.

Horowitz's transition was wrapped up in his feelings of guilt over recommending a woman to work for the Black Panthers and her ending up murdered.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes)

god fucking dammit. not your fault, my gay-ass brain's fault.

because i also have an old-ass brain, i keep thinking david horowitz was this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9Pdt_tV4Es

there used to be this awesome channel that had the full version of this theme song as well as some great dancefloor remixes of game show theme songs, but it got terminated for copyright violations after posting old episodes of _The Joker's Wild_. anyway here's my irregular reminder that i hate capitalism.

i guess the good news is that David Horowitz's daughter Amanda is uploading old episodes of Fight Back! with David Horowitz. i appreciate when the copyright holders make this old material available officially.

browsing the channel reminds me that the concept of a "right-wing drift" is... complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmm14f0rsFs

i guess the good news is that David Horowitz's daughter Amanda is uploading old episodes of Fight Back! with David Horowitz.

re: Migration. Migration / security has been the n°1 political issue for the far right for God knows how long. They have won seats on it, and you can still see their influence in the outlandish plans made to limit entry or set up extra-territorial barriers, or they're even in power (Italy, Austria, Hungary...). But if they have partly won some ground, they have also partly lost that battle: people broadly understand demographics, the economic need for immigration, there's a level of sympathy when immigrants come in times of crisis. So I would say that there too, there's a (thin) line for a consensus: a controlled, "acceptable" level of immigration that responds to economic needs / capacities for integration, and in the case of Europe, that is fair between member states. Right now it's still a debacle and the politics are in between that consensus and a tough far-right line, with states vying to be as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers and otherwise aim for skilled workers. Germany and Sweden tried for an "open arms" policy (not necessarily for leftish reasons) and had to scale back. But we still need to work out a consensus to relegate the far-right, otherwise the next day you see them in government. That tension has always been there, here it's 6 decades old, it can't be left unaddressed and left up for cheap electoralist grabs.

"But if they have partly won some ground, they have also partly lost that battle: people broadly understand demographics, the economic need for immigration, there's a level of sympathy when immigrants come in times of crisis."

People are being deported to El Salvador or rounded up by cops and being held indefinitely, so this is not facing the reality that far right politics are being absorbed by your precious liberals.

people broadly understand demographics, the economic need for immigration

I'm not sure how true this part actually is. I'm not necessarily disputing it but is there really a general understanding of this? Governments have played a game here, pretending immigration is something out of their hands like the weather, that they are trying to stop, while actually not stopping it because its economically necessary, while then deploying anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy to appease a sector of the electorate. Any positive framing is done in quasi-moral terms rather than practical ones ("we want to encourage the brightest and the best to add to our society not those other ones")

I suppose I am disputing it, its not clear to me that voters understand that at all

I think that's a good reading anvil, and I'm not sure you are disputing it either :) For sure there is a spectrum (of understanding), my point was only that the notion of "limiting" immigration can correspond to different options / political range.

I am disputing it and I'm also doubling down. I don't think voters have an understand of the economic reasons for immigration, at least in part because I don't think political parties have articulated those reasons because they've tried to have their cake and eat it

Ok. My vague line of defense will be to say that people are generally not dumb and that those reasons are actually being articulated: if not by political parties, at least by the media, concerned groups. I guess you'd need to look at surveys. A first search online lands me on a UK survey by a migration observatory, where the main conclusion seems to be that close to 70% of people think immigration is beneficial, but 52% want to put limits to it. I imagine you'd get very much the same results here.

I think it's more that a lot of people can be sympathetic to and see the value of immigration when it's framed certain ways — but can be easily swayed against it by nativist alarmism. Like, lots of people understand the economic value of immigrant labor at some level, but they don't have any real sense of how to tell if we're at a "good" level of immigration or a "bad" level. So the volume and force of the rhetoric that is pushed on them makes a difference — and it's way easier to turn them against migrants with one scary anecdote than toward sympathy with mountains of economic data.

That's more or less where I'm coming from, polls of this type don't feel very concrete to me, can be one thing one day the opposite tomorrow. I feel like the problem is that they're designed to get at how people feel about things, which can be variable even without framing intentional or unintentional. But somebody's feelings about the location of a new bus terminal and what the reasons that location was selected for are different things

"My vague line of defense will be to say that people are generally not dumb and that those reasons are actually being articulated: if not by political parties, at least by the media, concerned groups."

People in the West are racist, that's why we are where we are.

otm

lmao: https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-issue-half-million-non-eu-work-visas-over-next-three-years-2025-06-30/

hail Caesar! hail Rome!

A good essay on Curtis Yarvin.

Yarvin’s not a serious theorist. Philosophers, historians, public intellectuals, and even rival right-wing thinkers tend to dismiss him rather than take his worldview seriously. Despite his earnest efforts, his cobbled-together, gonzo theories won’t leave behind a school of thought. We won’t be reckoning with the implications of his ideas for decades to come. Indeed, we wouldn’t be doing it now if it weren’t for the need to explain Trump. Yarvin parlayed scores of ten-thousandword posts into the simulation of an intellectual career. Jury-rigged from sources he’d gleaned online, Yarvin’s thought exists entirely divorced from the ivory tower he resents. He’s a subject, not an interlocutor.

...

As is the case for virtually all would-be intellectuals, Yarvin’s influence is indirect. But it is real. So, while I am skeptical of Yarvin as a Rasputin-like figure, I do think Yarvin has played a role in encouraging the direction of right-wing politics at an elite level and in creating permission structures, especially for major investors and influencers in Silicon Valley, to embrace Trumpian politics.

By permission structure, I mean a framework that provides justifications that allow someone to change their views and behaviors.

Yarvin provides permission structures in at least three places: first, in rejecting mainstream norms about information; second, in his calls for DOGE-like cuts to the government; and third, in legitimizing Donald Trump’s autocratic tendencies.