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Please stop framing backward-looking nationalists as conservative. They don't want to conserve civil rights, environmental and protective standards, and other granted at status quo. They want society to go back to the 1930s.
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The post mentions Meloni who is nationalist (and was even fascist not too long ago). That, driven by nationalist parties, many European parties, not only conservatives, are drifting away further and further into populism is one effect of the problem of normalising populism and nationalism by the media.
I'm sorry but this really doesn't apply to a lot of European political landscapes. In Germany for example the biggest conservative party, CDU, is still very much just annoyingly "conservative", but definitely not "licking the gunpowder residue out of the bullet hole in Hilter's decaying skull".
And the conservative German nazi party (AFD) is in second place in E.U. elections right now. The conservative plague is on the rise globally, including in Europe.
Conservatives are fascists. The more conservative one is, the more fascist one is.
And the
conservativeGerman nazi party AfD is in second place in E.U. elections right now.FIFY. Since several years, the AfD is no longer a conservative party.
They are deeply conservative. The more conservative one gets, the more fascist one gets.
AFD didn't just suddenly abandon their conservative ideologies as they became more nationalist. Their conservatism is baked into their core ideology. Even they will tell you they are conservative. They are on the completely opposite end of the spectrum from progressives.
Conservatism is the very foundation upon which fascism is built. Conservatism is a spectrum. This is how they can convince some moderate conservatives to vote for them. They share the same values; they just lean further to the right than moderate conservatives on some issues.
Not arguing with that, just took issue with calling all moderate-conservatives Nazis because no matter how much I dislike them, that's just not true.
Yeah, we have a couple sane right wing parties here in Denmark too, including all three of the current coalition government (one of which calls itself center left, but has been center right to right wing on most issues for a couple decades now), as well as some extremist ones to the right of those.
"The farthest right/most conservative influential parties of all European countries" would be pretty fair though, what with frightening numbers of people voting for AFD, whatever Nigel Farage's current party is called etc..
To be simultaneously fair and insulting, though, they might only be able to name the extremist ones 🤷
Conservatives never wanted civil rights or environmental protections. What alternate dimension did you drop out of?
As I'm from Germany, our constitution was elaborated by a constituent assembly constisting in the majority of conservatives. It granted and grants a lot of civil rights which are questioned by modern day conservatives, such as the right for asylum or secrecy of mail and telephone. Starting from our first government, led by the conservative party CDU, the politics was also constantly pro-European towards integration. Also our first ministry for environment issues was established by a conservative government in 1986.
This backward-looking stupidity is a phenomenon of the last 30 years. E.g. Franz Josef Strauß, the most conservative politician I can think of, was pro technical innovation. As of today, the state of Bavaria still benefits from decisions made under his government. He would rotate in his grave if he knew how his party has become.
I see, I do tend to forget the term is quite broad in its use dependant on time and place.
A lot of people, including the best of the conservative politicians, take the whole "conserving our traditions" façade very seriously.
Conservatives, from the very beginning, were more interested in conserving their own power, while realizing hiding behind the "conserving our traditions" mask will win them a lot, besides using the "my enemy's hypocrisy is a fatal flaw of their character and ideology, my hypocrisy is human nature" tactic ad nauseum.
It would be silly to pretend the word "conservative" isn't widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists. But it's equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.
It would be silly to pretend the word "conservative" isn't widely understood to mean backwards-looking nationalists.
I agree that it uses to be the norm now, however it was not always like this but the meaning has changed. The horse has left the barn. (Das Kind ist in den Brunnen gefallen)
But it's equally silly to call fascists conservative when we have a much better word for them.
That's my point.
The horse has left the barn.
We have almost the exact same saying in English but it's usually phrased as something about closing the barn door after the horses have left.
The German saying (I've just corrected the false replacements made by spellcheck) literally reads "the kid has fallen into the well", so s.th. has happened and there is no way back.