Rise of the far right

[BardsAreAssholes]

I am watching election news with increasing fear. The deranged Trump conspiracy theorists supporters in the US, overturning Roe Vs Wade, the far right gaining traction in Europe, some of the rhetoric here. Hell, the fact the Rwanda idea was not immediately dismissed as insane.

Then outside the West there’s the threat to women’s lives in Afghanistan, Iran…

How does this end? How does it reverse? Other than a WW2 scenario, how do we secure the safety and freedom of women and girls?

I want to be optimistic, but I’m struggling to see a route to progress. I’m hoping the much more knowledgeable souls of FWR will know.

When the Left want to mutilate and sterilise teenagers, and remove their genitals and breasts then I'm really sorry but WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN?

Not shouting at you, shouting at the ridiculousness of the situation.

It is beyond me why the Left cannot see this.

We need more female lawmakers and politicians. We need to separate church and state. We need more female leaders and diplomats. We need to invest more into women's activism and organisations.

As for the rise of the far right, people have lost sight of the fight against fascism. The end of WW2 brought in more socially cohesive laws and organisations founded on the 'never again ' ethos.

We now have countries run as businesses, Trump being the par exemplar. Global organisations are the new colonisers trampling over human rights. Disenfranchised young men have fundamentalist values and black and white thinking.

This has been building voor over 20 years, when trans-rights were barely in sight. The TRA movement may have been a catalyst, but they are not the sole cause.

I think the horrors from the second world war are too long ago. Not many people from that period are still alive. We have been used to freedom for a long time and we have started to take it for granted.

Then there is the mass manipulation in social media. We saw the effects of it for the first time during the Brexit referendum, but that too has been building for a while.

It's the gradual errosion of our common sentiments and values that is causing this. Even though we are all safer in western nation, on average, people are more quick to use violence and intimidation when we don't like something.

There is probably a bunch of other stuff I haven't mentioned. For me 9/11 and the U.S government's reaction to it, was my first clue something was running off the rails.

Genuine question- as someone concerned about the erosion of women's rights and the need to protect women's only spaces, women's rights, women's data as CEOs Athletes etc is the opposition of trans women are women a right wing stance?

I think you have the rise of religious extremism in some places, worries over immigration in others, cost of living is a problem in most places, “wokery” which has little to do with peoples day to day life and politicians are either ignoring or responsible for some of this stuff.

It’s a failure of the political class imo.

I think it depends on their agenda. If their idea of women is "being chained, pregnant, barefoot to the kitchenstove, than no. It's not the opposite. It's just the other side of the same coin. It's equally regressive.

In fact many TRA talking points were used in the past were used to keep women from voting:

"That the female mind is inferior to the male mind need not be assumed. There is something about it that is essentially different and this difference is of a kind and a degree that votes for women would constitute a political danger."

Been trying to find this quote. I think it's from the New York Times. I just don't know what date.

You mean like Suella Braverman, Pritti Patel, Georgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel, Margorie Taylor Green, Pia Kjærsgaard, etc.?

Girls are no good to the Right if they have no Breasts or Uteruses.

I'm not saying that the Right are good for women and girls, or anyone really. That's the point. But if the Left keep to the agendas is to make it worse, where does that leave politically homeless people?

This is driven by consumerism and the capitalist pharma trade and yet the Left are all in.

Nobody understands what the fuck is going on.

I see mainland Europe is going towards the right, while the UK is going much more towards to the left. The UK is a bit thick tbh. The Conservatives see people are fed up, but they seem to be thinking "Maybe we should be more left-wing, then."

I'm not anti- the internet but the rise of social media and lack of critical thinking skills gives a terrifying amount of power to people who know how to prey on people's fears. People can be controlled in an entirely new way.

I don't have the answer but I do believe that people need to be more analytical when thinking about who or what is to blame for the things they don't have in life. But humans like simple answers, not complex ones!

Your list is very selective. 25 per cent of politicians worldwide are women. There are about five countries worldwide where women make up half the government. We need more women shaping our societies.

Are you saying that women are less likely to be far right?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. In the UK 75 per cent of politicians are male. Women make up half the population and our rights are being eroded. We need more women in politics and we need more women in the judiciary.

Can women be far right? Evidently. Would you like me to name every far right male politician and dictator or don't you have all day?

It seems unlikely that all the right leaning female politicians the pp described are against women's rights.

Womens right and right wing politics are two different things imo OP

OP is about the rise of the far right. A PP posted we need more women in politics.
Why post that other to imply that more women would mean less far right?

If people are voting for right wing and far right candidates, it suggests that centrist / left wing / far left parties aren't offering what voters want or are seen as something negative such as corrupt or incompetent or lying or harmful to voters' interests.

There's a misunderstanding here.

My post was divided into two parts. The first in order to combat the erosion of women's rights. The second as an explanation of the rise of the far right.

There are plenty of far right women who hold abhorrent views.

I was answering this question: how do we secure the safety and freedom of women and girls?

There are plenty of far right women who hold abhorrent views.

Can you name them?

Do you think it may be populist politics, neo liberalism and scapegoating?

Yes I can. I collate all their names on a spreadsheet. I'll PM you.

Giorgia Meloni - Italy
Marine Le Pen - France
Alice Weidel - Germany
Beatrix von Storch - Germany
Marion Maréchal - France
Frauke Petry - Germany
Pia Kjaersgaard - Denmark
Roberta Metsola - Malta
Ursula von der Leyen - Germany
Siv Jensen - Norway
Beata Szydlo - Poland
Christine Lagarde - France
Mette Frederiksen - Denmark
Kristina Schröder - Germany
Jana Černochová - Czech Republic
Laurence Trochu - France
Margarita Simonyan - Russia
Elena Udrea - Romania
Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Netherlands
Sylvi Listhaug - Norway

Thank you.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts so far. I agree both that we need more female involvement in positions of power, and that there are plenty of far right women in socienty.

I was sorting through some old piles of magazines and there were photos from Iran nearly 50 years ago - it looked a thousand times more modern than today. That. combined with the news of the European elections, got me on this train of thought, and it all ended up in such bleak places.

I used to believe in a general trend towards freedom and emancipation. Now I see a pendulum.

If that is the case, how do centrist / left wing / far left parties counteract that?

‘The left’ has got completely detached from actually improving the economic conditions of the working and middle class. All of our major parties are economically right leaning with a social justice window dressing of various flavours. Horrifying that the reaction to this to to support or excuse the far right, but perhaps inevitable. I just wish there was an organised actual left or coherent feminist movement standing by basic left liberal or socialist values, but both are in disarray. I fear that a Labour govt will respond to a large minority Reform vote by continuing to implement basically neoliberal austerity politics but giving more credence to the scapegoating of immigration as the cause of all inequality and the decay of public services, because otherwise they’d have to actually tackle those issues. And then the next general election or the one after that becomes a scary prospect.