Finland’s results in the European election bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party.
Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election.
The Finns are all too aware of what far-right government means, they’re living next to it, and it’s threatening their very existence.
Congratulations on the Fins voting against barbarism! Here’s to hoping the upcoming election here in the USA follows suit, and continues to reject reactionary nationalism.
They’re living in it. The existing Finnish government was already on a hard-right tilt over the last ten years, and this election has resulted in a countercyclical backlash.
This isn’t a bunch of Finns saying “We don’t want to be like Russia.” It’s a bunch of Finns saying the National Coalition / True Finns suck fucking ass for cannibalizing their public sector in order to inflate their police sectors in an anti-migrant freak out.
The country has dipped into a recession following a slew of big cuts to social spending and economic lag caused by the war. And people justifiably don’t like that shit.
Oh, I didn’t know this! Thank you for that information. I hope the new government can materiality improve the lives of the public.
Fingers crossed. But it wouldn’t be the first time the ratchet of politics blocked left-wing reforms while turning effortlessly to the right.
This also gives me hope that after a couple of years of far-right governance, these people will end up losing and more centrist politicians will be in charge again. Making this shit temporary in Europe.
They also have a (lesser than the neighbor) far-right government
I didn’t know that, thank you for informing me! Hopefully the new government can succeed in undoing any damage done by the previous government.
The USA first needs a serious left wing party for that to be possible.
God I’m sick of explaining this.
If everyone voted for the left-most party, and the right had no votes, the right would move towards the left, pushing the dems along with them.
Not surprisingly, when the country votes left your politics moves left.
Comments like this are the reason why the dems are not the bastion of leftism you so desire.
Mind if I ask what you are basing this on? Because the experience I’m having in my country tells me that would probably just reinforce the status quo, and then the far-right would have a huge increase.
In my country the center-“left” soc-dems (who have been leaning more and more liberal) were in power since 2014, with a majority on the left; in 2022 that party got a majority of votes, and the rest of the left loss a lot of votes, but the right was still in minority. This has essentially resulted in them being able to keep doing whatever they want and what they’ve always done and not keep their promises because they know a bunch of people always vote for them anyway because “it’s them or the right wins!”. Then in late 2023 there was a corruption scandal that resulted in us having new elections early this year where the far right saw unprecedented growth, the “center”-right party won the elections, and there is now a majority right in parliament. At no point during these 10 years did our country turn further left; the right certainly didn’t.
My point is, based on that, I would guess that having liberals (who are the ones in charge of the Dems) in power so long with a majority would just result in them consolidating power, the rest of the left to be pushed out, and eventually for the far right to see a renewed growth.
The real solution would either be for everyone to vote for a new different left-wing party (if we’re already talking about convincing “everyone” to vote for Dems, why not dream a little higher?), or turn to mutual aid and grassroots movements. And a party that wins elections will almost certainly never want to change the electoral system because they benefit from it the most; again, the best hope for that might be getting behind one party whose mission purpose is exactly to turn away from a 2 party system.
The overton window.
If the political opinions are reduced to a spectum running from left to right, then in a two party system the major parties will sit immediately to either side of the mid-way point, because they want to seduce as many swing voters as possible from the other side.
As in, the conservative party may have conservative dreams but their policies need to be far enough to the left to actually win an election, so they will push up against the progressive party.
If suddenly more voters vote progressive (the conservative party loses badly), the conservative party needs to adjust their policy settings further to the left.
As the conservative party’s policies move to the left, the progressive party will start losing voters to them unless they also move further to the left.
You seem to supporting the concept though. More people didn’t keep voting left, they voted center/left which sounds like has been moving right, so things stayed the same/went right. Who you vote for matters too - we have multiple opportunities to vote between “dems”. To me OPs comment is a simple truism - we can’t move left by not electing leftist individuals (and parties by extension). Any other strategy is some pie in the sky game theory.
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Some comments have pointed out that Finland already had a right-wing government going into this election, and I’ll admit that I was entirely unaware of this.
Again, I congratulate the Finnish public on rejecting right-wing and authoritarian politics, especially after having to suffer under it at home.
If only