Yeah, I know. Domestic not foreign, but so perfect.
Back during the last election in Canada the Conservatives had a huge lead in the polls. Then Trump started attacking Canada: tariffs and threats of annexation and lots of shit-talk about how Canada wasn’t a real country, was completely dependent on the US, was taking advantage, etc, etc…
Poilievre, the Conservative leader, didn’t condemn this. He even agreed somewhat.
And Carney (a neoliberal scumbag, but a smart and competent one) came out hard against Trump, defended Canada rhetorically, and won an election he should never have stood a chance in.
In Korea the right are pro-American symps. Many European right wing parties are as well, though others are figuring out, finally, that it’s bad politics.
Not all right wingers fall for this, of course. Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, and a corrupt right wing bastard if there’s ever been, immediately fired back, took US liquor off the shelves and generally told Trump to go to Hell.
I think the issue here is whether the right wingers are alphas or betas. The classic fascist personality is kick down, kiss up. Those are the people who love Trump, especially overseas. They want to feel strong, so they identify with the strong.
Alpha right wingers, on the other hand, when pushed, push back as hard as they can. Someone challenges them, and they don’t bow unless forced to. Doug Ford is a jerk, but he isn’t fundamentally a coward. To him being strong means being strong against everyone, and knowing that you don’t back down because that makes you look weak.
Poilievre: fundamentally a follower. Ford: a bastard who’ll kick up or down. Oh he’s corrupt and evil and takes care of his cronies, for sure. But he isn’t a wimp.
Too many politicians in American satrapies are wimps. Their idea of being powerful is being chosen by America as the leader of a weak state, doing what they’re told, and being King over their own countrymen.
This, fundamentally, means they aren’t strong: not psychologically or in fact.
A strong right winger wants to rule a strong country which doesn’t have to do what other countries tell it to. They don’t want to be subject kings.
Heck, a strong ruler of any ideology wants a strong country and to chart their own course, not be a lackey.
Europe and most of the Asian satrapies (Japan is particularly obsequious) are ruled by weak politicians. Weak men and women. It’s just especially embarassing on the right because one of the right’s fundamental promises is “I’m strong. We’re strong! You’re lead by a strong person.”
Pathetic.
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Jan Wiklund
Nationalism has always been a trick played by those who haven’t any other card to play. Wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said that nationalism is the last resort for a scoundrel?
And kissing the bully’s ass is not only a habit of the “wimps” – don’t we all, when we do as the boss tells us?
The real test is, however, when politicians present themselves as defending our interests when they in reality defend somebody elses, be it Trump or some “national” businessmen. It seems that most politicians do that nowadays, whatever they call themselves.
j
It has always seemed to me that a key part of the right wing experience is having a big daddy to look up to. Someone else that’s the real deal, as opposed to yourself, whom you never really believe is worthy. And all of this has always seemed somewhat Freudian to me, too.
Wrt/ politicians there’s more at play, though. The run-of-the-mill politician does not care whether their country is doing good or bad, what they care about is whether they themselves are doing good or bad. As long as you have more power than your competition, and more money than your neighbours, you’re good. Sell your country out to the US, get some financial aid, get some knowhow, get some backing, get some social capital from those of your voters who like the US, and get to wield some of that soft power of the US. What’s not to like about that? Maybe not easy on the spine, but you don’t have any…
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… don’t we all, when we do as the boss tells us?
No, not all of us. There are a few, like me, who don’t and what a price there is to be paid for such a mendacious audacity. The sad fact is, most do not want to pay that price so they kiss the boss’s rear in perpetuity and feign to have dignity. This is what makes The Net a beautiful thing. It helps make the cucked ass kissers feel psychically whole again, considering they can brow beat phantom foes with wet noodle bits and bytes. There’s no better palliative to restore confidence than the delivery of an unwarranted internet beat down.
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j, that second paragraph is practically perfect in every way. Spot on. Nothing to add.
Feral Finster
I dunno the goodthink liberal parties in the non-US West are US simps too, just they simp for Team D.
For see “empire” and drool like basset hounds at treat time.
Oakchair
We’ll what happened to leaders who didn’t do what the Epstein Empire wanted? Hint: they were either killed, jailed, or driven from any semblance of power.
On the opposite side if you obeyed the Empire you were given money, connections, and protection from law enforcement.
The Empire controls the banks, the media, the internet, social media, academia, and the police. There are many mechanisms they can employ to make sure no politician who isn’t their lapdog gets anywhere. A few algorithm adjustments and your message either reaches 5 viewers or 5 million.
On another note 2 decades ago the ruling class was openly discussing how the major threat to their power was free elections. They were openly talking about how they needed to combat this threat. What do you think these people —who control the banks, internet, tech, media, law and who for fun rape and kill children— decided to do about it?
cc
@Ian, slight typo: Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario.
Carney caters to the desire of Canadians to have independence from the US by putting on a show of “Elbows Up”. He does, at least, seem to be trying to diversifying Canadian trade away from the US.
But he remains a servant to the Anglo-American-led Empire that seeks to subjugate Russia, China, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, etc.
He continues to send away tens of millions of Canadian taxpayers’ money toward the Anglo-American-led Empire’s efforts to use Ukraine as cannon fodder against Russia.
He continues to send Canadian warships to the other side of the world from us to just off the coast of China to sail between its mainland and its provincial island.
So as the other commenters suggested, most sides of the political spectrum serve the Empire. But I do agree with the post and see Poilievre as worse than Carney.
Feral Finster
@Oakchair: what do you think the data centers and Palantir are there for?
It ain’t funny cat videos.
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I think the building out of AI is a genocide whether witting or not and I’m not so sure it’s not witting or one of the many birds they want to kill with the AI stone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xd8Demy5zs
Walsh mentions, almost in passing, that this has been going on silently for quite some time now, perhaps as long as two decades since its inception. The Dems response of hitting the pause button is so typical. They act like they’re concerned and want to help, but it’s hollow political theater.
It’s going to continue unabated until there is a massive violent backlash against it. The leaders, be they local or state or federal, are not listening. They don’t care. Protesting it won’t work. Going to town hall meetings and pitching fits and getting arrested doesn’t work. If there was a coordinated, organized violent backlash against AI and AI data centers, federal troops would be unleashed turning brother against brother and sister against sister. In their minds, the wealthy elite and their technocratic Little Eichmans, this thing must be built out no matter what. It’s as though aliens have arrived and are here and these are the orders or else. These Tech Bros look like aliens, don’t they? Look at Zuckerberg. He’s not Jewish, he’s an alien. I bet you David Icke agrees. Look at Musk. Look at Karp. Aliens, for sure! Look at Thiel — in that one recent video he clearly was a shape-shifting lizard of some sort. Altman? He’s an alien, no doubt about it. And, per chance they are not aliens, they may as well be because I don’t see the difference. They clearly are intent on genociding the majority of humans and turning the planet into a giant data center to fuel universal AI that transcends the planet, nay the solar system. Bugonia isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary. Satire and reality merged long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd_5HcTujfc
different clue
The Right Wing parties are not pro-American. They are pro-Fascist. They support eachother in Fascising their respective countries. They could be considered to be a Fascist International ( Fascintern).
If America’s own domestic ” non-Right” were somehow able to understand that the Republicanfederate Party is a fascist party and all its ” right-wing” spin mills, churches, etc. are part of a fascist movement; and were all able to agree on just enough steps-for-now ( while keeping their future disagreements on their respective back burners for now) to undermine, overthrow, and effectively exterminate the public presence of the American fascist community of movements and churches; then the foreign right wing parties would re-think their “love” for “America”.
If America went re-woke real hard, the MAGAbertans in Alberta would no longer want to join their Province to America, because it would no longer be the KlanMAGA Christianazi Trumpistan they love.
Can all the non-Fascist people, churches, spin mills, etc. in America join eachother in
a Grand Shotgun Marriage of Convenience for the purpose of “exterminating” the KlanMAGA/Christianazian/Republicanfederate family of groups and movements and their Party from power and from public square presence? Without the assistance of the vast fortunes which most of the Rich People which mostly goes to the American Fascist Community? They will have to try to find some other means of support, because they will never be given a path to power paved with millionaire money.
What would Jesus do?
What would Stalin do?
What would Scooby do?
Hiero
None of my comment probably applies to specifics in this post, but it still seems worth noting that there is strength required for strategic “wimpery”, which might be called patience or a number of other less pussified terms – reactionary lashing out that gets the people wet can just as easily be due to fundamental character weakness (and stupidity) rather than strength
Mark Level
I mean the factory setting for the Right is Default Caveman shit, don’t need no Culture (I’ll reach for my revolver), Power worshipped simply for being power. And the rest must Submit, as the ancient Greeks knew. Hell, some women become “Trad Wives,” degraded and “protected” at the same time. No less than Sylvia Plath once said, “Every woman loves a fascist.” Now she may have been focused on her own mentality and excluded others’ takes, but there’s a certain amount of truth to that, broadly speaking.
What J. and many others say. Yes, as Jan W. notes, bringing up a subject from the last thread, Nationalism is mainly a Problem, it divides people into Ubermenschen & Unters, Alphas and Betas as noted. The vicious Zionist Batya Ungar Sargon pretended Trump would be the saviour of “the White Working Class,” how’d that go in nearly 2 years? CHUDs will lose everything, more of them (ironically? kinda sorta not really) are economically vulnerable when they soon (as the Midterms over) lose their Medicare, Social Security, etc. “We don’t want hyphenated Americans,” long a boast of the US Political Right, Anglos are the “Superior Race” that developed the right behavior norms (Kiss up, kick down as Ian noted), the Chinese will never be “as good”, Hispanics neither, and certainly not Blacks. (Well, slight exception for what Adolph Reed Jr. called “the black misleadership class”, Uncle Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice– always looks better killing the brown and black people when the face representing the policy is black or brown, right? Well, that’s what they believe. I am not an expert in PR, but understand propaganda, not sure I buy it.
I recall a horribly ugly elderly black woman vetoing it, Russ Dobular of Due Dissidence podcast nicknamed her “Token McGinty.” But after a bit of goggling, looks like it was brought up and vetoed at least 2x. See here– https://usun.usmission.gov/explanation-of-vote-delivered-at-the-un-general-assembly-emergency-special-session-on-the-palestinian-un-membership-resolution/
Ambassador Robert Wood shamelessly lies (as they all do), “Our no vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood.” Ok, then it reflects shameless fealty to doing what the Zionists tell you to, a ZOG mindset.
To Jan also, the “last resort of a scoundrel” was rightly changed to the “first resort.” Oh, and last week was the “Israel Day Parade” in NYC, War Criminal Genociders welcome, Belazel Smotrich, dozens more, an Israeli Dude who called for “smashing the heads of Palestinian (Canaanite) babies against the rocks,” Old Testament endorses this. Or as Chuck Finance Whore Schumer said, Palestinians need to be force-exiled or exterminated since “They don’t believe in the Toh-Ra!” The Church that was protested by human rights opponents of Israel, though Mamdami’s NYPD kept the protesters 100s of feet away from it, for selling stolen land in the West Bank via auction, a violation of International Law, had a jolly visit and speech from Smotrich also.
I shared how my late, right-wing dad, who was almost equally anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic told me “We have to side with the Israelis, they know how to kill the savages.” (He might’ve used a less hateful word than savages, but that was what he meant.)
I’m glad for LAS that he sometimes plays/played Bartelby the Scrivener with past bosses, but let’s not forget how that ended for Bartelby. Luckily as a public school teacher, we had a Union. Had we not, the “Alpha” Admin bullying would’ve driven some people to severe alcoholism or suicide. Many people were bullied or intimidated out even with a union, however. And it took 2 years of teaching to get Tenure Union protection, I had plenty of shit flung at me until the first day of my tenure my 3rd year in. That’s the right-wing system.
Finster beat me to the point, btw. Let’s take the formerly allegedly (never) “progressive”, AOC. Center Right, votes for the Iron Dome, “I’m not voting for Munitions to slaughter Palestinians, I’m just voting for safety vests and helmets for the people who are slaugtering Palestinian elders, womens and babies, so don’t hate on me. I mean well.” All the Ken Burns’ BS in his documentary on the Vietnam War, “We meant well”, I mean John McCain in 2000 campaigning said “I hate the Gooks. I will hate them as long as I live!!” Called on the Carpet, he modified, “by Gooks I mean the Communists!” How dare those little yellow people assume they had the same right to National Sovereignty as the superior white races? So kill 5 million Vietnamese, both North and South, before fleeing in defeat. But we wanted to bring them “civilization”, Discipline and Punish, they could be rats on a hamster wheel someday exporting their raw resources (rubber, important to the Firestone Corporation) and their “best” students could stop speaking French (never Vietnamese), go to US colleges and learn English, Colonial Quisling Masters.
Oakchair, 100%, they (bipartisan they) don’t even need to hide it, they flaunt it. Dick Cheney smart enough to assimilate Machiavelli’s “It’s better if the slaves FEAR you, even if they hate you.” They will never love you, you don’t love them, why should they?
Well, lots of smug libs loved the lifelong segregationist, Plagiarist, Whore for the Credit Card companies Joe Biden, who promised directly in 2020 that he would smash BLM, and ‘Muricans would never have M4A or affordable healthcare, and oh, Israel is the best, I’m a Zionist, I will help them exterminate every indigenous person possible and the Ayrabs in neighboring states. It’s just the natural order of things, don’t call him Genocide Joe, that’s rude!!
I already said what we all know the CHUDs will get for worshipping Daddy!! Elon, all the Epstein Class win Bigly, only the most moronic stay in the Daddy/Jesus/Alexander the Great/ Crassus Cult. Chris Hedges shared recently Daddy’s approval down from 43% end of April, a dismal 30% level now, headed for Bush Jr. & Harry Truman levels.
The phrase “representative democracy” is as Big and Stinking a LIE as the phrase “Libertarian Bootstrapped Wealth” would be (I think that’s the Dimmie Abundance Grift.) Dumb Libs use the former, Hayek-Rand-Friedman vampires the latter.
Oh, something that should delight LAS (though he may not want to watch, too much truth to handle). The “Jewish” runt Cocaine Comedian paid tribute to a Nazi Genocider of the 30s and 40s, dug up the “remains” of some dude named Mindich, and re-interring them with Ukrainian State “Honors.” A commenter (not me) notes Zelensky’s grandpa fought against the Nazis, must be rolling over in his grave.
Actually they honored “Nazis” plural, not just this guy. Zelensky reportedly now “hates”, feels betrayed by Trump, but he still worships Zio-American Power and Killing, hopes to retire peacefully with his stolen Billion$, mansions in Israel (for mom), Italian Villa, etc. We shall see . . .
Link to Marta Havryshiko (the granddaughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors) & Glenn Deisen here– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roX0CcS3bGk
Mark Level
Due Dissidence did the best coverage of the NYC Israeli Pride Parade, see below– evidently nobody dared protest, they’d be beaten or killed with impunity. Oh, a tasty scrap, one leader from Israel led a movement to exterminate all the Gays and Sodomites, based on Mosaic Law. So “tolerant”, so “democratic.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6bMNRK8-U
mago
Guess I got filed into the department of redundancy department since my comment was dismissed. I can handle it, and no expectation that this message will go beyond the delete department.
Was confirming membership in the panopticon.
Suerte a cada.
Jan Wiklund
PS. Cory Doctorow believes that Carney is just talking but in reality doesn’t deliver at all. See https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/30/rupture/.
I don’t know who is right, but it might be true. Talking, but doing the contrary, is also the trick of Macron. What can they do, without hurting some of the interests that keep them up?
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I’m glad for LAS that he sometimes plays/played Bartelby the Scrivener with past bosses, but let’s not forget how that ended for Bartelby.
THIS is precisely why I say nothing will ever truly change and there is surely nothing new under the sun. Griping is the most these modern day Lenins can muster. When someone challenges them to refuse and say no, they proclaim, in defeatist fashion, “look where it got Bartleby”. Modern day self-described revolutionaries citing capitalist anti-capitalist propaganda to murder any potential revolutionary sentiment in the cradle or, nay, womb.
I prefer Planet of The Apes, the original series of movies because the remakes suck, to Bartleby. Of course, with my example, I suppose one could ultimately say, look where it got the apes but we can say that about anything considering anything human has done or will ever do or any living species, will be but an ephemeral drop in the seemingly endless ocean of the universe as though it never existed.
https://www.facebook.com/ApesMovies/videos/it-all-started-with-one-simple-word-no-nationaltellastoryday/669554873838373/
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What can they do, without hurting some of the interests that keep them up?
This is at the heart of it, isn’t it? THIS is the conundrum faced seemingly everywhere.
What would Lenin say if he could see today? Don’t ask Putin. He despises Lenin.
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly criticized Vladimir Lenin, famously accusing him of planting an “atomic bomb” under the Russian state and holding him responsible for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin’s primary grievances against the Bolshevik leader stem from several historical disagreements:
Federalism and Ukraine: Putin blames Lenin for structuring the USSR as a loose federation of national republics with the right to secede. He has argued that Lenin’s policies arbitrarily created modern republics—especially Ukraine—which ultimately paved the way for the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
World War I “Betrayal”: Putin has denounced the Bolsheviks for treasonously undermining the Russian war effort and pursuing power so aggressively that Russia ended up ceding large swaths of territory to Germany.
Destruction of the Empire: He views Lenin’s revolutionary actions as catastrophic to the historic Russian state, citing brutal repressions, the execution of the Tsar and his family, and the persecution of the church.
bruce wilder
On the other thread, nothing-to-be-proud-of, I defended the virtue of “nationalism” and the run-of-opinion in response was not favorable but also confused as to what “nationalism” is and what its relation to conservative politics is, exactly. I don’t think I can sort out the wild assortment of antonym pairs that pass for crib notes on political sociology here. Let’s cut to the chase and think about economics, where politics is just a set of rhetorical cover stories for neoliberal governance in favor of the interests of a supranational hegemonic ganglia of banks and financial actors.
Being aligned with Trumpian America on political vibes at a time when Trumpian America is a reanimated zombie infected with a Zionist parasite stumbling across the face of a globe anticipating the economic crisis and collapse the zombie-stumbling is creating — well, that is deer-frozen-in-headlights-behavior at best.
Of course, the propaganda we are all drowning in has been cultivating nightmare fear of fascism coming in the dark for a generation or more. Its a bit goofy from a distance, but if your internet diet is the equivalent of ultraprocessed sugar and aspartame, you are going to develop the political equivalent of cravings and/or diabetes and metabolic syndrome. You will develop a taste for Trump or Farage or whoever or you will start snacking on tasteless rice cakes and Kamala Harris.
What I am trying to suggest is that politics across “the West” is dominated by the neoliberal conspiracy of international finance and corporate business. When nation-states had national economies, in the now deep past, they could have organic national politics with organic national conservative politics. Conservative politics would be to some variable degree corrupt in the ways conservative politics is likely to be — beholden to business and rich elites and all that. Left politics in such circumstances found roots with labor unions and so on.
That’s not the world we live in today. The western world is dominated by an international financial economy, a complex network that has a vaguely American / liberal brand identity for reasons of historical legacy and brand management. The electoral politics of competing right and left “national” parties is degenerate in general. In a crisis, a Prime Minister can parachute in from some (foreign) central bank (e.g. Mario Draghi, Mark Carney) and it scarcely seems remarkable.
Consider what is happening in Hungary.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tfazi/p/the-western-take-over-of-hungary?
Orbán in Hungary was Trump-aligned and regularly under attack from the EU institutional supra-national state apparatus. Crony-corrupt locally of course. A weird sidelight to me was how Hungary under Orbán seeded a tiny bit of money to Western dissenters, mostly right-wing of course, but sometimes quirky. Rod Dreher moved there. Phil Pilkington. Steve Keen got a grant at one point I think.
I think neither left nor right legacy electoral political parties across the West are entirely “real”. Both parts are scripted with kayfabe ideologies designed to some extent to undermine electoral politics as a basis for exercising political power to govern.
bruce wilder
I saw a piece the other day that I cannot find again that showed how the realignment of American electoral politics had proceeded to such an extreme that Bob Dole 1996 political-demographics aligned recognizably with Kamala Harris 2024. Obviously, the rhetorical catechism and creed that those electoral coalitions respectively recite in faith are radically different. To mix metaphors, roots in the same electoral soil sociologically are now producing very different flowers.
Now, I know it isn’t “the same soil”, Heraclitus. Bob Dole represented a component of the Republican coalition that was already then fading to extinction, the small-town, reactionary chamber-of-commerce local businessman. Those guys were already in edge-of-town franchises, real estate and b2b networks by then. I have only a vague idea where they went, post-Amazon.
American Conservative used to offer some glimpse into the American equivalent of Tory one-nation conservatism, but I don’t know if that kind of thing has a genuine Party home today, buried as it was by neocons and the neoliberal right. I tend to see Bernie Sanders as being the corresponding tendency lingering in the Democratic Party, also fading to black, buried under woke.
Forecasting Intelligence
100% one of your better posts.
Agree on this.
I’m hoping Farage wins the next election but I wish he could at least pretend to stand up to Trump at times. It’s a massive weakness of his.
Interestingly the French National Front and now the German AfD have worked that out and are both polling VERY well in the polls. The nationalist Right are starting to realise that standing up to Trump is a vote winner.
Interesting to know what your thoughts are on the rise of the AfD in particular. They are a genuinely radical party who want to kick the Americans out of Germany, leave the EU and restore the cheap gas flows from Moscow that helped build up German industry.