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Rich Puchalsky :anarchism:

The Netherlands has a multi-party system just like reformers in the US want, reputable elections, biking infrastructure that people won't shut up about, a long tradition of social democracy, and just had a far-right election victory. The rise of fascism is not some trickery by Trump or the Russians or the US system: it's part of the world-wide failure of neoliberalism, which suppressed the left and then died.

An add-on post to the prior one about the Netherlands, to clear up some common misunderstandings about my opinion:

1. I'm an anarchist. I'm not mourning the death of social democracy or any other state form.

2. People are pointing out that the Netherlands election does not give the right wing absolute power: they have to form a majority. OK. Trump did not get absolute power when he won the US Presidency either. In the US there is a complex system of checks and balances that is supposed to substitute for the party-majority system. Of course neither system works once the right gains enough popularity.

3. Neoliberalism is a form of liberalism. It's OK to refer to "right wing neoliberalism" if you consider the US center-left to be right wing. But neoliberalism's position in history is well understood and it is a natural outgrowth of liberalism as such.

4. Because of capitalist class interest, neoliberalism was a world order that had essentially no popular support. No one went around holding signs that said "Support the WTO and we all get wealthier". Where it had to, neoliberalism pretended to social progressivism, but it absolutely consolidated the destruction of anything to the left of itself. Even supposedly Communist China is effectively neoliberal, at least in how it relates to the rest of the world.

@RichPuchalsky i agree with this framework of explanation.

@RichPuchalsky I'm being unfair here, but a Onion style headline came to mind: People From The Continent That Invented Fascism Surprised Fascist Won

@RichPuchalsky neoliberlism has always been a we did this before with "classical liberalism" and millions died last time. Fallowed by the 20th century of social democracy.. then back to the same mess for the last 40 years

@RichPuchalsky I’d say that these things don’t happen in a vacuum, and the rise of fascism elsewhere makes it easier to spread/import fascist propaganda in many places