The right has won control of the English-speaking world - thanks to the weakness of the left
Over the last three decades, leftwing parties in the English-speaking world have taken on much of the right’s antidemocratic programme and lost their souls
theguardian.com, Friday 14 November 2014 03.45 GMT
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Despite all this, the right are enjoying a new heyday that puts the Thatcher and Reagan years in the shade. Australia is ruled by the most reactionary national government in its history. Stephen Harper, having first transformed Canadian conservatism into a simulacrum of the US Republican party, is now remodelling the country itself as a petro-state. In New Zealand, a scandal implicating prime minister John Key’s staff in the smearing of political rivals did not prevent his National party government being returned in September. In the UK an austerity-mad Tory-led coalition government is drifting further right, as it (and Labour) dance to a tune set by the golf club bigots in Ukip. In the US, Republicans — who have spent the last four years obstructing Obama’s painfully modest agenda — are now making conciliatory and cooperative noises because they are effectively the party of government, and are seeking to clear the way for their own agenda.
Each country has its own internal political dynamics. In each case the right has come to power in different ways. But these groupings share a lot of ideological common ground. This is no accident — multinational corporate lobbying, a global network of thinktanks, and the planetary echo chamber afforded by organisations like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation keeps right wing ideas circulating and resonating throughout the English speaking world.
Anglosphere conservatives want to erode whatever remains of their respective welfare states, with a particular emphasis on wrecking social security, education and public health. They have profited by scapegoating immigrants or refugees, and stoking paranoia about border security. More so than in previous eras of rightwing ascendancy, they are joined at the hip to the carbon merchants whose products are worsening the climate disaster already under way. While Abbott waxes lyrical about the civilising properties of coal, Harper redesigns Canada’s foreign policy around getting the products of its dirty oil sands industry to market. In the US, the Koch brothers and other carbon moguls bankroll the Republican party. If New Zealand and UK conservatives are less strident on this topic, it’s because their carbon industries are nonexistent or were deliberately destroyed. Right now, they’re all committed to the negotiation of a Trans -Pacific Partnership that economist Joseph Stiglitz says benefits “the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else”.
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Having spent the last three decades chasing conservatives rightwards in pursuit of a mythical centre, it may be that politicians are as confused as voters are. Between them the social democratic governements of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair redefined progressive policy, seeking to effect social change through market-based, capital-friendly mechanisms. Capital showed precious little gratitude to them, and none to their successors. But the habit of trying to please everyone, including the vested interests who actually need to be confronted in order to bring about lasting change, dies hard.
The full article that deserves to be read in its entirety, and shared widely: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/14/the-right-has-won-control-of-the-english-speaking-world-thanks-to-the-weakness-of-the-left
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's 8:30 in the morning. Or, as you might say, "It's 8 fucking thirty in the morning."
I'm just having my coffee. And some vanilla somebody tells me my 'hatred is showing." 
My hatred of.. what? Coffee?
You do not know anything about me.
Absolutely nothing.
What's with you anyway?
I expressed an opinion different from yours.
Live with it.
Wow. Do you live your entire life like this?
Whew.. Must be exhausting..
Hope you feel better some day...
I saw the whole thing.
Who would rather divide DU and whine and complain about why the elected members of the Democratic Party are not all like the Independent Democratic Socialist from Vermont, or why President Obama is not what THEY want him to be (projecting their own personalized out-of-touch version of the No True Scotsm..er, Liberal Democrat onto the President of the United States, who represents 300+ million people).
Note that I put "leftists" in quotes. Might as well call them professional leftists. Emphasis on the "professional." (Alternately, there are more than a few right-wing trolls here posing as concerned "progressives"
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