No right wing wave in Finland as Left Alliance take record result in EU elections

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.

Dasus,

Guys.

Finn here.

42 % turnout.

We still have a massive problem with rising nationalism and general right-wing rhetoric, don’t kid yourselves. It’s just that those morons don’t think EU elections matter.

mojofrododojo,

ok but can you share the trick to keep the dicks from voting?

We could have a lot of nice things (like you’ve already got!) if we could, uh, drive the bus…

Hadriscus,

Always good to have some insider info

fine_sandy_bottom,

Obviously you’re much better informed about this than me, who has never even been to Europe.

I can’t help but wonder why only Finnish morons would avoid voting, and not morons from elsewhere.

As in… why does this dynamic only apply to Finnland?

Dasus,

As in… why does this dynamic only apply to Finnland?

I don’t think I even implied it did.

euronews.com/…/which-countries-saw-poorest-voter-…

Crikeste,

Good to see a country buck the conservative trend going around lately.

DarkCloud,

What I hear is that some European countries are leaning right on over-immigration and are voting on the basis of that issue.

Countries that aren’t going through that, aren’t voting right.

France and Germany were, so they went right. Portugal and Finland weren’t, so they went left.

boredtortoise,

In Finland that trick has gone already. Right wing ran immigration support to the ground so far right got votes with their campaign of “cars are burning and hand grenades are flying” (they’re not).

So hopefully this election is a first in the counter wave to that.

mojofrododojo,

What did the right wing make of Russia’s stunts re: dumping migrants on the border? Where do they stand on putin etc? Thanks for insights from Finland, always wanted to visit.

boredtortoise,

They created a panic. Migration officials said that we’re not in a crisis, the capacity and logistics to help people across the border are good. The right wing government made a huge media hassle that the border needs to close and have been finding ways to continue it indefinitely without a real solution to make the situation workable. Now they’re trying to pass the evaluating of each migrant to the border control workers (they’re protesting) instead of professionals.

The far right party has many connections to Russia (and China) but have shifted their communication to hide that. They’ve voted against sanctions towards Russia but their main nazi has done doctorate work on Ukraine and seems conflicted on his allegiances.

mojofrododojo,

appreciate the details!

mojofrododojo,

Russia was (I don’t know the current status) playing games on the border by dumping thousands of migrants at once - reuters.com/…/finland-says-thousands-migrants-see…

Dasus,

Well I don’t think we really have, honestly.

It’s just that the inbred racists who are all too common don’t think these elections mattered.

Yeah. 42% turnout.

cupcakezealot,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

be more like norway and finland and less like sweden

boredtortoise,

Sweden’s Left got a new seat as well

rab,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

So Finland is finally getting flooded with migrants?

boredtortoise,

Some right wing voters are probably thinking that but maybe it’s like the qanon prophecies: all the spooky predictions are now gonna happen any day now but the date gets always moved

red,

It’s the eu parlament elections, not our own. Our own is still in the hands of a centre-right party, in a coalition with shitty far right party (because they needed a majority, and the typical centrist party decided to not participate).

On the bright side, that far right party is fast losing support.

rab,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s glorious how you can still read my comment even though a mod didn’t like it

red,

It wasn’t a mod. You’re just at -17 vote count because what you said was moronic.

I have my client settings at not to hide, just collapse.

rab,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/8d130960-5fc0-4b7c-9779-ca39ec705579.png

I thought you viewed it with the modlog, maybe your instance behaves differently than mine?

red,

Maybe my client doesn’t care about mods (Sync for Lemmy). Otherwise maybe mod removal is just for the mods instace. Im on Sopuli.xyz

rab,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m just on browser, curious what you see on browser if you care to try haha

red,
Cognitive_Dissident,

Good.

I got maybe another 20 or so years of life left to me, I really don’t want to see my world turn into some fascist authoritarian hell-scape where everything is ruled from Moscow or Beijing. So please, fellow homosapiens: don’t let that happen, mmkay?

Crikeste,

If it does though, you down to fight?

Cognitive_Dissident,

Nice try, FBI.

Crikeste,

Nice. I’ll see you there, G. ✊🏼

unconsciousvoidling,

Does fighting online count?

FreeFacts,

Putin will be happy, as now Andersson will be replaced in the finnish parliament by a Putin loyalist Johannes Yrttiaho, as Andersson can’t sit on both parliaments by law.

If you didn’t know, there are many Putin loyalists in the finnish Left Alliance, working as an internal opposition faction against Andersson’s faction.

boredtortoise,

One of the rules is to assume every group is infiltrated by fascists

xc2215x,

Good for the Left Alliance.

disconnectikacio,

Wow they are so resistant to the so called “right wing” putinist degeneration.

Cybermonk_Taiji,

So called?

Aceticon,

I’m quite curious if this was due to leftwing parties changing the way they talk and going back to politics anchored on principles or if it was something else.

In my own country (Portugal) mainstream supposedly-left are soft neolibs, then there are the Communists (sadly mere slogan parroters invariably putting Party above Principle and hence amongst other things supporters of Putin) and the “thinking” Left who are quite out of touch middle class scions of the middle class (well intended-ish but societally ignorant people who were born with a silver spoon on their mouths and live in a very local - in a country were half the population is emigrated, almost none have actually lived abroad - bubble of relative priviledge) whose style of presentation is the same as the politicians from the “supposedly-left mainstream party” and who have copied the liberal take on Equality (from America, a country that pretty much only has hard-right and far-right, so it’s hardly a leftwing “equality for all” take) rather than the principled, identity-agnostic take on Equality. Also they obcess about the far-right, in practice helping them grow (it’s a well known phenomenon in Propanda that if a Party is constantly talked about by others, even if only to criticise them, they get perceived as important and end up growing). Unsurprisingly the entire mainstream is losing votes just like everywhere else, the alternative Left has recently collapsed to half the size it one was and only the far right is growing (which in my country is one ultra-neolib party and a fascist one).

It would be great if the Left in Finland had found a solution for this that’s culturally-agnostic and hence applies all over Europe directly, rather than be dependent on the kind of cultural factors that take the 4 decades or so these things usually take to get to Portugal from Northern Europe.

Hotzilla,

Finland has two major left parties: SDP (social democratic party), which is the more center leaning party. Then there is left-wing party, which is more to left. The more left one won now big, and it is uncommon for them to be one of the big winners.

We also have communist party here, and liberal party, but those are really small. Communist got 2 828 votes in total.

gmtom,

My god I want to emigrate over there so bad.

ZombieMantis,
@ZombieMantis@lemmy.world avatar

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.

boredtortoise,

They also have a (lesser than the neighbor) far-right government

ZombieMantis,
@ZombieMantis@lemmy.world avatar

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.

JeSuisUnHombre,

The USA first needs a serious left wing party for that to be possible.

fine_sandy_bottom,

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.

The_Terrible_Humbaba, (edited )

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.

spidermanchild,

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.

fine_sandy_bottom,

Mind if I ask what you are basing this on?

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.

bc93,

I totally agree, everyone should vote the Green Party in the US elections.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The Finns are all too aware of what far-right government means, they’re living next to it

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.

ZombieMantis,
@ZombieMantis@lemmy.world avatar

Oh, I didn’t know this! Thank you for that information. I hope the new government can materiality improve the lives of the public.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Fingers crossed. But it wouldn’t be the first time the ratchet of politics blocked left-wing reforms while turning effortlessly to the right.

SteveXVII,

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.

ZombieMantis,
@ZombieMantis@lemmy.world avatar

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.

Dasus,

Again, I congratulate the Finnish public on rejecting right-wing and authoritarian politics, especially after having to suffer under it at home.

If only

LordWiggle,
@LordWiggle@lemmy.world avatar

I’m moving to Finland.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I hope you know Finnish already or are really good with languages because it’s completely unrecognizable to people who speak most other European languages. My dad went to Helsinki in the 90s and said the only signs he could recognize were ones which had international logos like McDonald’s.

This is (according to a search) “I love you” in Finnish: minä rakastan sinua.

But yes, it sounds like a very nice place to live.

LordWiggle, (edited )
@LordWiggle@lemmy.world avatar

I’m familiar with the language, I just don’t know it. But Finland is bilingual, as there is also a lot of Norwegian Swedish spoken and many signs are in Norwegian Swedish too. I have less issues understanding Norwegian Swedish. Myself I’m Dutch, I’ve been to Finland several times. I’m not even going to try to learn the language, it’s really hard. But in major cities they speak English.

Edit: I didn’t remember correctly the second language

Skua,

Is it not Swedish, rather than Norwegian?

Vebred,

Yes it is swedish that is the second official language in finland :)

LordWiggle,
@LordWiggle@lemmy.world avatar

I fixed it, my bad :)

Hurmeli,

A finnish person here. Our second language is swedish not norwegian :-). Aside from that, it is true that many signs etc. are written in both finnish and swedish. People working in public sector are also supposed to know swedish.

Outside of few swedish speaking areas you are better off using english as it’s more widely spoken by the general population.

LordWiggle,
@LordWiggle@lemmy.world avatar

Ah thanks for the correction. It has been a while since I’ve been there, I clearly didn’t remember correctly.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I just remembered that my dad said that about the same trip. That he was able to get around the city because pretty much everyone spoke English, so they could just help him out. The signage was the issue for him.

This was back in 1989 and, just by coincidence, this morning I found a postcard he sent me from Leningrad, because he got permission to take the train there from Helsinki. He wrote that he hoped one day I would learn about Peter the Great and visit the beautiful city he founded. Always the professor. Zero for two, unfortunately. I know basically nothing about Peter the Great and, even though the name St. Petersburg/Petrograd should be a clue, I didn’t even know he founded it.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

But yes, it sounds like a very nice place to live.

It gets a bit cold in the winter.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I just looked at the temperatures and honestly, it doesn’t get much colder than it gets here in Indiana and it doesn’t get as horribly hot either.

Besides, give it 10 years and climate change will make the Baltic coast feel like the French Riviera.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar
barsoap,

Winter is the nice season in Finland, the other one is swamp season.

vga,

Cold is fine, you just wear more clothes. The darkness from November to February is worse. Nothing really fixes that.

Ninmi,
@Ninmi@sopuli.xyz avatar

“Record result” doesn’t even begin to describe how hard they shattered their previous number. They went from 7% last election to 17%. Left Alliance has never seen numbers like this as far as I know.

boredtortoise,

Yep. From a minor party to second place, with a small campaign and core leftism program. Li has been the straight shooter calling bullshit out for years and suddenly it worked. Absolutely amazing

Natanael,

The Swedish green party also kicked down our far right party down the ranks.

uis,

Now this concerns me.

rasmus,

Why would the Nazis losing be bad?

uis,

Because econazis are winning.

Aceticon,

This warms my hearth.

I’m actual a member of a small leftwing party in my own country and (having lived 2 decades abroad and seen other political realities and even been a member of the Green Party in Britain) have concluded they suffer exactly from the problem that well entrenched leadership are not “straight shooters calling bullshit out”, and instead their style of discourse “avoids giving offense”, sounding far too much (IMHO) like the mainstream supposedly-left party we have here and leaving an impression about the party (to those who aren’t tribalists predisposed to support and believe in anything the party’s leadership says) that they’re just another group looking to suckle from the tit of the state.

I think the problem in my party is due to the leadership being a very uniform group of 30-something well-off scions of the Middle Class (which, in a country that until the revolution of 74 that overthrew Fascism had very little Middle class, shows that they’re hardly coming “from the people”) who got to the leadership mainly due to nepotism (often being the sons and daughters of party founders) or by going to the same shcools and being similar to each other and talking the same talk as the rest - i.e. cronysm - and who, from the explanations I got from one of the party’s members of parliament for certain anti-Democratic practices inside the party, see themselves as superior to the rest of the members of the party (which probably explains why they listen - if at all - very little to the rest of the party and seem unable to change even after losing between half and two thirds of the vote).

So I hope I can use the example of the Left in Finland to internally push for a kind of change in leadership and discourse, towards one much more broadly representative of people in this country and who is willing to talk about how parts of the machine are broken and need replacing (and do so anchored on a proactivelly tought through vision for the future, rather than the mere reactivelly “complain about things blowing up after they blew up” so common in my country) rather than the current mild-mannered, frustrating reactive discourse that amounts to little more than “the car is fine, it’s just some some screws that need tightenning”.

boredtortoise,

“straight shooters calling bullshit out”, and instead their style of discourse “avoids giving offense”,

I want to highlight that Andersson is still respectful and not offensive. The callouts are done honestly

Totally agree that leftism in a global sense needs to shift communication towards a more active and hopeful future. Everyone else is just sticking to the status quo or worse.

Aceticon, (edited )

I’ll give you an example:

I would like to see more pointing out that most members of Parliament, government ministers and heads of city halls from the two main parties are also “housing investors” so it makes absolute sense that they voted for all kinds of measures over the last decade that pumped up even higher the gigantic house bubble in Portugal, which is making young people in Portugal stay with their parent’s until their mid 30s and, in a country with one of the most aged populations in Europe, delaying childbirth and having fewers children, and even to leave the country by their hundreds of thousands each year.

Instead all we get is something around “house prices are too high that’s bad for the young” and only started getting it recently when even the Middle Class started hurting - I mean, the guys at the mainstream parties also say that at this point because it’s got the a level were it’s well beyond undeniable. I mean, I moved back to Portugal 5 years ago from the UK and it was already painfully obvious to me that there as a massive housing bubble and the politicians in power were passing measures to pump it up even further and faster.

Similarly the non-mainstream Left seldom talks about Corruption and the systemic structural reasons for it (from a Judicial system which is slow, underinvested in and partly subverted by the dominant political parties, to a widespread nationwide culture of Nepotism and Cronyism), not least because the party with the biggest problem in that domain at the moment is the supposedly leftwing mainstream one with whom these parties aimed to make a cohalition in the last Parliamentary elections. Refraining from overtly and unwavering standing by the principle that politicians abusing the powers they’ve been delegated to by voters in unacceptable no matter the party of those politicians at the time when the far-right was (with tremendous hypocrisy) was making a lot of noise about it, just made those leftwing parties look like either accomplices, unprincipled and/or just looking to feed of the tit of the state like the rest.

(It also doesn’t help that in my experience those leftwing parties also internally suffer massivelly from Cronyism and Nepotism)

IMHO to be a proper leftwing party you don’t really need to go around calling other people assholes, you just need to point out that many if not most of the greatest problems that affect all society weren’t born from immaculate conception: they are the result of choices and actions for personal gain of people entrusted by voters with powers that can impact everybody else. Merelly “This is bad and needs changing” from the mouths of a politician with no pointing of fingers doesn’t mean much because they all say that when things get to the point of being undeniable, even the very same politicians that caused that problem in the first place and such stuff only real works for tribalists who are already convinced that “the leaders of my Party are trustworthy and it’s those other people who are not” (which has the curious effect of making most party members thinks those speeches are amazing and insightful when comming from those they see as they leaders, without noticing the deep similarity with what is said by the leaders of other parties, even while outsiders and non-tribalists are hearing everybody saying the same stuff and thus not trusting any one group more than another and even thinking “they’re all the same”).

JimmyMcGill,

Let me guess, Portugal and Livre?

Aceticon,

No.

Livre are Liberals cosplaying as Lefties.

In a genuine fight for Equality you don’t go around segregating people by identities and deeming some more deserving to fight for than others because of the identity you think that they belong to: you fight for everybody who is being treated unfairly, ideally going after that which is causing greatest pain first.

Split people by the genetics they were born with and treating them differently based on that is not the path to Equality and Fairness, it’s just a different kind of Inequality and Unfairness, so those doing such dividing and segregated treatment are either fighting for something else - say, “everybody should be free to do what they want with consenting adults”, which is fine, but at times incompatible with the core leftwing principle of “the best possible life for the greatest number”, especially when it comes to money (were the latter principle would go against the Freedom of some to accumulate as much wealth as they want), so that’s not Leftwing, that’s just Liberalism - or they’re tribalist fad followers, who don’t think when it comes to politics.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Livre end up turning out to be just as much a bunch of self-serving assholes seeking “jobs for the boys” by ridding a fashionable political strain imported from elsewhere as Portugal’s newest “Green Party” cosplayers, PAN, turned out to be.

JimmyMcGill,

I’ll read your comment in more detail later but who were you talking about then?

Aceticon, (edited )

O Bloco.

If you look at the leadership they’re incredibly uniform (almost all 30-somethings, from well off origins, either there because mommy or daddy were middle class leftwingers during the Fascist days - which I can respect, whilst at the same time thinking says nothing about their childrens’ qualities or values - or because they’re mates with such people). Unsurprisingly they all sound like betinhos (soft spoken middle-class types constantly signaling their social status in language, dress and manners) and do not at all come across as competent or even with any breadth of life experience (plenty never experienced or did anything other than Politics, a characteristic they share with people of the same age in the two mainstream political parties).

I mean, it’s fine to be like that, it’s just not fine when a politicial party which is supposed to fight for and represent all kinds of people is so narrow in the original social strata, age, life experience and universities frequented (including actually having frequented one) of those who lead it, and hence their way of thinking and the kind of things they’re aware of, not to mention that highly uniform social environments are invariably the result of people selecting each other by similarity and friendship (i.e. cronyism) not merit, since merit comes in all shapes, forms, genders, ages and origins and hence selection by it naturally yields a lot more variety in a group.

(There are a ton of blindspots for any group of people who are highly uniform and that problem due to the uniformity in the leadership of the Block has been easilly exploited by the mainstream “leftwing” party and even the far right in Portugal in the last 2 elections)

As somebody who spent his young adult years in The Netherlands, I have very different values in terms of openness and much stricter Democratic expectations than the shit that dominates the party, were I’ve seen my share of systematic undemocratic behaviours and treating mechanisms meant for free and democratic choice including actual votes as nothing more than “formalities”. Also, having lived and been in politics in Britain I have a keen ability to detect the parroting of the performative “leftwing” ideas from the fake leftwing wing parties there (LibDems, New Labour, equivalent to the Democrats in the US) which oh-so-often seems to be repeated by local lefties who being too unwordly to understand the context and trying to follow the fashion of the “left” in those countries, parrot neoliberal stuff they read in English-language social media.

It’s very frustrating because I originally thought they were a thinking Left.

JimmyMcGill,

I’m not sure I agree

For one Bloco’s majority of votes comes from exactly the opposite of what you say they are. I.e. lower class and less educated people.

I don’t think they have the image of being “betinhos”, quite the opposite. Majority of Betos vote IL, Agrobetos somehow vote chega, and betos who lean left and actually care about social issues now vote Livre. Some of them also voted PAN but fortunately less and less.

The view I have of Bloco is that they are more on the woke warrior side and a bit too much sometimes. The whole, I am more knowledgeable than you is very present in IL and in a way also in Rui Tavares.

Catarina Martins is one of the more empathetic politicians we have in Portugal atm. The Mortagua sisters may have a well off background but they have proven their work countless times and many times outside of Bloco. Marisa Matias and José Gusmão are both almost 50 and no where close to your description of “elite”.

But I guess your opinion is just as valid. For what it’s worth I actually joined them very recently but so far haven’t seen much of anything (apart from disorganization).

Aceticon, (edited )

Maybe it was all those years outside of Portugal, but in my mind “betinhos” isn’t just a certain young wannabe (or even outright) rich person (the outright being common in places like Cascais) but is more generically a middle class person from a middle class background who heavilly signals their well-off status - they’re indeed two different kinds, but when it comes to the way they talk they have quite similar styles and run around with an elitist belief that they know better. Maybe it’s my working class background (even though I do have a degree and am supposedly middle class myself nowadays) or some kind of hyper-sensitivity to class status signalling from having lived in the UK, but for me the well-off leftwing soft “rebels” from well-off families who behave towards working class party members in a paternalistic way are from the same branch of the tree as the other kind even though they’ve taken a turn to the left rather than the right.

It does make sense that the “betinhos” from the wannabe rich in the sense you seem to be thinking about vote IL since that party sells an idea of meritocracy (entirelly fake as I can tell you from having worked in the industry from were most of those “gentlemen” from IL come - Finance) which would appeal to the “not yet rich who want to believe they’ll get there if they try to emulate what they think are the rich hard enough”. Curiously from what I’ve seen when manning voting boots in Cascais for the Bloco a few elections ago, the real deal upper class “betinhos” probably vote CDS.

I’ve been a member of the Bloco for 4 years now, in 2 different districts and whilst I spent most of the time in the first couple of years with a “all I know is that I know nothing” posture of watching and learning, I did pay a lot of attention and used a couple of decades of experience gained abroad (in various kinds of companies and various countries) in figuring out new environments, observing how things work between people and even winding people up just to get them to say what they really think, and have seen and heard a lot of elitist and even outright anti-Democratic posture in the Bloco, including from sitting Parliamentary Members I know personnally (I’ve also seen good things here and there and don’t actually think most people there have bad intentions, they’re mainly out of ignorance and lack of self-awareness behaving in ways that are elitist, self-serving - not in a greedy way but in an interpret things in ways that avoid accepting that they too sometimes are gasp wrong - really reactive, inconsistent and lacking a broader vision, and even with ouright anti-Democratic behaviours).

I’ve also seen some ridiculous fake leftie stuff from the membership: in one congress I went to most of the speeches from members were of the “we the [some group] want/need X, Y, Z”, which is my eyes is just greed disguised as “for the group”, whilst the “for the common good” kind of stuff (or at least the stuff worring about groups other than those one is in) were a lot less than what I (naivelly?) expected in a congress of a real Leftwing Party.

I don’t know about the class of the voters of the Bloco, all I know is that the leadership of the party at the highest level are all degree-holding people and even the District leadership in the District I live in which contains large blue collar areas and hence an unusally high number of blue collar worker members (still a minority), only a tiny handful of the District Leadership are blue collar.

Maybe it’s a wider Portuguese phenomenon, but the tendency of many Middle Class people to think they know better even in subjects they know nothing about and use haughty dialetics to basically bully the less well educated or just ignoring them whilst faking listenning to them rather than really listenning and taking it in what a Working Class person says, even on subjects that the Working Class person does not better, is alive and well in the Bloco, were IMHO I think it’s unnacceptable (acceptable in the pro-Elite rightwing, not in a supposedly pro-everybody leftwing party).

This social blindness manifests in some ridiculous ways sometimes: I remember one election where the national leadership (who, by the way, don’t seem to listen to anybody else that people from Lisbon and Porto, to the point that councils in the same district felt ignored) sent us a black middle class woman to go campaigning in a poor neigbourhood which had lots of people who were born in Africa and became Portuguese nationals or their children, and she behaved incredibly “middle class woman” with this kind of bland “we understand your problem” talk whilst not really properly empathising with the concerns of those people, whilst the person amongst us really empathising (mainly by getting progressivelly angry at the shit that was being done to them) and coming up with ways to try and help them within the power of a party that had all of one seat in the local assembly was a local guy who didn’t at all look like them but had been in some pretty bad State highschools whilst growing up and really knew how life could be for somebody from such neighbourhoods.

(The funny bit was that the lady herself once elected was pretty decent as member of Parliament, she just wasn’t at all representative of the people those who put her forward for meeting and seemingly represent, with quite extraordinary socially-blindness only seemed to see as “ethnics” hence they “matched them by ethnicity” - you need to be incredibly socially-deluded to see poor people and think what matters the most is their skin color).

For me the collapse of the vote on the Bloco in the last couple of years as the mainstream parties started falling (which one would expect was a prime time for a leftwing alternative voice to gain votes) did not surprise me in the least given all that I saw from the inside including some interesting talks with my local member of Parliament once I moved to a District capital.

Maybe the party can be pushed and prodded to become more like this Finnish party seems to be, though judging by how self-isolated, elitist and Party-Headquarters centric the current leadership are and how little they listen to the rest (except when an election comes and they need people to go around campaigning, which is when they suddenly remember to tour the “countryside” and talk to the members, though even those “listening” tours are very much in a “important people and little people” structure rather than “open discussion”) I don’t think it will happen without the old guard - who were the ones who chose to give way to this handpicked “new generation” - cut their legs off.

JimmyMcGill,

Why are you still a member? It seems like you aren’t having a good time.

Aceticon, (edited )

I haven’t totally lost hope yet.

Also it’s not like most people in the party don’t have good intentions, it’s mostly a problem of ineptitude, the unfortunate Portuguese tendency to “make it up as you go” and not being quite as strict as I am when it comes to Democratic principles of free and fair choice, openness and the nature of being a representative for others.

A broadenning of the kinds of people that end up leading the party and a replacing of the culture of self-deluded ignorant elitism at the top with one of openness might shift the politics of the party into a more aware and hence more representative and even more competent track.

If there is one thing I’ve concluded from my experience of living in multiple countries and even being involved in politics in some is that variety and some amount of flux are the best things to have in Democracy: it’s when people sit too long in places of power and surround themselves with others like them (or, worse, Yes men) that you get problems - there is no leadership that doesn’t turn to shit once it’s had a decade or two constantly at the top.

(Note that in this party at the moment the leadership is not a person, it’s a group. This was especially true during the time of Catarina who internally was very open and clear about only wanting to be a spokesperson, not “the boss”).

I very much doubt the culture of cronyism can be replaced by something more meritocratic (as that’s a general problem in Portuguese society rather than specific to that party), but merelly variety will at least lead to more ways of thinking about and approaching everything because more varied backgrouns bring more varied outlooks and approaches to figuring out how to achieve the kind of society people in that party generally want to have (even if they seldom know how to even start to get there).

Nerrad,
@Nerrad@lemmy.world avatar

Thqnk you Finland!!!

joneskind,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

Unfortunately it’s the opposite here in France and I’m devastated.

Congratulations to the Finns!!!

Vipsu,
@Vipsu@lemmy.world avatar

Well hopefully your population is intelligent enough to see through the lies after the populists take in to office. It’s usually when their incompetence shines right through as they’ll just start making excuses and keep blaming the opposition for their failures. It’s also the point where they usually start breaking most of the promises they made during the elections or while they where in the opposition.

The French also have history of not so peaceful protests so the people in the ivory towers need to take that in to account.

Dwayne,

Well that didn’t work out for Germany. However, maybe the most recent scandals of some German AFD representatives did prevent them from receiving even more votes. Nevertheless, the AFD hasn’t received any recognition for its beneficial contributions in the parliament thus far. Typically, it involves strange remarks or overall misconduct. But their overall propaganda seems to be still very effective.

I like Li Andersson’s three major goals. Seriously… How could this be wrong for certain people. I don’t get it

to end poverty, to make the world more equal and to solve the climate crisis

Fuc*ing leftits with their positive, political goals. Disgusting /s

hubobes,

You see them as positive goals, other people see them as advantages to loose. To foreigners, to climate protection, to „lazy“ people. They have a privilege they want to keep.

eleitl,

BSW taking 6% out of box (way more in the East) got to count for something.

joneskind,
@joneskind@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for the hopeful message.

I have no doubt the French far-right would fail miserably like every other EU far-right government, and I wouldn’t bother too much in other circumstances but those suckers are Putin’s friends and the last thing I want to see happening is the end of Ukraine’s support.

Macron just dismissed the government, and we’re up for new elections in two weeks. There’s a good chance that for the first time in the French Republic History we don’t have a single leftist voice at the government.

We are famous for our protests indeed, but with a far-right government cops will just feel allowed to do their worst, and we might reach chaotic levels of violence.

Anyway, thanks again for your message. We’re not there yet and I need to blow off some steam.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

The French also have history of not so peaceful protests so the people in the ivory towers need to take that in to account.

They do, which is why they’ve invested so heavily in state police forces and surveillance technologies. France runs tight behind the UK in terms of over-policing of potential dissidents (re: poc, college kids, community activists) and cribs a lot of their techniques from the US and Israel.

barsoap,

Oh no they didn’t copy from the UK, it’s a thing going back straight to Vichy France. Have a look at the biography of this character.

UnderpantsWeevil,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Woof.

Senseless,

Hey finns, will you take me in again, like you did during Erasmus? Pretty please? I do like saunas, lakes, woods, Salmiakki and metal so I should fit right in, right?

PahassaPaikassa,

Just one question before we let you in: how do you pronounce “sauna”?

Lumisal,

You’re kind, since you didn’t ask him to pronounce something like yö

Senseless,

Ha! My mother tongue uses unlauts.

XTL,

Unlike Finnish.

PahassaPaikassa,

Or translate “kuusi palaa” into english.

Senseless,

Like a normal person, so like it’s written.

PahassaPaikassa,

Excellent.

Sauna will be ready by six o’clock. You bring the beer, I have sausages.

Hotzilla,

Ok, you are welcome, just show this post on the border control and they give you Finnish passport

Senseless,

Kiitos!

uis,

Banya.

JimmyMcGill,

Sauna Perkele.

Also did Erasmus there, but I’m not a fan of salmiakki so I hope that my swearing will compensate for that.

PahassaPaikassa,

You are allowed by law to replace salmiakki with koskenkorva.

JimmyMcGill,

Sure

Let’s do that

Tja,

Will you accept a fan of mämmi?

PahassaPaikassa,

No! Thats disgusting, go away.

Blizzard,

I might have believed you until you went too far claiming you like Salmiakki.

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