GeofCox on Nostr: This article - ...
This article - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/revealed-one-in-three-europeans-now-votes-anti-establishment - and the academic paper behind it - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/populist-a-database-of-populist-farleft-and-farright-parties-using-expertinformed-qualitative-comparative-classification-eiqcc/EBF60489A0E1E3D91A6FE066C7ABA2CA - are replete with problems.
Although I believe the general conclusion is true - that voters are rejecting 'establishment' politicians and parties - the analysis behind this in fact takes place entirely within an establishment framework, employing its usual visual metaphor of a spectrum with a centre at the status quo and extended arms to the 'far left' on one side and 'far right' on the other, characterising these 'extremes' in terms of their 'ideology', and implying some sort of equivalence between them.
There's no consideration of any alternative conceptualisation - for example the traditional left theorisation that it is in fact the political centre that is the most ideological position, since it merely reproduces the socialised status quo, or that the left position is based mainly on objective economic reality (exploited and oppressed people) rather than any 'ideology, or the left/green position that capitalism is objectively destructive and has to end regardless of any ideology (because if it isn't there will be few people left to believe in any ideology at all).
The questions begged are these: what if the left-to-right visual metaphor is entirely misconceived? What if in fact the political left/green is based not on any ideology, but the real experience of oppression and exploitation, and the real danger of climate-ecological breakdown - and it is in fact those comfortable in the status quo that need rose-tinted centrist ideology to disguise from themselves the real nature of economic reality, and those desperate to usurp them that need the insane power-fantasies of the political right?
Although I believe the general conclusion is true - that voters are rejecting 'establishment' politicians and parties - the analysis behind this in fact takes place entirely within an establishment framework, employing its usual visual metaphor of a spectrum with a centre at the status quo and extended arms to the 'far left' on one side and 'far right' on the other, characterising these 'extremes' in terms of their 'ideology', and implying some sort of equivalence between them.
There's no consideration of any alternative conceptualisation - for example the traditional left theorisation that it is in fact the political centre that is the most ideological position, since it merely reproduces the socialised status quo, or that the left position is based mainly on objective economic reality (exploited and oppressed people) rather than any 'ideology, or the left/green position that capitalism is objectively destructive and has to end regardless of any ideology (because if it isn't there will be few people left to believe in any ideology at all).
The questions begged are these: what if the left-to-right visual metaphor is entirely misconceived? What if in fact the political left/green is based not on any ideology, but the real experience of oppression and exploitation, and the real danger of climate-ecological breakdown - and it is in fact those comfortable in the status quo that need rose-tinted centrist ideology to disguise from themselves the real nature of economic reality, and those desperate to usurp them that need the insane power-fantasies of the political right?