Social Europe: Building an electoral coalition: social-democratic parties in western Europe

 Simply put, the basic strategic paradigm which allowed for postwar social-democratic electoral success during les trente glorieuses no longer exists. The ‘third way’ did attempt to reconcile a globalised economic climate with social-democratic policy-making but in the long-run it turned into an electoral failure. [...]

Using post-electoral data from the Belgian National Election Study, I have shown that this opposition literally cleaves the Flemish social-democratic electorate. Appealing to both left-particularistic production workers and left-universalistic socio-cultural professionals is proving challenging when the new cleavage is salient—especially as populist radical-right parties strategically position themselves to align with production workers, while green parties increasingly specialise in addressing socio-cultural professionals.

Nor do the welfare-state preferences of the two electorates align entirely. While both strongly support an interventionist state, 30 per cent of production workers but a negligible 2 per cent of socio-cultural professionals adopt a populist stance, combining a nativist, exclusionary egalitarianism with a critique of the functioning of the national welfare state. Socio-cultural professionals are more likely to believe in universal, boundary-crossing solidarity than production workers (15 per cent, compared with 7 per cent of production workers) and tend to have a left-wing profile supportive of social investment (52 per cent, compared with 23 per cent). Both production workers and socio-cultural professionals can however agree on the importance of a redistributive and interventionist state. [...]

Higher perceived ethnic discrimination is linked to a vote for the radical left, instead of the social democrats, at least partly explaining the surge of minority voters behind the PVDA in recent elections. In trying to recover some of their former electorate of left-particularistic production workers, social democrats thus stand to lose their ethnic-minority electorate, which has arguably been the only consistently loyal section in recent decades.

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UnHerd: Stop searching for the ‘gay gene’

 The history of the search for the gay gene is not a comfortable one. One of the most controversial studies was conducted by gay neuroscientist Simon LeVay in 1991, who claimed that gay men’s brains were “more like women’s”. Then there was the study suggestion that boys with older brothers are 33% more likely to be gay because of occupying a womb where a male foetus has already been.

Appallingly, the then Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom Immanuel Jakobovits reacted to news of LeVay’s research by saying: “If we could by some form of genetic engineering eliminate these trends, we should — so long as it is done for a therapeutic purpose.” [...]

The response to Hamer’s study was largely that of horror. Alarmists said the discovery would be used to try to “cure” homosexuality, ignoring the fact that Freudians, fascists and supporters of eugenics alike have been trying to eradicate homosexuality for decades on the assumption that it was something that could be “fixed”. Yet gay rights activists in the US and Britain were, on the whole, delighted at the discovery of the “gay gene”, seeing it as ammunition in the war against homophobia. To them, the gene proved that their sexuality was instinctive and inevitable, not perverse. [...]

A further analyss in 2003 led researchers to say that they had found persuasive evidence to support the theory that a person’s sexuality is developed before birth. They had measured the “eye-blink reaction” of straight and gay test subjects who were subjected to sudden loud noises, finding significant differences in the response between male and female, heterosexual and homosexual participants which, they said, could be linked to the area of the brain which determined sexuality.

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Notes from Poland: Poland’s human rights commissioner on the state of democracy, LGBT protests and “dormant civic energy”

 Agnieszka Wądołowska: “Poland in 2020 is a completely different country than it was in 2015,” you said in the Senate in a statement summarising your term as commissioner for human rights. “Poland is no longer a constitutional democracy”, but a state of “electoral authoritarianism” and a “hybrid democracy”. What do you think we have lost in those five years? [...]

For example, with the [ruling] Law and Justice party’s anti-refugee advert, it was impossible to hold anybody who produced it accountable. The prosecutor’s office discontinued the proceedings. And the matter of the antisemitic post of a member of the National Council of the Judiciary will probably not be ruled upon, because the statute of limitations will apply in a few weeks’ time. Even though the case has been known about for years. There are many such examples. [...]

In many cases, the hardest thing is the fact that the changes stop me from helping people as I would like to. Every commissioner used to be able to take a case to the Constitutional Tribunal. Now I must make a rational judgement on whether that might not make the situation worse – because, for example, the Constitutional Tribunal legitimising a given law can make the work of the courts difficult, as they can always directly apply the constitution. [...]

There is one more thing to mention. What is happening is, in my view, a repercussion of the presidential campaign and the fact that the subject of LGBT became an electoral fuel used to heat up the atmosphere and take votes away from the [far-right] Confederation party. A moment ago, we had the Istanbul Convention on the table, now it’s LGBT rights – this all seems to me to be a political game. And I find this regrettable because one should not play with human rights. This is of course connected to a very real, concrete threat to the people who become victims of this situation.

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Nerdwriter1: Caravaggio: Master Of Light

 

euronews: Montenegro election: Who are the triumphant opposition factions and what do they stand for?

 Consisting of three blocs or alliances, For the Future of Montenegro, Peace is Our Nation and Black on White, the opposition won a wafer-thin majority with 50.7 per cent of the votes, or 41 out of 81 seats in the Montenegrin parliament. [...]

Despite the unifying goal of unseating the current DPS government and assurances that they are collectively committed to staying the course on issues such as EU integration, the rule of law and the overturning the DPS government's law on religious freedom, the opposition’s disparate values and agendas may mean that forming a viable alternative government is not an easy task.

One of the biggest challenges will be the reconciling of opposing pro-EU and pro-Serbia and Russia stances across the competing opposition alliances. The general opinion among voters tends to reflect an anxiety that ideological antagonisms will most likely be the source of any future instability within the new government.

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Reuters: Steve Bannon’s effort to export his fiery popularism to Europe is failing

 After Bannon was charged with fraud for his role in an effort to raise money to help build Trump’s wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, two people working with him said an effort to found an academy for right-wing Roman Catholic activists in Italy faces a criminal inquiry by the Rome criminal court and a project aimed at ending the European Union has closed up shop. [...]

Along with Bannon, the institute has been trying to set up a two-track program: an “academy for the Judeo-Christian West” with a Bannon-designed curriculum and the Cardinal Martino Academy, which will promote Catholic social teachings, said Benjamin Harnwell, a former British Conservative party activist who leads the institute and works with the former Trump aide.[...]

Separately, a Brussels-based Bannon-backed project aimed at undermining the European Union shut up shop last year, said Mischael Modrikamen, the Belgian lawyer who teamed up with Bannon to promote the anti-EU “The Movement.”[...]

Populist candidates from France, Italy and Britain did well, but their counterparts in Germany, Austria, Denmark and Spain did not. And Bannon’s “Movement” found little support from right-wing leaders.

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