openDemocracy: Marching with Dabrowski – what the centenary of Polish Independence can tell us about the radical right?

Peculiarly, armbands commemorating The Home Army of 1944 (the Polish resistance movement), were worn by both skinheads and small children brought to the march by their parents. What remains remarkable are the organizational capacities; the official rules of the march forbade the use of alcohol, as well as antisemitic or xenophobic messages. Seldom violated, the Polish radical right showed noteworthy command of the situation if they were, excluding those intoxicated from the main marching groups. [...]

There are at least two important implications arising from the picture I saw. The first is quantitative: the event gathered more than 200,000 attendees, which is the absolute record. The second points to a more substantial concern: seeing Polish families and small children side by side with extremists signalled the mainstreaming of the radical right. Right-wing President Duda’s move to ‘unite the Nation’ by merging the marches only underscored the fact that the two sides, if not of the same coin, certainly belong to the same currency. The leading populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, as the mainstream manifestation of the radical right, is proving successful in absorbing most of these voters.[...]

Nonetheless, this does not mean that such actors are not worth talking to, especially in a country which is considered a stronghold of Catholic nationalism (more than 85% of Poles are Roman Catholics). While the line is always to be drawn, the radical right plays, even if on the fringe, on those empty spaces that our liberal democracies have left behind. Through grassroots activism and contact with the ‘ordinary’ people, they create space to embellish the national memory with references to the pride of the imagined community. After all, when MW or ONR organize a charity event in a village far away from the eyes of decision-makers, the content of their propaganda remains secondary to those who received their help.

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CityLab: Luxembourg’s New Deal: Free Transit and Legal Weed

Luxembourg rarely gets much international attention. But last week, the government of the Rhode-Island-sized nation-state made some dramatic policy announcements. Last Thursday, a new ruling coalition announced that the landlocked Grand Duchy would be the first country in the world (just ahead of Estonia) to make its public transit entirely free at point of use.

If that groundbreaking announcement weren’t enough, the coalition also confirmed that it would boost Luxembourg’s monthly minimum wage by €100 ($114), give everyone two more days off a year, and legalize recreational cannabis by 2023. [...]

Right now, for example, public transit is practically free: A two-hour ticket on the railways costs €2 (or €3 in first class), while an all-day pass costs €4. Young people and students, meanwhile, already travel free. These nominal charges only generate €30 million of revenue annually for a system that costs a little under €1 billion to run, so it’s no great leap to dispense with charging at point of use altogether. Dispensing with the need for tickets also cuts the costs incurred selling and checking them, and the revenue shortfall will be partly recouped by cancelling a commuter subsidy. The hope is that the law will ultimately pay off in other ways, by reducing direct costs for citizens and getting cars off the road when they travel. [...]

The minimum-wage raise and extra holidays, meanwhile, might sound like populist pie in the sky to Americans. But in Luxembourg, it’s just an extra cherry on top of an already generous layer cake of progressive working conditions. Working weeks are already short (an average of 1,512 working hours per year in 2015, compared to 1,783 in the U.S. and 1,676 in the U.K.) and conditions especially flexible. Creating a new national holiday and adding a day to the country’s statutory minimum will bring the total number of days off employees must receive (excluding national holidays) up to 26. With the total national holidays now at 11 days, that means all Luxembourg workers can expect 37 paid days off a year. And the minimum wage in Luxembourg is already quite high. With different minimum categories depending on age and qualification, its current lowest rate for workers over 18 is €2,084.54 ($2,364) a month.

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The Calvert Journal: “We aren’t just suffering”

Dmitry Kozachenko: I am openly gay, and in Russia there are no publications I would like to read. Usually LGBTQ+ magazines are run by members of the older generations, who don’t really understand the worldview and lifestyles of young people. A lot of LGBTQ+ magazines ignore pop culture, even though it’s one of the key vehicles for promoting progressive ideas. I wanted to create a publication in which queer youth could express themselves and help others in their community. [...]

SK: Unfortunately we aren’t yet able to cover all of Russia, so for now we’re focusing on life in Moscow and St Petersburg, where we live and know the queer culture inside out. At the moment we have a very fractured community, so my aim is to tell queer people about other queer people and create a sense of connection. It’s also important to raise questions of physical and mental health and self-care. We want to write about different gender and sexual identities — queer diversity is still new for a lot of LGBTQ+ people in Russia. We want to be as inclusive as possible to trans and non-binary people, and we’re actively looking for writers from these communities to contribute to the site. Also, life-affirming features are very important: we aren't just suffering, we have a lot of fun. [...]

SK: Russia is a very big country, and people have very varied lifestyles. In Moscow and St Petersburg, LGBTQ+ people can blend in with the crowd, society is more advaned, one can find relatively tolerant environments — maybe not perfect, but safe. But unfortunately most of Russia is made up of small towns where it’s hard to survive even for a heterosexual cis person; for queer people it is simply terrifying. I talked to queer people who moved to St Petersburg from small towns, and they have some chilling stories.

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Politico: How Macron gave Italian populists a boost

During a 13-minute televised address to the nation on Monday night, the French president promised a minimum wage increase and tax cuts, including for low-income pensioners, in an attempt to appease the Yellow Jacket protesters. The announced measures could push France's budget-deficit-to-GDP ratio to 3.5 percent, well over the EU's 3 percent ceiling, according to an anonymous government source quoted by French daily Les Echos. [...]

"But but but, Macron said he's cutting taxes and increasing public spending ... does [Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre] Moscovici agree?" Claudio Borghi, a top League MP and chair of the lower house's budget committee, tweeted after Macron's announcement. [...]

However, it would be a lot more complicated for the Commission to press on with its plans to punish Rome for its extra spending while sparing France. Macron's potential EU rules breach will also prove harmful for the ongoing negotiations on a eurozone budget, which France has spearheaded.

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The Guardian: Modi's BJP suffers heavy election defeats in Hindi heartland

The governing Bharatiya Janata party’s (BJP) vote collapsed by 17 percentage points in Rajasthan state and by at least 12 points in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, all part of the Hindi heartland where Indian governments are traditionally made or broken.

Those losses, as well as the revival of a Congress party frequently written off in the past five years, had analysts revising their predictions for next year’s national polls, which Modi had been expected to win in a cakewalk. [...]

The government has contended with large protests in recent weeks by farmers in distress due to natural disasters and falling prices. Nearly 55% of India’s 1.25 billion population is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, and farmers form an important voting bloc for parties.

The BJP has also faced criticism from Hindu nationalist groups unhappy at the delay in building a temple to the deity Ram in his fabled birthplace Ayodhya. Unemployment also remains a problem despite high economic growth. [...]

Yet Modi’s personal popularity remains significant. In Mandsaur, a Madhya Pradesh rural town surrounded by yellow rapeseed fields, six farmers were shot and killed during one demonstration last year. The BJP lost surrounding districts on Tuesday but surprised analysts by holding Mandsaur, where Modi held a raucous campaign event in November.

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