Decency, Trump and Obama.

[hollodero]

(03-19-2017, 03:39 PM)Dill Wrote: What confuses our European friends is that they see two versions of liberalism

That is true.

(03-19-2017, 03:39 PM)Dill Wrote: each of which would be in the middle of the spectrum in most European countries, constantly described as "far right" or "far left."

Well, not exactly. We consider your "far right" as being quite far right indeed. In general, your republican party is quite unmatched here, and we couldn't tie it to an existing European political ideology. Right now we can, of course, but in general there is no equivalent. But the middle, no. The equivalent for the democratic party is our moderate conservatives. I would call Sanders "left" (but not far left), maybe this Edwards guy that once was there, certainly some others I don't know of. The rest, including Hillary or Obama, is more in the middle or slightly on the right. Imho.

In conclusion, our spectrum centers at a point you would already call "left".

(03-16-2017, 03:59 PM)Dill Wrote: You are correct about the differences between Alt-rights, e.g., they have their own party in the East Reich, etc.  Whereas in the US they had to take over an existing party, which often resists their aims, (Imagine the FPÖ and ÖVP forced to share the same administration and budget)

But I think there has been more historical interaction/resemblance between US and European/Austrian right than you realize.   

Two things, first I imagine it quite in the way you described it. Two-party system would probably already have brought us an alt-right government. Sice we don't have that, they had to make do with the role as junior partner. Thank god for that.

About the historic perspective, sure some patterns are uníversally visible and part of every authoritarian's playbook. And some of these things are visible now, I didn't intend to neglect that. It's reason enough to be alarmed. 

There's some major differences, and one of those I have already hinted at, the alt-right raises out of a society of relative wealth, security and freedom. This I see as historically unprecedented.