WJ
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Post by WJ on Mar 14, 2022 9:58:56 GMT
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Mar 14, 2022 18:51:59 GMT
WJ are you getting a sense of the impact of the Ukraine invasion on Hungarian politics? And what's going on with their Magyars over the border?
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WJ
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Post by WJ on Mar 14, 2022 21:36:05 GMT
Really hard to tell. Politics here is just so unlike everywhere else I've lived. People just don't talk about it. Or at least, they're unwilling to talk about it with me. I've been in Spain, Sweden, Germany and the UK during election periods and it's just so different.
Very little free press here and the free press that there is is staunchly anti-Orban, so even though I sympathise it's hard to get a balanced view. It's as if all the news media in the UK was boiled down to the Canary vs Guido Fawkes (and even Guido can be anti-Tory when it suits him).
As for Transcarpathian Hungarians, they are so far completely shielded from the direct effects of the war. I would guess that Uzhhorod would be one of the last places that Russian troops will enter, should they even try to occupy the whole country.
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Post by greenhert on Mar 14, 2022 22:18:12 GMT
This Hungarian election will have just six party lists: United for Hungary, Party of Normal Life (Normalis Part, anti-vaccine party), Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP, joke party), Solution Movement (MEMO, digital politics party), Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazank, far-right), and Fidesz-KDNP. The list of the party entitled "IMA" was rejected. 12 other parties are standing only in the single member constituencies.
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Post by greenhert on Mar 14, 2022 22:19:29 GMT
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Mar 20, 2022 10:38:36 GMT
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Post by minionofmidas on Mar 20, 2022 10:53:49 GMT
This Hungarian election will have just six party lists: United for Hungary, Party of Normal Life (Normalis Part, anti-vaccine party), Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP, joke party), Solution Movement (MEMO, digital politics party), Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazank, far-right), and Fidesz-KDNP. The list of the party entitled "IMA" was rejected. 12 other parties are standing only in the single member constituencies. Surely the joke parties are all one-tailed dog parties. |
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aargauer
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Post by aargauer on Mar 20, 2022 11:16:50 GMT
Can we move beyond this "at least Politician X triggers my opponents" mindset - please? On both the left and right of the spectrum, some political figures are objectively bad people - and we should all be honest enough to say so. I am glad he exists in Europe but I'm glad it's not my country. |
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Post by Forfarshire Conservative on Mar 21, 2022 5:41:45 GMT
United For Hungary. Were I Hungarian, I'd be deeply troubled by the erosion of democracy and basic democratic norms, such as the rule of law and a free press. I get why many support Orban for his saying the supposedly unsayable, things I have sympathy with, but Hungarian democracy should.not be sacrificed on either that altar, or the altar of one man's ego.
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Khunanup
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Portsmouth Liberal Democrats
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Post by Khunanup on Mar 21, 2022 18:59:36 GMT
Can we move beyond this "at least Politician X triggers my opponents" mindset - please? On both the left and right of the spectrum, some political figures are objectively bad people - and we should all be honest enough to say so. I am glad he exists in Europe but I'm glad it's not my country. Why? I can't imagine that a Swiss Liberal voter would find much to like in an authoritarian, statist populist like Orban. Then again, you've (rather bizarrely) voluntarily aligned with Boris Johnson's Conservative Party on here so perhaps that explains it...  |
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Post by Forfarshire Conservative on Mar 21, 2022 20:36:52 GMT
I am glad he exists in Europe but I'm glad it's not my country. Why? I can't imagine that a Swiss Liberal voter would find much to like in an authoritarian, statist populist like Orban. Then again, you've (rather bizarrely) voluntarily aligned with Boris Johnson's Conservative Party on here so perhaps that explains it... The Swiss FDP are centre-right and eurosceptic, you're neither but we are both. 🤷🏻♂️ |
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Georg Ebner
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Post by Georg Ebner on Mar 22, 2022 10:26:22 GMT
Why? I can't imagine that a Swiss Liberal voter would find much to like in an authoritarian, statist populist like Orban. Then again, you've (rather bizarrely) voluntarily aligned with Boris Johnson's Conservative Party on here so perhaps that explains it...  The Swiss FDP are centre-right and eurosceptic, you're neither but we are both. 🤷🏻♂️ Exactly. If You are open to historical erudition and not encapsulated in a present-day left-"liberal" bubble, You are aware, that Swiss liberalism had the current of the old patricians of Bern, Basel, Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg, Schaffhausen, Mulhouse, Lucerne, Biel, who were reluctant/hostile to democratisation; and that even the Radicals, i.e. the pro-democratic Liberals of 1846, turned to the right since the rise of socialism&communism: CH has been - with MontPelerin-Society or univ. H.St.Gallen or dailies like NZZ(Zurich)/BaZ(Basel)/"TagBlatt"(St.Gallen) - a fortress of "neo-lib."/"libertarianism". What is of course "right-extreme" these days for ignorant "Liberals" on the US-level. And although Orban has not only campaigned now and again against "western Lib.", but also been hostile in practice to foreign banks&inVestors, he revived in some sense the legacy of the monarchy's Liberal Party, which was also very nationalistic & quite etatistic. |
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Post by finsobruce on Mar 22, 2022 10:39:46 GMT
The Swiss FDP are centre-right and eurosceptic, you're neither but we are both. 🤷🏻♂️ Exactly. If You are open to historical erudition and not encapsulated in a present-day left-"liberal" bubble, You are aware, that Swiss liberalism had the current of the old patricians of Bern, Basel, Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg, Schaffhausen, Mulhouse, Lucerne, Biel, who were reluctant/hostile to democratisation; and that even the Radicals, i.e. the pro-democratic Liberals of 1846, turned to the right since the rise of socialism&communism: CH has been - with MontPelerin-Society or univ. H.St.Gallen or dailies like NZZ(Zurich)/BaZ(Basel)/"TagBlatt"(St.Gallen) - a fortress of "neo-lib."/"libertarianism". What is of course "right-extreme" these days for ignorant "Liberals" on the US-level. And although Orban has not only campaigned now and again against "western Lib.", but also been hostile in practice to foreign banks&inVestors, he revived in some sense the legacy of the monarchy's Liberal Party, which was also very nationalistic & quite etatistic. Then they aren't Liberals any more are they Georg? They are Conservatives. (One type of) .  |
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polupolu
Lib Dem
Liberal (Democrat). Socially Liberal, Economically Keynesian.
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Post by polupolu on Mar 22, 2022 13:50:17 GMT
Exactly. If You are open to historical erudition and not encapsulated in a present-day left-"liberal" bubble, You are aware, that Swiss liberalism had the current of the old patricians of Bern, Basel, Zurich, Geneva, Fribourg, Schaffhausen, Mulhouse, Lucerne, Biel, who were reluctant/hostile to democratisation; and that even the Radicals, i.e. the pro-democratic Liberals of 1846, turned to the right since the rise of socialism&communism: CH has been - with MontPelerin-Society or univ. H.St.Gallen or dailies like NZZ(Zurich)/BaZ(Basel)/"TagBlatt"(St.Gallen) - a fortress of "neo-lib."/"libertarianism". What is of course "right-extreme" these days for ignorant "Liberals" on the US-level. And although Orban has not only campaigned now and again against "western Lib.", but also been hostile in practice to foreign banks&inVestors, he revived in some sense the legacy of the monarchy's Liberal Party, which was also very nationalistic & quite etatistic. Then they aren't Liberals any more are they Georg? They are Conservatives. (One type of) .  It is more complicated than that. In the UK in the 1930s some of the more right-liberal or "economic liberal" people (or in other descriptions those who emphasise "freedom to" over "freedom from") defected to the Tories because they saw Socialism and Communism as bad for the country. There is still a strand of this in the Tory party (which is actually one of the reasons the Tories are not a Christian Democrat party). It isn't too different from what Georg describes in Switzerland. Similar things happened in New Zealand and several other places I am aware of. So someone on the right of a European Liberal party might prefer the Tories to us (though most do not).
I am a bit out of touch nowadays; but from what I can gather the closest party in Switzerland to our old Liberal party are the Green Liberals.
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Post by finsobruce on Mar 22, 2022 14:43:17 GMT
Then they aren't Liberals any more are they Georg? They are Conservatives. (One type of) . It is more complicated than that. In the UK in the 1930s some of the more right-liberal or "economic liberal" people (or in other descriptions those who emphasise "freedom to" over "freedom from") defected to the Tories because they saw Socialism and Communism as bad for the country. There is still a strand of this in the Tory party (which is actually one of the reasons the Tories are not a Christian Democrat party). It isn't too different from what Georg describes in Switzerland. Similar things happened in New Zealand and several other places I am aware of. So someone on the right of a European Liberal party might prefer the Tories to us (though most do not).
I am a bit out of touch nowadays; but from what I can gather the closest party in Switzerland to our old Liberal party are the Green Liberals.
Well yes, it is always more complicated than that, but in a broad sense Liberalism has moved from having an economic to a social meaning, (in the very broad political sense).
And as you say the Tories in the UK are a 'special case' in terms of European politics. *
* just before anyone jumps in when i say special, i mean interesting  rather than in need of intervention... |
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Mar 22, 2022 16:03:35 GMT
I don’t claim in-depth knowledge of the Swiss FDP, but even allowing for the difference between social vs - economic liberalism, there are quite a few European Liberal parties that don’t seem ‘liberal’ in either sense. Given that many European nations historically had a reasonably strong 2-party system, the Liberal parties often filled the role as the main alternative and NOTA party. This meant some have been centrist, some have been ideologically incoherent lobbyists for certain parts of society (usually the middle class, in some cases rural interests etc), while others took in views that were not represented in the other parties but weren’t very ‘liberal’ either eg; nationalism (in some cases borderline fascism). The British Liberal Democrats have sometimes been called the ‘Dustbin of British politics’, and that’s not an entirely unfair description of many of their mainland sister parties.
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Post by rcronald on Mar 22, 2022 16:39:00 GMT
The UK (along with the US) has a very deformed view of what Liberalism actually is, British and American “Liberal” parties are Social-democratic in nature and many “Conservatives” are actually Liberals.
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Post by Merseymike on Mar 22, 2022 16:47:01 GMT
The UK (along with the US) has a very deformed view of what Liberalism actually is, British and American “Liberal” parties are Social-democratic in nature and many “Conservatives” are actually Liberals. It depends on how 'liberal' is defined. If you mean economic liberalism then some conservative parties have adopted that brand of liberalism. Social liberalism does not necessarily link directly to economic liberalism. It's a catch all ideology and has many distinctly different elements |
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Post by rcronald on Mar 22, 2022 17:24:03 GMT
The UK (along with the US) has a very deformed view of what Liberalism actually is, British and American “Liberal” parties are Social-democratic in nature and many “Conservatives” are actually Liberals. It depends on how 'liberal' is defined. If you mean economic liberalism then some conservative parties have adopted that brand of liberalism. Social liberalism does not necessarily link directly to economic liberalism. It's a catch all ideology and has many distinctly different elements I think that a party is “Liberal” if it is Liberal both on our society and our economy. If a party is not really economically Liberal but is socially liberal then I don’t think that they should be labeled as “Liberals”, but rather as progressive or Social Democrats. David is for example is a real Liberal, socially and economically. |
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Post by london(ex)tory on Mar 22, 2022 17:26:16 GMT
It depends on how 'liberal' is defined. If you mean economic liberalism then some conservative parties have adopted that brand of liberalism. Social liberalism does not necessarily link directly to economic liberalism. It's a catch all ideology and has many distinctly different elements If a party is not really economically Liberal but is socially liberal then I don’t think that they should be labeled as “Liberals”. David is for example is a real Liberal, socially and economically. I think of myself as both a liberal and a democrat, but I am certainly not a Liberal Democrat! |
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