The unimportant news thread

[Todd]

The Return of Fascism in Italy

Sweden.  Italy.  What is wrong with Europeans?

(The source here is The Atlantic, so it could just be hackwork.)

[ritter]

...
Sweden.  Italy.  What is wrong with Europeans?
....

The same thing that is wrong with Americans, I'm afraid....

[Todd]

The same thing that is wrong with Americans, I'm afraid....

But how can that be?

[ritter]

But how can that be?

Telepathy? An airborne virus? Something in the water? 

I suppose there's no easy answer, but would think that in troubled times, the appeal of politicians who promise an (impossible) return to an allegedly better, easier past, while blaming "others" for our current woes, is enhanced. It happens here, and it happens there...

[Todd]

So European education systems are failing as well?

I liked the 90s.  Maybe we should return to, say, 1998.  You know, a pre-Google world, where Amazon only started selling items other than books, and the biggest concern was proper use of cigars.

[ritter]

...
I liked the 90s.  Maybe we should return to, say, 1998.  You know, a pre-Google world, where Amazon only started selling items other than books, and the biggest concern was proper use of cigars.

But there were no online discussions of complete Beethoven piano sonata cycles then, were there?

[Todd]

But there were no online discussions of complete Beethoven piano sonata cycles then, were there?

Sure, on Usenet (rec.music.classical.recordings).  Usenet stretches back to the 70s, though I think the first classical music threads started in the 80s.  I could be wrong.  I'm sure AOL had some chat rooms that would have covered the subject ca 1998 as well.

[ritter]

Sure, on Usenet (rec.music.classical.recordings).  Usenet stretches back to the 70s, though I think the first classical music threads started in the 80s.  I could be wrong.  I'm sure AOL had some chat rooms that would have covered the subject ca 1998 as well.

Well, the 90s had it all, then!  Let's find someone who takes the world back to those years (and we were younger, too!).

[Karl Henning]

The same thing that is wrong with Americans, I'm afraid....

No kidding. I guess America isn't all that "exceptional"

[Jo498]

I liked the 90s.  Maybe we should return to, say, 1998.  You know, a pre-Google world, where Amazon only started selling items other than books, and the biggest concern was proper use of cigars.

I also liked the 1980s and 90s, probably  because I was young. But nostalgia should be resisted because the 1990s in some ways "begat" the following decades.
That doesn't mean that our descend in to decadent madness is easy to explain. But it is impossible to explain if one thinks in the 90s everything was fine.

These last results are quite easy to explain. It's the counterswing of the pendulum from the delevopment of the last decades that saw delegating national sovereignty to unlected, corrupt and arrogant EUrocrats, general dominance of global capital and organizations, and left leaning liberalism having gone wild with e.g. uncontrolled migration (not from Japan or Canada but from mostly african, balkan and near/mid eastern failed states) and branding positions that were perfectly central (and probably shared by >90% regardless of stances on tax rates or legal smoking age) even in the 1990s (like thinking that "natural families" are natural and that having control over borders and migration should be one of the core functions of national states) as "far right".

[Jo498]

I don't know about chatboards or mailing lists of the 1980s because I was too young. Usenet exists since 1979, I have been there since 1994 or certainly 1995. And yes there were and still are classical music groups (although I now access them only via archives not in the classic email-style way).

[Todd]

But nostalgia should be resisted because the 1990s in some ways "begat" the following decades.

Everything has been going downhill since August 15, 1971. 

On the upside, one can stream most content now, so in the end it's all good.

[Todd]

Sterling crumbles to all-time low, euro at 20-year low

Will the pound drop below parity?  To think, the pound used to be fixed at $5 to £1. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Sterling crumbles to all-time low, euro at 20-year low

Will the pound drop below parity?  To think, the pound used to be fixed at $5 to £1.

I heard that on the news earlier today.  Last I heard, it was about $1.08 USD.

PD

[Karl Henning]

Yowch!

[Karl Henning]

And: just in time for mobilization?

Putin grants citizenship to Edward Snowden, who disclosed U.S. surveillance

[Spotted Horses]

And: just in time for mobilization?

Putin grants citizenship to Edward Snowden, who disclosed U.S. surveillance

When does he reply to Ukraine? 

[Florestan]

The return of fascism in Italy is nonsense on stilts. Fifty years ago Giorgia Meloni would have been a mainstream Christian Democrat.

Actually, if there's anything in contemporary Europe that ressembles fascism it's precisely the European Comission: elected by nobody (at least not by the peoples) and responsible to nobody (at least not to the peoples) they work hard to impose the ideology, practice and interests of global capitalism on increasingly reluctant and fed up peoples. And when such a people react by electing leaders not to her liking, the un-elected Madame von der Leyen has the guts to threathen them with economic sanctions.

It looks like in today's Europe only one man -Zelensky - and only one people - the Ukrainians - are allowed to be nationalists (including by extolling real fascists like Bandera) and look after their own interests. All others should give up their sovereignty, including over their own borders, and acquiesce to the dictates of an un-elected clique of bureaucrats on the payroll of global big business. The hypocrisy is mind-blowing.

[Florestan]

These last results are quite easy to explain. It's the counterswing of the pendulum from the delevopment of the last decades that saw delegating national sovereignty to unlected, corrupt and arrogant EUrocrats, general dominance of global capital and organizations, and left leaning liberalism having gone wild with e.g. uncontrolled migration (not from Japan or Canada but from mostly african, balkan and near/mid eastern failed states) and branding positions that were perfectly central (and probably shared by >90% regardless of stances on tax rates or legal smoking age) even in the 1990s (like thinking that "natural families" are natural and that having control over borders and migration should be one of the core functions of national states) as "far right".

Amen to that!

[Todd]

Italians Didn't Exactly Vote for Fascism

The Atlantic editorial board apparently changed its mind.  Didn't take long.

I do wonder what Roman voters had in mind the first time they voted in Rachele Mussolini.  Now she can run on her record, of course.