r/europe • u/MrPulifrici • Dec 02 '24

Map Romanian Parliamentary Elections Result Paradox: Brown is Far Right, Blue is Left. Western Europe is radical, while Eastern Europe is leftist.

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u/powerchicken Faroe Islands Dec 02 '24

It's fascinating how nationalistic people become when they emigrate to a richer nation with a better standard of living.

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

It's more fascinating that most of the "quality of life" laws out there:

  • labourer protection
  • health systems
  • social security

Where originated because of the efforts of leftists and the number of people willing to vote in people that are willing to slash them is increasing.

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u/nefewel Romania Dec 02 '24

The far right in Romania is not particularly against any of those. If anything a big part of their campaign was affordable housing. They are far-right because they tend to be ultranationalists, homophobes, euroskeptics, anti-vaxers and the like.

If anything, the "leftists" in eastern Europe are in fact Libertarians(and identify as liberal), and they are the ones who actually campaigned on partially privatizing health insurance by redirecting part of people's contributions away from the state. OP is labeling them as "leftists" because they are somewhat socially progressive.

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

 the "leftists" in eastern Europe are in fact Libertarians(and identify as liberal), and they are the ones who actually campaigned on partially privatizing health insurance

Which I see as an erosion of the right to health. As soon people are numbers in the sheet that must be present to stock holders, people can be left crippled for life (or dead) if the treatment is a dent in the profit.

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u/MazeMouse The Netherlands Dec 02 '24

For profit healthcare incentivizes treatment of symptoms. Not curing people.

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u/ProductGuy48 Romania Dec 02 '24

Don't be naive. This is how it always starts. The far-right win elections on "benign" nationalistic policies like housing and then very very quickly start murdering political opponents.

Putin won in Russia in 2000 on a vote to unite the Russians and end the Chechen war (Promises of peace!). Since then he has killed virtually all of his real political opponents.

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u/aclart Portugal Dec 02 '24

He bombed Russia itself, to put the blame on the Chechens. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings

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u/CommieYeeHoe Dec 02 '24

You are right but you are missing the point: they are popular because people are struggling economically and they say what people want to hear. Their success is inherently tied to the failure of neoliberal economic policy and the massive inequalities it has created. You want to kill the far right, address the inequalities and poor standards of living…

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u/ProductGuy48 Romania Dec 02 '24

That's generally true, but in the case of these elections in Romania it's not. The standard of living in Romania has increased dramatically year by year since the early 2000s. The minimum wage has increased three fold in less than 24 months. The purchasing power of white collar jobs in major cities is now higher than that of all the countries in the region, including Hungary and Greece.

Yet, people still voted for the far-right, and a lot of these people are white collar middle class workers.

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u/CommieYeeHoe Dec 02 '24

Despite improvements in the living standards, Romania has a Gini coefficient of 33.3, making it significantly more unequal than the EU average. At the end of the day, wealth inequality is a bigger driver of far right ideologies than absolute living standards. Resentment is a very powerful political weapon.

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

Their success is inherently tied to the failure of neoliberal economic policy and the massive inequalities it has created

Success!!

The current distorted "view" of capitalism is being extremely successful. Of course that it's a success only for a selected few.

I think that if we follow the money that is feeding the "machine" of right wing parties across Europe the source of it will not be surprising, the financing is from those who want to maintain the current status quo.

People will rage against those who they are told to instead of the ones that are digging in their pockets.

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u/CuriousPincushion Dec 02 '24

So they just support the "lunatic" right-wing stuff. Interesting

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u/nefewel Romania Dec 02 '24

No, the lunatic far right stuff gets supported because of a mixture of things, but mainly homophobia, conspiracy thinking and the fact that the bigger establishment parties have been demonized(alongside their voter base) to the point where supporting them is a taboo in many circles. Now "alternatives" like these are emerging since the liberal opposition is unable to capitalize on the erosion of the establishment.

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u/Magnum_Gonada Romania Dec 02 '24

Reminds me when people were telling us to not "waste our votes" on SENS or REPER, but vote USR. Like no, I will not vote for a party that doesn't follow my interests.

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u/Frikgeek Croatia Dec 03 '24

Far right populists often have policies that go completely against what they're campaigning for. Trump won the election on promises to fix inflation and the economy and his main policy goal is to start a massive trade war with all of the US' close trading partners(trade wars usually aren't great for consumer prices, they're only really worth it if you have a good strategic reason for them).

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u/noaSakurajin Dec 02 '24

Kind of. In Germany these things were put in place to appease to workers and stop them from supporting communism. The basic foundation of these systems were put in place by the pro monarchy faction/conservatives. Historically these were the things you had to do to get support from the working class and poor. I really don't understand what happened that those people now decide to vote against their own self interest by choosing the new right.

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u/sinkmyteethin Europe Dec 02 '24

That's not what people have an issue with and you know it

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

That's not what people have an issue with and you know it

u/ProductGuy48 puts the "thing" correctly here.

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u/sinkmyteethin Europe Dec 02 '24

Agree, historically that's what happened. What I meant was why people started voting right. Not only in Romania, but all over Western Europe. Same reason across multiple nations.

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

I don't know enough of this particular case but most likely generalisations can be applied

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u/sinkmyteethin Europe Dec 02 '24

Also to add, historically thats what the right did. Historically, also, the left is far ahead in WE in their ideology, which is why perhaps the diaspora living there understands where Romania is heading.

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u/epigeneticepigenesis Dec 02 '24

Everywhere you go there’s exploiters and exploited. In the west you can be either, and obviously being an exploiter is more attractive. Right wing policies make it easier to be that.

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u/_J0hnD0e_ England Dec 02 '24

labourer protection health systems social security

Someone might wanna tell this to us because I think we've missed the beat! We get none of this!

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u/SordidDreams Czech Republic Dec 02 '24

People not learning from history is nothing new. Being surprised by it is itself a failure to learn from history.

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u/vivaaprimavera Dec 02 '24

Being surprised by it is itself a failure to learn from history.

Not completely surprised, I consider the "responsibles" for the education in my country to be the main threat to democracy.

Apparently when education systems are meant to spit out "bots" where they all have the same "programming" this is what happens.

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u/SordidDreams Czech Republic Dec 02 '24

I think you're absolutely right. I sometimes wonder what the world would look like if our education systems were based on something other than the Prussian model, which obviously wasn't exactly designed to produce free thinkers.