If with 'around the world' they intend to mean 'The USA and the UK' then I'm all in agreement.
But the rest of the world is not that much different from 12 months ago.
The article sugggests strongly that these other countries had a completely different view of their governments in the recent past but I see very little evidence of that.
But in the UK (see: brexit) and in the USA (see: Trump) there definitely is a populist shift in progress.
The French, the Italians, the Russians and even the Dutch have had a substantial trust issue with their governments as long as I've been alive, I don't know enough about the local politics of a lot of the other countries listed there but I suspect that given the fact that none of the ones that I am familiar with would warrant the label 'collapse' that it is not as alarmist as the title would have you believe.
What is happening is that there is a slow but steady push towards more nationalist representation in the various parliaments and this is a source for concern.
And this is all not to say that a Trump presidency and an exit of the UK from the EU can't/won't do plenty of damage, but with some luck they will cause some real political reform in those two countries.
It's either that or a very good chance of serious economic upheaval.
> there definitely is a populist shift in progress
Is it that difficult to believe that a large part of the population is not interested in multiculturalism, unrestrained immigration, Islam, etc? I think until this concept cannot be fathomed and taken seriously you will see a continued shift towards so called "populist" thinking. There _must_ be a shift towards a more moderate politics. It is too far to the left and it's too liberal for the vast majority of people in those countries. You can argue against this ad nauseum, however at the the end of the day it's a democracy and the majority will steer the direction they want their politics to go. The current liberal parties need to wake up and realise they're pushing a form of politics that is out of touch with the masses. And every time people say Trump supports are "stupid" and "racist" and "backwards" you are just going to make them push even harder, because you refuse to acknowledge their very real grievances.
What do those three things actually mean though? And what would it mean to end them?
Immigration is only unrestrained within the EU; EU free movement doesn't apply to either refugees from Syria or non-EU immigrants.
What does it mean to end multiculturalism? Formal ban on the teaching of minority languages, as in the bad old days when the UK tried to stamp out Gaelic and Welsh?
What does it mean to end Islam? An end to freedom of religion? Making muslims wear large yellow crescents so they can be easily identified? Remember the Bataclan attackers weren't immigrants, they were French or Belgian nationals.
Muslims killing people because it is Haram to draw cartoon pictures of their imaginary sky god. Muslims sexually harassing woman in Cologne on New Years. Muslims "call to prayer" blaring over load speakers in non-Islamic countries but in their own Muslim created "suburbs". Muslims wanting public swimming pools gender-segregated.
If the only way to break the ebb of this tide is through conservative/right-leaning/populist politics then this is exactly what will happen, if the majority so wills it.
The actual point is that these are real or perceived to be real grievances that the current political elite are _refusing to entertain as legitimate concerns_. They're not even asking for a "definition". They are flat-out dismissing it as bigotry, racism, "a small minority of disgruntled people", etc. So people have turned to e.g. Trump, who openly talks about this and offers plain and simple plans that address these issues: Build a big wall, deport millions of illegals, etc. You can disagree, but it's a simple solution that people understand.
Aren't all those things already illegal? It is really hard to find people on either side of the political spectrum that wouldn't agree that those things should remain illegal and be enforced.
So most people don't have a problem with that, but they do have a problem with labeling an entire culture, race, or religion is immortal/illegal. That's literally the definition of racism and we should be better than that. Yet it seems like some people are in a real hurry to turn back the clock on that.
These illegal events come downstream of the policy of what tends to be liberal government: multicultural immigration done hastily, and without the necessary frameworks in place to support it. Regardless of whether these were ill-considered side-effects or whether the consequences came on purpose, they're that government's mistake and their responsibility.
If you're talking to your friends, and none of you are directly involved in political office, then I don't think you're getting the opinion from the people who matter. I would beware apologists, though.
I think it is the throughput or volume of importing that is most foolish about this effort, not even the intention. In Canada, there exists at least one public school that has to educate 19-22 year old Syrians who don't speak a lick of English in the midst of 15-16 year olds: same classes, same resources. It turns out that these uneducated adults are giving the administration a tough time and I fear for the sexual safety of those children.
> Immigration is only unrestrained within the EU; EU free movement doesn't apply to either refugees from Syria or non-EU immigrants.
I think people are definitely frustrated with how the refugee crisis was dealt. There is a perception -- whether true or not -- that Merkel opened the floodgates for unfettered extra-EU immigration. You are right in that there seems to be no serious solutions to these perceived problems, just a build-up of anger.
Typically, this means the various campaigns that push political correctness related to race and culture. While the intentions might be virtuous, what usually ends up happening is people on the right become skeptical about "newspeak" and people on the left accuse the right of being "racist" (a small minority actually are). The divide gets wider. I hope that you're not being deliberately obtuse to try to prove your point. Use your imagination and try to think if there's anything about the push for multiculturalism and how it's being done that could be problematic.
> unrestrained immigration
Germany has unrestrained immigration. They've taken in something like 600k Syrian refugees while Turkey has taken in over 2M. Here in the US we have an unprotected border that illegal immigrants cross in order to live and work here and the left is trying to push policies that would slowly give them amnesty. Your interpretation of "unrestrained immigration" seems to be deliberately avoiding the hot-button topics.
> Islam
I very much doubt that the GP is talking about "ending Islam", but it sure makes it easier to argue against their post to interpret it that way, doesn't it? If people on the left can't understand the desire to have a bit more skepticism about Islam in light of the recent raft of ISIS and ISIS inspired terrorist attacks then I'm not sure civil discussion about the issue can actually be had. It's unfortunate, because I definitely sympathize with the position that says we should be tolerant of other cultures. But if that tolerance comes at the expense of security and requires labeling conservatives "racist" for having skepticism all that's going to do is result in more populist candidates and a further swing against progressive ideals.
> Use your imagination and try to think if there's anything about the push for multiculturalism and how it's being done that could be problematic.
You're asking me to make a strawman and argue against it. I'm asking people to explain their position and be specific about what they're against and what they want done about it.
> Germany has unrestrained immigration.
No they don't. They even have a handy website in English to explain what rules apply: http://www.bamf.de/EN/Migration/migration-node.html ; if you, as (I guess?) a US national landed in Germany and decided to stay and work, you'd find out fairly quickly that it's not unrestricted.
What they have done is fulfil their obligations under the Hague convention on refugees. This does not automatically grant the refugees indefinite leave to remain or German nationality.
> skepticism about Islam
What does this actually mean in practice, though? Does it mean allowing or encouraging officials to ask people their religion and discriminate against them on that basis?
The UK labour party is currently having a fight over the mirror image of this question, which involves distinguishing between the state of Israel, "Zionism", and people of Jewish ethnicity and religion. The distinctions are easily lost in careless rhetoric but very important.
Is it too far left? Current polling leads me to believe that the people are beginning to lean more left themselves. Trump isn't exactly winning.
Their greivences are real; mine are similar, but I don't believe that the policies and reactions that are trumpeted are going to fix their grievances.
Consider immigration as a concern. Why? Competition for jobs, crime and an exploding population of unskilled workers. Education programs (creating skilled Americans, reducing immigrant birth-rate and crime) and stabilizing Mexico are probably the most beneficial long term solutions, but I hear no discussion around this.
> But in the UK (see: brexit) and in the USA (see: Trump)
> there definitely is a populist shift in progress.
In Germany too, at least partially: The right-wing and very new "AfD", a relative newcomer, now has almost 1/10th of the votes (depending when you take the poll, results fluctuate).
But in contrast to 100 years ago, nationalism now seems to be a reaction to an external threat (non-EU immigrants), as opposed to intra-European tensions.
Out of EU immigration (intra -EU too, but it is a bit subdued) is of great concern to great many people. Since the AfD is the only German party willing to listen about said concerns - you can safely assume they will become more popular.
Not a single German party has been pro out-EU immigration. Not a single one.
In fact, the current government even made it harder for asylum seekers to stay, or bring their family, and expects to deport the majority of them in less than 3 years.
Please read the official parliamentary protocols, and not the very wrong spin the media put on it.
Last time we took in a large portion of out-EU immigrants we didn't send ~2 million of them back (even though there were plans to do so), many of which I wouldn't remotely consider "German" even in the third generation (yes, I'm talking Turkish guest workers here). I don't see why this would be different this time around, especially considering many have nothing to go back to. From this we also have gotten a clear indication that large-scale assimilation isn't working (in this timespan) -- as you'd expect, because who wants to let go of his culture for no reason (there are native people living here!?).
Technically there's a distinction between an accepted asylum seeker and a citizen proper, but at the end of the day they're going to get a regular permission to settle (Niederlassungserlaubnis, like a normal immigrant) and from there it's not far to citizenship at which point there's no legal way to send them back (because it would involve revoking citizenship). But even permissions to settle aren't routinely revoked, so the ruling parties accept that the asylum program is effectively turned into an immigration one. Merkel, too, has accepted that and is pushing the "integration" angle. A smart move considering the refugees of today can be the voters of tomorrow (~10-20 years). Her party backed off a bit when right-wing movements gained steam, but nothing essential has changed since. The next federal parliament elections will be interesting ones, a big motion of confidence...
Simple, because over two thirds of those were already sitting in refugee camps in Greece by mid-2015.
Greece asked Germany to pay for the camps.
Merkel decided that paying for camps in Germany would be cheaper than for paying for camps in Greece, and that here maybe a third could actually get integrated, further lowering costs. And the effort to deport them might get easier.
So she said her famous sentence "we won't send anyone who already is in the EU and tries to go to Germany to get asylum back to the EU country they were in before".
with some luck they will cause some real political reform in those two countries.
Currently it looks like the most likely outcome is an independent Scotland trying to remain in the EU (with a vaguely social-democrat politics) and a chaotic / far-right England. Northern Ireland is waiting to see what will happen; the peace process there was dependent on the EU and there are some possible disastrous outcomes that nobody in charge has bothered to rule out yet (border closure with Ireland, end of Human Rights Act).
Maybe Labour will implode and leave UKIP with ~60 seats in the north of England.
In some ways this Brexit is a victory for the longest newspaper campaign in history. It wouldn't have been possible without the Daily Mail, Express and Telegraph posting anti-EU and anti-migrant stories for decades.
And yet the Independent, the Guardian, the FT, the Economist etc have all been posting nothing but pro-EU articles for weeks now. The Indy seems to have gone into complete meltdown. So you think these don't balance out, huh.
It's like global warming: the two sides aren't symmetrical, and trying to balance between inaccurate and accurate articles does not bring the reader closer to the truth.
(The Telegraph have James Delingpole as their anti-wind-farm global warming denialist column)
Stuff going on with the Australian federal election last weekend (2016-07-02) is pretty interesting, too. [0] [1] We’re still not sure who is going to be running the country yet.
Almost a quarter of the votes went to minor parties and independents, which is the highest on record I believe. Derryn Hinch (aka “the human headline”) is now a senator, along with Pauline Hanson, who I imagine campaigned on building a wall along the Australian/Mexican border.
Most people are interpreting it as an indication that we’re sick of all the narcissistic bullshit from the two major parties. Of course they don’t see it that way.
[0] For the uninitiated, Australia has compulsory voting, and a two-party preferred system, so the lion share of voters usually vote for either Labor or the Coalition (Liberal), with a smattering to minor parties and independents.
In South Australia, NXT received 21% of the vote with a party tagline of "Sick of toxic politics? Give NXT a go!" The founder has had a fairly strong profile in SA politics for almost 20 years, but got virtually nothing in terms of interstate votes.
Actually right wingers say that the 5 stars are left wing and left wingers say they are right wing. Five Star is made of disgrunted citizens and those citizens used to vote left and right so you can see anything in it. Maybe it's time to go past concepts like left and right.
But the rest of the world is not that much different from 12 months ago.
The article sugggests strongly that these other countries had a completely different view of their governments in the recent past but I see very little evidence of that.
But in the UK (see: brexit) and in the USA (see: Trump) there definitely is a populist shift in progress.
The French, the Italians, the Russians and even the Dutch have had a substantial trust issue with their governments as long as I've been alive, I don't know enough about the local politics of a lot of the other countries listed there but I suspect that given the fact that none of the ones that I am familiar with would warrant the label 'collapse' that it is not as alarmist as the title would have you believe.
What is happening is that there is a slow but steady push towards more nationalist representation in the various parliaments and this is a source for concern.
And this is all not to say that a Trump presidency and an exit of the UK from the EU can't/won't do plenty of damage, but with some luck they will cause some real political reform in those two countries.
It's either that or a very good chance of serious economic upheaval.