>Let's just be fair and teach the next generations that our countries have been hijacked by corps+lobbyists, and that democracy is just a word used to make people accept their totalitarian power.
You can fight them, you know.
You can fight them, you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
If anything, the high unemployment in the EU over the past decade would have been a fertile breeding ground for such ideas. I'd say we're doing pretty well so far as a society by not engaging in more drastic measures given how much our rights are trampled on.
You can have a "class consciousness" without pulling out the hyperbole and Stalin card.
This consciousness is what afforded us civil rights, granted us a safe work place, an eight hour work day, labor rights and bought us social programs that keep people from dying in the streets.
Somehow these "class conscious" revolutionaries didn't let society devolve into chaos.
It's this consciousness that we need to remind ourselves and those with power of our worth. Otherwise, we'll continue to get fucked over. No one will offer to make us concessions that we never had the power to ask for.
The majority of the third world and anyone who wasn't born into the right religion/race/family in the first world would like to have a word with your first point, though.
I guess we shouldn't realize nor negotiate from our position in society since being run by plutocrats isn't so bad because you say so.
Good plutocrats try to make sure their population has "just enough" that they don't rally in the streets with guns. Relying on the goodwill of these people is an absurd expectation.
This isn't true at all.
The EU is doing that right now, debasing the Euro to reduce the overall massive debt load and fake growth to placate the population and pretend to show things improving. Being able to abuse the currency makes it easy to continue to meet social obligations, but in actuality they're defaulting on those obligations through currency devaluation (ie the net result being citizens of the EU will suffer a lower standard of living, while most people won't realize what's happening until years later).
If Japan couldn't abuse the Yen to fill the huge hole in their budget that their debt is causing, what would happen to their government? It would have already collapsed, unable to pay its bills. It's only the fiat system that enables them to continue. Japanese savers used to pay for the debt accumulation, then their savings rate collapsed; so now the Japanese government is taking wealth from their citizens via currency devaluation instead to keep covering the debt costs.
We aren't as violent as we used to be in the 1970s-80s (violent crime has dropped precipitously, for instance). Perhaps because we don't use leaded petrol any more.
The far-right consists of anti-immigration people. That's not far-right. That was a normal centre-right opinion just a few decades ago. It's definitely not Fascism despite the implication.
The far-left consists of people wanting to protect their government pension funds, green activists and people who do not like meddling by the likes of the IMF and WB. That's not far-left either. They definitely aren't communists.
It's ridiculous how the media portrays these mostly sane political opinions as extremes held only by extremists.
I agree that there are very few far left parties in Europe with any number of elected politicians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobbik
[2] >In a newsletter published by a group calling itself "The trade union of Hungarian police officers prepared for action", the following was allegedly printed: "Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews." The editor of the union, Judit Szima, was a Jobbik candidate in the upcoming election for the European Union parliament. Haaretz alleged Szima "didn't see anything wrong with the content of the article."
I think Golden Dawn waving Swastikas around counts as fascism, even if some of the other right-wing parties in Europe are more tiptoeing around it.
I honestly doubt real fascism will make any great gains until the financial elites feel their masters of the universe positions threatened, at which point some of them will throw their lot (and considerable wealth) in with the far right and ramp up the rhetoric and the violence. That's when things are going to get scary real fast.
We're not there yet, but the potential is growing very quickly. The fusion of a lot of cash, a paranoid elite and a bunch of terminally unemployed very pissed off young people is explosive.
>The far-left consists of people wanting to protect their government pension funds, green activists and people who do not like meddling by the likes of the IMF and WB. That's not far-left either. They definitely aren't communists.
There are communists in Europe, but yes, what is designated far left by the media these days is pathetically middle of the road by historical standards. Syriza's a mildly lefty damp squib.
>It's ridiculous how the media portrays these mostly sane political opinions as extremes held only by extremists.
Of course.
That said, left/right/far left/far right are all relative terms.