I prophecy something that no mere mortal could prophecy without divine knowledge

@Burnley123 Every party is. The government can't help you. Only you can help you.

@Aami1 so you support anarchism?

@Aami1 He’s far from perfect but I feel that grownups are in charge again, which is a good thing.

@Aami1 ok hun. Whats the answer?

@Aami1 been knowledgeable on nazi history isn't "black and white"

@Guitarman123 I know, as you demonstrated earlier.

@Aami1 difference is that you have no knowledge on the subject. Go read the book i recommended

@Guitarman123 You were unaware of the National Socialist's first policy, and the Beautification Act, for starters...

@Aami1 Pretty niche info.

@Burnley123 Not really, if you are claiming to have a good knowledge of the nazis, especially if it's apparently good enough to put down other people's knowledge...

@Aami1 I can't speak for your previous debate with him and don't know what your point of contention was.

I've read books on WW2 and one on the economy if the Third Reich. What did you guys not agree on?

@Guitarman123 I have a similar argument - you have to vote for somebody.
I heard a better description of it more recently; you vote for the party whose policies most closely align with what you want and vote for them.

@GeniUs you are wasting your time with that guy

@Aami1 99% of people will not acknowledge they are wrong in an argument even if they realise they are, I like to present my argument and hope it is well made enough for people to silently shift their position. I don't need to 'win' just for other people to come round to my way of thinking or persuade me that they have the right viewpoint.

@Burnley123 Likely outcome (using my country's recent political history as a reference): it becomes a centre-right party (PD at the time of Renzi), whereas the Tories increasingly become your FdI (Meloni) or FI (Berlusconi), and Reform your League.

The overton window moves further right and centre-right liberalism will be colloquially referred to as "ThE LeFt".

@Elessar
Yes.

Not just Italy. This process is underway in almost every Western nation. Add to that: Liberals also move further to the right and adopt aspects of the hard right agenda.

The Tories are currently in the process of a leadership contest. The favourite is Kemi Badenock. She is of African heritage and did a speech in Parliament about 'Critical Race Theory.' That tells you everything you need to know.

@Burnley123 I'm not sure our neoliberals are moving further right here, rather I would say that ever since Renzi departed from the PD, both the PD and the 5 Stars have been moving left (not that the latter has become any less cringe, let alone credible; and not that Schlein's PD is properly a leftwing party yet).

Former Berlusconi and Salvini fans are now Meloni's biggest voter base, but I'll argue that neither of them were ever truly neoliberals.

@Elessar [quote][Renzi departed from the PD, both the PD and the 5 Stars have been moving left (not that the latter has become any less cringe, let alone credible; and not that Schlein's PD is properly a leftwing party yet)./quote]

Thanks for the info. Partly it looks like a gap in the market. When the right has so many parties, then there is nowhere to go but to the left. Though obviously, this is the neoliberal centre-left as oppose to say Corbyn left.

Neither party will do anything to upset the capitalist class.

Unless something substantially changes then we are in a slow death spiral between neoliberalism and soft fascism. WIth the two merging.

There is cyclical resistance because political processes don't happy in a straight line but for me that is the big picture.

@Burnley123 Yeah it's a very very milquetoast "left" (or more like a progressive center / centre-right), but I wouldn't say it's properly neoliberal either, it's more like a modern, socially-progressive implementation of the christian-democrats perhaps?

I'd say the only proper neoliberal politics we had here recently was Mario Monti, and he was greatly unpopular both at left and at right.

@Elessar In a sense everyone is a neoliberal because its the dominant order of our day. Sawing off the roughest edges doesn't change the framework.

Unless your are in favour of systemic change - like Corbyn was and Melenchon is - then pretty much everyone is neoliberal. In the broadest sense.

@Burnley123 Hmm, with neoliberal I mean in favour of privatizations, budget cuts, "small government" policies. More or less like the "libertarians", except with the key difference they don't believe the free market would magically regulate itself. Thatcher's politics, perhaps?

The PD doesn't have a clear/strong economic stance: you have both capitalists and anti-capitalists in it, and they try not to upset either. The five stars are actively trying to prey their anticapitalist voters (if they lean more towards a pro-capitalist stance like they did with Renzi), whereas at the same time Forza Italia is trying hard to position itself as a "centrist" party in order to capture their pro-capitalist ones if the party line moves too further left. To compensate, the party focuses on socially progressive policies (especially on LGBT issues) and remain mostly quiet about economics.

@Elessar
Oh definitely. Neoliberalism because a big movement in the 70s and 80s and was inspired by Hayek and Milton Freidman. It was based on Classical Liberalism of the 19th century (like libertarianism) and included all of the things that you mentioned. Its different from classical liberalism in that neoliberals are prperared to use the state to crush opposition to free markets.

In Britain, it went further than anywhere (Amercia had less distance to fall) and Thatcher ended what was a social democratic consensus and we've been living in her shadow since.

In the rest of Europe, neoliberalism has come in gradually and by stealth. The same principles apply and a lot has come in through the EU. Though that is a softer version of neoliberalism than the anglo-american one.

@Burnley123 It's a bit like with Brexit, you're the frontline when it comes to this sort of radical changes, and people here in the continent get the time to watch and say "hmm, now that I see how it actually is, maybe it's better we don't get that". Notice how all those "Italexit", "Frexit", "Dexit", "Grexit" movements disappeared post-2015 too.

I'm not sure the Americans had a smaller hit: sure they had less "margin", but Reaganism in their case has been transformative over there too.

Over here pure neoliberal ideology is unpopular all over the spectrum, no one wants to reduce the spending budget, at most different parties want to prioritize different uses of public money. Privatization and tax cuts are popular in rightwing circles, but definitely not cutting the expenditure or downsizing the government. In fact, the closest thing we had to a textbook neoliberal was a technocrat, who immediately after his term was turned into a scapegoat with the assent of every "regular" party, of every orientation.