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Oh boy, here we go for something you never heard about. The big 1 million dollar question ! Does it include our famous Meme Man ? Yes it does, why wouldn't it ? He is afterall the terrific nightmare coming true for some, and for others the proof, with the Brexit, that a new conservative/extremsim wave is coming. But couldn't it also be just a revelation on people's thoughts about political correctness, globalization, and generally against a corrupted government doing what seem to be nothing ?

Well I guess I kinda wanna hear your thoughts on that topic, as well as your analysis on the situation. Warning, we're not here to bash on Trump/Brexit supporters, nor accuse these 2 things of fucking the world up, as it would only end in an endless bloodshed. We're here to try to understand the situation and if and how it is affecting the world.

So here's my 2 cents on the situation, from my perspective. I feel that these 2 events did both showed a general annoyance for political correctness and all that stuff, creating a more conservative wave lead by the Brexit and Donald Trump. From what I'm seeing so far in France, and to a lesser extent Europe, we're experiencing a situation where the more conservative right (lead by François Fillion) is gaining more power, while the left is struggling and is in complete discord. This however doesn't mean that this movement is extremist, as althought France is seeing a resurgence of the extreme right (with Marine Le Pen), it is still struggling to move on from its "nazi" conotation. If anything, an opposite extreme is gaining a lot more power through minorities, the extreme left (with Jean-Luc Mélanchon). So while the movement provoked by the Brexit and the populism of Trump did affect France, its effects are for me limited.

So what do you think ? I really wanna know your perspective on this, even if the media covered a lot about it already.

Yes and No.
The political correctness problem helped(even if the Right might be overblowing it tough but it's real [i don't agree with some of statements of the article] ) but is not the sole reason of the "anti-globalization" option has been wining lately.

I think that the dissatisfaction with the politicians and the comeback of voters of rural areas that voted on that option because they felt left out in the middle of all of this.

I don't think the election of Trump, success of Brexit, ousting of Renzi, etc is a sign in the (re)surgence of "right-wing extremism" as much as it is a knee-jerk reaction to extremist globalist/leftist policies effected by President Obama and the various functionaries of the EU and national politicians who support the EU. In the USA, I think the specter of the "alt right" is fairly overblown: most Trump supporters seem to have voted for him to spite Secretary Clinton/President Obama and their policies rather than out of support for the ugliest portion of Trump's supporter base.

Likewise with the Europeans. I sincerely doubt (at least I sincerely hope it is not the case) that racial supremacist movements are gaining real traction; I suspect, to the contrary, that people are putting tentative and cautious support behind more right-leaning movements as a means of fighting back against a significantly radicalized left.

This is not to imply that the hard right movements in the USA and Europe are toothless or powerless: these movements do have the real potential to cause real damage and trauma on both continents; however, their pools of ideological supporters are likely much smaller than their actual voter bases.

I bought into it for a while, but I'm growing more and more skeptical of the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from both camps. For people like me, paleoconservative Catholic traditionalists, there are going to be a lot of hardships and negative changes in the near future (I am more concerned with the salvation of souls and the preservation of the Truth than anything else). Church attendance will continue to decline, abortion will continue to be administered, and ruinous "free love" social practices of excess and decadence will continue to be practiced among Western populations. At the higher strata, at least.

Things will continue to be pretty okay for the average supporter of our current secularist and materialist culture, however. The culture will change only in superficial ways. The strongmen for whom various European and American populations have recently voted will bolster local economies (likely by corrupt means) at the expense of the global one. People like Trump or Le Pen (if she doesn't get beaten by Fillon, which is my ideal situation) will do nothing whatsoever to challenge the general irreligious and self-affirming culture of the West. Borders will be closed and the fight against fundamentalist, political, Wahhabist and Salafist Islam will be taken more seriously. This might be the only good outcome of these elections. Alas, however, it will also likely come at the expense of hatred against well-meaning and harmless Muslim communities. It seems there's no good development that can happen without a negative one happening somewhere and to someone else. Such is pull-and-push of politics.

I think it's just basic populism, which last spurted up in the US in the late 1800s when William Jennings Bryant took up the farmers' "free silver" movement and merged it into the Democratic Party, only this time Trump took the "anti-globalism" movement and merged it with the Republican Party while Farage did it with UKIP.

I'm not sure of the exact political situation in the UK, but American elections almost always swing drastically to the other side every decade or so. In the last 16 years it swung from Clinton, to Bush, to Obama, now it's over to Trump. Getting a second term almost always guarantees your party will lose next time as voters seem to always want something "different."

I think a lot of people in Generation Y down underestimate how dramatically politics changed from before the Clinton/Bush dynasties. "Clinton → Bush → Obama → Trump" is not the political pattern. It's really Carter/Reagan (the original globalists(?)) → {a new era of globalism} → Bush → Clinton → Bush → (supposed to be Clinton, black vote got away from them but Obama down with most of the plans so whatev) → (supposed to be Clinton, decades of shitty globalist deals finally catch up). Trump is the interjected answer to "what do we do to hold up the entire show?" not just another piece that fits into a prescribed pattern.

I think the next year at least is going to be turbulent and anything but normal tbh. The Democrats really don't look like they're willing to let this go, the media isn't even trying to pretend to be kind of neutral or just tolerably left leaning, and let's talk about the college population which is getting straight up draconian among all the other increasingly militant activist groups in the literal streets. This country's young liberals are so entangled in their hysteric fear and consequent actions, I'm actually starting to think the collapse-of-society preppers may be on to something.

I think people today are just realizing how these globalist, leftists polices aren't really working and are in fact hurting people. Take for example the myriad of terrorist attacks and mass-slaughterings that have happened among the rise of just "normal" crimes like assault, rape, anti-nonislamic, and anti-gay crimes in areas where large amounts of immigrants live. People are beginning to realize that some of these people are not these defenseless refugees the politicians and media are telling us they are, and that several of them are criminals at best and violent terrorists at worst, and that we should defend ourselves from them by not letting as many of them get close to us.
People are just getting tired of these ideas because they aren't really helping those they are suppose to because they still live in deplorable conditions, and are in fact hurting us financially and physically. They want change, and change is something Trump and the Republicans promised. (Rather ironic seeing how that was Obama's motto during his first campaign) At the very least they said they were going to do something different, unlike the democrats who said that things were a-ok as they are.

Years of Neoliberal Policies from Carter all the way to Obama caused a President Trump and Brexit to happen. The working class didn't choose Trump(some billionaire former lobbyist golfing buddy of Bill Clinton) because of "PC culture", they chose him because he knew how to push the right buttons of the working people and spoke to them better than Clinton. Trump may have not had policy specifics, but he talked more about Jobs and trade deals and blamed the right people to fuel his rise to power(Outsourcing, China and Trade deals) plus a crapton of media coverage with no fact-checking of his beliefs and plans, while the democrats only had talking the typical talking points of blandness and no policy. Perhaps the biggest flaw of modern liberalism is how the ideology wants to target mass amounts of people in the vaguest ways possible. If voters truly hated "PC culture" then a person like David Duke would be an elected senator from Louisiana about now. He has a history of changing views to gain personal momentum in the first place.

I see more optimism from the people of the country rather than the next president. I'm glad that the majority of the country didn't choose him for president in terms of popular vote. I'm glad that people are finally calling out the Alt-Right for the fascists that they are with some of his supporters. I'm glad that a majority of the people still support progressive reforms such as a minimum wage of 15$ and an end to corporate lobbying. It's somewhat better to know that people are also waking up that Trump isn't what he seems either, especially with a "swamp" of his cabinet picks being bankers or career politicians that he wanted to drain in Washington.

I think the main reason why Trump won was due to people being dissatisfied with the current (until Trump actually takes office) administration.

A lot of people felt cheated when Obama didn't do what they thought he was going to (though to be fair, what politician does?) and Clinton pretty much promised to be more of the same. At the very least, Trump has a pretty good relationship with Putin for someone who wasn't even a politician.

I do think the general populace is sick of how far political correctness has gotten, but I don't think that is directly what caused Trump to win.

A lot of people dont know this, but this shit goes way back to reagan:

"Neoconservatism (commonly shortened to neocon) is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among conservative leaning Democrats who became disenchanted with the party's foreign policy"

The democrats seem to be losing their voterbase, except this time it affected european countries. Thanks to the internet, the ideas of these new disenfranchised democrats AND republicans reached the europeans who almost instantly realized their left is just like that and started opposing them.

The trump thing would have been isolated to america if it wasn't for the internet, so i could say i consider it a meme

All this Trump/brexit stuff just seems all too familiar to me….like deja vu


Oh right! It's because we went through similar phases back 2013 when we elected Tony Abbott the Onion-man and the liberal party (basically republicans) because the labor (basically democrats) were in-fighting and now we're in the fallout of Labs and we want are "lefties" back or at very least someone else.


Oh and if anyone's wondering about the simpsons memes it's basically become customary to use simpsons memes when discussing politics in australia. It probably keeps us sane,
Plus it pisses off politicians Unless they show support for the inanimate carbon rod!

Here's something interresting about France's situation, and how François Fillon has gained, and is still gaining, a lot of support.
If we would follow the logic that populists, like Trump, would impact Europe, then this would mean that Marine Le Pen would be in the lead, and the media would freak out.
However, Fillon does the total opposite of Trump. Instead of doing big rallies, promise some impossible tasks, and just making his opponent look bad, Fillon is always playing low, he never really goes in conflicts. That's why, for a while, people never thought it'd even be able to win the right's primaries. Yet, through his serious tone, explaining all of his program (that he started to make since 2013) in full detail, and almost never getting in conflicts, letting his opponents destroying themselves through controversies, he managed to become a really serious candidate to become 2017's french president.
While it doesn't mean the extreme right is powerless, Fillon's reasonable and conservative mesure are still winning.
The left is dying, but that ain't new. They only got 2 "good candidates", not even going throught the left's primaries, Emmanuel Macron and Jean-Luc Mélanchon. But even them are looking kinda powerless against the right's come back.

Additionaly, you could say Austrich's recent election of the ecologist Alexander Van der Bellen against Norbert Hofer, from the extreme right could be an argument against this conservative/extremism wave. While it was somewhat close (53% against 46%), I guess that could be used as an argument.

By the way, thank you so much for everyone's replies. I'm glad I can learn different perspectives thanks to this thread.

I think all the recent rise to approval of right-wing policies is probably just dissatisfaction with left-wing rhetoric and the pervasive identity politics that are everywhere just don't appeal to the working man. Also, as aforementioned, outsourcing jobs to China and globalism have hurt many jobs in service economy countries. That's just what I understand, there is probably is a lot I'm ignoring or not knowledgeable of.

I believe, and this may be stupid and unfounded, but I believe things like politics move in cycles, when the political compass of the world goes from one side of things to the other. The reason I think this is the case is that people don't like complacency, people don't like stagnation, and people generally like things to be fresh and new.

Human beings have a desire as social creatures for stimulus, and I think that loops into politics and the desire for new ideas and new people to be in charge. Currently, the world is dominated by left-wing politics, or liberal politics, or progressive politics. ITs the majority view held by a lot of people, and that creates stagnation. It creates social complacency, and it generates an enviroment where outside ideas are rejected harshly by the mainstream and the majority of opinion makers with large audiences.

People I think, as social creatures, do not like being told what to do or how to act. There is something probably buried in our DNA that just does not like the thought of being told how to behave by others, especially if we do not acknolwedge them as being correct or superior to ourselves. So when you have a global stage dominated by the same political leaning and views, people are going to want things to change and be shaken up, even if just for a single term or so.

I feel like that's what is going on here. People are pulling a release valve to help relieve some of the pressure the left wing is trying to push on them 24/7. Whether it works or not will have to wait and see. But generally, that is imo what is happening.

That's a very interresting way to see it, kinda like the "Master-Slave Dialectic" of Hegel.

This dialectic basically explains the eternal cycle between the Master and the Slave.
Let's take your example to understand it better :
-We first got on the Master's role the Left, and on the Slave's part the Right. For a while, the Master is providing the Slave what it needs.
-This domination is however temporary, as the Slave, through his labor and hardwork, learns more about their state. Thus, the Slave makes, through his creativity, better creations that the Master could never reproduce. In our case, I guess this "creative creation" became either the Brexit, or Donald Trump.
-We here come to a point where the Master is becoming dependant of the Slave. Since the Slave became aware of the situation, it now can enslave its Master.

I know my explanation is kinda bad, as it as only been one year since I started learning philosphy, but your idea kinda applies to this dialectic. So it's not stupid, nor unfounded. It's just a lot more philosophical. At least for me.

One thing about PC culture I'd like to bring up is while it might not have been the definitive factor in deciding these political decisions, it was involved with them somewhat.
As you could tell, Hillary Clinton was obviously catering to the PC culture, which at this point is starting to get on people's nerves. I think the fact that Trump didn't give 2 shits about political correctness is the reason he was more successful. He was able to draw in the crowd of people who were tired of these other people and galvanize them to vote for him. Or at the very least these people knew that voting for Trump would severely piss off the PC culture, which it did if the riots are any sign.
I guess you could also say that Trump's election was sort of a "payback time" for all these people who hate the PC culture that seems to have taken over everything.
However, like I said I don't think this was the deciding factor in him being elected. I do believe however it did give him a little more of an edge so he might've attracted some new people or kept people who were on the fence from leaving.

I agree with Trump on a lot of things but at the end of the day what has me feeling the most disenchanted with stuff right now is that I feel I've done everything I possibly could have done on my end to qualify for a decent job, but there aren't any around here anymore. Even the places that have been in my area for years are closing or cutting shifts.

I didn't vote for Trump to stick it to anyone, I just want living in the rust belt to suck a little less.

It's close, and I do see the mechanics of what you are saying. I think its a pretty good explination for events. Going back further, the Right wing in the early 2000's were the masters, being in control of the mainstream media and mainstream population. The left was the underground movement who could only exist on channels that catered to them such as MSNBC or on the internet. In fact that was how the majority of the internet blossomed, and many things such as net neutrality, freedom of speech, forums without dominating mods or admins, etc, were started and pioneered by the left wing, the slave, who was working to survivie under the thumb of the right wing, the master.

2006 onwards saw the positions slowly degrade, and finally swap. Only, the left wing kept a lot of its holdings and positions back when it was a slave, as well as gaining the mainstream assets as well. It left the right wing with much less places to go, and so for a large amount of years, you saw what has been a very dominated political scene, with many parts of the web turning on the tools they used to combat the right wing.

The slave, who became the master, wanted to make sure the master, who was now the slave, could never rise back to power. That's when you started seeing stuff like Safe Space, Triggers, and Internet Censorship and accountability really spike, around 2008 or so when the left was in power, and directed towards the right.

However, you cannot do that. You cannot use the tools of the slave when you become the master, in order to further beat the slave. To carry with your explanation, an attempt was made to turn the relationship into a Jailer/Prisoner one, rather then a cyclical master/slave one. The internet, the birthplace for the resurgence of the left as well as the frontier for rebellious behavior, had attempts made to tame it to a very left leaning state.

The more you try to force that kind of relationship however, the harder the blowback will be. Had donald trump not won, I believe we would have seen an even stronger push in 2020 for the alt right victory. And it would have been stronger, and stronger, until eventually it'd bubble over, and you'd get a full on social clash on your hands.

That's why I personally am not worried. Now that they'll have their time in the sun, they will slowly wither, and be replaced by the left again. And they can't really do anything to stop it either, which is the beauty of this kind of thing.

Personally, I think Trump won because he had an easily-understandable platform and was a recognized celebrity, two things that appeal to people who aren't really into politics. On one side, he used rhetoric that relied mostly on buzzwords and ad hominem to assert ideas that appeal to conservatives, the crowd that are mostly susceptible to them (not trying to offend conservatives, just trying to point out that most conservatives in this country are farmers, blue-collar workers and other people living in rural areas, people who aren't known for their education). He spoke to them in a way that they could understand with ideas that both confirmed their prejudices and made them feel special, so he garnered both the voters' support and the support of those who usually don't vote because they finally have someone who doesn't speak in terms they understand (e.g. "Fuck China and Build the Wall", not "Disregard China's economic policies and construct a physical barrier on our southern border".) As for Trump's image, he's been in the public eye since the 80's, so it's pretty much guaranteed that the average American will recognize him. This is a huge advantage for Trump, because people tend to vote for who they've heard of. And considering that the other candidates were people that NO ONE had heard of (Like, who here has actually heard of the name Kasich before this race, let alone that a guy with that name was a politician?), Trump was the only guy with that advantage. Plus, Trump's image was that of an sincere demagogue with a background in business, so he really appealed to the sensibilities of the conservative crowd and contrasted himself with his portrayal of Clinton as a lying politician.
So basically because he appealed to the denominator and got himself out there using his celebrity as a foundation (not to mention all the free publicity) he secured the presidency. I think that people are blowing the whole PC out of proportion because it's an issue that we face and the candidates give people in our subculture a chance to vent their feelings about this issue in a way that's meaningful on our chosen platform. Other than on the internet, I haven't heard of anything about Political Correctness other than on my college campus, where there's a couple of very vocal conservative clubs that seek to combat it.

I hope this didn't sound retarded.

He knew his target audience, and catered to them well, gaining the electoral advantage.

*lowest common denominator

I, personally, don't see this "conservative wave" at all. The popular Right wing populist parties in Europe have absolutely toothless platforms and yet they STILL have next to no chances of gaining any sort of power. It got to a point where I'm certain I will try my best leave Europe for good once I graduate. It's not that I'd be unwilling to fight, it's just that people are too demoralized to do anything. The smell of decay in the air is persistent and overwhelming.

With that being said, and for all my love and adoration for Trump, I realize he wasn't elected for the reasons I consider most important. And that's not good, because I don't believe he will "bring back jobs", I don't think that's how economics work. i.e. Trump and Brexit are moves in the right direction, but mostly not for the reasons their supporters believe they are.

Honestly, I think right wing extremists are going to actually be calmed down due to trump winning. I think Trump's gonna be for better or worse the reagan of the new millenia.

I think in the alternate reality where clinton one, chances are you'd be hearing about the butthurt riots where Non-Whites and anyone that isn't an alt-rightist are being killed and Alt-Rightists Cry in their basement to draw anime characters blowing up minorities instead of our butthurt riots where college liberals killed cops and whites and went into their safe spaces to draw anime characters blowing up "white cis scum"

It's not a new wave of extremism so much as a consequence of the failure of the western left. The left has reached a point where it has become so entrenched in the ivory-tower, upper-class (or middol-clahss in the case of the Brexit) social elite that they have lost the vote of the working class. A reminder is in order that the lower classes aren't really all that concerned with the identity politics half of social justice. Ask a random factory worker and a random income equality lobbyist what they think of gay people, and you'll probably get two different answers.

In America, this means that the lower working class ended up voting for an ostensibly right-wing candidate because he was more populist than the left-wing one! The fact that the DNC could have chosen Sanders, but chose Clinton instead is a testament to its abandonment of the working class. Clinton paid lip service to social justice, i.e., she was politically correct. That was enough for the DNC, and the DNC assumed that that would be enough for America, too. And if it weren't for the electoral college, it would have been! But lower-class conservatives were better represented than upper-class liberals, and populism won out over sensitivity.

So I suppose it's a revelation of people's opinion on today's politically correct world.