Recently Canada and yesterday Australia resoundly rejected the right wing in federal elections. The Australia opposition was even using the term “Make Australia Great Again” and it failed so badly that the opposition leader lost his own personal position/seat (they have the Westminster system there).
We are not taking about slight victories but resounding ones. “85 seats for Labor (left), with 41 for the Liberal and National coalition (right), nine for independents and another 15 to close to call”
So why are these other countries rejecting this right wing rhetoric and the USA embraced it a second time?
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Recently Canada and yesterday Australia resoundly rejected the right wing in federal elections. The Australia opposition was even using the term “Make Australia Great Again” and it failed so badly that the opposition leader lost his own personal position/seat (they have the Westminster system there).
We are not taking about slight victories but resounding ones. “85 seats for Labor (left), with 41 for the Liberal and National coalition (right), nine for independents and another 15 to close to call”
So why are these other countries rejecting this right wing rhetoric and the USA embraced it a second time?
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I guess they’ve got America as an example of what not to do
Canadians and Australians have robust government services that they want to keep. A large swath of Americans have been propagandized into believing that what works in every other first-world country wouldn’t work here.
Because they saw us fall first.
Because of Trump.
Trump launched an economic war against the entire world. It’s really hard for nationalists in other countries who are ideologically aligned with Trump to keep up the schtick when Trump is openly attacking their country.
Didn’t Sweden, France, Germany just push more right wing (not majority but more)?
I thought the AFD in Germany gained seats
Because they’re much further to the left in comparison to the USA. And they actually do a good job educating their citizens on Fascism. And they have a wide variety of public services that they kinda don’t want to lose.
When massive portions of the population benefits from government welfare programs, infrastructure, and services, they tend to not be fond of people trying to eliminate it all.
World: “Let’s go far right. What could go wrong?”
Trump: “I’m leader of the free world now.”
World: “Oh, that. Yeah, let’s not do that.”
Same reason nobody wants to leave the EU anymore after seeing the impact of Brexit.
The tariffs are causing backlash.
They are watching in real time and can learn from our mistakes, but the other big part is American hyperindividualism. It rewards and emphasizes selfishness and small in groups, both of which are more aligned with right wing ideology
You say that, but the UK just voted in a bunch of ReformUK council members
One opposition candidate who has a history of being somewhat unhinged said make Australia great again once and regretted it fairly quickly, claimed she wasn’t aware she said it and if she did meant nothing to do with Trump.
Dutton (opposition leader) had a marginal seat to begin with though it was sweet to see him lose his seat.
Australian politics is not one to discuss easily as we have compulsory voting, winning an election here isn’t like winning one in the US. American elections are won on the fringes, Australian elections are won in the middle. You characterise Liberal as ‘right wing’ but they are barely right and politically moderate because moving too far left or right doesn’t work when everyone has to vote – your base already votes for you. Hence the elections are won in the middle.
Please don’t read too much into this election, the opposition ran the weakest campaign I’ve seen in my life, whilst Dutton got the nickname ‘Temu Trump’ it doesn’t mean too much other than we found it hilarious. It’s worth noting that on a state level the Liberals are total basket cases in two states (one of them mine) and are on the nose politically in general.
This was not a culture war victory, it was largely one of a political party that normally supports everyday Australians and is historically the party of the working class actually doing so while the opposition runs the worst campaign imaginable during a cost of living crisis.
Sorry for the long preamble – the answer to your question is we aren’t fucking stupid. Australians saw the lack of a plan and didn’t vote for it.
Remember that Canada was almost sure to go conservative before the outrage over tariffs. People are captive to the mood of the moment. The economy is rough right now, which tends to drive people conservative; but then America does it first and enrages all our allies by publicly and economically shitting on them, driving them left.
The world was becoming more conservative, but the extreme actions of Trump has woken up people from across the world to realize that many of their current liberal governments need to be maintained. It’ll take a while, but I’m sure this will help Democrats in 2026 and 2028(at least assuming American learns for the upteenth time that Republicans are terrible).
We have had a century of propaganda convincing idiots that they’re all ‘independent,’ that learning is feminine and feminine is bad, that it’s weak to need or want a society, that sociopathy is good, etc. The Overton window has shifted so far to the right that rich people paying the same taxes as the rest of us is seen as communistic.
I just looked it up and it appeared that one senator used the term “Make Australia Great Again”, and then one hour later was claiming not to remember saying it – which I imagine was after being told off by the campaign. I think that they recognized how damaging it was to be associated with the MAGA movement.
That said, the senator in question was the shadow minister for government efficiency (DOGE, anyone?), so I don’t think they did a great job of hiding their Republican influences.
But do I think that the Trump administration, and the radical-Right movement in general, are seen as a cautionary tale around the world. That said, I also think that Trump’s tariff wars were well-timed to influence both Canada’s and Australia’s elections.
All you have to do is look at the polls in Canada to see the sudden change of fortunes with the conservatives losing their lead just after Trump started his tariffs and talk of invasion. To be fair, it also coincided with Trudeau stepping down, so there are multiple factors.
I would like to point out that the liberals in Canada won by a small margin
But the liberals here won almost exclusively out of fear of Trump
Awesome that Australia too rejected Trumputin!
The reason why it succeeded in the USA is because there are so many uneducated far-righters (Trump supporters). Sooner or later the elitist education system was going to bite the US in the butt (even though that same system failed to help Trumps’ IQ).
Australia has mandatory voting
America has voter suppression
Are you sure trump actually won?
A parliamentary system with a ceremonial president (or other ceremonial leader) is simply better than the US constitution in the 21st century.
Our size and past success is enabling great hubris. You see a lot of MAGA types posting stuff like “why CAN’T we build everything we need here?” in Reddit and other forums. This is more obviously stupid in Australia than the US.
Think it also helps that conservatives in Canada and Australia are more moderate in general.
Idk how it is for other countries but we have loads of misinformation being posted on social media from Russia, China and God knows where else. We also have lots of uneducated folks who laci critical thinking skills. So when they see a picture with words they agree with and/or get outraged by they do very little to question it. It confirms what they want to hear or get mad about.
Im Canada at least, the consensus political thought seems to be that if it wasn’t for Trump, their elections would’ve turned out drastically differently. I’m not as read about Australia.
Trump started attacking our allies rhetorically and economically. This drove a counter movement to their domestic politicians who most closely mirror him.
People saying their citizens are smarter or their govts offer better services as the reason why their recent elections turned out differently are deluding themselves. It’s convenient reasoning but it’s not backed by anything. People all over the world are vulnerable to the ignorance and demagoguery that fuels Trump.
We have a massive right-wing propaganda machine that’s been inundating our information space for decades, there is also a massive amount of right-wing dark money influencing out elections as well. Our education system has dumbed us down, intentionally, especially when it comes to critical thinking skills.
A major reason is that Australians and Europeans just aren’t as right-wing as Americans. Have you heard of the authoritarian personality? It’s this concept in psychology of a type of person who is very submissive to his leaders and prefers to be told what to think rather than think for himself. There’s a nice Wikipedia article to give you a quick summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism
Now scroll down to the Prevalence section of the article. In 2021, a data company called Morning Consult did a survey of people in a number of western countries to measure their authoritarian inclinations. These are the results:
So 25.6% of American have highly authoritarian views while only 12.9% of Australians do. That there is why.
The usa was built to artificially lean to the right because of slavery. It was, apparently, the only way they could get the more rural states to join the union. So right wing parties get more power than they deserve
Because Trump threatened some of these countries pretty much. Also, we have a lot of other issues going on here and our “left” would be those parties.
Because the US is a more right wing country than most of the developed democracies are, in addition to having an unhealthy media and political environment
Because of Trump. Any more than that is noise and has no serious merit. US was simply first and the world reacted as such. That is why you see so many articles how Conservatives were leading the past few months and they lost all of that lead when it was time for election. I’d argue the US had an inverse of that. Biden had a health lead coming into 2024 but when election time happened all that lead Democrats had fizzled out.
It’s 100% due to Trump. We’d have right wing governments in Canada and Aus today if it wasn’t for him.
Trump snapped everyone back to reality. They see the chaos he’s causing here in the US, and they think “I don’t want any of that shit coming here. Hell no.”
Canada and Australia rejected the Right but England unfortunately didn’t, electing huge numbers of Reform councillors in its local elections. 😢
Because here MAGA is a cult
Trump is showing the rest of the world how stupid right wing nutjobs are.
Part of their appeal is a sense that they have some knowledge/insight being buried my mainstream politics
Trump is exposing the hallowness of it to voters everywhere….except America apparently
Right Wing Nazi Media
Other countries aren’t “rejecting right wing rhetoric,” they’re rallying in opposition to Trump. Those might seem similar but they aren’t the same.
If an incumbent conservative party in Europe sold the idea that they would take the fight to Trump on trade they’d do fine too
I mean, the far right is still pretty successful elsewhere. MK, Vox, AfD, Reform, Five Star etc don’t seem to exactly be dying, they will be threats to global order for decades (although it is possible that they will moderate with time).
But Trump is going to be an iron on the legs of far right movements while he is in office because he erodes their narrative that they are the competent, sensible, hard-edged leaders who stand against the feckless and idealistic left. Right wing movements can’t really disown Trump or their policies because they agree with him and their base likes the guy, but they have to if they want to seriously appeal to swayable voters because of the incompetence and chaos on display.
This time, Rump attacked them directly. Canada and Greenland especially, and everyone else sees that and knows they won’t be safe either. It’s not just blazing incompetence on display, it’s a direct threat. It’s the threat they are responding to.
Because the ‘Left’ in this country isn’t putting up a good show. Same with the UK.
Learning from our example would seem the most obvious answer.
My theory? At least in terms of Europe, they were directly the victims of a Fascist government that overran and bombed out their countries during WW2 and killed millions of people in a holocaust, so I imagine that they know firsthand how bad things can really get? We fought in WW2 against the Nazis, but we never were directly affected (sans Pearl Harbor) and there were some people who actually (initially) supported Hitler and the rise of his fascism, some of which was reportedly inspired by our own policies here and treatment of minorities.
Unlike them, apparently, we have more politically-active fascist a-holes than liberals.
The media and cultural landscape over the last 25 years in the USA + the political cult of personality on the right and its subsequent echo chamber is hard to overcome for many voters in America.
Simple bec trumps crazy nonsense has spooked them
I think it’s coming. Just look at Trump’s approval rating.
Also, to be fair…make America great again resonated with American conservatives because it was a campaign quote from their favorite guy– Ronald Raegan. That’s an irrelevant point nowdays, but for many Americans it probably resonated more profoundly than it would in other countries.
Eh…
On the one had, our Dems ran on “we should chase the mythical undecided voter, move to the center!” and Canada’s and Australia’s Liberals ran on “Look at those mother fuckers, they suck!”, which is much better at energizing a base.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s fair to say other places are outright REJECTING Right Wing Rhetoric… It’s FAR too popular even if Trump being Trump cost them this election.
From what I saw, the Canadian right-winger had a real chance at winning until Trump announced the tariffs on them and suddenly they move left hard. It’s kind of had the same effect in lots of places now.
It’s the only good thing he’s done us all.
>Why Are Other Countries Rejecting The Right Wing Rhetoric But USA is Not?
Because the far left thinks electing trump is a good idea as a matter of protest.
Most countries are already much closer to what Donald Trump proposes to make America. Most other countries are very racially or at the least fairly culturally homogeneous and have high enforced barriers to entry.
And many of the exceptions to that, like the UK, Italy, Germany, and France, have seen Trump-like figures and their parties make huge gains. (Reform UK, Miloni, AfD, le Pen)
Because the US rhetoric is causing other countries to rethink bad politics. Someone had to touch the stove to see how awful extremist politics are like. It’s just unfortunate the US had to be the one to prove it to the world.
Because they saw stupid and didn’t want to join it.
For decades Limbaugh and Fox hyped up the population and made them believe they were both the o.g. American™️Patriots and also prisoners in their own country. The democrats either suffered institutional rot or allowed tumblerites to take over their propaganda arm, which combined with advancing technology, post-9/11 jingoism, and cultural focus on business/the economy, and corporate offshoring separated people from each other and got them disconnected from what it means to care about others and express that through politics. Now it’s all “I got mine so screw you” or some variant of wanting to feel powerful if you haven’t gotten yours yet.
There election schedule is different from ours!!!!
But seriously though, who said Americans are not ready to reject the MAGA Right? Our next big election is still a while away. In the meantime, we have to slow cook the American anger towards the Trump administration.
I think they’re afraid of what’s coming with the tariffs, as we all should be.
Other countries don’t have an equivalent to Fox News that is anywhere near as influential and effective at encouraging people to vote against their best interests and reject education.
People act like this slide into fascism is something that just suddenly happened, but the reality is that extreme right-wing conservatives have been sewing that soil for decades now and they’re just now collecting their harvest.
Not saying it couldn’t or won’t happen elsewhere too, but it isn’t as if Trump and Musk just decided one day to “play Nazi” either.
It looks like it is because Trump antagonized those countries. So it’s more a rejection of Trump than their own internal politics in a vacuum.
Freedom of speech has been bastardized by the right wing. See Fox News. Right to misinform and lie for profit. And this then infects other countries
Because we as a nation are a lot stupider.
America is a terrible place full of terrible people. It can happen there too though.
Because Republicans have spent decades propelling right-wing ideology as “conservative thought” while simultaneously destroying public education, so many Americans have a distorted view of the political spectrum and where they are on it.
They don’t have a religious denomination that thinks a mildly left-wing government will send them to death camps the way American Evangelicals do
77 million voted for him. 75 million voted against him. 89 million didn’t vote at all.
Granted that doesn’t address the state and local elections.
But yes please god America actually do something to fight this garbage.