Tulio: The Philippines sounds more rightwing than the US right now. Their bloodthirsty, murderous ultra-nationalist despot is rather popular.
Middle East countries are conservative.
I don’t think Americans themselves are nearly as rightwing as the government. When they are polled, they seemed to be more center-left. From what I understand, most Americans support gay marriage, most believe climate change is a real threat, most support increasing the minimum wage, most believe in upholding Roe v Wade, most want to protect the environment, most now want marijuana legalized, I’ve even heard that most believe in universal health care now.
On the actual issues when polled a la carte, most people aren’t rightwing. Many Republicans however have been brainwashed into thinking that any Democratic president will turn America into Venezuela under Chavez. They bring up Venezuelan socialism all the time and accuse the Democratic party of wanting to be like Latin American socialism, which is bullshit of course. The progressives in the Democratic party look at European social democracy as a model, not Venezuela or Cuba.
Show me anywhere on Earth where US Republican Party style conservatism is popular. Duterte says he is socialist, and he got elected President. Sound like a Republican to you. He has a good relationship with the New People’s Army, an armed Maoist revolutionary group. He had an excellent relationship with them when in government in Mindanao. Still think Duterte is a Republican.
Yes, Middle Eastern countries are conservative (as are many countries), but that is just social conservatism. Social conservatism barely matters. Conservatism is only important in economics and in nothing else. Show me one Middle Eastern country anywhere where US-style conservatism is popular. One, one, one.
Venezuela is just a case where they tried to put in European social democracy, but the elite down there is so fanatically reactionary that they fought it at every turn, mostly recently completely blowing up the whole economy via sabotage, which their leaders have even confessed to. So Venezuela is what happens when the capitalist opposition opposes social democratic reforms with all their weight. I don’t see how Chavez was trying to do anything different than say Norway for instance. That seemed to be his model.
Social democracy or democratic socialism in one form or another is simply the way of almost the entire world. The whole planet runs on variations of this system or in some cases such as China, even further Left than that. China is far to the Left of social democracy.
