New Zealand abandons Labour and shifts to the right as country votes for wholesale change

New Zealand voters have delivered a forceful rejection of the Labour government as a surge in support for the National party delivered what analysts described as a “bloodbath” for the government and a new right-leaning era for politics in the country.

The result marked a dramatic change in fortunes for the Labour party, which three years earlier – led by Jacinda Ardern - secured a historic mandate, but saw its support dwindle in the face of rising living costs and the Covid pandemic.

Layoffs at West Virginia University Expose Right-Wing Trends Sweeping Higher Ed

The current crisis at West Virginia University (WVU) is a case study demonstrating not only the telltale signs of manufactured neoliberal austerity, but also the underlying acceptance of right-wing extremist trends in higher education masquerading as “necessary” budget cuts for the financial survival of the university.

Nationalist, populist, far-right parties eye rising support across Europe

Riding waves of fear and anger emanating from Russia’s war in Ukraine, the cost-of-living crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, nationalist, populist and far-right parties are eyeing rising support across Europe.

Polls have suggested that a backlash against immigration, LGBTQ rights, abortion and support for Ukraine is unfolding across the continent.

That has political forces branding themselves “conservative” and “patriotic” eyeing next year’s EU elections as a prime test.

Accelerationism: the obscure idea inspiring white supremacist killers around the world

Before he traveled back to his home in California for the 2017-’18 winter break, the University of Pennsylvania sophomore had been elected managing editor of a campus cooking publication called Penn Appétit. It’s a position he ended up never filling.

On the morning of January 2, his parents noticed that he’d left their house in the Orange County community of Foothill Ranch and tried to contact him. When he didn’t respond, they checked his Snapchat account and found messages between their son and Sam Woodward, a former high school classmate. The two had planned to hang out at a local park.

New Israeli government or polls: Midnight deadline for Netanyahu

Israel‘s political elite is racing against time to form a new government through high-stakes backchannel negotiations before a midnight deadline.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s right-wing coalition has to secure the support of Avigdor Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction on Wednesday or face an unprecedented second election of the year.

Netanyahu’s Likud and its right wing and religious allies won a total of 60 seats in April 9 elections in the 120-seat parliament in the polls.

Modi’s Win Bodes Ill for India, and the World

The world’s largest secular democracy has just moved further away from its foundational ideals—exemplifying a worrisome global phenomenon.

India, like the United States, was established as a secular, democratic republic. The ascension to power five years ago of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who was banned from the United States for almost a decade for allegedly presiding over an anti-minority pogrom in his home state, struck a severe blow at these principles. His re-election (with a bigger parliamentary majority this time) cripples these values even further.

India's Right Wing Tightens Grip As Modi And BJP Set To Sweep Elections

NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on Thursday won a second consecutive five-year term as prime minister of India, months after bringing India to the brink of war with Pakistan, its nuclear-armed neighbor.

The BJP and its allies won a sizable majority in India’s lower House of Parliament, proving Modi’s continuing popularity despite his inability to provide jobs for India’s legions of unemployed youth — a central promise from his 2014 campaign.

Five years after he was first elected, the economy remains sluggish and the credibility of many of India’s democratic institutions — from the judiciary, to the election commission, to the media, and even the country’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India — have been compromised.

Right-wing parties win regional Italian election

ROME — A coalition of right-wing Italian parties won a regional election in Abruzzo, which pit the country’s ruling parties against one another, results on Monday showed.

The right-wing alliance, which includes the League, the Brothers of Italy and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia won 48 percent, toppling a center-left coalition that took second place with 31.3 percent.

Boris Johnson is auditioning to lead a grim, insular Britain

For many years it struck me as amusing rather than ominous that the place where I first spent any time with Boris Johnson was a Munich beerhall. We were journalists covering a defence summit in the 1990s. We’d both filed our pieces – he to the Telegraph, me to the Guardian – and we were bored. So, along with the man from the Times, we took a taxi into the city centre and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer and chatting. Johnson made a lot of good jokes, and one or two rather loud and tasteless ones about Hitler and Munich beerhalls.

Spanish People's party shifts to right with new leader

Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP), which was cast out of government at the beginning of June after a string of corruption scandals, has shifted further to the right by choosing an outspokenly traditionalist MP as its new leader.

Pablo Casado, who served as the party’s communications vice-secretary and was also chief of staff to the former prime minister José María Aznar, was elected in a poll of PP members on Saturday.

Rise of far-right in Italy and Austria gives Putin some friends in the west

Suddenly, Vladimir Putin has some useful friends in the west.

As he looks to improve relations with Europe, at a new low since the March nerve-agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, the Russian president knows he can count on the backing of at least two capitals.

Both Austria and Italy’s new governments, formed late last year and last month, include populist, far-right parties that make little secret of their sympathy for Moscow – and have even signed cooperation agreements with Putin’s ruling United Russia party.

Italy is facing regime change. The future will be repressive

Is Italy Europe’s new political laboratory – the country in which liberal democracy changes its hue and sinks below the horizon into populism? The question is legitimate, not only because historians have long established how, in his rise to power, Hitler took Mussolini as a model. And not only because Donald Trump was preceded on to the world stage by Silvio Berlusconi – another unscrupulous tycoon devoid of political experience, unfit for government, and with whom Trump shares more than a few personal traits. Above all the question is legitimate because, in Italy, not one but two populisms have won. Together they command more than half the votes in parliament and were until a few days ago on the verge of forming a government.

Far Right Surges As Italy Faces Hung Parliament

ROME (Reuters) - Italy faces a prolonged period of political instability after voters delivered a hung parliament on Sunday, spurning traditional parties and flocking to anti-establishment and far-right groups in record numbers.

With votes counted from more than 75 percent of polling stations, it looked almost certain that none of the three main factions would be able to govern alone and there was little prospect of a return to mainstream government, creating a dilemma for the European Union.

Italy's Election Is A Blow To European Unity And A Boost For The Far Right

Italy’s election on Sunday didn’t deliver a clear victory to any single party or alliance, yet there was an unmistakable winner: the populist and far-right parties that campaigned on anti-immigrant sentiment, anti-establishment views and an avowed dislike of the European Union.

The preliminary results of the vote show a fractured political landscape with no easy path for parties to negotiate a coalition government. Both established center-right and center-left parties lost support, while the populist and ideologically amorphous Five Star Movement gained the largest single share of the vote.

Poland: Authoritarian, not patriotic

BUDAPEST — The massive independence day march that took place in Warsaw earlier this month left even the harshest critics of Poland’s right-wing government speechless. How could Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto leader, let the “evil genie” of neo-Nazism and hateful nationalism “out of the bottle”?

Other policies pushed forward by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) have incited a similar mix of outrage and bewilderment. Why does Kaczyński not appear to worry that the judiciary he captured may one day be used against his own party? Is he not afraid that antagonizing Germany, a key NATO and EU ally, may eventually help Russian President Vladimir Putin? Is he not uneasy about increasing Poland’s economic vulnerability by lowering the retirement age and introducing massive new welfare spending?

A mission for journalism in a time of crisis

No former period, in the history of our Country, has been marked by the agitation of questions of a more important character than those which are now claiming the attention of the public.” So began the announcement, nearly 200 years ago, of a brand-new newspaper to be published in Manchester, England, which proclaimed that “the spirited discussion of political questions” and “the accurate detail of facts” were “particularly important at this juncture”.

Now we are living through another extraordinary period in history: one defined by dazzling political shocks and the disruptive impact of new technologies in every part of our lives. The public sphere has changed more radically in the past two decades than in the previous two centuries – and news organisations, including this one, have worked hard to adjust.

The Rise and Fall of Steve Bannon

In March, I went to the White House to visit Steve Bannon, who today was fired by President Trump. After Bannon showed off his office and his famous whiteboard, we sat down at a wooden conference table in the large corner office of Reince Priebus, who was then the White House chief of staff. Moments earlier, Priebus had left the building, and Bannon seemed to use the chief of staff’s office as if it were his own, roaming around while he talked, and flinging a Coke can in Priebus’s trash bin, as if he were marking territory. Despite the show of confidence, Bannon felt like he was beset by enemies.

Bannon's security clearance a challenge outside the White House

Legal experts say Stephen Bannon may face a challenge in his security clearance as President Trump's now-former chief strategist returns to his pre-White House career as executive chairman at the media company Breitbart.

“People with Top Secret clearances are bound by a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) for life,” said Bradley Moss, a partner at the Law Office of Mark Zaid specializing in national security and security clearance law.

White supremacist rallies are planned for at least nine cities this weekend — here’s what to expect

A few blocks away, I arrived at the edge of Emancipation Park, where the rally was supposed to have taken place, to find skirmishes already underway between right-wing extremists and members of the loose alliance known as AntiFa (for anti-fascist). Smoke billowed near the AntiFa contingent, perhaps from one of its own canisters, or maybe a so-called flash-bang hurled by police. It was all so chaotic, that it was difficult to understand what was taking place.

How Union-Busting Bosses Propel the Right Wing to Power

U.S. bosses fight unions with a ferocity that is unmatched in the so-called free world. In the early days of the republic, master craftsmen prosecuted fledgling unions as criminal conspiracies that aimed to block their consolidation of wealth and property. During modern times, corporations threaten the jobs of pro-union workers in over half of all union elections—and follow through on the threat one-third of the time. In between, bosses have resorted to spies and frame-ups, physical violence, court injunctions, private armies of strikebreakers, racist appeals and immigrant exploitation.