Thank you very much for summarizing the political atmosphere in France and Spain. We are in Our third week in Lisboa and left the US for the exact reason you stated (and because we lived in Texas where women's rights and anyone else that isn’t a white heterosexual male is under attack, and guns out number people.). But I digress….I feel that Macron will win. He is ahead this time by more than his first run and I am hoping that the French see through LePen’s shift from the far far right. Spain is a toss up and I am glad you’ve kept abreast of it and thank you for your research for our benefit. We will continue to enjoy our time in Portugal and hope saner minds prevail in further elections. Thanks again!
So glad you wrote about this, as depressing as it is. I feel like these days it's a battle between finding the best worst place to be and it's good to hear from someone who is already on the ground.
Maga ideology aka hate, has spread world wide and it is troublesome. The French election and debates have been covered here and we are watching intently on what happens this Sunday indeed. Macron is favored to win post the debates when he raised LePen’s current debt with the Cremlin from her prior run which is not sitting well with voters. As someone whose Polish Grandfather was in a Nazi concentration camp and then captured by the Russians and working in their Gulags against his will before escaping (Thank God) I see history repeating itself and there are fewer places to run. My husband and I are an interracial couple and while it’s better, it’s not worry free. Alabama just legalized Interracial marriage in December 2000. Come on France, give us hope in humanity!
Funny, as I think about our move to PT (planning on July 15th with our D7 in place and landing in Lagos) – that if you switch the "expat" label for "immigrant" we will, just as we watch those immigrants coming to the U.S., likely look toward finding our English-speaking tribe of immigrants to lean on each other for companionship and guidance in making our way in our new country. With these political winds blowing in Europe, we wonder how we can, as immigrants, contribute a positive influence toward embracing the values of empathy, compassion and engagement as we shape our new lives. We'd be interested in hearing from other values-aligned others in the Lagos area.
Well said Nancy! While very aware of the situation in France, I was not so aware of the situation in Spain and thank you for bringing it to my attention! I share many of your political concerns and continue to find the political landscape in the US extremely concerning. My hope is that Macron is victorious. We shall soon see! In the meantime, keep safe and well.
I will be moving from the US to Portugal in another week and the upcoming election in France is deeply concerning to me. My decision to permanently leave the US prior to the 2024 US election and in fact prior to the 2022 midterm elections, stems from the growing trend of far right politics, ignorance, and intolerance being promoted by US leaders who have been awarded misplaced power. My maternal family history makes a move to Europe seem counter-intuitive yet, in spite of my concerns for the future, and there are many, I believe the US has seen its best days and that by keeping a reasonably low profile, I will fare better in a country without a strong gun culture.
I pray that we evolve into a non-violent global society where people's actions reflect the fact that in truth, we are all different yet, we are all one. I appreciate your posts about political trends as I believe far too many people are avoiding this critical topic. Thanks again.
Thanks Michele. I have already received one less supportive email from a reader suggesting that I should stay in my lane and avoid such topics. Of course, I have not and will not. Though I sometimes think I should become the Heather Cox Richardson of Portugal, I truly think about this stuff a lot, I think it best that I continue to mix it up: a little travel, a little food, medicine, language, culture, etc. Thanks again for your support.
Stay in your lane? Really? And, what pray tell is your lane. Jeez…Thanks for writing about this. Politics are central to everyone’s life whether or not we talk about it. Keep mixing it up. You left the U.S. because of the march to the Right in the U.S. so observing and commenting on politics in Europe is as pertinent as commenting on culture, housing, food, healthcare et al. Thank you for doing so. It matters.
My wife and I are currently shopping for our new home in Porto, Portugal. We are exhausted by the violence and politics in the US and hope to enjoy a peaceful retirement in Portugal. The rise of extremism is distressing news. Especially since this time we are the immigrants that citizens might want to expel.
This will sound harsh, but permit me to reframe the issue a bit. Are you white? Do you have financial resources? If yes, then don't worry. As the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees across Europe has shown...the "concern" expressed by the alt-right tends to be related to black and brown people from Africa and the Middle East.
You can post politics - but be prepared that not everyone will agree with you!
Moving right isn't necessarily a bad thing. Having a border is a functional part of a country.
I'm not going to type an essay but I welcome conservative parties gaining power in Europe. Do I agree with everything they say? No. But I'd rather live in a slightly center right society than a hateful woke one any day.
Not everybody wants a woke, anti free speech, police defunding, borderless society that loves to spew misandry, hatred against white people, and so on. No thank you.
I feel like people in first world countries have zero sense of perspective these days. Want to see real right or left wing how about the hundreds of despicable dictatorships across the world.
This in contrast to right-of-center people in Europe and USA who god forbid want a strong border - such evil!
Quinn, I try not to respond to comments like this. But clearly we disagree. I find it interesting that the right has co-opted the term "woke" which originated in the African American community more than 50 years ago. But when one does not want to do the hard work of creating policy and then consensus one finds other ways of garnering voter support. Thus we have the elimination of the centre-right and the fabrication of the "woke tyranny" (Trump). There is a difference between free speech and hate speech. I don't want to defund the police but I would like them to be trained to de-escalate situations rather than shoot unarmed black men. I don't hate white people I just want all people to be treated with the same respect and have the same privileges as white men. Perhaps we could start by paying men and women the same amount. And while I am on the topic lets provide women the same reproductive rights men receive. And of course, we could try to address the quality of health care while men receive vs that of black men & women. Until we admit there are biases we will not be able to fix these inequities.
Dictatorships are becoming a first world problem...Hungary which is hosting CPAC comes to mind. And while there are few policy issues on which I agree with Rep. Liz Cheney, I think she and I agree that the actions of some in the prior administration, and some GOP members of Congress came dangerously close to interfering with a free and fair election.
In closing, l want to thank you for publicly posting your comment. Most often the really "challenging" response are sent to my email and often contain more contentious language. We disagree...but I will always defend your right to express your point of view.
We do disagree - for instance I know that everyone in the USA (regardless of whether they're a white male) are exceptionally privileged. In fact, I type to you from a country where people earn less than ten dollars a day. They would kill for the privilege of a black american.
but the way you responded made me respect you. With the maturity of "I will always defend your right to express your point of view".
If more people had that attitude we would have a more harmonious society.
Good post Nancy, thanks for writing about this. It seems to me that the previous consensus that existed in most developed countries, in which a center-left and a center-right alternated in power regularly, and where there was a broad agreement to leave social welfare policies in place, is breaking down everywhere. Certainly this has happened in France, where the legacy center-left and center-right parties have all but disappeared. In the US and UK, the traditional center-left and center-right parties still exist in name, but in the US, the Republicans have gone off the deep end and are now an openly anti-democratic party, and in the UK, the Tories are headed in that direction. Spain has experienced a great deal of turmoil around the structure of its political parties as well. Portugal does not seem to have traveled as far down this path, but as you pointed out, the far-right Chega party increased its numbers in the legislature which is not a good thing.
I continue to struggle to understand why this is happening. My cynical and oversimplified explanation is that the wealthy interests that fund the right have figured out how to use propaganda and existing fears and hatreds to rile people up in to voting for them, even when they neither really agree with nor benefit from their policies. The Republican party doesn't even bother putting out a platform anymore - in the last election, I believe their platform was literally just "whatever Trump wants". Of course, we all know the real agenda: tax cuts for the rich, and destroy government's ability to regulate business, and therefore render it powerless to do anything meaningful to address climate change.
We're still in the midst of a pandemic that killed at least 1 million people in the US alone, and we are rapidly running out of time to be able to ameliorate the effects of and prepare to adapt to climate change - and there is so much baked in already that even if we stopped carbon emissions tomorrow, the world will still have to deal with a larger number climate disasters, water shortages, crop failures and pandemics.
And yet what are we worried about in the US? Apparently, the real threat to humanity is that children might learn that gay people exist, or math textbooks might be teaching "critical race theory" (and of course, probably fewer than 1 in 100 people who sling that term around have any idea what it means). I'd say it's Orwellian, but even Orwell couldn't have come up with things like QAnon.
I'm sorry to be so negative and full of gloom and doom, but if we don't recognize what the problems in front of us are, there is no way we can begin to solve them, and I'm certainly not ready to give up hope.
It seems likely that Macron will win on Sunday, and I certainly hope he does, since electing LePen would quite possible be the beginning of the end of the EU. But a narrow win by Macron doesn't mean that we who value democracy and reality-based policymaking are out of the woods in France or anywhere else. As the effects of climate change continue to get worse, we will see more and more climate refugees and anti-immigrant sentiment will only increase. It's going to get harder to fend off right-wing authoritarians as we move forward, not easier, and I don't see anyone out there who has a convincing strategy for how to keep people on board with democracy. It's not time to give up, but it's time to get to work.
Ken, so well written!!!!! I have not thought this through completely but my gut tells me extreme income inequality is part of the cause. Yes there will always be rich people but we need more Warren Buffett’s and fewer Elon Musk’s. Imagine being able to buy Twitter…the fact that such a rich man doesn’t need to use his own money, instead borrowing it on untaxed assets and then create an environment where any wack-job can promote the conspiracy theory of the day.
Thanks Nancy, and I agree that wealth inequality is a big part of what's going on. At the very least, I'd like to see billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. If someone starts a successful business, then I don't mind seeing them reap the rewards of that, but they should also contribute back to the system that helped them become successful. However creative and hard-working any wealthy person is, they did not pay to educate all of the people that work for them, they didn't build the roads and other infrastructure that their businesses depend on, and they didn't pay to develop courts and a legal system that protects their interests. Those things only exist because community-minded people in the past were willing to contribute some of their income toward developing them.
It is difficult to stay positive sometimes, but what choice do we have but to try? Since retiring and moving to Portugal, I've started reading history books, and that has helped me put things in perspective. Even with all of the bad things going on now, the average person, at least in the developed world, lives better than 99% of people ever have.
Thank you very much for summarizing the political atmosphere in France and Spain. We are in Our third week in Lisboa and left the US for the exact reason you stated (and because we lived in Texas where women's rights and anyone else that isn’t a white heterosexual male is under attack, and guns out number people.). But I digress….I feel that Macron will win. He is ahead this time by more than his first run and I am hoping that the French see through LePen’s shift from the far far right. Spain is a toss up and I am glad you’ve kept abreast of it and thank you for your research for our benefit. We will continue to enjoy our time in Portugal and hope saner minds prevail in further elections. Thanks again!
So glad you wrote about this, as depressing as it is. I feel like these days it's a battle between finding the best worst place to be and it's good to hear from someone who is already on the ground.
Maga ideology aka hate, has spread world wide and it is troublesome. The French election and debates have been covered here and we are watching intently on what happens this Sunday indeed. Macron is favored to win post the debates when he raised LePen’s current debt with the Cremlin from her prior run which is not sitting well with voters. As someone whose Polish Grandfather was in a Nazi concentration camp and then captured by the Russians and working in their Gulags against his will before escaping (Thank God) I see history repeating itself and there are fewer places to run. My husband and I are an interracial couple and while it’s better, it’s not worry free. Alabama just legalized Interracial marriage in December 2000. Come on France, give us hope in humanity!
Funny, as I think about our move to PT (planning on July 15th with our D7 in place and landing in Lagos) – that if you switch the "expat" label for "immigrant" we will, just as we watch those immigrants coming to the U.S., likely look toward finding our English-speaking tribe of immigrants to lean on each other for companionship and guidance in making our way in our new country. With these political winds blowing in Europe, we wonder how we can, as immigrants, contribute a positive influence toward embracing the values of empathy, compassion and engagement as we shape our new lives. We'd be interested in hearing from other values-aligned others in the Lagos area.
Well said Nancy! While very aware of the situation in France, I was not so aware of the situation in Spain and thank you for bringing it to my attention! I share many of your political concerns and continue to find the political landscape in the US extremely concerning. My hope is that Macron is victorious. We shall soon see! In the meantime, keep safe and well.
Another interesting read Nancy, thank you x
We can run but we cannot hide. It’s happening everywhere and it’s darn frightening.
I will be moving from the US to Portugal in another week and the upcoming election in France is deeply concerning to me. My decision to permanently leave the US prior to the 2024 US election and in fact prior to the 2022 midterm elections, stems from the growing trend of far right politics, ignorance, and intolerance being promoted by US leaders who have been awarded misplaced power. My maternal family history makes a move to Europe seem counter-intuitive yet, in spite of my concerns for the future, and there are many, I believe the US has seen its best days and that by keeping a reasonably low profile, I will fare better in a country without a strong gun culture.
I pray that we evolve into a non-violent global society where people's actions reflect the fact that in truth, we are all different yet, we are all one. I appreciate your posts about political trends as I believe far too many people are avoiding this critical topic. Thanks again.
Thanks Michele. I have already received one less supportive email from a reader suggesting that I should stay in my lane and avoid such topics. Of course, I have not and will not. Though I sometimes think I should become the Heather Cox Richardson of Portugal, I truly think about this stuff a lot, I think it best that I continue to mix it up: a little travel, a little food, medicine, language, culture, etc. Thanks again for your support.
Stay in your lane? Really? And, what pray tell is your lane. Jeez…Thanks for writing about this. Politics are central to everyone’s life whether or not we talk about it. Keep mixing it up. You left the U.S. because of the march to the Right in the U.S. so observing and commenting on politics in Europe is as pertinent as commenting on culture, housing, food, healthcare et al. Thank you for doing so. It matters.
Amen!❤️
You do you boo! Everyone else is taken💕
My wife and I are currently shopping for our new home in Porto, Portugal. We are exhausted by the violence and politics in the US and hope to enjoy a peaceful retirement in Portugal. The rise of extremism is distressing news. Especially since this time we are the immigrants that citizens might want to expel.
This will sound harsh, but permit me to reframe the issue a bit. Are you white? Do you have financial resources? If yes, then don't worry. As the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees across Europe has shown...the "concern" expressed by the alt-right tends to be related to black and brown people from Africa and the Middle East.
Amen!
You can post politics - but be prepared that not everyone will agree with you!
Moving right isn't necessarily a bad thing. Having a border is a functional part of a country.
I'm not going to type an essay but I welcome conservative parties gaining power in Europe. Do I agree with everything they say? No. But I'd rather live in a slightly center right society than a hateful woke one any day.
Not everybody wants a woke, anti free speech, police defunding, borderless society that loves to spew misandry, hatred against white people, and so on. No thank you.
I feel like people in first world countries have zero sense of perspective these days. Want to see real right or left wing how about the hundreds of despicable dictatorships across the world.
This in contrast to right-of-center people in Europe and USA who god forbid want a strong border - such evil!
Quinn, I try not to respond to comments like this. But clearly we disagree. I find it interesting that the right has co-opted the term "woke" which originated in the African American community more than 50 years ago. But when one does not want to do the hard work of creating policy and then consensus one finds other ways of garnering voter support. Thus we have the elimination of the centre-right and the fabrication of the "woke tyranny" (Trump). There is a difference between free speech and hate speech. I don't want to defund the police but I would like them to be trained to de-escalate situations rather than shoot unarmed black men. I don't hate white people I just want all people to be treated with the same respect and have the same privileges as white men. Perhaps we could start by paying men and women the same amount. And while I am on the topic lets provide women the same reproductive rights men receive. And of course, we could try to address the quality of health care while men receive vs that of black men & women. Until we admit there are biases we will not be able to fix these inequities.
Dictatorships are becoming a first world problem...Hungary which is hosting CPAC comes to mind. And while there are few policy issues on which I agree with Rep. Liz Cheney, I think she and I agree that the actions of some in the prior administration, and some GOP members of Congress came dangerously close to interfering with a free and fair election.
In closing, l want to thank you for publicly posting your comment. Most often the really "challenging" response are sent to my email and often contain more contentious language. We disagree...but I will always defend your right to express your point of view.
@Nancy Whiteman
We do disagree - for instance I know that everyone in the USA (regardless of whether they're a white male) are exceptionally privileged. In fact, I type to you from a country where people earn less than ten dollars a day. They would kill for the privilege of a black american.
but the way you responded made me respect you. With the maturity of "I will always defend your right to express your point of view".
If more people had that attitude we would have a more harmonious society.
Relieved that Macron appears to have won by a sizable margin
I too let out a celebratory yelp when the News Notification came across my cell phone.
A sigh of relief!
Good post Nancy, thanks for writing about this. It seems to me that the previous consensus that existed in most developed countries, in which a center-left and a center-right alternated in power regularly, and where there was a broad agreement to leave social welfare policies in place, is breaking down everywhere. Certainly this has happened in France, where the legacy center-left and center-right parties have all but disappeared. In the US and UK, the traditional center-left and center-right parties still exist in name, but in the US, the Republicans have gone off the deep end and are now an openly anti-democratic party, and in the UK, the Tories are headed in that direction. Spain has experienced a great deal of turmoil around the structure of its political parties as well. Portugal does not seem to have traveled as far down this path, but as you pointed out, the far-right Chega party increased its numbers in the legislature which is not a good thing.
I continue to struggle to understand why this is happening. My cynical and oversimplified explanation is that the wealthy interests that fund the right have figured out how to use propaganda and existing fears and hatreds to rile people up in to voting for them, even when they neither really agree with nor benefit from their policies. The Republican party doesn't even bother putting out a platform anymore - in the last election, I believe their platform was literally just "whatever Trump wants". Of course, we all know the real agenda: tax cuts for the rich, and destroy government's ability to regulate business, and therefore render it powerless to do anything meaningful to address climate change.
We're still in the midst of a pandemic that killed at least 1 million people in the US alone, and we are rapidly running out of time to be able to ameliorate the effects of and prepare to adapt to climate change - and there is so much baked in already that even if we stopped carbon emissions tomorrow, the world will still have to deal with a larger number climate disasters, water shortages, crop failures and pandemics.
And yet what are we worried about in the US? Apparently, the real threat to humanity is that children might learn that gay people exist, or math textbooks might be teaching "critical race theory" (and of course, probably fewer than 1 in 100 people who sling that term around have any idea what it means). I'd say it's Orwellian, but even Orwell couldn't have come up with things like QAnon.
I'm sorry to be so negative and full of gloom and doom, but if we don't recognize what the problems in front of us are, there is no way we can begin to solve them, and I'm certainly not ready to give up hope.
It seems likely that Macron will win on Sunday, and I certainly hope he does, since electing LePen would quite possible be the beginning of the end of the EU. But a narrow win by Macron doesn't mean that we who value democracy and reality-based policymaking are out of the woods in France or anywhere else. As the effects of climate change continue to get worse, we will see more and more climate refugees and anti-immigrant sentiment will only increase. It's going to get harder to fend off right-wing authoritarians as we move forward, not easier, and I don't see anyone out there who has a convincing strategy for how to keep people on board with democracy. It's not time to give up, but it's time to get to work.
Ken, so well written!!!!! I have not thought this through completely but my gut tells me extreme income inequality is part of the cause. Yes there will always be rich people but we need more Warren Buffett’s and fewer Elon Musk’s. Imagine being able to buy Twitter…the fact that such a rich man doesn’t need to use his own money, instead borrowing it on untaxed assets and then create an environment where any wack-job can promote the conspiracy theory of the day.
Sometimes it is difficult to stay positive.
Thanks Nancy, and I agree that wealth inequality is a big part of what's going on. At the very least, I'd like to see billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. If someone starts a successful business, then I don't mind seeing them reap the rewards of that, but they should also contribute back to the system that helped them become successful. However creative and hard-working any wealthy person is, they did not pay to educate all of the people that work for them, they didn't build the roads and other infrastructure that their businesses depend on, and they didn't pay to develop courts and a legal system that protects their interests. Those things only exist because community-minded people in the past were willing to contribute some of their income toward developing them.
It is difficult to stay positive sometimes, but what choice do we have but to try? Since retiring and moving to Portugal, I've started reading history books, and that has helped me put things in perspective. Even with all of the bad things going on now, the average person, at least in the developed world, lives better than 99% of people ever have.