obviously trying to find intellectual rigour in their arguments is a fool's errand but christ how can you both go for "we need to restore trust in politics" and "oh naturally we should let the woman who committed several crimes run for office"
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
However, if one has regard to the precedents (e.g. Brexit and Trump) I can also accept that the move to deny Le Pen the opportunity to run may be counterproductive - particularly if her party finds a plausible new candidate.
My scorching hot take is that if you, as a citizen of a broadly functional democracy, have been convicted of serious crimes in a court of law, you've no business holding public office. There I said it, etc.
There you go again with your “reasonable arguments” and “things that no sane person would have disputed around 15 years ago”. Next you’ll be wanting a podcast.
there's apparently now a view in every right-leaning British publication that nothing ought to be done about the far right, ever - they should be able to say whatever they want and do whatever they want, yet remain untouchable, and it's becoming increasingly hard not to parse it as outright support
The far right as unimpeachable anointed tribunes of a section of society which must be treated with kid gloves and absolutely not in the same way as everyone else because a) reasons and b) otherwise bad stuff will happen
I almost find myself preferring the ones who say “yeah, they’re fash, so what, the people like them” to those who argue that we should give the far right a free pass for fear of how it might react to being held to the rules.
Yes, there's this weird sense of "yes I know those are the rules, but they don't understand the rules and will get very upset if we apply them, so we should give them a pass". Which, ironically, is exactly what wouldn't work at the tough-on-discipline schools the right loves
Absolutely this. I think that we have taken the war's lesson of *🚨watch out lads this could happen again🚨*, to perversely frame the far right as some special kind of sin / inevitable force / base human urge, which *must be expressed* to be controlled
Comments
For many years those convicted of criminal offences were allowed to retain their seat in Parliament. (Or even run for office - see e.g. Robert Sands).
Yet those individuals sent to prison are denied the opportunity to vote!
Although I guess you could say the same of Trump and look what happened there…