[orbifold]

You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist. Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right.

[dahdum]

My example would be prolifers, that requires pretty deep empathy for the unborn to override the natural empathy for the mothers.

[lordCarbonFiber]

Except prolifers don't care at all about the unborn; only about erroding the rights of women. This is why you don't see any of them campaigning to reduce miscarriages or enable better prenatal care.

[dahdum]

41% of women are pro-life, to think they are only driven by the motivation to erode their own rights is far too simplistic.

Broad characterization of the opposing side as evil, morally bankrupt, racist, sexist, fascist, communist, or other negative traits is why our politics are so toxic.

[lordCarbonFiber]

[citation needed]

Instead of "but both sides" and a false appeal for civility, you could read some accounts of people involved with the movement.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...

[dahdum]

It's not a false appeal, I genuinely believe the hasty generalization of the opposing side cheapens the argument for prochoice.

That article was a good personal account which could definitely change minds.

[eropple]

> You can be super emphatic an right wing, how do you think someone becomes a populist nationalist.

At the bottom? Fear of the other; in the United States, fear of the other rooted particularly in racism. Because it's not "nationalism" here--a disease by itself, but a controllable one. It's white supremacism, given nicer clothes by calling it "white nationalism" for some godforsaken reason, peddled by leaders who want the bottom to vote their way. It's not like it's news. Lee Atwater pegged this whole disgraceful thing decades ago. To legitimize and get boots on the ground for economically regressive policies, the right wing of the United States leveraged this racially-motivated insecurity; now the racist tiger has eaten them and they are so very surprised that the racist tiger was racist all along.

At the top? They're the ones doing the peddling. Some is surely true-believer racism. Some is also surely cynicism--because the bottom will eat it up and there's your leash to drag them where you want. It isn't exactly complex.

(And, no, Obama and Clinton are not "ultra right" from a European perspective; that's the sort of mendacious both-sidesing I expect out of actually far right speakers, though. Obama and Clinton would be generically center- to center-right politicians on a Europe-calibrated axis. The modern Republican Party is more like Ukip.)

[hueving]

Nationalism and white supremacism are not the same thing at all. Equating them and needlessly injecting race into it is bog standard Russian divisive propaganda.

[eropple]

In America, they are. Both are historical and current disasters; the icing on the cake of American white supremacism fueling American nationalism is extra gross, though.

I do want to compliment you for the rhetorical twirl of trying to co-opt reality with the Russian specter, though. It's bold. Projecting...but very bold.

[hueving]

Please try to rephrase that by actually saying something. I'm genuinely curious why you think that absurd equality is so obvious it requires no evidence.

[s73v3r_]

"Besides from a European perspective even someone like Obama or even more obviously Hillary (based on the amount of war mongering she has done alone) is center or ultra right."

All things are relative. Given that description of Obama or Clinton, what would you classify those who ran as Republicans in the last election?

[_emacsomancer_]

By some measures, Clinton campaigned (slightly) to the right of Trump in the run-up to the general election: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

For the primaries, using similar measures at least, the Republicans all more or less clumped together to the right of Clinton.

[s73v3r_]

That article makes claims that are just not true. "Trump supported a decent minimum wage from the start, wants free education in state universities, has supported universal health care, consistently opposed the Transpacific Partnership Agreement and wants more bank regulation."

He very clearly is not in favor of free education, he is very clearly not in favor of raising the minimum wage, he very clearly is not in favor of universal health care, and very clearly is not in favor of more bank regulation.

So I find the claims that Clinton was more to the right of Trump quite dubious.

[_emacsomancer_]

I think Trump has taken almost every conceivable position on every issue, so the claims in the article were presumably true for some particular moment of time.