Rome is about to hold its mayoral election. On the ballot is Sergio Iacomoni AKA Nero, running with his "Nero List" ("Lista Nerone").
Iacomoni is a well-known Roman Empire reenactor who has traveled the world with his historical society and says he wants to "resurrect Rome"
Hardcore
The platform for the Nero List (Full name: "Roman Historical Movement - Nero List") involves heavy subsidizing of traditional Roman festivals and music, as well as a promise to "sponsor bagpipers in each municipality" movimentostoricoromano.it/programma
Yes!
As his name implies he's a strong proponent of Nero revisionism and believes he was not responsible for burning down Rome
They even have billboards
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Truly insane developments in Romania right now. A hardcore ultranationalist candidate is surging in a new poll for next year's presidential election. Diana Sosoaca frequently campaigns with images of "Greater Romania"- which would annex territory from most of its neighbors
The story of how this happened is pretty revealing. AUR, a nationalist party, made it into the Romanian parliament back in 2020, electing Sosoaca with them as an MP. She split the party, and founded her own more extremist effort. Now she's polling tied with the AUR candidate
It's a very clear example of how extremist drift can happen. When a nationalist party makes a breakthrough, that raises the profile of its members, which can lead to splinter situations like this. Splinters are not always successful, but this is a serious situation
Javier Milei takes office as Argentina's president in 4 days.
He plans to initiate a program of "economic shock therapy," which entails extreme spending cuts along with mass privatization.
Milei: “Everything which can be in private sector hands, will be in private sector hands"
Shock therapy has a history in Latin America and will be familiar to those who have learned about Chile's military junta, which pursued a similar strategy guided by the Milton Friedman-influenced "Chicago Boys"
Something to watch for, given how many have celebrated Milei's win, is the increasing popularity of these ideas among the far-right.
Ultra-liberal economics has already been a trend within the faction and the Milei fandom could accelerate that globally
You will never believe what is going on with the Bavarian AfD
(This guy is 22 years old)
A *legislator*, he was just elected in the Bavarian state election that was held this month
"A German politician has been arrested for allegedly displaying Nazi symbols, after 'Sieg Heil' was regularly heard coming from the headquarters of a fraternity to which he belongs" bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
- Brazil had a president who supported the past military dictatorship
- Runner-up candidate in Chile also openly supported the Pinochet regime
- Obligatory mention of Keiko Fujimori in Peru
- Now Argentina could have a president (and VP) who apologizes for the 1976 dictatorship
Milei is a far-right libertarian so it's a different brand of politics compared to someone like Bolsonaro, but the theme here is a radical shift in historical memory toward authoritarian regimes that you can actually observe around the world
(Although the far-right libertarians are also some of the people who like to celebrate the Pinochet regime throwing political dissidents out of helicopters, so you can see the connections)
Moreover the high German threshold of 5% means that 35% could be outsized in state parliament, with almost 40% of seats or more depending on how other parties shake out
Apocalypse scenario would be if the other smaller parties all somehow missed out on the threshold. That would actually produce an AfD majority, although it'd be especially unlikely for Linke. For other parties though, they're only a few points from danger zone
Ruuben Kaalep is a former Estonian MP for the far-right Conservative People's Party, who was elected to parliament when he was just 25 years old. A self-described "ethnofuturist" poet and philosopher, Kaalep drew frequent media coverage for his links to neo-Nazi groups