Over here in Belgium the far right party Vlaams Belang and their (supposedly independent) militia Schild en Vrienden seem to be getting more and more involved with Christianity, with more and more young people acting incredibly religious. In The Netherlands I see more and more people on social media arguing against a right to abortion.
I was wondering if other countries in Europe are experiencing this as well, because it almost seems to coincidental to not suspect certain foreign meddling.
The European right is always aping the US right, it’s no wonder they’ve also started to adopt their penchant toward Christian fundamentalism now. Then again European liberals do the exact same, they too have adopted almost one to one the language of the American liberals, even when it sounds completely ridiculous in our own languages. It is just another indication of the complete lack of autonomy of contemporary European politics and our cultural colonization by the US.
never understood why some people oppose abortion.
Controlling women and their reproductive organs has been a thing for quite some time now
But people who oppose abortion usually like to talk about “freedom”. Isn’t it a freedom for women to decide whether to continue pregnancy?
We always need to ask, whose freedom is dominant? The capitalist class wants unlimited freedom to control social reproduction and population numbers. One of the best ways they can do that is by having state control over women’s bodies, and immigration policy.
So both capitalism and patriarchy trump the individual “freedom” of women to control their bodies. In the west christianity is the main force propping up patriarchy, so abortions and contraceptions ara seen as immoral.
Side point but the book, the Caliban and the Witch by Federici, is a wonderful account of how the capitalist class came to have full control over social reproduction.
Their argument is that it’s murder, so since murder is a crime abortions should be too. Of course they don’t bat an eye when it’s their friends or relatives that need an abortion, but you already know that.
I can only speak for the relatively rural area in which I live. A relatively well known US based extremist church has completed a hostile takeover of a church in the area, and are now offering courses for people who want to join this church. That means that not only are local Germans more likely to be extremised (in an already very conservative area), but there’s a large number of people coming from abroad for the specific purpose of growing and evangelizing.
Overall the membership of so-called free churches are growing Germany while the religious establishment is seeing more and more people leaving. There are of course big differences between individual establishment and free churches, but the free churches have much more potential to turn into very strong reactionary forces.
In Canada, older people yes. But in younger people, definitely not.
