Talk:Fremskrittspartiet

I did a few edits. No fan of Fremskrittspartiet myself, but I feel the article needed a few nuance changes to keep with the generally high quality of Rationalwiki. It should be stressed that Breivik left the party n 2007, and that generally they probably have more in common with UKIP and AfD than they do with Le Pen's extreme right wing party. ^{— Unsigned, by: GeirHong / talk / contribs 13:01, 6 October 2015}‎

I agree. Nuance is good. --Slimy goop (talk) 15:22, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Will try to recast this soon (am working on Listhaug entry now). Behring Breivik had delusions of grandeur about his involvement in the FrP, but was never an official in the party, despite his attempts to stand as a candidate in the youth wing, and the party itself denounced him. Nowadays, the party is probably more famous internally and internationally for its amateurish scandals, such as health minister Listhaug being a smoker, and before that, her receiving bouquets of flowers from neo-Nazi groups for a Facebook post criticaal of immigrants.CogitoNotStirred (via telepathy) 03:04, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Should Fremskrittspartiet be labelled as a “far right political party””

I’ve reinstated the “far right political parties” category. As far as I can see, Fremskrittspartiet’s (FP)hardline anti immigration stance fits perfectly with other political parties in this category, such as the Danish People's Party (DPP)and the Sweden Democrats (SD). Granted, these parties approach it from different angles with the FP being a sort of pre Tea Party attack on the “nanny state” similar to the similarly named predecessor of the DPP (Fremskridtspartiet). By contrast, the DPP emphasises support for the welfare state in general and pensioners in particular with the “lazy immigrants” presented as a threat to it, while the SD springs from outright Neo-Nazi roots (though now deliberately modelling themselves on the DPP). These parties are not merely conservative, but right wing populists with far more strident right wing credentials and policies than their respective countries’ established conservative political parties (Høyre, Konservative Folkeparti and Moderaterna). ScepticWombat (talk) 10:39, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I would like to say that not all right-wing populist parties are classified as far-right parties. For now, the English Wikipedia does not classify Fremskrittspartiet as a far-right party, unlike other right-wing populist parties. They are parties that use conservative liberalism as their main policy stance, Conservative liberalism is not generally considered far-right ideology.--BluePink (talk) 13:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I think 'Sverigedemokraterna' is a far-right party. However, "Fremskrittspartiet" appears to be less extremist, although it uses some populist rhetoric. In Norway, there are academic papers saying that the party is not a populist or far-right party, and the English Wikipedia does not mention it as a far-right party. There may be some extremist party members, but the party as a whole does not regard the party as far-right.--BluePink (talk) 13:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I think that would be to take too seriously the nicer packaging of the FP compared to the SD and to simply limit far right to basically a synonym for Neo-Nazi. For instance, the DPP basically has a zero tolerance policy towards Neo-Nazis (they are summarily expelled) and likes to present itself as just a conservative, even “centrist” party, in order to make its views more palatable. They also like to play the back and forth tango with their more extreme (prominent) members that makes it possible to use the kind of “a few bad apples” distancing that the FP also play along with, yet curiously few of the prominent members seem to suffer any consequences for expressing their far right views, allowing the party to capitalise on both fronts: De facto signalling to far right voters that the party is a home for them, while at the same time broadcasting the “moderation” of the party as a whole.

Just because FP likes lower taxes doesn’t preclude it from being far right (compare this with another Danish party, Nye Borgerlige (NB), which is arguably even more anti-immigration than the DPP, but also in love with tax cuts). Basically, I’d like to see some examples of FP not applying the kind of far right staples as rules and regulations disproportionately hitting immigrants in general and Muslims in particular and especially rhetoric blaming immigrants for a large slice of society’s problems that characterise the other parties in the bunch. As I pointed out earlier, the FP seems to me more like the DPP’s predecessor, which, just like its Norwegian counterpart, started out as a Tea Party’ish Protest Party against the “nanny state”, but switched to an emphasis on anti immigration in the 1980s. ScepticWombat (talk) 15:49, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

It's not very surprising. If you change just a few words, conservatives in Northeast Asia are the same. However, we do not attach the "Far-right" category to mainstream conservative parties in Northeast Asia. I do not object to documenting the FP's possible far-right appearance. However, the far-right party category should not be used recklessly. It should only describe the extreme conservatism of the FP, and remove the far-right category. Categories should be applied more objectively.--BluePink (talk) 23:36, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

@BluePink The FP’s own website has only four highlighted “core policy” areas on it website, one of them (the second from the top) being immigration and with a list of policies indistinguishable from the DPP’s (same proposals, same rhetoric, same illustrations of headscarved women). So, unless you’re willing to ignore such hard immigration policies as the cornerstone of the far right category, I don’t see what‘s “objective” about not putting the FP in the same category as the DPP (btw, both also panders to pensioners, not that this is a far right characteristic, though), considering their similar policies and similar background (the DPP was founded by a splinter faction of the FP’s Danish equivalent). Basically, unless you want to remove the far right label from the DPP as well, I really don’t see the “objectivity” in doing it for the FP, simply because they have other policies than anti-immigration and you can find similar rhetoric in the entirely different political context of North East Asia that you don’t think fit the far right category.

Also, you should be careful about making comparisons with a political spectrum that is so different as North East Asia, since the mainstream governing Social Democrats in Sweden and Denmark and their equivalents in opposition in Norway would be howling lefties in most political systems, yet in their respective political systems they are outflanked on the left by one or two parties in their respective parliaments. Should we then start to label Social Democrats as “far left”, simply because what they support in defence of the already existing, Nordic, welfare state models would be considered radical left proposals in other political systems? ScepticWombat (talk) 05:33, 15 May 2020 (UTC)