Countries where the two main parties are the communists and the fascists

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

One is El Salvador. Are there any more? Russia maybe? I think Guatemala used to be like that, but the last presidential race ended up with a runoff between a mainstream center-right and mainstream center-left candidate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No. In Russia the main party is Neo-Stalinist. So is the second largest party.
The Neo-Nazis (LibDems) were set up by the KGB as well...

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Putin is far too free-market to be a communist or Neo-Stalinist.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Putin is far too free-market to be a communist or Neo-Stalinist.

Putin is not free-markety. He isn't in favour of anything with the word "free" in it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well neither was Pinochet or Franco...

I thought of two more: Angola and Mozambique. And Italy. Well, kind of

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

You know, it's not a country, but one could make a case for Northern Ireland.

[ag]

Russia does not really have parties anymore. The main "party" ("Unity") is what is known there as the  "party of power" - the collection of bureaucrats and MP's who agree to operate as part of the administration. There is no ideology, nor there is any other thing that unites them, other than being "near power", courtesy of the president.  The electoral system has now been modified and the electoral process is conducted in a manner that they are pretty much guaranteed a 2/3 parliamentary majority as long as they get a third of the vote, and as long as the president does not decide to support another group.  The faction members get their voting orders in the Kremlin, and the minor administration officials who transmit the orders don't even bother to conceal their contempt towards MP's in public (in private, if one is to trust the defectors, the orders are transmitted using shouts and obsenities, prison-camp style). I guess, the sallaries are high enough to compensate the indignity.

The members themselves are a fairly diverse bunch - from bureaucrats to businessmen to free-market liberals to left wing sociallists.  The "party" is omnivorous, and nobody cares about ideology.  They are not faschists - they are bureaucrats and carreerists.

The three other parties that got accross the 5% barrier last time (to be raised to 7% next time) are the old Commies, the vaguely national-socialist "Motherland" (which has since broke up into factions and factionlets) and the operetta faschists of Zhirinovsky's LDPR (these guys are there to make outrageous statements, do circus tricks in the chamber and vote with the government on anything that matters). 

The Motherland's current leaders claim they are "social-democrats" - if they are social-democrats, then I am a star dancer in Kirov ballet (this is an actual Russian way of putting it - try it out).  They are faschists, of course, but of the semi-benign demagogic type (nobody really takes them seriously, since nobody can imagine Rogozin heading anything outside Bedlam or Sing-Sing).  Outside of legal politics there are also some real Nazis (with bkack shirts, swastikas and wannabe storm troopers and all - The Russian National Unity), but the goverment keeps them illegal and under control.

The Commies have been seriously weakened and don't seem likely to recover, at least with their current pathetic leadership (comrade Zyuganov is so devoid of charisma, they would have been better off not letting him appear in public without a burkha). Their best chance is to ally with unhapppy democrats and disaffected nationalists into some amorphous and omnivorous "anything but Putin" entity, which would get them above their 20-30% of the electorate and might even turn them into a non-negligible opposition force. Since they are the only opposition surviving in Parliament, they might have a chance - but not with a leader that looks and sounds as if his corpse has just been disinterred from a provintial cemetary for low-level Soviet apparatchiks.

There is a little "petting zoo" of "democratic" forces. The free-market  "Rightists" were the core of Yeltsin's reform government, which makes them hated by all those disenchanted with reform.  This gives them a good 80% negative ratings (Chubais, their de facto leader, is by far the most hated man in the country - a recent attempt on his life has been publically cheered), but used to also give them reliable and committed group of supporters (enought to get some parliamentary seats). Unfortunately, they couldn't figure out that it was time to leave government when Putin came in, and, hence, still can't decide whether they are in opposition or what (some of their people still hold cabinet posts).  The result, of course, is that those free-marketeers who hate Putin despise them as sell-outs, and those who like Putin vote for "Unity", leaving them out of he legislature.   

Those "Rightists" unhappy with this ambiguity have tried to form a splinter faction, but their most popular leader was killed, after which they constituted a "Car-Owners League" (this is, unfortunately, not a joke).  Another splinter group was prevented from registering by the government quickly organizing a shell party with the same name (now they are keeping their future name in secret, until they are ready to submit the registration request; I guess, they will also have to campaign in secret, though I can't figure out, why the government bothers so much).

Then there are the slightly left-of-center "Apples", who tend to be liked by those who didn't do too well in the reform, but still want Russia to be a "Western" country. Their problem is - they are a one-man show, and that one man (Yavlinsky) is somewhat unstable.  He hates Chubais, Chubais cordially reciprocates and getting the two into the same room without trying to spit at each other (barely figuratively) has become problematic. Going really down to the midget there are (Gorbachev-created) Social-Democrats, whose reason for existence is outright impossible to discern (they are now, appropriately, replacing Gorbachev with an art dealer, specializing in happennings).

Altogether the "democrats" can count on 10-12% of the voters, but since these are divided into a bunch of factions, their chances of getting the requisit 7% are slim to none. There are all sort of "co-ordinating committees" trying to represent all "democratic forces", but, mainly, succeeding in representing their own members.  Great press-conferences, though, and sometimes good blogs. 

To sum up, it's an asylum: everybody thinks himself a Napoleon, and the powerfully-built male-nurses are careful to administer the tranquilisers at any sign of trouble.

Finally, to complete the madhouse, there is the Russian variety of the Loonies - the National Bolsheviks of Eddie Limonov.  Limonov is a really good and completely amoral writer, who spent a chunk of his life f..cking anything that moved of either sex in New York City and Paris (and writing about it), but at some point after turning grey-haired he decided to do some "writing by doing".   He is right in one sense: since there is no scope for parliamentary politics, the art of politics is to be done in prison. He himself spent a few years locked up on some weapons charges, though he's been released. Unfortunately, he has surrounded himself with some nice and clueless kids, who are willing to follow him into jail. Even more unfortunately, the authorities happily cooperate by locking them up on horrid charges (pretending that a student sit in in the administration's public reception room is tantamount to an armed attempt at overthroughing the gov't). So by now it has gone from the Raving Loony Party to the Young Martyr Party, and that seems to be too high a price to pay for a literary project.

[ag]

Yeah, and about Putin - he is no "Neo-Stalinist". He is an "old-KGBist". The old "kontora" ("office", as they nick-named it there) has always been slightly apart from the regime. They always believed they "would do it right" if only they didn't have those pesky Commies around. They are technocrat-wannabes, without much reason to believe in their technocratic competence in anything other than torture. They themselves, though, are dead honest about it - unfortunately, a lot of people believe them. They almost got their wish with Andropov, but he departed to meet Marx too soon for them to do anything. Well, they are havig their chance now.   The funny thing, Putin might even want Russia to become a bit like Germany (he loved it there as a spook).  Unfortunately, he doesn't have enough intelligence (sorry for a bad pun) to figure out how it works. The guy is an incompetent SOB, but, what is even worse, there is noone better than him around, his likely replacement is even more horrid, and I don't have much printable to say about the beliefs about life of an average Russian. My only concern is for those 12% of the  Russians who'd want to live in a normal country, but would have to go through another series of mishaps to get there.

[Gustaf]

AG, what about Kasparov, that CHess Master, I saw that he's started a presidential campaign. Is he aligned with a party? I know that eh won't win, of course, I was just interested in whether he had a party.

[ag]

AG, what about Kasparov, that CHess Master, I saw that he's started a presidential campaign. Is he aligned with a party? I know that eh won't win, of course, I was just interested in whether he had a party.

2008 Committee. That's what I said about great press-conferences (Kasparov is not alone there - a great collection of nice and bright and famous, whose chances of affecting anything whatsoever equal exactly zero, at least until the next revolution).

[minionofmidas]

Well neither was Pinochet or Franco...

I thought of two more: Angola and Mozambique. And Italy. Well, kind of

What do you mean, kind of? The Communists have reformed (and the unreformed ones are not one of the largest parties), but two of the three largest parties can be well called fascistic.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

well calling Berlusconi a fascist is just leftist hyperbole. But you do have the Northern League and National Alliance in his government, so it's not like he's opposed to fascists.

[minionofmidas]

well calling Berlusconi a fascist is just leftist hyperbole. But you do have the Northern League and National Alliance in his government, so it's not like he's opposed to fascists.

A purely personalist cult party where all the election propaganda is about the leader's saintly sanctity? Yeah right. The AN is way sane and normal and centre right compared to Forza Italia.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I've wondered how someone can create a party based on a personality cult around someone who's such a crook. There are some odd people in Italy.

[minionofmidas]

I've wondered how someone can create a party based on a personality cult around someone who's such a crook. There are some odd people in Italy.

The DC and PSI were discredited beyond compare, and their voters needed somewhere to go to.

[Colin]

One is El Salvador. Are there any more? Russia maybe? I think Guatemala used to be like that, but the last presidential race ended up with a runoff between a mainstream center-right and mainstream center-left candidate.

Well from what I can tell ARENA has moved from a military organization tied with the Death Squads of the 80's into an actual Conservative party at least according to Wikipedia. ARENA campaigned in the last presidential election on democratic reform, free market reform, and better relations with the United States. It seems that since the 90's they have moved from an authoritarian party to a more traditional conservative party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_Republican_Alliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_presidential_election%2C_2004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_El_Salvador

[MaC]

United States with the Democratic and Republican parties
Sorry, but you set me right up for that one...