Alternative for Germany has joined France’s National Rally and Reform U.K. in becoming the most popular party in its country, according to polls.
A poll Tuesday showed Alternative for Germany — which is under surveillance by the country’s intelligence services over suspected extremism — is now the most favored by voters. The survey by broadcaster RTL put the AfD at 26%, ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats at 24%.
This is a high watermark for the European far right, a once fringe movement whose virulently anti-immigration, anti-Islam and culture-war politics were shunned by the mainstream just a decade ago.
Today, these parties have developed deep ties with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who openly cite nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as inspirations on policy and tactics.
Sigh
Far right parties are a product of stupidity and foreign money. The stupidity of the establishment parties in Europe ignoring the people’s will on immigration enabled the far right, and Putin’s Russia gave them the means to run with it.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
This is exactly what has been happening in Germany (most notably with the CDU and SPD) and it’s not working. All that happens when these parties take on AfD talking point is that their voters no longer want to vote for them while the AfD’s positions get normalised in the mainstream.
What they actually should do is stop picking uninspiring and corrupt candidates and push for things that would actually benefit the working class (wealth tax, tackling the housing crisis, etc.) instead of funneling more wealth upwards. At the end of the day the AfD is strong because people are struggling to make ends meet and the AfD is using the racism that’s always been present in Germany to offer them an easy scapegoat.
It’s the wrong approach to take the talking points of AfD to begin with. They’re neo fascists, why would they try to copy them? Not only is that lazy, but it’s also shows that these establishment parties are out of touch with the populace. These far right parties are gaining ground because there’s no viable alternative to them on immigration. Establishment parties trying to compete with far right parties at their own game is a losing strategy, and it shows. If they want to win people over on immigration then they need to actually understand what people are concerned about and then actually take the time to provide a viable and pragmatic alternative for people to vote on.
I don’t think the issue is really immigration at all. It’s that working class people are being squeezed harder and harder and no party, including the AfD, seems to take it seriously. The AfD is just good at populism and pretending they have a solution by blaming it on immigration and selling themselves as less corrupt and incompetent than the others, while actually being just as bad or worse. If the CDU and SPD in particular hadn’t allowed things to get this bad while spending decades in power, the AfD’s populism wouldn’t have fallen on fertile ground.
And there is also an argument to be made that the media has dropped the ball by allowing the AfD on talkshows and debates without sufficiently pushing back and calling out their bullshit and thus allowing them to paint themselves as a legitimate alternative despite being fascists that are found to be at odds with the constitution (Grundgesetz) time and time again.
Also the AfD is probably the best out of all the parties at social media.
Can you link me to some credible sources on legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe? I’m in the US and I don’t see the downside of immigration. Most of the folks angry about immigration here are just being sold a scapegoat.
Admittedly, we’re much more culturally diverse to begin with, harder to get to, and have quite a large base population so maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges.
legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe
Just my opinion, but: There are no systematic ones that can’t just as plausibly be explained by anti-immigrant stances of the locals. Yes, of course, immigration also means SOME people immigrating will be bad in one way or another, but statistically significantly not more or less than the amount of bad people born in the country. Most of the problems “with immigrants” arise from a mutual escalation of people not willing to integrate. In short, and without saying which comes first:
- immigrant does bad thing X
- anti-immigrant people point at X and claim it’s because they are immigrants
- some people will believe the accusations and behave more poorly towards immigrants
- some immigrants will turn the prejudice against them into a dislike / hatred of their host country
- immigrants do bad things
- rinse and repeat
Speaking for Germany, all of this is FAR outweighed by the richness that immigrants bring to our country. Germans - and I say that as a German - really needed (and still need) a lot of lessons in empathy and kind-heartedness - and we have more of that now than 50 years ago, thanks to not only evolution of society, but also thanks to immigrants from the mediterranean - Italians, Spanish, Greek and Turks. If Germany had no immigrants, I would leave this country in an instant.
people not willing to integrate
This is the only “issue” I can think of from my own experience in the US. I imagine some resentment can form if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake. An influx of people with different “culture” might feel like an attack on your own culture. I frankly don’t understand but that’s why I mentioned the base population of the US being large and diverse. Perhaps we’re already such a “melting pot”, at least in the densely populated cities and suburbs, and having so many pockets of cultures is just what I’m used to. I want to better understand but it still just sounds like ignorant fear of a different culture.
Hell, it’s a well established statistic, that many people pretend doesn’t exist, that criminality is lower among the immigrant population. Any population will have some bad apples, but the incoming population is thinning them out if anything.
I think there’s multiple ways it can happen. Sometimes, incoming cultures aim to be inviting and inclusive, and do what they can to become involved with the surrounding community. But other cultures really silo themselves and never speak to “the foreigners” - while continuing to take up more and more of the area. They speak their home language, don’t discuss the existing culture or even share their own. They don’t act like guests, just tenants - sometimes not realizing that thanks to refugee programs they’re often paying “guest rate”, not “tenant rate”.
However, that certainly isn’t always the case. I’d point to the Italian and Hispanic cultures in America as some that have become distinctly American. It’s harder for me to give examples of the “silos” since, by definition, you don’t see much of them; but sometimes during elections, church gatherings, or other census-related actions, you’re reminded they exist.
if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake
The irony is that the racist people typically do not have any culture, they spend their days with faces glued to smartphones, trashtalk and being egoistic assholes. Where smartphones / social media are part of the root cause, and the rest (egoism, trash talking, being racist) come from the same character trait: lack of empathy.
The thing that people ( not you of course) just do not understand, is that for a lot of western countries the birth rate is under 2. So every year the population has a larger part of old people.
Our systems for retirement, government, social programs, etc only really work when more young healthy people are added.
So we actually really need young immigrants to basically keep the boat floating.
If the boat requires an infinitely growing population then it’s bound to sink sooner or later.
That’s true, can’t have something infinite (population growth) on a finite planet. It could possibly work with expansion to space and other planets.
There’s that, too. But I hope we can find a way to keep the population size stable at most, because the world already has too many humans…
I think it is a case of comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying this as a first gen immigrant from Iraq myself, I’m in the US but I have family in Europe (Finland, Sweden, and Germany), and it’s just a very different dynamic. The national narrative about immigration, the ways immigrants are treated by society, and the way government assists immigrants in Europe and the US are quite different. They also get different kinds of immigrants, which is also important. All these factors contribute to very different situations economically, politically, and socially.
But I think this is the wrong way to approach this topic in this context because what matters more in politics is perception. When you look at the polls of any European country with a large immigrant population, virtually all of them have a pretty big chunk of the population, usually ethnically native and working class, that are heavily anti-immigration. This implies that the big issue with immigration in Europe is integration and assimilation. Since the establishment parties over there outright ignore them entirely, they end up flocking to far right parties instead since they’re the only ones who want to place restrictions on immigration.
It isn’t rocket science, people become uneasy when they see or at least perceive there to be an influx of newcomers, they don’t even need necessarily to be from a different race or culture. It’s simply a fact that isn’t going to change any time soon. And more and more people globally are going to be on the move as the climate breakdown and more wars break out. If you don’t want to see populists thriving then you need to put in the leg work to slow the pace of change that people see and reassure them.
Maybe if the left wing party that got in for the first time in 15 years actually behaved remotely like they should, this would not be happening in the UK
All Kier Starmer has managed to accomplish is vindicating the idiots that say “both sides are the same” and fuelling Reform’s populism.
His government’s current policy focus areas make Tony fucking Blair look like a socialist by comparison—and he earned the fucking red-tie Tory assessment of his policies.
vindicating the idiots that say “both sides are the same”
When a “left wing” party is still far right, the people who complain have a point. Yes, there is a difference between extreme right and far right, but in the absence of any meaningful leftist options, people will gravitate toward those they hope will implement actual change, even if the change is worse than every other alternative. This most often tends to be those who want to pull the world even further to the right.
Yeah. I naively thought that finally there might be some change now the fucking Tories have imploded, but no.
What a monumental turdpile.
Same thing is happening in Australia. It’s controlled opposition. The real leftists have been progressively out-capitaled from the center-left parties. Now their majority are corporate removed “centrist” neoliberals that continue to screw the workers, just slower than the center-right party, which is now a borderline fascist party.
I’m still waiting for people to realise that we live in corporate dictatorships with the illusion of democracy; you can vote for whoever you want, but the oligarch-financed candidates are statistically guaranteed to win a majority 90+% of the time, coz capitalism. The major difference is how much lube they apply before they fuck you.
I’m still waiting for people to realise that we live in corporate dictatorships with the illusion of democracy; you can vote for whoever you want, but the oligarch-financed candidates are statistically guaranteed to win a majority 90+% of the time, coz capitalism.
People having this realization and solidarity amongst the common folk are the only way to we have a hope of fighting this pile of shit back.
It’s still nowhere near a guarantee of a win, and it’s made monumentally more difficult by the oligarchs plotting to divide us up (using the politicians and social media platforms they own) but it’s the only chance we have.
Spot on
Labour has been a joke of a party for the past 3 decades. The only reason they are in power right now is that the Tories actually managed to completely destroy the UK. Labour and the Tories are going to go the way of the Whigs the nezt election and will be replaced by Reform UK and Corbyn’s new leftist party.
All these leftists become conservatives when their wealth is threatened.
Who the fuck looks at the US right now and thinks “I want that?”
Fascists
This is EXACTLY what leftists have been trying to warn liberals about. People everywhere are struggling under late stage capitalism. Centrists liberal parties like Labour, CDU/PSD, Renaissance, and PO are telling everyone that everything is great and the ship will right out soon. Meanwhile far right parties acknowledge that everything is fucked and they promise to punish “those responsibile” for it (they of course are referring to social minorities instead of the wealthy capitalists that are plundering our societies.
The current status quo parties if Europe either need to pivot their platforms to radical change and clamping down on the capital class whome literally everyone hates or they are simply paving the way for fascist takeovers.
What happens instead is that the established parties decide they can win the voters back if they adopt far-right policies. We get extra-shitty governance and they still lose voters. It’s a lose-lose situation but they’re committed.
Yes, and every election season we will see liberals decry any leftist movement and demand that now is the time to rally behind feckless "electable " neoliberal politicans that everyone hates and will drive away more voters, and then blame everyone who warned them that they would lose. The establishment parties will blame “extremest messaging” or some such nonsense and then push further right the next time around and the leftmost fringe of the party will be expelled.
And this all is thanks to those very same far-right figureheads pushing that every form of leftism is Stalinism, will immediately cause mass starvations, censorship, white genocide, mandatory homosexuality, etc.; so no “sane” people dares to implement anything that is deemed “too far-left”.
Then the far-right figureheads push even harder on what is “too far-left”.
Then the far-right figureheads slowly redefine what far-right is. The nazis slowly become cartoon villains, who ran on the program of “killing Jews for fun”, thus if you bring up any reason to justify your hatred, then you’re a savior, a messiah, the moderate between leftist lunacy and far-right genocide for fun.
Then the far-right figureheads play lip service to various issues. They’ll claim to protect your free speech from the far-left. They claim to defend your workplace. They claim to stand for the flag. And most of all, they claim to be moderates on every issue, but with caveats more obvious to those who are more well-versed in politics. Their free speech issue is mostly about hate speech for some reason, but still want to protect children to some degree (I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Nigel Farage only dropped the age verification on hate speech, then issued a full-on porn ban). They talk ill of unions for going “too far” and celebrating “hard workers” and those within the “hustle culture”. They will cry “communism” if they have to buy something else instead of that beloved “foreign brand”.
(This all gave me an inspiration for an article, I just need to find a good outlet.)
If that were true then wouldn’t leftists be winning in the polls? Why would Late Stage suffering cause a shift to the right? Makes no sense.
You anti-liberal crowd seem like precisely the reason this kind of thing is happening. You’re like a pipeline for people to go from socialists to Trump supporters and anarchists.
Maybe you should look at how governments have reacted to right wing movements vs left wing movements over the past century and you’ll answer your own question. The US wasn’t paying communists to terrorize fascist groups in Italy and Greece, nor were they suddenly forgiving if war crimes to incorporate communist leaders into their societies.
There was a just a news story posted this week about the German court ruling that a communist book club could legally be disbanded amd broken up by the state, yet that same government does nothing to Stop AFD
Angry people
More like idiots
Idiots are allowed to be angry.
Idiotic angry people.
Vladimir Putin.
Man it’s the 1920s all over again!
This is so depressing. I remember 10 years ago seeing how the world was changing, I was full of hope for the future, we were slowly becoming more socially accepting of minorities and it seemed to be slightly getting better. Now the progress didn’t stop, it fucking reversed and shit is so much worse than it was. This makes me really sad.
The people pretending they cared about the gays and the minorities ignored people’s basic human needs.
That’s how we got here.
Who got all the new wealth from increased productivity post 1980? The gays and minorities?
The billionaires who are scapegoating gays and minorities just like they almost always do.
I don’t think they’re saying helping gays and minorities was the problem. I think probably more that rich and powerful for a while learned they could get votes while enacting predatory economic policies by marketing social issues where the government doesn’t actually do a ton there but put minority groups into marketing campaigns for what public programs there are out there and advertise non-governmental things minorities can seek. So minorities and LGBQT were really good marketing for politicians and the rich while they were pushing privatization, lower taxes, austerity, higher surveillance/police state, etc
deleted by creator
We are speedrunning robber-barrons through WW-II in one shot this time. What a ride. Can I get off, please?
deleted by creator
“My wage-slaves are getting a bit too comfortable. Here’s a bunch of money. Go fuck with them.”
- Sociopathic Oligarchs
Now the progress didn’t stop, it fucking reversed
It didn’t reverse itself. Huge amounts of effort and organization went into that reversal.
That’s why it’s a called a “reaction”
Are people not paying attention to how destructive these parties are to democracy?
Nope and by design from the media to keep them distracted from it. Get people riled up about trans people in toilets and asylum seekers in small boats rather than the rich destroying the planet and causing horrendous inequality in basic living.
Tyrants are also usually to blame for the asylum seekers in small boats. The irony knifes me. They’re often seeking asylum because they’re fleeing a tyrant, and the response of the countries they try to find safe harbor in is to turn themselves into the very type of tyranny they were fleeing.
People want change, they promise change, no matter how bad of a change. That, coupled with a massive propaganda network made up of a few billionaires, and there you have it.
No, they promise the world and then shit in your mouth. These people are being duped.
They definitely are, “strangely enough”, it follows trends of cost cutting measures on education that have been happening in the last few decades.
People are getting shit on ny the current parties as well. Prisoners don’t riot because they think they will get out of jail, they riot to get even with their keeps that have been fucking them over. All the status quo parties in Europe/the West are responsible for the current mess we are in and people know it.
That’s the whole point. Look to the now infamous Jubilee video of the man proudly claiming that he is indeed a fascist and he wants an authoritarian ethnostate.
Most people are essentially animals. 50% of the population doesn’t have an inner monologue.
idk, this doesn’t mean they are more subtle to propaganda. There is currently no scientific evidence, that this would indicate that people are not able to self reflect or other things. Not having an inner monologue means that these people are using different techniques to accomplish these tasks. The reality is more complex than that.
I wonder, how can people look at what Trump/MAGA has done to the US and think to themselves “I want THAT for my country”.
I feel that in 50 years from now there will be documentaries about how the Russians won over Europe and the US by influencing voters and just straight up frauding right wing parties into the government.
I refuse to believe that many people are this stupid/brainwashed to fall for literal 1930’s Nazi propaganda.
IF there will be a free enough country to make this documentary
The documentary might be in Russian. Even Hitler had planned a museum to feature all the people he had exterminated; once you’ve won and everybody is dead, there’s no reason to hide it any more. Another example would be our (the United States) fascination with native american culture, now that it’s far too late to reverse that particular genocide.
Your comment presupposes that there will be some kind of back to normal in 50 years, which is unfortunately not going to be the case. Climate change accelerates, economic and political crisisl follows, and these kinds of populist movements are going to thrive in that kind of environment.
Climate change will not have stopped in 50 years, on the contrary.
But they do, even if Russia can flood the information space and all that. I have no doubts there.
Still, a lot of stupid people need to believe this crap.
I go about my day not believing that crap but others are seemingly open to this.
People are fed up with being broke and not able to afford the same things that they or their parents could afford even 20 years ago. Populists do not have to offer policies they can or event intend to implement so they can promise any old shit to the gullible who want change. Wrap that in a reassuring racist package: immigration is out of control, send back the small boats, etc. so that it doesn’t smell like communism (not that communism cant be racist) that people confuse even moderate socialist policies for due to decades of western propaganda.
Couple this with the Overton window being moved ever towards the right due to left and center left parties being captured by neoliberals who seek funding and patronage from the Rich, plus decades of the press putting pressure on any left wing policies by enforcing a double standard of left wing policies required to fully document how they will work and be funded, while right wing fantasy policies are waved through without any scrutiny from the majority of press.
Then the right deliberately break any essential service, under fund it and spend it elsewhere, making it time consuming and expensive to fix, leading them to point at their opponents being ineffective, and the press refuse to hold the right to account over this.
This has reduced any coupling between those left of the far right and the general population in terms of policies meeting the requirement. You can start to see why they are gaining ground.
This could help give some explanation of the election of Trump/MAGA, but 8 months into that election everyone outside can see that they just made all the problems worse. And when this rise was noted last year, I wouldn’t have asked that question because the people don’t have something to give an an honest response of what would really happen if such groups were elected to power (which these exact same problems happened the last time Trump was elected, but it’s happened now twice in a row with a safety bumper between these elections which would help dismiss any claim of it was a fluke/bad timing). Which comes back to my question, how can you look at Trump/MAGA and say “I want THAT for my country?”
We aren’t dealing with hypotheticals anymore, we are already seeing cause and effects.
Removed by mod
They don’t. But the wealthy, the corporations, etc, they do.
They do, the majority of voters are fucking illiterate idiots. It’s not always an evil plot by big business, reality is usually far more depressing
I think it’s both. With enough illiteracy, enough misinformation and corrupt media, enough evil corporations, and potential election interference, and there you go - far right movements driven by lack and entitilement and hate and greed. Malignent leadership manipulating others and the system to get what they want. Combine it with cost increases because of evil corporations and their clutch on politics and climate change inaction, and resulting cost increase on foods and other products due to major climate events and instability, and that’s where we’re at. It sucks because with all of our knowledge, our technology, perhaps things could’ve been way better. But malignant greedy leadership and the worst traits of humanity have given us this outcome.
Racism and other kinds of bigotry mostly.
They don’t,this shit reeks of right propaganda
Maybe ask a Trump supporter?
Billionaires are people, too. Sorta.
Hey UK, they’re all being funded by Russia, just like to dipshits who told you brexit was a good idea. Don’t fall for it again
Narrator: They were going to fall for it again
King Farage pledged the UK’s loyalty to the Russian Empire.
UK has been on a dark path for a while now, Kier Starmer has done a great job of pushing the population down that dark path. When people say both sides are the same, Kier has made sure that everyone feels as though that is true.
WTF is happening in the world rn? Why are all the right wingers taking control? I thought it was just the US going through a crazy-stupid phase
Billionaires learned how to use the world wide web as an AI powered disinformation network
perfectly written.
Social media. Muskrat, Zucc, Thiel, etc. are high on the fumes of the AI hype, and want that sweet AI money, from the surveillance state using AI.
Well right now in the UK we voted for the supposed
left, centre,centre right wing party (The UK has the same 2 party issue as the US more or less) and they reacted by being even more right wing than the right wing we just got rid who recently also just imploded their popularity and now we’re stuck with the far right party next election because UK politics is such a caste based exclusive club that no one on the left or even real centre has enough political or monetary capital to form an opposition.and want that sweet AI money
actually i think rich people don’t really personally profit from extra money. They have already more money than they could ever spend to fulfill personal wishes. in that sense, the money is not “sweet”.
the reason they’re hoarding so extreme levels of wealth is because they believe in “greatness”, in being a part of something greater and bringing the world progress, one way or another. that’s why “techno-optimism” is such a common theme among them. “mars settlement” might go in a similar direction, though that one has more reasons (jobs programs, mostly). it’s more for a desire for greatness (you could call it imperialism, but without the bloodshed) more than a desire for money, i think.
the reason they’re hoarding so extreme levels of wealth is because they believe in “greatness”
They only believe in the “greatness” of themselves. Which is expressed monitarily.
Their entire self worth is based on the size of their bank accounts, on what they “could do” with their money.
Instead of, you know, what they’re actually doing with their money: nothing.
They hoard it to feel special. They could literally give away billions to the right places to fix shit immediately and still be billionaires. But they don’t.
Despite that very literally leading to them being worshipped. Which would be more greatness for them then they have now. And more greatness for the world. And it ain’t happening.
Because. They’re all convinced they’re the smartest people ever, and not big idiots that never learned the basic social benefits of sharing.
“Greatness” isn’t found on top of a pile of money. It’s found at the bottom once it’s been spent. That’s how people and the economy actually benefit from it. By the velocity in which it changes hands. Which so far, is near 0% for these billionaires seeking “greatness.”
It’s embarissing, if anything, to see them so incapable of achieving their goals of greatness simply because they’re too insecure about having anyone else that isn’t them spend their money. Especially when it comes to actually using it to benefiting the world instead of their egos.
It’s more that they use the accumulated wealth as a leaderboard score to show off to other rich people.
But the reality is that economic power is power, and a healthy society must limit the amount of power any individual can accrue.
I think you’ll get a lot of different answers depending on who you ask, and i think liberalism and allowing other people their own opinion / interpretation of things is important. Yet here’s my take:
- There was a gross mis-interpretation of reality around the 2000s when people believed that we could lay down all violence and gross behavior and enter a “perfect, soft world” which was understood as an absence of sexism and nationalism, mostly. However, these are instincts so deeply rooted in people that you can’t just “get them out” in any way, even if you try to create a social movement around “calling out” men who show sexist behavior. What happens instead is that these suppressed groups seek their own expression, and you end up with far-right populism.
I don’t want to love on this planet anymore
I like the idea of an AI apocalypse
We can either blame the western political system for it or some other agents interested in making it fail…
Asimov’s second foundation spoilers
spoiler
As with the second foundation, it was strange to see psicohistory predicting so precisely the future, here it is very strange to see all western democracies fail at the same time
The Foundation has been out for 75 years. I think we’re past the time limit needed for spoilers
Imo we are never past the spoilers… someone may be doing its first steps into it and deserves to have the full experience.
Idk man, while it’s possible that this is russian influence, I think it’s beating around the bush and facing the fact that people are capable of being terrible all on their own* (talking about the manipulative people in politics, not the gullible citizens)
Russia and china are only using failures in western policies against us. They don’t create them. It’s up to our nations to resolve those tension spots so they cannot be used against us.
The Russian argument is understandable because it’s what our governments point to as the origin of their failures. It allows them to keep pointing at that “outside interference”, invest in surveillance while not investing in what the subjects used by the interference reveal about the real wants of the population are.
Russia certainly is no friend of democracy and hatred towards the Putin regime is healthy but to fight it does take more than just saying a third of your citizenship is dumb and brainwashed, you have to remedy what they use against us.
This is true. But at the same time, a THIRD of our population ACTUALLY IS dumb and brainwashed. How the fuck do you fix that?
That’s true as far as it goes, but breaking the chain of Russian (and other hostile nation) influence on our politics is still the most direct way of dealng with the fascist problem. They’re puppets and we must cut the strings.
I think this is the beginning of Foundation’s Edge, tho. Second Foundation book deals with the First Foundation looking for the planet where that homes the Second and revolves around Arkady Darell
You’re confused because you’re existing in a censorship bubble.
it’s not just censorship. people have fundamentally different instincts, and that leads them to see different behavior as “normal” or acceptable.
You’d think what’s going on in what used to be the US (now a crater of burning shit) would have been a lesson for the rest of you.
Do Not Vote Con If You Don’t Want Life To Suck.
Stupid euros always talking mad shit about hep they’re better than us and turn around and do the same dumb shit
It’s going to be worse than you have. Not the same, living there, seeing the things: Europe is on the verge of going the hardest right wing way again, trumpism will look like amateur far-right compared to what is about to go down here.
Idk. Were already just blackbagging brown and homeless people off the street for concentration camps, queers are probably next. Unless you skip straight to the killing part
I also want to add on how big our military, police forces, and prison systems are. It seems like the imperial boomerang is finally crashing back into it’s citizens. Add ontop of that our technology, Silicon Valley and all it’s tech moguls, and our lack of privacy. I don’t know how Europe compares in terms of tech and privacy though, but I know we are around the top for military, police, and prisons. Yay - America is so exceptional in brutality and imprisonment off of our taxes… :(
Lol welcome to Lemmy tho
While it didnt kill the right wing populist parties, it did stall many of their efforts to get their chosen leaders into office. We shall see how the all shakes out.
What disgusts (but doesn’t surpise) me is that the media have almost completely ignored the fact that each Europen fascist party is exactly following the Moscow line, with the possible exception of the Italians, who claim to support Ukraine. Those parties are fronts operated by a hostile power, and should not only be shut down, but their leaders sent to prison for treason.
Instead: crickets.
yeah, and when you point this out, even with evidence of connections with the media and russian oligarchs and russian money going to media personalities they just yell about how the west’s favorite scapegoat blah blah
like do I think russia created a right wing populist movement in the west? no, however they are the reason they are all toeing the same line on issues important to them, and repeating, word for word, the same propaganda
It seems that democracy is beyond saving in the age of social media and all the misinformation that circulates there. I mean, you can’t be that incredibly stupid if you live even halfway in reality.
You only have to look at the US to see very clearly how corrupt the goddamn neo-Nazis are and that the promises they make to their ignorant voters are nothing but lies. It’s more than obvious that the US fascists are pursuing policies that are by no means in the interests of the people, but rather the work of a criminal syndicate, which is what they truly are. There is no difference between these barbarians and those in Europe – they are all agents of the power hungry billionaires and do nothing but pursue their interests, which is of course at the expense of the citizens.
Anyone who still doesn’t understand this is living entirely in the imaginary parallel world that the Nazis have built together with their financial backers.
Since this obviously affects so many people and these people cannot be convinced with rational arguments, it is probably hopeless.
Democracy is on it’s way out. Humanity is completely fucked on every fucking angle possible.
Democracy has always been the beard for Fascism since the creation of the US. It was a good lie to sell the people while the wealthy did whatever the fuck they want. Once you come to realize this everything makes sense and falls into place.
That may be true for the US, but we’re talking about Europe here, where many countries have a welfare state, workers’ rights exist, and education is handled very differently. That’s precisely why I find it even more incomprehensible how people can be so incredibly stupid and vote for Nazis who are not only inhuman racists, but also want to create US-style conditions in Europe.
If Europe is such a great representation of idealism why are they marching lockstep to the right?
The truth is the wealthy, because of concentration of capital, have a disproportionate amount of representation. The wealth gap continues to get worse in all of Europe. This is not a coincidence!
The US doesn’t need to impose their shitty conditions on Europe because they are doing it to themselves. It is a race to the bottom and the wealthy are laughing the whole way.
What else can I say? Every thinking person is aware of the problem, but you’re not going to achieve anything with your propaganda slogans – on the contrary, you’re scaring off people who basically agree with you.
The truth is fucking terrifying and you have a lot of propaganda running around in your head like everyone, including me. This propaganda creates cognitive dissonance.
Every thinking person is not aware of this or even close. I studied communications with an emphasis on propaganda and persuasion. I learned a lot of disturbing things about humanity.
While we may agree on a few points I highly doubt you believe what I do. Perhaps you are right though, stranger things have happened.
The actual Nazis didn’t really drop in popularity much, or rather their policies didn’t, even after those very policies resulted in much of the continent being burned down. People literally looked around at the rubble and hoped that fascists would fix things. In Italy, they stayed in power ffs.
You need strong constitutions to protect from this shit, because people will vote for their own death when they are scared.
You need strong constitutions to protect from this shit, because people will vote for their own death when they are scared.
Constitutions without a mechanism of enforcement are just a piece of paper. Much of what is occurring in the United States right now is absurdly unconstitutional, but it doesn’t matter because the institutions – that are full of living, breathing humans – all ignore it.
Social media. They are disproportionately pushing right wing media. That’s it.
Please. Europe is a dozen times less stable than the US. You guys can’t stop from blowing each other up every 30 years.
If you add the words “liberal, capitalist” in front of democracy, I agree with you. But I believe that democracy as a whole is a worthy ideal worth striving towards, in all areas of public life.
deleted by creator
Most importantly, they paint the liberals as the left option to pretend that left does not work.
So glad the liberals, both in government and voters, that always lead us to fascism are so invested in shit like “respectability politics”, politics “being boring” and being on their supposed intellectual high horse because “emotions are bad, you should never raise your voice when people are starving and being genocided, you’re just the same as the far right.” But then while saying this just doing mostly what the far right want, pretending it’s somehow their idea. It’s really working so well to stop them.
But then the liberals would happily throw us into fascism if it meant there was an “I told you so” they could somehow twist out of it to say to the left
I will give you that.
Although I hope you give me that taking this level of dissatisfaction and managing to get negligible gains while the populist far right turns it into an outright lead in the polls is a massive failure of the left.
I am pretty staggered at the absolute incapability to make a dent on this trend by anybody at this point. It takes some hardcore commitment to 20th, if not 19th century politics to suck this badly at this.
The left has been getting kneecaped by the center at every opportunity. Macron formed as far right of a government as he could despite the left taking the most seats in parliament. Labour kicked Corbyn out of the party for trying to take them back to actually focusing on the needs of workers and not capital. SDP in Germany only cares about making sure Israel is loaded up with all the missles and arms it needs to carry out it’s genocide in Gaza. Liberals will give the reigns of power to the fascists before they ever make a concession to the left
Again, how come the far right has been able to pull the center right to the extreme but the left has sucked so bad at gaining concessions from centrist liberals?
I swear, step 1 to stopping fascism is we all collectively stop pretending the dog ate our campaign strategy.
This thread is bumming me out immensely. There is zero reaction here. Just whining and deflecting, from centrists and leftists alike. We are not turning this around this way.
How come i can get my alcoholic brother to go to a brewery with me, but i can’t get him to go to rehab with me? Liberals DO NOT WANT to make concessions to the left.
Ah, so they are right and we are wrong.
As in, we literally have losing cards. People are just naturally inclined to be right wing, and leftist positions are inherently minoritary.
That not only flies in the face of history and common sense, it’s defeatist to the point that a century ago it would have gotten you pegged as some fifth columnist infiltrator in any self-respecting leftist organization.
Human nature seems to be a huge part of it. Blaming someone else for all your troubles is such a winning concept, it’s really hard to fight against it. Plus actually having to acknowledge real issues and trying to fix them often comes with people having to change or sacrifice and that’s a hard sell compared to someone just pretending to have perfect solutions and that everything will be fine.
Sadly emotions win debates against facts almost every time.
That sounds good, but I’m going to need a bit more proof than just the premise that leftist politics are inherently a harder sell than race wars, genocidal urges and actively voting against one’s own interests.
It’s a cop out. An excuse. “It’s not that we suck at selling this, it’s that we’re right and it’s hard to do the right thing”.
Not buying it. Even discounting the places where they do have left-leaning governments holding back the far right, the obvious retort is “well, lie to them, then”. I mean, do you think the fascists have a plan for when they seize power and persecuting migrants and giving the rich control of most of society turns out to not fix everybody’s problems? If people are so emotional and dumb, then manipulate them for their own good.
Either the left has been bad at normal politics or they’ve been bad at populism. It’s abject failure either way.
Don’t ignore the media. A lot of money also means a lot of media attention which is skewed to the right and the whole social media, advertising industry and getting paid by clicks favors emotional content.
Right. So you’re telling me that these filthy liberals control the media and they’re still unable to stem the tide of extremist countercultural fascists about to unseat them from power all over Europe? What good is tilting the media to the right if you are entirely powerless to stop the fringes from kicking you out?
More to the point, where is the social media manipulation towards the left? How come the fascists can use social media to normalize an extreme but the left cannot?
I’m exhausted by the victimism. At least when the far right plays the victim card they have the common decency to do so in a call for rage-induced action. The left has become accustomed to the “what can you do” school of being a victim. It’s infuriating.
I say it again. Get good at old politics or get good at new politics. If Breitbart managed to become the acceptable template for what used to be centre-right conservative press the left has zero excuses.
Capital controls the media, not the left. The concept that the left controls the media is made up in order to justify pushing the goalpost to the right.
It is no different than the conservatives’ beef with colleges not giving their ideology safe spaces. This is most pronounced in law schools where conservatives are demanding their “constitutional originalism” reasoning be taught. The problem is, of course, there is no actual legal theory. They just made it up.
You seem to be upset that the left, which is not represented by any political party or corporation is not in control of the narrative. This is by design.
Listen, appealing to the dark side of human nature, othering people, blaming government is easy and works great. It is low hanging fruit stuff. It is effective for control and manipulation. It is also the opposite of what people on the left want.
They are not victims, they just don’t have any real power. The US has always been controlled by the wealthy and they are choosing the easy way out to stay in power. Giving the illusion of democracy takes a lot of work and even some occasional minor concessions. It is and always will be an illusion though in our current system.
We really need to form a government that is designed by nature to resist corruption instead of embracing it. Until we have something like that nothing meaningfully will change.
Eh… the left controls my government. There are plenty of leftist parties in Europe (which is what the thread is about).
I mean, last I checked France, Germany and the UK were not in the US, but I may have missed something in the news today.
Otherwise, I can´t stress enough how little I care about what happens to the US. Which is as little as possible but not zero, because I am not allowed to make it zero, which is what I’d really want.
Hey buddy. You’re talking real fast. I dont think you know what you’re talking about.
Commenter clearly said billionaire media outlets are right leaning and control discourse. Billionaires are all right leaning. Billionaires fund breitbart. How did breitbart become mainstream? Because they were funded by multiple fascist Billionaires to advance their agenda.
why doesn’t the left manipulate social media
Oh you mean on the nazi platform owned by a nazi billionaire? Or do you mean on Facebook, also owned by a billionaire? I guess you mean lemmy, because thats what “leftist” social media looks like. Oh wow we arent dictating discourse because our app doesn’t make anyone money, big fucking shocker. Not to mention every kamala voter on this app needs to make sure than anyone to the left of her is shouted down. The left is really making waves.
People feel this way because it is literally only regular people asking for left wing policy and all of the power to influence politics is in the money. Nobody has any money because it was stolen from them by these same people who control all the social media, the news, and all the politicians. So people say “theres nothing we can do” because none of the Billionaires are going to suddenly stop being Billionaires and then nuke the rest of them from orbit.
If its so easy to start communist breitbart then go do that shit dude, if you’ve got it so figured out then why are you here talking? You wont, because this is cope. Plenty of people are making left wing media and driving conversation towards socialism but they’re making no money from it and getting no reach because they’re principled socialists doing educational socialist advocacy. Read: nobody with money would ever in a million years fund them the way the right wing funds tim pool, benny johnson, ben shapiro, jordan peterson, joe rogan, matt walsh, and you get the point now? Billionaires OPPOSE our viewpoints. Our shit is in workshops and union halls, not on TV. Thats why this disconnect is so large, because you dont broadcast socialism into people the same way you do bigotry.
Build a cadre and start doing the work, we dont need a top down authority to direct us like the troglodytes on the right. The “what can you do” attitude is towards billionaires controlling media not social revolution.
See, that’s some more excuses.
Turns out that a) back when the centrist liberals were quite close with those billionaires and didn’t want to rock the boat the far right still managed to sway both the billionaires themselves and politics overall rightward straight from the fringes, which the left hasn’t been able to mirror then or now.
But, more importantly, b) why is your app so shitty? I mean, sure, the other guys were able to cozy up to money, create, fund or buy platforms and pull poltiical strings. So we were what? Developing open source communication protocols that didn’t manage to get people to stick around even when the nazi billionaire had multiple public breakdowns?
See, the problem with that is the “if you don’t like it fix it yourself” attitude works about as well in politics as it does in open source software. Which is to say, not at all. It’s… actually kinda scary how well those two things map together. Nobody is in charge, nobody is getting paid, nobody wants to do anything and if enough people get together to actually try without corporate sponsorship you end up with a bunch of identical forks, none of which work particulary well.
But hey, by all means, enjoy your artisanal socialism and lose with dignity. I’m sure the moral pangs will make the well organized fascists really regret steamrolling the loose smattering of well informed cadres in union halls.
I don’t have it “figured out”, but I can certainly tell you that small scale zero budget grassroots action splintered across a multitude of factions delineated by random purity tests is not going to do much. That’s also why I have zero interest in starting yet another useless splinter of any kind.
There is an opportunity to rally anger around an alternative and yes, it will take unification, a charismatic leader and plenty of top down authority to get it going. The left is dropping the ball massively on all of those fronts. Get me that and I won’t care if it aligns with my particular brand of leftism, I’ll vote for it and support it publicly.
I mean, I already do, I live in a country with a left-leaning government, at least for now, and I will continue to vote for leftist parties here regardless of what happens or what they do for the foreseeable future. But… you know, in places where they don’t have a functional left wing apparatus.
We’re all in hell.
Nah, the human species is finally being honest. This is what we are. We are shit.
We have and can be better. There is no excuse.
No, we can’t. It’s time we accept the truth. Humans are, at their core, evil, hateful, selfish creatures.
Idk I don’t think it’s so black and white - that’s a cognitive distortion. There are good/better people who work hard to help people. Or people who are kind and uplifting to others around them even if it’s not their job. What we’re seeing now is malignant greedy people taking advantage of multiple collapses: our governments, the sixth extinction, climate change, etc.
I’ve spent time thinking and learning about the worst parts of humans, and I’m no expert, but the good, the bad, the ugly, and all the shades of gray inbetween, are all things that humans have used to survive. Just some people, whether by nurture or nature or culture, skew to the worser traits and some to the better traits. I guess I’m telling you all of this because there are good people who aren’t evil at their core, there are good people who make life worth living and that should give you hope and maybe something to hang onto during these awful times.
What we’re seeing now is malignant greedy people taking advantage of multiple collapses: our governments, the sixth extinction, climate change, etc
And literally nobody is stopping them. Why is that? It’s because every human is a malignant greedy person.
I’ll leave the optimism to others. I’ve officially seen enough. We are beyond redemption.
So why are you commenting? Why not fuck off to your cave of misery?
I have, but you goddam humans have infested the entire planet.
I’m sorry that this is how you feel. There are good people fighting fascism right now. All is not lost yet.
Well, maybe both of you are right, actually. We all suck so much and have been putting off a lot of responsibility for such a long time, and now it’s coming back to roost. Kinda nuts to think about, that it works that way.
