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.
Billionaires control the polls, own the news, own the social media, and have foundations and think tanks pushing society to the right. It’s all manufactured and twisted. They use lobbying / corruption to ham string all democratically started socialist programs so they no longer work well and it turns people against them. Billionaires are parasites that slowly suck society dry. They shouldn’t exist.
Most importantly, they paint the liberals as the left option to pretend that left does not work.
Thanks Elon, for your financial support of Hitler acolytes worldwide. Also, get fucked you Boer-reject piece of shit
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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 whore “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.
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
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.
Britain: Conservative + Labour starts Online Safty Act, Reform tops polls shocked pikachu face
Labour: We were sure continuing purging our own left base and adopting all Tory policies would make us look good! Fucking traitors the lot of them.
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.
This is bewildering. As an American citizen who has no idea how the actual fuck we wound up with another Trump presidency, all I have to say is, if you live in any other country and think the answer is to import this bullshit into your own country, I have no sympathy for you.
It’s not as simple as “Europeans are also voting for Trump-like parties”. You have multi-party system in Europe and the far-right parties are mostly anti establishment movements. People are mad at lack of action from the governments when it comes to housing, climate, crime, immigration and social services issues. They are tired of both left and right wing parties so they voting for the alternatives now. It’s not exactly some anti-intellectual, extreme conservative, anti-democratic movements like MAGA. Yes, it’s still bad but most people support EU and democracy. While MAGA is a purely fascist movement trying to regain their dominant position over the minorities in EU it’s more about frustration with the ruling class.
As an American, thank you for explaining this. It’s still not great because it echoes what happened here. We are also stuck in a duopoly that was slowly being cranked to the right over decades. A lot of people were initially drawn to Trump because of his ideas of “draining the swamp” and sounding anti-establishment. I think the duopoly and the sense of anti-establishment under a capitalist economy (that turned into hypercapitalism) is where fascism really dug it’s claws in and when things really started to accelerate. I have hope that this will result in something better after whatever happens happens, but I’m deeply worried about my family, my friends, my self with whatever comes next. I don’t want people to die and suffer but that’s already happening and has been happening. I feel powerless and it’s awful.
Everyone everywhere is worried now. I really hope EU as a whole will survive and guard basic human rights (at least internally) but who knows?
I’m not sure how corrupt the politicians are in your country, but they are here. We’ve had laws repealed one by one so politicians can get bought off like by oil companies, health insurance, war profiteers, housing investment companies (renting out homes to people instead of people owning), etc. That seems to be a major issue for us in why no progress was made in terms of climate change and other issues too. Although our democrats made progress on social issues, which honestly democrats won’t lose much with some policies and laws for some social progress, they’re still protecting corporate interests because they want their slice. I’m not sure if there’s a good future for us or not, but I’ve been reading that getting involved in one’s community and grassroots helps. Best of luck to you and yours from across the pond.
As an American citizen who has no idea how the actual fuck we wound up with another Trump presidency,
I can help you, here.
We skipped the primary and coronated Liz Cheney as our party leader.
Social media plays a big role in this. People have been inoculated with a state of mind that allows this kind of ideas to succeed.
That’s the thing. We have a foresight Americans don’t necessarily have and we’re still making a mess. It’s an even more damming reflection of our society.
Holy hell, what a comment section. I’m seeing Americans calling out Europeans for being all talk about what America is supposed to do, several people lamenting impending doom, and more blame targeting the ultra wealthy.
Our future needs to be Solarpunk and have class mobility. Do something for your community this week. The answers lie with the people that think differently than you. De-propagandize your neighbor by giving them a shared enemy. Nothing binds people together like conflict. While we’re at it, encourage boxing matches between government officials. Mabne then we’ll keep younger, highly motivated individuals in office.
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.
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.
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.
Do not split.
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.
If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
Schizo rant about media manipulation
We are isolated from the right wing side of it here but propaganda is dominating most media. Its really sophisticated and resourced by different states and groups.
On mainstream platforms open Nazi imagery and ideas go viral in hyper specific pockets. Its targeted at groups they think will be suspectable then those groups adopt it, wash it and then spread it. At this point its several stages in and most of the work is done by actual people for free.
They compile emotional imagery, videos and stories and blast them in the face of average people and it baits them hook line and sinker. If you can show a 35 year old white women clips of vicious attacks on women from refugees of the course of the year she will internalise it and become radical. These dont have to be recent she just needs to see them regularly. Strip context, make up different narratives for the same clip it doesnt matter.
With the lovely invention of social media and targeted advertising you can get your message put in front of these average people. People dont choose what they see, they just view what comes across their feed.
This – people determine themselves by consuming media. If you consume media with algorithms, then you are determining yourself even more, because you are not in charge of what you are consuming next. It doesn’t matter what you will publish against this, because the algorithms decide if your peaceful living is more “viewable” than the right wing propaganda.
The dangerous blend of political funding, ideological media, and the power held by those who design and control algorithmic behavior – combined with insights from modern psychology – is part of what’s driving us toward the dystopian future we’re now living in.
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.
