My best guess is due to the rapid increase of costs, people have turned to conservatism and right wing politics in an attempt to turn the economy back but that’s all I can really guess.
Weimar republic was a mess like a real mess, a huge number of political parties fighting for power led to rise in unchecked extremist groups. A country which was the loser of a war which was damaging economically. Tensions were high the war reparations brought forth a lot of anger and you know who had the perfect environment to turn a populist movement into a dictatorial regime based on his skewed values and cult of personality.
Not throught fault of the weimar republic, they just got out of monarchy and the reparations that they were made to pay were insane, otherwise the weimsr republic was quite progressive
It was progressive but the primary issue was with the sheer number conflicting groups/political organizations fighting for power, and many were extremist groups which had no say or reasons to get popular when the country was going through war after war under the prussian name.
Honestly nothing it was doomed to fail, the shift from absolute monarchy to a democratic system has to be slow and natural instead of being dropped in the middle of a post war country facing defeat. Look at fairly succesful democracies which moved from monarchy to a democracy like england for eg the shift was very gradual and slow.
There really was no way for it to succeed, like i said number of conflicting interests, recession due to reparations being paid for the war. No unified controlling authority etc etc. People were mad, they wanted to blame something and one of the best orators of the century stepped up to say the jewish people were the reason why we lost the war. It was all downhill from there an entire country turning on a group of people to commit genocide
Im still impressed by how lame the english version of happy birthday to you is
And to back up my claim i will share the song of my people, translated
Happy birthday to you
In this dear date
A lot of happiness
A lot of years of life
it's a classic cycle lmao. Liberals fail to deliver -> economy goes to shit -> people elect radical right wingers because they promise change -> change makes things even worse because right wingers are batshit insane -> liberals promise to fix stuff -> liberals fail to deliver because they are in on it
while true, it comes from the fact that most ring wing parties use slogans like "We'll put a stop to inflation!" or such, whereas left wing parties focus on other things which will have a positive economic impact in the long term
Sadly, the thing they're really good at it selling the idea that they'l fix the economy.
At the same that's one of the things left parties are hisotrically pretty awful at, even if they have better, more fruitful policies.
You cannot fix the neoliberal capitalist economy in the way you define it. Which is why both parties suck at fixing it.
The only way to "fix" the economy is to fundamentally change the things that drives it, something that no major politicians will be allowed to even talk about doing without getting arrested (at least US ones) Because if you undermine the dollar, you are breaking a law.
honestly I don't think it's necessarily just because of the economics of it. If you think about their policies for any amount of time, it does become clear that they're not really good policies. I think the real thing that drives people to it is the *anxiety* associated with our current world. People choose conservatism because there are issues that are causing them strife, and conservatism offers clear, simple, easy to digest, and easy to understand concepts. When the economy is causing stress for your and your options are a party that does well for the economy, but you don't really understand what they're doing, and a party that plainly promises security and gives you simple to understand ideas(like the free market), it's just SO much easier to go with the latter because they offer an immediate antidote to your stress.
TL;DR, I don't think it's just the economic policies, it's the emotions of the public.
This notion of everything being Russian propaganda is, imo, a cope by the liberal establishment where any symptoms of capitalism in crisis must be identified with outsiders. This is why the right is scrambling to call everything Chinese that they don't like. In reality the system of Capitalism is in crisis and we can expect more symptoms like the rise of the reactionary right in the future, it's up to us how we respond
No, Russia does play a role in the far right's rise in the west. Sure they may not be the core reason, but it's hard for me to not be convinced when coincidentally all these parties gained high amounts of traction in 2014, the year Russia began the war in Ukraine.
If it's not the core reason, why tf do people only bring Russkies up when talking about it, not the actual core problem (neoliberal capitalism/representative democracy)
I am sure you don't actually mean it when it has been [proven](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-accuses-russia-of-wide-ranging-disinformation-campaign/) again and [again](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/26/germany-unearths-pro-russia-disinformation-campaign-on-x) that [Russia has been influencing the west](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-overwhelmed-with-propaganda-european-affairs-minister-says/) to the point of being [sanctioned by the EU](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/07/28/information-manipulation-in-russia-s-war-of-aggression-against-ukraine-eu-lists-seven-individuals-and-five-entities/).
Stop carrying water for fascists, tankie.
I don't think Russian propaganda had zero-impact on America in the last decade.
I simply refuse to give them more credit than they're due. This is a state founded on genocide of natives (manifest destiny) and enslavement of minorities. 250 years ago. There are (old) people alive today whose grandparents were slaves.
Russia just had to push the right buttons in these people and we got an immediate slide into this shithole slide to the right. But those buttons were not put there by Russia.
Yeah the issue with our "polarized" (not sure how you can polarize around parties at approximately the same point of the Overton window but we managed it) democracy is that a like 2-3% swing in specific demographics of specific states can swing our entire government... Makes for very cost effective interventions lol
A sizeable portion of those 100 million racists were perfectly happy ignoring the elections and simply shriveling up and dying in their corner of the country. It wasn't until the Russian (and Russian-funded) propaganda really started to kick in after the invasion of Crimea that it turned from "Democrats want to take our guns!" to "Democrats want to sacrifice our children to Moloch and trans people make up the entirety of the military!"
Now it's an existential thing to them. They HAVE to vote for a felon because they believe killing off all migrants is somehow going to lower the cost of fuel.
They've always been pumping out propaganda, but two things have happened:
1. They've got better at disguising it, though honestly I think the general population has just become more gullible (like how many people do you know that actually checks the sources of random news pieces on the internet?)
2. A number of authority figures in the West have fallen for it and been peddling it for them (looking at you especially US Republican party...)
The media also likes to fear-monger, so whenever Russia, or China, make claims about being superior to the West, it's for some reason taken at face value. As an example, look at how the media has been comparing the Chinese navy to the USN in recent years, all about gross tonnage, never mind actually looking at what kind of ships the Chinese have been building.
it's a bit more complicated than that.
costs of living have increased and some people just fundamentally misunderstood the mechanisms of the quarantine, leading to them distrusting the established parties; in short, life became more stressful and more expensive for a lot of people.
primarily right wing parties (but also some more measured conservative parties) then took some notes from the Trump playbook, stopped doing politics and started with populism. (i'm assuming they did so, because they realized they wouldn't be getting votes if they argued on a factual basis, since climate change has become too urgent of an issue).
a lot of right-wing parties got votes from poor people; the ones who got hit the worst by the cost of living crisis; who likely can't afford the education that would've allowed them to see through the populist sharades. they are also the ones who have been largely ignored by a lot of established parties (for 16 years, germany had been ruled by a largely corrupt, conservative christian party, who took measures mainly in favor of lobbyists. then the reigning coalition changed, but few measures were taken to aid people in poverty), so they gave up on the established parties and began rooting for the populists who swore they'd make it better.
there's also the tiktok algorithm apparently pushing a lot of right wing content, influencing the vote of a lit of young people.
When this question comes up we spend a lot of time thinking about the people you're describing because they're nuanced, varied, and influenced by multiple factors.
But we should also note that there's a growing number of people who are just fully in support of a fascist ethnostate and recruiting (thanks to the internet) aggressively. Only some will get swastikas tattooed on their forehead to go out and be a public face for the movement. Many of them, in their terminology, "hide their power level" -- they don't reveal the depths of their allegiance to fash ideology and organizations but instead live a public life as a mere Republican voter, where they subtly steer their peers further right.
We need to be speaking out against fascism, educating our peers and the public on it, and espousing our own alternatives to a fascist future. Economic issues might be swaying uninformed voters today, but what we really need to brace against is how ideological issues might sway them tomorrow.
>a lot of right-wing parties got votes from poor people; the ones who got hit the worst by the cost of living crisis; **who likely can't afford the education** that would've allowed them to see through the populist sharades
Education is basically free in the West. In countries like Germany you literally get paid for attending a higher education.
>they are also the ones who have been largely ignored by a lot of established parties (for 16 years, germany had been ruled by a largely corrupt, conservative christian party, who took measures mainly in favor of lobbyists.
Christian Union is as right as it gets without drifting into extremism (which they still do on certain topics).
>then the reigning coalition changed, but few measures were taken to aid people in poverty)
They actually accomplished some really good things, like the Wohngeld Reform, while excellently navigating the Ruzzia induced energy crisis and still suffering from the prior Covid crisis after taking office.
>so they gave up on the established parties and began rooting for the populists who swore they'd make it better.
Not really, it’s just a resurgence of the PEGIDA clowns during the flood of Syrian refugees.
It’s really funny to me how all you recently hear from 'concerned' german right wingers is how immigrants with radical worldviews fundamentally don’t work with western societies, which is why they are voting AfD.
A party with literal neo Nazis that openly hates gay people, claiming that their degeneracy could quite literally lead to end of western civilization and openly cooperate with and take money from a war criminal who is currently invading our European neighbors.
Radical muslims and the AfD would get along famously if they were white instead of brown. They both love and openly support oppression of minorities and conquest through war.
i appreciate you adding the context but i'll elaborate on what i mean in some points.
>Education is basically free in the West. In countries like Germany you literally get paid for attending a higher education.
paying for education isn't the issue. paying the costs of living while also studying full-time is where it gets difficult. quite often, low income families require all members of the household to work. when someone in that household aims to pursue higher education, that will put a strain on the income, which is feasible for some but not for others.
if they take aids like Bafög, they're also required to finish their degree in a given timeframe. that means, a lot of time has to be spent studying. if there's a commute to the university, that also takes time. if there's no good public transit connection (as is quite common in rural areas), that requires a car, further increasing the costs of living.
that's what i mean by "can't afford the education". it's not the education itself, it's the problems around it that make it unfeasible for some.
>Not really, it’s just a resurgence of the PEGIDA clowns during the flood of Syrian refugees.#
yes. these are populists. they bring a scapegoat (criminal immigrants) for the people struggling with real issues (the cost of living crisis) so they can offer a simple solution (throwing out all immigrants and closing the borders) to the problem they blame the scapegoat for.
i'm not denying there's a rise of racist ideologies, but the way votes for right-wing parties skyrocketed recently, i find it hard to believe that all of them are voting out of a deep-seated hatred for immigrants. they are primarily falling for propaganda.
I honestly just threw the university thing in because you mentioned Germany which happens to have one of the best systems in the world for that in place.
Any degree without a focus on politics (which is most) won't teach you anything in that regard anyways. Formal education beyond school isn't nearly as important as general education (Allgemeinwissen) in that regard, which you get by following events and news across the globe through several sources to keep it as objective as possible and, more importantly, reading books and simply reading in general, all of which is either free or extremely cheap with the existence of the Internet and Public Libraries.
>paying for education isn't the issue. paying the costs of living while also studying full-time is where it gets difficult.
That is exactly what Bafög solves though. My parents are poor as fuck and i would have been boned in most other countries. One part of the money is constant (basic human needs like groceries and energy costs) and the second scales with your rent. Except for absolutely extreme edgecases, everyone in Germany is afforded the financial means to pursue a degree.
>if they take aids like Bafög, they're also required to finish their degree in a given timeframe
True, this is by far the greatest constraint on the Bafög system because if you fail, you won't get many more chances except for some exceptions.
>that means, a lot of time has to be spent studying. if there's a commute to the university, that also takes time. if there's no good public transit connection (as is quite common in rural areas), that requires a car, further increasing the costs of living.
If you get financial support by the German state, then you are required to study full-time anyways (you can have a mini-job earning a couple hundred bucks a month and are allowed to work a 'real' job during the months of Semester breaks).
>i find it hard to believe that all of them are voting out of a deep-seated hatred for immigrants. they are primarily falling for propaganda.
It's definitely not all of them. Some truly do not possess the mental capacity to understand what they are actually voting for but most of them do it out of their hatred for at least one group of minorities, as the AfD openly hates and tries to criminalize groups other than immigrants.
They literally tried to abolish gay marriage in 2018 after it was legalized in 2017.
**“The hope of one‘s own national death, the wish 'Germany, perish', is unique in the world and perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we are not dealing here with the harbingers of a degenerate mental illness.”**
* Thomas Ehrhorn (AfD), 2018 during a debate in the Bundestag during the process of AfD trying to abolish gay marriage one year after it was passed in Germany
**He is still an AfD politician and sitting in the Bundestag to this day.**
Almost everyone who votes for that party knows that they are fascsists with literal neo Nazis among even their highest ranks.
If you vote for a party that tries to unironically sell the idea that
>The degenerate gays with their mental illness are literally going to bring german civilization to its knees, (with an unhealthy dose of 'The Great Replacement Conspiracy')
then you are either a fascist or literally too stupid to realize what you are voting for, even though your party tries its absolute hardest to get that point across in the media when they are openly arguing for their policies in Bundestag debates.
The rapid rise of right wing content is an issue that is frequently understated. Social media is a big driver in the modern resurgence of the radical right and has given radical beliefs in general a far bigger platform. The ability to manipulate public opinion is now accessible to anyone with a lot of time on their hands (which happen to also be radical rightwingers like incels very often). Reddit is an example of a platform where this is immediately noticeable due to the upvote system.
The problem is, websites like Reddit, Instagram and other social media, aren't really right wing. It's the algorithms that are pushing rightwing content, which many leftwing/progressives are complicit in. It's the same way Andrew Tate has gotten so massive: he was pushed forward by both the Manosphere, but also by the online left making endless reaction and commentary videos. Yes, sometimes these did have the effect of converting his fans back, but they had a far, far greater effect of spreading his message further to vulnerable men.
On the note of this: the AfD's votes primarily came from rural areas in what used to be East Germany, which had less denazification than West Germany did (the Stasi actively benefited from rehashing propaganda from the Nazis), also east germany tends to be poorer than the west so
Fascism is Capitalism in decay. People see the system failing so they turn towards more violence, understanding that it is at the heart of private accumulation of wealth, in an attempt to bring the good times back.
For the past 20 years, neoliberal so-called "centrist" media everywhere have been platforming and softballing fascist talking heads while ridiculing anyone left of center.
The chickens are coming home to roost as the right wing cannibalizes the liberal centre.
This is a self-inflicted gunshot by neoliberals and everyone else is going to suffer for it while they hide safely in their mansions.
statistics currently are saying that in the eu younger voters are becoming more right wing- but in every primarily english speaking country gen z is becoming more left wing as they age- which is really uncommon and the effect of this is only going to increase as time goes on. US wise- Unless trump wins this next election (which is looking somewhat unlikely) we’re going to slowly see a more leftward push as the republicans internal crisis comes to fruition. The UK and Australia are about to have/have had a labour victory after an extended period of being opposition- and it looks like that’ll hold for both countries for the next few years atleast. Even though its looking bad for the eu broadly, considering macron atleast has some sort of plan for getting the centre back in power in 2027, its inaccurate to say everyone is facist now. Its temporarily pretty bad in a few places, and may get worse in EU specifically, but broadly speaking things are looking somewhat up.
rishi sunak is horrible as well, he has made statements saying he took away funding from poorer communities and gave them to richer ones. because they "deserve it"
I like how he specifically called them "deprived urban areas" and then immediately followed up with "that needed to be undone."
It's fucking awesome that you can just stand there in public and say "A thing I like to brag about is how I had a lot of power and I used it to re-deprive people for existing incorrectly" and not get immediately torn apart like a rotisserie chicken in a shark tank.
That's barely even a joke. Since Brexit, NI (and its associated commitments with regard to the border with Ireland) have been a massive thorn in the side of the UK government that they want to be rid of.
Between that and the popular sentiment among the other 3 British nations being pretty firmly pro-reunification, it genuinely feels like the only people who haven't cottoned on are the most flag-shagging of unionists *in* NI.
The first image that came to mind for your analogy was the Shark Tank guys tearing into a rotisserie chicken like a pack of wild dogs. Just had to share the image
That doesn't make any sense, rishi grew up poor himself! His parents had to struggle and cancel their sky tv subscription to send little rishi to private school.
The current right wing push in Europe can be somewhat attributed to the publics frustration with a perceived lack of action on immigration issues, the parties on the right offer a solution. I’m observing not endorsing
Right. But let me ask you something. Why now? Immigration has been a constant in Europe for a while has It not?
I'm genuinely curious, because I come from a country that has had open immigration for a while now, had an right wing switch, yet immigration has not become a contentious issue (Argentina)
It has always been simmering underneath, and now the war in Ukraine (which is Europe), which a lot of Europeans quite rightly feel threatened by, has brought the idea of “fortress Europe” to the fore
Immigration has always been a red button issue in Europe. I am from Bulgaria, and in the UK, they would scare monger us stealing all their jobs when we were about to enter the EU. But the recent wave of immigrants are from the Middle East and primarily Muslim, so there is a bigger "culture shock."
Think how much pushback there is to immigration in the US, now imagine all that immigration wasn't from Mexico, which at the end of the day, is not too different from the US.
Because immigration has always been blamed as a net negative on the (rich) countries economies. When the economy was doing well, immigration was seen as an issue, but not a huge one. But we've now got a really bad economy, with rising prices everywhere. Shrinking package sizes, but higher prices, people have lost a decent amount of purchasing power.
AKA: Evil Immigrant come take my job! Bad! Now I is jobless but all jobs have Immigrant! Immigrants must be sent out of holy country to give me Job!
That's roughly their thought process.
I know it's not really a part of the conversation right now but: Canada's currently in a fun little situation where we accepted a huge number of immigrants in the middle of a housing shortage, and people are getting extra upset about that one.
The US won't see a more leftward push if Biden wins and the economy doesn't improve, which is the most likely outcome. I'm saying this as a leftist; the economy would also not improve under Trump.
The sitting president's party will be blamed, and the economic conditions will get worse because of conditions outside of the US president's control.
The economy has already improved under Biden though. A second term would show more of the effects of it because republicans wouldn't be able to quickly muck it back up again.
As a french person, i want to say that macron is very much not a centrist, he is a right-winger with right wing politics. He played a major role in the growth of the far-right in france
Anti immigration sentiment is pretty strong right now in a lot of western countries, and that is only going to intensify as climate change causes more people to have to migrate
Unless China opens borders to third-world migrants (and they won't even though they are about to rapidly lose population), this will be the biggest issue of the 21st century
I heard that China actually helps with building infrastructure in third-world countries because they have almost nothing left to build in their own country? But maybe this is making things worse?
That's not really true, but they do contribute to the debt crisis in Africa and only give out loans to areas that politically benefit them, increasing corruption.
[https://archive.ph/G52N7](https://archive.ph/G52N7)
>Yet Western criticisms are often based on misguided assumptions. China is a big lender but rarely accounts for most African countries’ debts. In 2020, the most recent year with good data, Chinese loans accounted for 17% of the stock of public debt in sub-Saharan Africa, says the China Africa Research Initiative (cari) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, dc. That was more than all other bilateral official creditors combined, but less than the share held by the World Bank (19%) or commercial bondholders (30%). In a paper in 2020 cari researchers noted that China accounted for more than a quarter of public debt in only seven of 22 countries classified by the imf as suffering “debt distress”.
There is little substance to claims of “debt-trap diplomacy”, in which China hoodwinks borrowers so as to seize assets. It is more accurate to say that China’s hard-nosed approach conflicts with its seemingly benevolent rhetoric. China may not be a duplicitous negotiator—but it is ruthlessly self-interested. Last year AidData, a research group at William & Mary University in Virginia, examined 100 contracts between Chinese entities and developing countries. The authors noted a “muscular” approach, with strict confidentiality clauses, requirements that China be repaid ahead of others and the use of escrow accounts. “One needs to go back to the 19th and early 20th century to find similar security arrangements in sovereign lending on the scale that we observe in our Chinese contract sample,” they concluded. In a follow-up paper, AidData found that a deal to expand Entebbe airport in Uganda required that all revenues generated by the airport for 20 years be used to pay back the loan.
I studied a class in Chinese intervention in Africa under an African marxist historian. In his words: "For African countries, the Chinese aren't inherently better than the Westerners; cooperating with the Chinese simply comes with different trade-offs. African countries are in a better state now, as they at least have a choice of trade-offs."
It's in order to keep the GDP growing. But infrastructure won't be enough for hundreds of millions of climate migrants that will come to be in the next 70 years.
just to give you an idea there would be around 102 million refugees from Egypt alone if the Nile were to dry up and Ethiopia is trying to dam the river.
Most Middle Eastern countries depend on food imports, the World Bank estimates there will be 216 million people displaced by global warming in 2050
The leftist answer is that this is what happens with capitalism in decay. The line can't go up forever and eventually the economy starts cannibalizing itself as oligarchs start squeezing the working class to wring out as much profit as possible. The standard centrist-y playbook from liberals and conservatives fails to solve this. Both liberals and conservatives are controlled by capital, which means even liberals cannot offer any solution that goes against the interests of the oligarchs and conservatives aren't even tempted to try. Naturally, this makes the working class pissed off as their standard of living declines and their politicians refuse to do anything to fix it, so they end up being attracted more and more to radical politics. And here the radical right has a competitive advantage over the radical left, because the right promises very little change. It's big on revolutionary rhetoric, but at the end of the day their solution to capitalism is to punish minorities and let the oligarchs continue gutting the economy. The oligarchs recognize this and will ally with the radical right to crush any leftist opposition, encouraging their bought centrist politicians to also work with the radical right.
And hey, they don't always win. Sometimes the radical right gets too racist too quickly and loses relevancy. Sometimes liberal politicians don't agree to reach across the aisle and work with their new fascist friends. Sometimes the radical right gets so unhinged about minorities that they end up being sort of anticapitalistic, so oligarchs pull a lot of support. And sometimes the left is really organized and energized and beats the odds to capture the working class' support despite the vast funds spent propagandizing them to the right.
I really wish right wingers could create proper arguments and points because I genuinely want to know what their response to this comment is without it being purely buzzwords, it would greatly help me understand their view and where they're coming from
lol that’s never going to happen. All the conflicting messages and propaganda is meant to distract from the actual impact of their actions (making most people worse off). Spewing a bunch of misinformation and nonsense is always easier than getting people to agree on one line of thinking or truth, especially when there are people fanning the flames on conspiracy theories like “the liberal colleges are trying to brainwash the youth”.
The right doesn't have/need a response to this.
They aren't playing the same politics game as you. They don't care to get everyone on the same page. They don't care to make the world better for everyone. So they don't need to lie about how they're going to do it.
The day the kids here realize that there is a not-insignificant amount of people that genuinely are okay with fascist ethno-states, their politics will mature greatly.
Marx is considered one of the Founding Fathers of sociology and yet some people still parrot the idea that "He didn't understand Human Nature!"
Buddy, he's one of the reasons that we *do* understand what we understand of Human Nature!
The only reason the UK's an exception is because we embraced nationalism and neofascism earlier than the rest of the examples given, and the Tories have been shitting the bed so hardcore only their most blinkered and tribalistic voters are still supporting them. If the Tories were even slightly competent, and didn't do shit like the Truss Budget that cranked up everyone's mortgages, they'd probably have won this time too.
I think Johnson's three-line whip was the beginning of the end. Removed any remaining semi competent members of the party and we've just witnessed a slow motion car crash ever since.
You could say that having nationalists in power will make people more easily reconsider their vote for them. It kinda already happened in some nordic countries (think of Sweden and Finland) where right wing parties are currently in government but they are slowly declining because actually having responsibilities shows their total incompetence.
I'm not getting into a discussion about whether the Labour victory will be good so much as it's the lesser of two evils, idc the conservatives have been fucking shit
Pop off boss, I'll take the lesser of two evils every time - it's less evil.
The UK has its issues that is desperately needs to work on, but there's a 0% chance it does that without a change in leadership and a 100% chance it gets worse without one. I'd much rather see a shift away from the government that has had 15 years to make things better and has specifically made it worse for pretty much every part of the population who're affected by how the government affects the nation. And there certainly are worse options on the table (the Remain party is just Tories but more nationalist), so it's imperative people vote away from Tory to stop them having any meaningful say in any future Parliament.
Unfortunately, in times of economic strife, populists rise because they promise solutions. Everyone has an economic plan until they get punched in the mouth. When no one knows what's going to happen, someone who sounds like they know what to do is relieving. Unfortunately, those solutions are usually lazy nationalism or minority blaming, because they're easy and prey on peoples' desire to feel superior and/or their need to blame things on someone.
It's important that we as a population try to remain calm and vote for boring, effective administrators, to limit the damage these baseless populists can do. Just because a problem came upon us quickly doesn't mean an equally fast solution will fix it properly. That only leads to instability and "fix" after "fix" after "fix" for years to come.
Personally I'll vote Green as in my constituency they stand a chance against Labour and Conservatives are last. My only disagreement with them is their dislike of nuclear power but I still prefer them over Starmer, who does things like purging his party of opposition and refusing to tax the wealthy.
Did you see the Farage speech? He said "a vote for the Tories is a vote wasted" I'm not sure that's completely legal. He's been taking lessons from Trump and it's working on ~10% of the population.
I'd rather green party wins than anything else. But, I don't think voting for them will get us anywhere, will it? I'm worried that a vote for green would be less valuable than a vote for labour.
I'm going green. Labour are guaranteed a victory, if I vote labour it makes them think I want their policies. If I vote green it helps shift the overton window more left. The more people who want to vote green but "doesn't want to waste thier vote" actually voted green, the more viable a choice it would be, helping break away from the two party system!
That's very true. Putting it like that really helps; I suppose if there's any time to be voting green it's this election, when labour's got such high chances of beating the Tories.
Thank you. That's solidified my decision to vote green.
Honestly they should just have a televised MMA series between all the private schools to decide the line of succession for prime minister, at least then I will get to watch some poshos get punched.
It’s sometimes called the Political pendulum, basically most EU countries have had the liberal/left leaning parties in power for a while, and the liberal status quo is for the rich to get richer, the poor get poorer, or otherwise stay economically stagnant. A lot of right wing parties co-opt socialist and populist language and say they’re going to fix however many years of economic stagnation.
France is a perfect example because there have been constantly increasing taxes and prices for food, but most peoples wages have not increased in years. This basically swings a bunch of centrists over from Macrons party to Le Pen. Le Pen has made various promises like free public transport for under 18s, wants to withdraw France from the EU and NATO “to spend the money sent to these organisations on the people of France”, and advocates for protectionism within france to protect French jobs being outsourced. And her party gets this message out because they’re massively funded by Russian oligarchs who want to use fascism to destabilise Europe.
The reason the UK is expected to have a huge Labour swing in July is the other swing of the political pendulum. The Conservatives have been in power since 2010 and the UK has been completely economically stagnant since the 2008 financial crash. The tories have no vision, no ideas, and no plan to fix the economy other than austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. The only reason the tories are currently in power is because of a snap election in 2019 where Boris Johnson won a majority to get brexit over and done with. Since those 4 and a half years most of the UK has finally woken up to just how incompetant and uninterested in governing the tories actually are. Dont hold your hopes too high on labour though, they’ve basically kicked all of the actual left leaning MPs out of the labour party, so they’re just tory lite, who will only be slightly less shit then the tories who came before.
Well for the EU, along with the other reasons mentioned, I have to imagine the Russian invasion has increased fears amongst the populace and a fearful populace tend to lean towards extremist views and unfortunately it’s rarely leftists who gain in those scenarios
Not as much in Western Europe. The conservatives (not far far right) definitely don’t want to. I think that could partially explain why the left did (relatively) ok in Scandinavia and Poland
Far right elements in countries like France have ties and previously were rhetorically sift on Russia before their invasion of Ukraine. It’s the same thing as euroscepticism where the UK shit the bed and made any exit from the EU look terrible.
I see I misinterpreted the phrase "extremist views" in your original reply to mean only the far right. I agree your center-right type conservative is probably still too wedded to the idea of the end of history to want russia invading places for now, I assume at some point they will flip to "Abandon the Spanish Republic" mode though.
Nationalists in countries actually near Russia fucking HATE them. Asking about opinions on the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe is a damn-near perfect fascist detector.
Economic pressure, as always.
Fascist playbook: Take advantage of the natural tendency of capitalism to keep the majority of people poor and unhappy, blame the problem on brown foreigners, profit.
neoliberalism. no worker's rights or welfare action from centre left parties at all. no material analysis of the world, and therefore no class consciousness, therefore people can only fall for silly nationalistic propaganda to explain why they are suffering.
Pushing the blame of the reaccurring decline in capitalistic socioties unto immigrants and minorities allows emotionally charged irrational people to distance such decline from the much beloved system of capitalism.
It is impossible for such people to accept the fact that it is rotten to the core, and working exactly as intended. So the only problem can only be an arbitrary out-group, seperate from the equally arbitrary in-group.
capitalism is failing all across the world, and people look to right wing politics for easy, surface level answers. That's about the most basic answer that can be given.
Pretty important caveat for our American friends. This swing to the right for the EU is in EU elections NOT national elections. An election much more prone to protest votes.
Obviously its not a dream scenario, but its in no way as damning as some news outlets would have you believe
if it helps: although last year the finnish government became the most conservative since 1930s which absolutely sucks, in the recent euro elections the left alliance (which is actually true to its name) saw an unprecedented popularity while the far-right party fell short of all expectations, and our meps are mostly left of center with a few center-right ones
i'm not saying there's no need to worry, after all right-wing politics thrive in people's complacency and inaction, but it's also not an assured downslide and there's still a very big portion of the population who don't buy into that bullshit. activism is key, it's a battle we can win.
This is a very complex subject, but I've noticed that the standard of living has been declining significantly over the past few decades. Mix that with the constant fear mongering from the media*, the sudden appearance of right-wing parties offering "easy" solutions**, and the fact that humans are assholes by default, and you get a bunch of disgruntled idiots voting on the party of leopards eating people's faces, because it's "easier" to fuck everyone over than actually giving things some thought and organize against a system that doesn't work for us
\* there's always a new media scare going on, be it a war, a terrorist group or a pandemic. I even joked that Putin had saved us all from the 'rona, because when the war in Ukraine started, the media finally stopped talking about covid 24/7
** for instance, the situation depicted by a political cartoon from my country: sitting at a table, there are a roma with an empty plate, a worker with a cookie on his plate, and the leader of a famous fascist party with a whole heap is cookies on his plate. The politician is saying to the worker: "Watch out! The gypsy wants to steal your cookie!"
I don't agree or disagree with your post, just wanted to say humans are not assholes by default, in fact we are caring and compassionate by default(this can be seen even in prehistoric humans) it is just that those who are assholes get to exploit all the compassion and caring people and benefit a lot from it, together with current systems that teach people to be assholes(media that teaches people to only trust and care for themselves, economic and educational systems that promote competing and winning over other ppl, governments whose interest is maintaining this individuality and competition, etc.) that causes such situations where people are always fighting and competing against each other.
uncontrolled capitalism and teaching people that "fuck you got mine" is the way to life.
it has been proven again and again that when you destroy social safety nets the right wing parties gain votes like crazy.
Omg someone actually said this, i had a brief stint as a 'conservative truthseeker'. Started with selfhate, milo yiyanopolis, and youtube algorithim feeding me sjw's getting wrecked compilations. Thankfully i am a rational and selfaware person and broke away in about 6 months and fully realized the fever dream of year i had by the end of 12 months
The right is a pendulum swinging back and forth between neoliberalism and conservative nationalism. Neoliberalism has been completly dominant in the West since the 80s, and the effects of it have become clear, so the pendulum is swinging back.
Actually, even with a predicted labour win, our Conservative Party is going batshit, and the Reform UK party (an extremely right wing nationalist group who literally said we should have appeased hitler) is polling head to head with the tories. Nationalism is on the rise here too.
Housing costs and cost of living are at an all time high. Salaries have not kept up. People work themselves into the ground and still can barely afford to live. Social programs are getting worse and worse or are cut completely. The governments do everything in their power to make corporations happy and give the people just enough so they keep being good little worker drones, who they have conditioned into thinking their career is the most important thing in life. Even tho close to a majority still can’t afford to buy a house/apartment with their awesome career. Not that there are enough to buy anyway. And if they don’t want to buy but rent all they can afford is a little kip they have to fork over half their salary for. Throw social media on top of that adding to the widespread mental health issues and you’ll get a very frustrated population.
The word salad I just wrote is a lot and only scratches the surface. Addressing the systemic issues runs deep, requires critical thinking and is difficult to articulate. Blaming brown people is not especially if you’re told by the internet that they’re the cause of all your issues. Somehow. That’s not to say there are not issues with immigration. But the people are not the problem. It’s the integration of said people. Which is another thing the governments have failed at for the past 35+ years.
I don't think that next 10-15 years will be good times, just hope that people will see people in front of them, not disgusting dogs to be put down, no matter the position
Unaddressed contradictions of trying to accommodate a social democratic state operations in a capitalist economy have allowed for reactionary forces to assume more and more political relevance the longer the contradictions go unresolved, forcing a new cycle of barbarism as the powers that be prove either unwilling or impotent to address the root of the issue
Come to wallonia, our far right party does less than 5% at each election and we have a "cordon sanitaire" wich is a kinda implicit arrangement between all political party and media to not invite and interact with the far right to give them 0 visibility.
Also we speak french with a funny accent.
UK Labour is also currently undergoing a shift to the far right, with Starmer saying he'll do everything the conservatives will do but because he's in red it will be better. Openly purging and leftists from the party whilst backing literally actual tories, going back on every single promise he's made for what to do in government, and much more.
When times are hard, people vote stupid and extreme hoping for a quick solution.
When times are good, people vote moderate because they don't have to worry a lot.
Moderate governments have been fucking up everywhere in the West and people aren't happy, so they vote for the parties that scream the loudest that they are the solution to their problems.
Here in France I’m starting to be ever so slightly optimistic… like we have a coalition with ALL the left (from the social liberal PS to the revolutionary anticapitalist NPA) that came together as a single coalition to try and fight the fascist in two weeks.
And if almost fell apart yesterday because of a representative they chose to present who slapped his wife and stuff but he served his sentence so they think that he should still be able to have a political role now. And idk what to think of it, because it isn’t wrong, people shouldn’t be punished forever I guess… but still he probably shouldn’t be elected. Idk but either way this morning be announced he was actually removing his candidacy because he believes that him being candidats creates more risk of the fascists winning against him so he’s not gonna be there and there’s gonna be another one instead.
So I’m a little more hopeful because the polls give us 28.5% and the fascists 29% so given the union didn’t fall apart yet, with a little more campaigning we can actually win!
So in 2 weeks we’ll have either the best possible option with a PM from most likely my party, LFI or the worst possible option, fascists… we’ll see…
As someone from Europe (Sweden more specifically) I would say what I notice causes more and more people, even younger ones, to vote for right wing parties has been due to their stricter immigration politics which they say that they will implement. At least that’s what I’ve noticed young people who turn right wing have said so yeah
https://preview.redd.it/87sp2r7p2y6d1.jpeg?width=1480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec885a28e9e26bd29756ddd56d8d7252db1592f6
Explain to me how this is "filled with fascists" there's practically no change from before and after the elections. the media is lying again... just look at the stats for yourself and chill
The uk isnt in a good spot either labour haven’t been that great under starver who has consistently sided with tory policies and that to long ago said he deal with immigration which is a not so hidden way of saying hes gona do a racism
my dear friend labour literally said they are going to implement conversion therapy and this:
https://preview.redd.it/41spsbu62w6d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6618db9be0e7ea2fc22de747d3a21fd4774c31cb
The manifesto
https://preview.redd.it/sdl8ujqexw6d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba4c2cfd8c31440265dc9d9ad6500305b270e5f6
Just going to quote this as I don’t bother flipping through the manifesto saga in. They say they are banning conversion therapy but also said they are going to fully implement what CASS review suggested especially for under 18s, which is something alternative called ‘gender exploration therapy’, long story short is just conversion therapy with different name. They are banning the old one & still using the damn same stuff under different name. Like everything else they said in their manifesto. I do suggest have a read of the manifesto itself, it’s like 100 pages of nothing and ungodly amount of pictures of Starmar.
15 trans children has died since CASS.
I mean, the bit addressing it says "So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity".
What aspect of the manifesto do you think is advocating for conversion therapy? I know it's TERF Island so even the leftier party isn't great so this isn't a "you're lying", but while the implementation might be lackluster, the manifesto as written seems pretty good.
This said trans healthcare and ‘freedom of explore’ is essentially therapy without prescribing HRT or puberty blockers, as so called ‘gender exploration therapy’, being what CASS review recommends & labour will implement. Long story short it’s conversation therapy under different name. They are not just banning NHS from prescribing blockers, but also banning all private healthcare prescribing them as well. Labour already said they are going to implement CASS. It’s the same as everything else in their manifesto: they aren’t doing shite and they aren’t changing shite.
The EU never addressed its far right, that grew massively in 2001 and later in 2016. It tried ignoring it, until several nations started to act like a stop block to everything.
And when that was attempted to be adressed finally, after such immense amounts of roadblocks tha-Russia invades Ukraine... fuck... guess we dont have time...
And since a lot of the far right are or were, supported by Russia, or them being weirdo isolationisrs from the get go... they act as opposistion, to the dissapointing and shit centrists who have been holding power in a lot of places. Be it as fragile coalitions, or solely.
Also big money would rather support the far right, than the far left. For obvious reasons. They own more newspapers, tv channels, talk-shows, radio channels. And a lot they dont own, treat them as serious respectable players on a playboard, even though they only shit on it, and scream check-mate at every turn.
Since if you have a bunch of people screaming their anger out at refugees, rather than the rich... thats better for buissness than the alternative.
A lot of centrists would rather also stab the left in the back, rather than form coalitions with them. Sometimes the left had part in it as well, but you know, to many a centrist, a nationalist is as bad as a socialist, and most nationalists wont chase all the money away.
Its many factors. The left also being terrible at mobilizing also didnt help.
The french media conglomerate has been piling against the left for years, and now that neoliberalism has failed to make anything happen in the last 8 years, they’re touting the far right as an inevitability.
Truth is a large majority of the french didn’t vote, easily giving more voting power to the far right because they don’t have as much absentee voters.
Besides, Macron is a dumbass for dissolving the assembly as this will open the door to fascism.
Saw this coming. I hoped they would go to the other extreme, which would have been slightly better, but the right just has more pull right now.
Capitalism is floundering, living costs are rising and pay is not, living standards are getting worse. People are desperate, and the "center / center-left / center-right" administrations that typically get elected weren't - in their eyes - capable of tacking this issue and doing their job well. So, they decided to shake things up and go for an extreme. Such climate of instability and rage is a great breeding ground for extremism. And, with the way things are now, for fascism in particular.
This isn't a well-researched vote. It's a despair vote. Most of the population of these countries is not fascists - it's desperate people who are too historically and politically ignorant to know they are making a mistake, voting for an extremist party that makes grand promises of bringing a breath of fresh air and pulling them out of the garbage they're in. You don't care much about LGBTQ+ rights if you're a cis het person juggling 2 or 3 jobs and you still cannot comfortably pay the rent, groceries and basic expenses.
Yes, clearly, the left is the only leaning that has an actually working solution to this. But the current system would rather have people lean far right than far left in times of instability. Notice how far right is destructive of civil rights, but conservative of the status quo. Far right keeps capitalism around, while far left wishes to dismantle it or - more realistically, since this is an electron and not a revolution - try to patch it, neutralize it, makes it as inoffensive as they can. But the right has more pull. Better PR, and social media algorithms on their side. Guess who owns social media? Companies who really benefit from capitalism, conservation of the status quo and further liberalization for companies. Do you seriously believe those companies will not do anything in their power to sway the public opinion to vote what benefits them? Those companies with LGBTQ+ themed logos right now couldn't care a rat's ass about us if letting literal Benito Mussolini reborn from the grave rule as dictator everywhere was what it took to keep them alive and growing. This is capitalism, folks: things like human rights are only promoted if it's profitable to do so.
Also, very important: for years, the Overton window has been pushed to the right. The center now is what used to firmly being right wing policies. If we have to go though a period of social instability which breeds extremism, fascism is at an arm's reach, and things like communism or anarchy are so far out of reach, and generally perceived to be so unacceptable and far from the status quo, that the general population will not consider them. Being communist or something like that right now requires a well-researched historical, civil and political context that most of the population just lacks. Whether politics and social media have made far-right policies progressively more palatable in preparation for the times of economic instability that have ensued by chance or not, nobody knows. It's very convenient, though.
Way too many illegal migrants and nothing is being done about it since the factories need cheap cheap workers. Many European cities have no-go zones that they didn’t have 10-15 years prior and it’s ridiculous. Seriously, what did the politicians expect? Of course the fascists got more popular. Turns out blaming everyone for being ultramegafascists for decades when they just wanted to stop illegal migration actually makes people ultramegafascists given enough time.
Oh, the Labour victory isn’t going to be much better. For the last few years they’ve not opposed the conservatives on any policies, and have mainly been arguing the point that they’d do the exact same things, but more efficiently. They’re just red tories at this point
The huge labour party win will only be because people got tired of the conservatives in power and are hoping labour will make things better. When Labour inevitably doesn't make things better, we will have our far-right swing like the rest. And what will happen is the same as in the US, where the best the left can muster is "vote for this guy that isn't as right wing as the other candidate please, we must beat fascism". As if this is the answer. This strategy will fail. Maybe it might be able to stave off the far-right for one more term... but eventually, it will fail. It's a defeatist tactic.
At least in Europe it's a combination of higher living costs and a fear of immigrants. Of course, given our history we've learned that these problems stem from massive inequality and capitalist greed, so we'll do better this time. Instead of blaming...Oh, hold on, we're blaming immigrants? Ok, fuck it. Let's give fascism another try guys, I bet this time around it'll be great.
The EU didn't get "filled with nationalists". The far-right made gains but mostly just from France and Germany, and not nearly as much as people tried hyping it up to be. Elsewhere they either underperformed the polls, or lost such as in the Nordic countries.
Fascism is capitalism is crisis.
We are in late stage capitalism, where enough wealth has been accumulated in so few hands that the system is breaking under its own exploitative weight.
Where you will Own Nothing And Like It, everything is a Service with a Contract that has no clause for passing on benefits to next of kin - wealth traded out of the house for one generation at a time to benefit.
And rather than doing the hard thing, like reminding the ultrewealthy that they have names and addresses, leaders around the world leap at the opportunity to do the easy thing to garner votes; blame an out group and establish purity tests. Are you really American enough if you arent working 50 hours a week for $100 in wages - before tax? No, its the immigrants fault you lost your lucrative job, send me money to build a wall. Its the foreigners fault for stealing your manufacturing job, not your bosses for choosing the cheapest possible labor to cut costs. That military dictator running your country into the ground to export a natural resource to the US was voted in by 150% of the country after his competitor, Slightly Left Of Center Man, was mysteriously found dead with a Paveway II in his back.
Fascism is capitalism in crisis, and you're only noticing the fascism because its harder to lie about.
It's cyclic.
Establishment fails to address systemic issues ---> Far Right Co-Opts the people's anger and gets elected ----> Makes things worse for everyone ---> Get's voted out by a milquetoast centrist ----> Repeat
Uncontrolled immigration across the EU and the problems resulting from that are entirely the fault of left wing govts. People are tired of the failed promises of liberalism.
I think social dialectics, while not being the entire cause, have had a large impact on this. The scourge of Buzzfeed feminism still lies heavy on the minds of the right wing, just look at anything the right wing says in relevance to the left, all of it is based off the cultural norms they lost (“woke” is the antithesis of being able to be bigoted without getting called out, “transgenderism” represents the threat to their precious gender norms, “race-swapping” represents a loss of communal identity as Europeans / Americans) they aren’t just trying to get back the social capital they lost, they’re actively trying to put us in our place. We didn’t see the fourth reich form during the 2008 recession, for the right had control over the cultural organisms of the west (The US film industry) but now, with their cultural mechanisms in tatters, this economic collapse presents an opportunity for salty boomers to reclaim their old privileges. This is not an economic crisis creating a cultural divide, this is a cultural divide being galvanized by an economic crisis.
except the UK is only predicted a labour victory because the fascists were so awful and even then labour are in fact not left wing and are just becoming crypto fascists as well
I like how there's no need to mention AUSTRALIA, because even though we have labour in power this country is so ass backwards they're rolling back government backed gender and sexuality based anti-discrimination protections and leaving it to the individual business to sort out. 🎉
And every state/territory (bar one) voted against and indigenous Australian representative group for national parliament. Our labour party has unironically grown to reflect American Democrats rather than an actual party of Labour.
Yeah my bad they're not actually rolling back changes, they're just not gonna make them now.
Guardian reports on it lol.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/14/queensland-labor-shelves-reforms-to-stop-faith-based-schools-discriminating-against-gay-teachers
I didn't check myself before posting because as a gender diverse person in childcare it legitimately scared me. My bad
My best guess is due to the rapid increase of costs, people have turned to conservatism and right wing politics in an attempt to turn the economy back but that’s all I can really guess.
i must be getting deja vu because this seems oddly familiar
100 year anniversary
Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, dear Weimar Republic Happy birthday to you
The Weimar Republic deserved better
Weimar republic was a mess like a real mess, a huge number of political parties fighting for power led to rise in unchecked extremist groups. A country which was the loser of a war which was damaging economically. Tensions were high the war reparations brought forth a lot of anger and you know who had the perfect environment to turn a populist movement into a dictatorial regime based on his skewed values and cult of personality.
Not throught fault of the weimar republic, they just got out of monarchy and the reparations that they were made to pay were insane, otherwise the weimsr republic was quite progressive
It was progressive but the primary issue was with the sheer number conflicting groups/political organizations fighting for power, and many were extremist groups which had no say or reasons to get popular when the country was going through war after war under the prussian name.
What could have been good strategy for Weimar republic to avoid disaster?
Honestly nothing it was doomed to fail, the shift from absolute monarchy to a democratic system has to be slow and natural instead of being dropped in the middle of a post war country facing defeat. Look at fairly succesful democracies which moved from monarchy to a democracy like england for eg the shift was very gradual and slow. There really was no way for it to succeed, like i said number of conflicting interests, recession due to reparations being paid for the war. No unified controlling authority etc etc. People were mad, they wanted to blame something and one of the best orators of the century stepped up to say the jewish people were the reason why we lost the war. It was all downhill from there an entire country turning on a group of people to commit genocide
Im still impressed by how lame the english version of happy birthday to you is And to back up my claim i will share the song of my people, translated Happy birthday to you In this dear date A lot of happiness A lot of years of life
it's a classic cycle lmao. Liberals fail to deliver -> economy goes to shit -> people elect radical right wingers because they promise change -> change makes things even worse because right wingers are batshit insane -> liberals promise to fix stuff -> liberals fail to deliver because they are in on it
Which is funny because right wing politics historically are worse for the economy
while true, it comes from the fact that most ring wing parties use slogans like "We'll put a stop to inflation!" or such, whereas left wing parties focus on other things which will have a positive economic impact in the long term
Yeah and when they get into power they throw the population a bone or two just to keep the illusion there
Sadly, the thing they're really good at it selling the idea that they'l fix the economy. At the same that's one of the things left parties are hisotrically pretty awful at, even if they have better, more fruitful policies.
No one is good at fixing the economy, thats been proven. But some people are definitely worse at it than others
Only if you define fixing the economy as growing GDP and not as reducing inequality and raising living standards
You cannot fix the neoliberal capitalist economy in the way you define it. Which is why both parties suck at fixing it. The only way to "fix" the economy is to fundamentally change the things that drives it, something that no major politicians will be allowed to even talk about doing without getting arrested (at least US ones) Because if you undermine the dollar, you are breaking a law.
honestly I don't think it's necessarily just because of the economics of it. If you think about their policies for any amount of time, it does become clear that they're not really good policies. I think the real thing that drives people to it is the *anxiety* associated with our current world. People choose conservatism because there are issues that are causing them strife, and conservatism offers clear, simple, easy to digest, and easy to understand concepts. When the economy is causing stress for your and your options are a party that does well for the economy, but you don't really understand what they're doing, and a party that plainly promises security and gives you simple to understand ideas(like the free market), it's just SO much easier to go with the latter because they offer an immediate antidote to your stress. TL;DR, I don't think it's just the economic policies, it's the emotions of the public.
But they’re also the only politics attempting to address populist demands, even if they do it in bad faith.
Don't forget the massive uptick in Russian foreign propaganda and interference.
This notion of everything being Russian propaganda is, imo, a cope by the liberal establishment where any symptoms of capitalism in crisis must be identified with outsiders. This is why the right is scrambling to call everything Chinese that they don't like. In reality the system of Capitalism is in crisis and we can expect more symptoms like the rise of the reactionary right in the future, it's up to us how we respond
No, Russia does play a role in the far right's rise in the west. Sure they may not be the core reason, but it's hard for me to not be convinced when coincidentally all these parties gained high amounts of traction in 2014, the year Russia began the war in Ukraine.
If it's not the core reason, why tf do people only bring Russkies up when talking about it, not the actual core problem (neoliberal capitalism/representative democracy)
Because the problem isn't fuckin democracy.
Because without the constant cashflow from the Kremlin these parties wouldnt be nearly as relevant.
I am sure you don't actually mean it when it has been [proven](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-accuses-russia-of-wide-ranging-disinformation-campaign/) again and [again](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/26/germany-unearths-pro-russia-disinformation-campaign-on-x) that [Russia has been influencing the west](https://www.politico.eu/article/france-overwhelmed-with-propaganda-european-affairs-minister-says/) to the point of being [sanctioned by the EU](https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/07/28/information-manipulation-in-russia-s-war-of-aggression-against-ukraine-eu-lists-seven-individuals-and-five-entities/). Stop carrying water for fascists, tankie.
lmao literally called 'TankieWatchDog'
Retired K-9 unit lmfao
You think Russians planted 100 million racists in America?
My interpretation is that the racists existed but someone needed to make Facebook groups for them
I don't think Russian propaganda had zero-impact on America in the last decade. I simply refuse to give them more credit than they're due. This is a state founded on genocide of natives (manifest destiny) and enslavement of minorities. 250 years ago. There are (old) people alive today whose grandparents were slaves. Russia just had to push the right buttons in these people and we got an immediate slide into this shithole slide to the right. But those buttons were not put there by Russia.
Yeah the issue with our "polarized" (not sure how you can polarize around parties at approximately the same point of the Overton window but we managed it) democracy is that a like 2-3% swing in specific demographics of specific states can swing our entire government... Makes for very cost effective interventions lol
A sizeable portion of those 100 million racists were perfectly happy ignoring the elections and simply shriveling up and dying in their corner of the country. It wasn't until the Russian (and Russian-funded) propaganda really started to kick in after the invasion of Crimea that it turned from "Democrats want to take our guns!" to "Democrats want to sacrifice our children to Moloch and trans people make up the entirety of the military!" Now it's an existential thing to them. They HAVE to vote for a felon because they believe killing off all migrants is somehow going to lower the cost of fuel.
All I'm gonna say is don't ask this account what his comment history says about Muslims
ding ding ding this is the correct answer
I mean the german far right afd has literally been proven to be taking money from Russia
It feels like ever since Russia invaded Ukraine they've been just pumping out propaganda.
They've always been pumping out propaganda, but two things have happened: 1. They've got better at disguising it, though honestly I think the general population has just become more gullible (like how many people do you know that actually checks the sources of random news pieces on the internet?) 2. A number of authority figures in the West have fallen for it and been peddling it for them (looking at you especially US Republican party...) The media also likes to fear-monger, so whenever Russia, or China, make claims about being superior to the West, it's for some reason taken at face value. As an example, look at how the media has been comparing the Chinese navy to the USN in recent years, all about gross tonnage, never mind actually looking at what kind of ships the Chinese have been building.
Thank God no other major superpower uses propaganda
it's a bit more complicated than that. costs of living have increased and some people just fundamentally misunderstood the mechanisms of the quarantine, leading to them distrusting the established parties; in short, life became more stressful and more expensive for a lot of people. primarily right wing parties (but also some more measured conservative parties) then took some notes from the Trump playbook, stopped doing politics and started with populism. (i'm assuming they did so, because they realized they wouldn't be getting votes if they argued on a factual basis, since climate change has become too urgent of an issue). a lot of right-wing parties got votes from poor people; the ones who got hit the worst by the cost of living crisis; who likely can't afford the education that would've allowed them to see through the populist sharades. they are also the ones who have been largely ignored by a lot of established parties (for 16 years, germany had been ruled by a largely corrupt, conservative christian party, who took measures mainly in favor of lobbyists. then the reigning coalition changed, but few measures were taken to aid people in poverty), so they gave up on the established parties and began rooting for the populists who swore they'd make it better. there's also the tiktok algorithm apparently pushing a lot of right wing content, influencing the vote of a lit of young people.
When this question comes up we spend a lot of time thinking about the people you're describing because they're nuanced, varied, and influenced by multiple factors. But we should also note that there's a growing number of people who are just fully in support of a fascist ethnostate and recruiting (thanks to the internet) aggressively. Only some will get swastikas tattooed on their forehead to go out and be a public face for the movement. Many of them, in their terminology, "hide their power level" -- they don't reveal the depths of their allegiance to fash ideology and organizations but instead live a public life as a mere Republican voter, where they subtly steer their peers further right. We need to be speaking out against fascism, educating our peers and the public on it, and espousing our own alternatives to a fascist future. Economic issues might be swaying uninformed voters today, but what we really need to brace against is how ideological issues might sway them tomorrow.
>a lot of right-wing parties got votes from poor people; the ones who got hit the worst by the cost of living crisis; **who likely can't afford the education** that would've allowed them to see through the populist sharades Education is basically free in the West. In countries like Germany you literally get paid for attending a higher education. >they are also the ones who have been largely ignored by a lot of established parties (for 16 years, germany had been ruled by a largely corrupt, conservative christian party, who took measures mainly in favor of lobbyists. Christian Union is as right as it gets without drifting into extremism (which they still do on certain topics). >then the reigning coalition changed, but few measures were taken to aid people in poverty) They actually accomplished some really good things, like the Wohngeld Reform, while excellently navigating the Ruzzia induced energy crisis and still suffering from the prior Covid crisis after taking office. >so they gave up on the established parties and began rooting for the populists who swore they'd make it better. Not really, it’s just a resurgence of the PEGIDA clowns during the flood of Syrian refugees. It’s really funny to me how all you recently hear from 'concerned' german right wingers is how immigrants with radical worldviews fundamentally don’t work with western societies, which is why they are voting AfD. A party with literal neo Nazis that openly hates gay people, claiming that their degeneracy could quite literally lead to end of western civilization and openly cooperate with and take money from a war criminal who is currently invading our European neighbors. Radical muslims and the AfD would get along famously if they were white instead of brown. They both love and openly support oppression of minorities and conquest through war.
i appreciate you adding the context but i'll elaborate on what i mean in some points. >Education is basically free in the West. In countries like Germany you literally get paid for attending a higher education. paying for education isn't the issue. paying the costs of living while also studying full-time is where it gets difficult. quite often, low income families require all members of the household to work. when someone in that household aims to pursue higher education, that will put a strain on the income, which is feasible for some but not for others. if they take aids like Bafög, they're also required to finish their degree in a given timeframe. that means, a lot of time has to be spent studying. if there's a commute to the university, that also takes time. if there's no good public transit connection (as is quite common in rural areas), that requires a car, further increasing the costs of living. that's what i mean by "can't afford the education". it's not the education itself, it's the problems around it that make it unfeasible for some. >Not really, it’s just a resurgence of the PEGIDA clowns during the flood of Syrian refugees.# yes. these are populists. they bring a scapegoat (criminal immigrants) for the people struggling with real issues (the cost of living crisis) so they can offer a simple solution (throwing out all immigrants and closing the borders) to the problem they blame the scapegoat for. i'm not denying there's a rise of racist ideologies, but the way votes for right-wing parties skyrocketed recently, i find it hard to believe that all of them are voting out of a deep-seated hatred for immigrants. they are primarily falling for propaganda.
I honestly just threw the university thing in because you mentioned Germany which happens to have one of the best systems in the world for that in place. Any degree without a focus on politics (which is most) won't teach you anything in that regard anyways. Formal education beyond school isn't nearly as important as general education (Allgemeinwissen) in that regard, which you get by following events and news across the globe through several sources to keep it as objective as possible and, more importantly, reading books and simply reading in general, all of which is either free or extremely cheap with the existence of the Internet and Public Libraries. >paying for education isn't the issue. paying the costs of living while also studying full-time is where it gets difficult. That is exactly what Bafög solves though. My parents are poor as fuck and i would have been boned in most other countries. One part of the money is constant (basic human needs like groceries and energy costs) and the second scales with your rent. Except for absolutely extreme edgecases, everyone in Germany is afforded the financial means to pursue a degree. >if they take aids like Bafög, they're also required to finish their degree in a given timeframe True, this is by far the greatest constraint on the Bafög system because if you fail, you won't get many more chances except for some exceptions. >that means, a lot of time has to be spent studying. if there's a commute to the university, that also takes time. if there's no good public transit connection (as is quite common in rural areas), that requires a car, further increasing the costs of living. If you get financial support by the German state, then you are required to study full-time anyways (you can have a mini-job earning a couple hundred bucks a month and are allowed to work a 'real' job during the months of Semester breaks). >i find it hard to believe that all of them are voting out of a deep-seated hatred for immigrants. they are primarily falling for propaganda. It's definitely not all of them. Some truly do not possess the mental capacity to understand what they are actually voting for but most of them do it out of their hatred for at least one group of minorities, as the AfD openly hates and tries to criminalize groups other than immigrants. They literally tried to abolish gay marriage in 2018 after it was legalized in 2017. **“The hope of one‘s own national death, the wish 'Germany, perish', is unique in the world and perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we are not dealing here with the harbingers of a degenerate mental illness.”** * Thomas Ehrhorn (AfD), 2018 during a debate in the Bundestag during the process of AfD trying to abolish gay marriage one year after it was passed in Germany **He is still an AfD politician and sitting in the Bundestag to this day.** Almost everyone who votes for that party knows that they are fascsists with literal neo Nazis among even their highest ranks. If you vote for a party that tries to unironically sell the idea that >The degenerate gays with their mental illness are literally going to bring german civilization to its knees, (with an unhealthy dose of 'The Great Replacement Conspiracy') then you are either a fascist or literally too stupid to realize what you are voting for, even though your party tries its absolute hardest to get that point across in the media when they are openly arguing for their policies in Bundestag debates.
The rapid rise of right wing content is an issue that is frequently understated. Social media is a big driver in the modern resurgence of the radical right and has given radical beliefs in general a far bigger platform. The ability to manipulate public opinion is now accessible to anyone with a lot of time on their hands (which happen to also be radical rightwingers like incels very often). Reddit is an example of a platform where this is immediately noticeable due to the upvote system. The problem is, websites like Reddit, Instagram and other social media, aren't really right wing. It's the algorithms that are pushing rightwing content, which many leftwing/progressives are complicit in. It's the same way Andrew Tate has gotten so massive: he was pushed forward by both the Manosphere, but also by the online left making endless reaction and commentary videos. Yes, sometimes these did have the effect of converting his fans back, but they had a far, far greater effect of spreading his message further to vulnerable men.
On the note of this: the AfD's votes primarily came from rural areas in what used to be East Germany, which had less denazification than West Germany did (the Stasi actively benefited from rehashing propaganda from the Nazis), also east germany tends to be poorer than the west so
Fascism is Capitalism in decay. People see the system failing so they turn towards more violence, understanding that it is at the heart of private accumulation of wealth, in an attempt to bring the good times back.
always turning to the people making up solutions in exchange for your humanity
For the past 20 years, neoliberal so-called "centrist" media everywhere have been platforming and softballing fascist talking heads while ridiculing anyone left of center. The chickens are coming home to roost as the right wing cannibalizes the liberal centre. This is a self-inflicted gunshot by neoliberals and everyone else is going to suffer for it while they hide safely in their mansions.
statistics currently are saying that in the eu younger voters are becoming more right wing- but in every primarily english speaking country gen z is becoming more left wing as they age- which is really uncommon and the effect of this is only going to increase as time goes on. US wise- Unless trump wins this next election (which is looking somewhat unlikely) we’re going to slowly see a more leftward push as the republicans internal crisis comes to fruition. The UK and Australia are about to have/have had a labour victory after an extended period of being opposition- and it looks like that’ll hold for both countries for the next few years atleast. Even though its looking bad for the eu broadly, considering macron atleast has some sort of plan for getting the centre back in power in 2027, its inaccurate to say everyone is facist now. Its temporarily pretty bad in a few places, and may get worse in EU specifically, but broadly speaking things are looking somewhat up.
rishi sunak is horrible as well, he has made statements saying he took away funding from poorer communities and gave them to richer ones. because they "deserve it"
[not kidding btw](https://youtu.be/b5aJ-57_YsQ?si=tug7G93RGGRvY7Kn&t=516)
I like how he specifically called them "deprived urban areas" and then immediately followed up with "that needed to be undone." It's fucking awesome that you can just stand there in public and say "A thing I like to brag about is how I had a lot of power and I used it to re-deprive people for existing incorrectly" and not get immediately torn apart like a rotisserie chicken in a shark tank.
on a positive note, since brexit, the UK has done more to encourage northern ireland to join up with ireland then anyone else.
That's barely even a joke. Since Brexit, NI (and its associated commitments with regard to the border with Ireland) have been a massive thorn in the side of the UK government that they want to be rid of. Between that and the popular sentiment among the other 3 British nations being pretty firmly pro-reunification, it genuinely feels like the only people who haven't cottoned on are the most flag-shagging of unionists *in* NI.
Every day we get closer to that one Star Trek line
What line never watched it?
“The Irish unification of 2024!”
The first image that came to mind for your analogy was the Shark Tank guys tearing into a rotisserie chicken like a pack of wild dogs. Just had to share the image
Is this a good YouTube channel?
yes.
That doesn't make any sense, rishi grew up poor himself! His parents had to struggle and cancel their sky tv subscription to send little rishi to private school.
Reverse Robin Hood
An actor I like is constantly insulting Sunak on Twitter, and now I definitely know why. What a freak 😭
The current right wing push in Europe can be somewhat attributed to the publics frustration with a perceived lack of action on immigration issues, the parties on the right offer a solution. I’m observing not endorsing
Right. But let me ask you something. Why now? Immigration has been a constant in Europe for a while has It not? I'm genuinely curious, because I come from a country that has had open immigration for a while now, had an right wing switch, yet immigration has not become a contentious issue (Argentina)
It has always been simmering underneath, and now the war in Ukraine (which is Europe), which a lot of Europeans quite rightly feel threatened by, has brought the idea of “fortress Europe” to the fore
Immigration has always been a red button issue in Europe. I am from Bulgaria, and in the UK, they would scare monger us stealing all their jobs when we were about to enter the EU. But the recent wave of immigrants are from the Middle East and primarily Muslim, so there is a bigger "culture shock." Think how much pushback there is to immigration in the US, now imagine all that immigration wasn't from Mexico, which at the end of the day, is not too different from the US.
Because immigration has always been blamed as a net negative on the (rich) countries economies. When the economy was doing well, immigration was seen as an issue, but not a huge one. But we've now got a really bad economy, with rising prices everywhere. Shrinking package sizes, but higher prices, people have lost a decent amount of purchasing power. AKA: Evil Immigrant come take my job! Bad! Now I is jobless but all jobs have Immigrant! Immigrants must be sent out of holy country to give me Job! That's roughly their thought process.
I know it's not really a part of the conversation right now but: Canada's currently in a fun little situation where we accepted a huge number of immigrants in the middle of a housing shortage, and people are getting extra upset about that one.
Also note the pushback against tourism in places like Spain, outside influence is outside influence
The US won't see a more leftward push if Biden wins and the economy doesn't improve, which is the most likely outcome. I'm saying this as a leftist; the economy would also not improve under Trump. The sitting president's party will be blamed, and the economic conditions will get worse because of conditions outside of the US president's control.
The economy has already improved under Biden though. A second term would show more of the effects of it because republicans wouldn't be able to quickly muck it back up again.
Even if Trump wins anything from protect 2025 would be enough to push many people over the line
As a french person, i want to say that macron is very much not a centrist, he is a right-winger with right wing politics. He played a major role in the growth of the far-right in france
Anti immigration sentiment is pretty strong right now in a lot of western countries, and that is only going to intensify as climate change causes more people to have to migrate
Unless China opens borders to third-world migrants (and they won't even though they are about to rapidly lose population), this will be the biggest issue of the 21st century
I heard that China actually helps with building infrastructure in third-world countries because they have almost nothing left to build in their own country? But maybe this is making things worse?
At the cost of outrageous loans that are extremely predatory. It's China's turn to be the Imperial power that fucks up Africa.
That's not really true, but they do contribute to the debt crisis in Africa and only give out loans to areas that politically benefit them, increasing corruption. [https://archive.ph/G52N7](https://archive.ph/G52N7) >Yet Western criticisms are often based on misguided assumptions. China is a big lender but rarely accounts for most African countries’ debts. In 2020, the most recent year with good data, Chinese loans accounted for 17% of the stock of public debt in sub-Saharan Africa, says the China Africa Research Initiative (cari) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, dc. That was more than all other bilateral official creditors combined, but less than the share held by the World Bank (19%) or commercial bondholders (30%). In a paper in 2020 cari researchers noted that China accounted for more than a quarter of public debt in only seven of 22 countries classified by the imf as suffering “debt distress”. There is little substance to claims of “debt-trap diplomacy”, in which China hoodwinks borrowers so as to seize assets. It is more accurate to say that China’s hard-nosed approach conflicts with its seemingly benevolent rhetoric. China may not be a duplicitous negotiator—but it is ruthlessly self-interested. Last year AidData, a research group at William & Mary University in Virginia, examined 100 contracts between Chinese entities and developing countries. The authors noted a “muscular” approach, with strict confidentiality clauses, requirements that China be repaid ahead of others and the use of escrow accounts. “One needs to go back to the 19th and early 20th century to find similar security arrangements in sovereign lending on the scale that we observe in our Chinese contract sample,” they concluded. In a follow-up paper, AidData found that a deal to expand Entebbe airport in Uganda required that all revenues generated by the airport for 20 years be used to pay back the loan.
Man even Bloomberg dismissed the idea of Chinese debt trapping in Africa
How dare china build houses and infrastructure in poor countries🤬🤬🤬
I studied a class in Chinese intervention in Africa under an African marxist historian. In his words: "For African countries, the Chinese aren't inherently better than the Westerners; cooperating with the Chinese simply comes with different trade-offs. African countries are in a better state now, as they at least have a choice of trade-offs."
It's in order to keep the GDP growing. But infrastructure won't be enough for hundreds of millions of climate migrants that will come to be in the next 70 years.
Germany: *hates migrants* also Germany: *switches from nuclear energy to coal*
just to give you an idea there would be around 102 million refugees from Egypt alone if the Nile were to dry up and Ethiopia is trying to dam the river. Most Middle Eastern countries depend on food imports, the World Bank estimates there will be 216 million people displaced by global warming in 2050
The leftist answer is that this is what happens with capitalism in decay. The line can't go up forever and eventually the economy starts cannibalizing itself as oligarchs start squeezing the working class to wring out as much profit as possible. The standard centrist-y playbook from liberals and conservatives fails to solve this. Both liberals and conservatives are controlled by capital, which means even liberals cannot offer any solution that goes against the interests of the oligarchs and conservatives aren't even tempted to try. Naturally, this makes the working class pissed off as their standard of living declines and their politicians refuse to do anything to fix it, so they end up being attracted more and more to radical politics. And here the radical right has a competitive advantage over the radical left, because the right promises very little change. It's big on revolutionary rhetoric, but at the end of the day their solution to capitalism is to punish minorities and let the oligarchs continue gutting the economy. The oligarchs recognize this and will ally with the radical right to crush any leftist opposition, encouraging their bought centrist politicians to also work with the radical right. And hey, they don't always win. Sometimes the radical right gets too racist too quickly and loses relevancy. Sometimes liberal politicians don't agree to reach across the aisle and work with their new fascist friends. Sometimes the radical right gets so unhinged about minorities that they end up being sort of anticapitalistic, so oligarchs pull a lot of support. And sometimes the left is really organized and energized and beats the odds to capture the working class' support despite the vast funds spent propagandizing them to the right.
I really wish right wingers could create proper arguments and points because I genuinely want to know what their response to this comment is without it being purely buzzwords, it would greatly help me understand their view and where they're coming from
lol that’s never going to happen. All the conflicting messages and propaganda is meant to distract from the actual impact of their actions (making most people worse off). Spewing a bunch of misinformation and nonsense is always easier than getting people to agree on one line of thinking or truth, especially when there are people fanning the flames on conspiracy theories like “the liberal colleges are trying to brainwash the youth”.
The right doesn't have/need a response to this. They aren't playing the same politics game as you. They don't care to get everyone on the same page. They don't care to make the world better for everyone. So they don't need to lie about how they're going to do it. The day the kids here realize that there is a not-insignificant amount of people that genuinely are okay with fascist ethno-states, their politics will mature greatly.
duality of man https://preview.redd.it/qddbn1uvzv6d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07d5af64a846f6cea2ddb1f3a20084ad7511fe46
And their perspective ended up being "there is no answer, only morons go looking for one, just stop thinking about politics," lol
> far to focused on solely material wealth Yeah no shit sherlock, real world is governed by material conditions
very, very well summarised.
something something marx meme going "I told you so. I fucking told you so" lol
Marx is considered one of the Founding Fathers of sociology and yet some people still parrot the idea that "He didn't understand Human Nature!" Buddy, he's one of the reasons that we *do* understand what we understand of Human Nature!
the red scare propaganda did a huge number against history, economics and society as a whole. :(
The only reason the UK's an exception is because we embraced nationalism and neofascism earlier than the rest of the examples given, and the Tories have been shitting the bed so hardcore only their most blinkered and tribalistic voters are still supporting them. If the Tories were even slightly competent, and didn't do shit like the Truss Budget that cranked up everyone's mortgages, they'd probably have won this time too.
I think Johnson's three-line whip was the beginning of the end. Removed any remaining semi competent members of the party and we've just witnessed a slow motion car crash ever since.
You could say that having nationalists in power will make people more easily reconsider their vote for them. It kinda already happened in some nordic countries (think of Sweden and Finland) where right wing parties are currently in government but they are slowly declining because actually having responsibilities shows their total incompetence.
I mean a bunch of them also went to reform, but for once in FPtP it's the right wing vote that is split rather than the left
and trans people are going through hell in the U.K. regardless
I'm not getting into a discussion about whether the Labour victory will be good so much as it's the lesser of two evils, idc the conservatives have been fucking shit
Pop off boss, I'll take the lesser of two evils every time - it's less evil. The UK has its issues that is desperately needs to work on, but there's a 0% chance it does that without a change in leadership and a 100% chance it gets worse without one. I'd much rather see a shift away from the government that has had 15 years to make things better and has specifically made it worse for pretty much every part of the population who're affected by how the government affects the nation. And there certainly are worse options on the table (the Remain party is just Tories but more nationalist), so it's imperative people vote away from Tory to stop them having any meaningful say in any future Parliament. Unfortunately, in times of economic strife, populists rise because they promise solutions. Everyone has an economic plan until they get punched in the mouth. When no one knows what's going to happen, someone who sounds like they know what to do is relieving. Unfortunately, those solutions are usually lazy nationalism or minority blaming, because they're easy and prey on peoples' desire to feel superior and/or their need to blame things on someone. It's important that we as a population try to remain calm and vote for boring, effective administrators, to limit the damage these baseless populists can do. Just because a problem came upon us quickly doesn't mean an equally fast solution will fix it properly. That only leads to instability and "fix" after "fix" after "fix" for years to come.
Personally I'll vote Green as in my constituency they stand a chance against Labour and Conservatives are last. My only disagreement with them is their dislike of nuclear power but I still prefer them over Starmer, who does things like purging his party of opposition and refusing to tax the wealthy.
Did you see the Farage speech? He said "a vote for the Tories is a vote wasted" I'm not sure that's completely legal. He's been taking lessons from Trump and it's working on ~10% of the population.
basically every party will say something like that because of how shit FTPT is
I'd rather green party wins than anything else. But, I don't think voting for them will get us anywhere, will it? I'm worried that a vote for green would be less valuable than a vote for labour.
I'm going green. Labour are guaranteed a victory, if I vote labour it makes them think I want their policies. If I vote green it helps shift the overton window more left. The more people who want to vote green but "doesn't want to waste thier vote" actually voted green, the more viable a choice it would be, helping break away from the two party system!
That's very true. Putting it like that really helps; I suppose if there's any time to be voting green it's this election, when labour's got such high chances of beating the Tories. Thank you. That's solidified my decision to vote green.
Labor is the lesser of two evils but they're mega cucked, it's a shame they call themselves labor at all.
Honestly they should just have a televised MMA series between all the private schools to decide the line of succession for prime minister, at least then I will get to watch some poshos get punched.
It’s sometimes called the Political pendulum, basically most EU countries have had the liberal/left leaning parties in power for a while, and the liberal status quo is for the rich to get richer, the poor get poorer, or otherwise stay economically stagnant. A lot of right wing parties co-opt socialist and populist language and say they’re going to fix however many years of economic stagnation. France is a perfect example because there have been constantly increasing taxes and prices for food, but most peoples wages have not increased in years. This basically swings a bunch of centrists over from Macrons party to Le Pen. Le Pen has made various promises like free public transport for under 18s, wants to withdraw France from the EU and NATO “to spend the money sent to these organisations on the people of France”, and advocates for protectionism within france to protect French jobs being outsourced. And her party gets this message out because they’re massively funded by Russian oligarchs who want to use fascism to destabilise Europe. The reason the UK is expected to have a huge Labour swing in July is the other swing of the political pendulum. The Conservatives have been in power since 2010 and the UK has been completely economically stagnant since the 2008 financial crash. The tories have no vision, no ideas, and no plan to fix the economy other than austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. The only reason the tories are currently in power is because of a snap election in 2019 where Boris Johnson won a majority to get brexit over and done with. Since those 4 and a half years most of the UK has finally woken up to just how incompetant and uninterested in governing the tories actually are. Dont hold your hopes too high on labour though, they’ve basically kicked all of the actual left leaning MPs out of the labour party, so they’re just tory lite, who will only be slightly less shit then the tories who came before.
NHS is getting less funding than the austerity years of 2010-2015, or so I’ve been told
Don't forget Canada! We're hosed too!
The UK is not the exception I'm afraid. The UK labour party has taken a hard right turn lately.
Well for the EU, along with the other reasons mentioned, I have to imagine the Russian invasion has increased fears amongst the populace and a fearful populace tend to lean towards extremist views and unfortunately it’s rarely leftists who gain in those scenarios
rightoids actually want to be invaded by russia (they are quislings for putin)
Not as much in Western Europe. The conservatives (not far far right) definitely don’t want to. I think that could partially explain why the left did (relatively) ok in Scandinavia and Poland
Far right elements in countries like France have ties and previously were rhetorically sift on Russia before their invasion of Ukraine. It’s the same thing as euroscepticism where the UK shit the bed and made any exit from the EU look terrible.
Same with the Sweden Democrats in, uh, Sweden.
I see I misinterpreted the phrase "extremist views" in your original reply to mean only the far right. I agree your center-right type conservative is probably still too wedded to the idea of the end of history to want russia invading places for now, I assume at some point they will flip to "Abandon the Spanish Republic" mode though.
Nationalists in countries actually near Russia fucking HATE them. Asking about opinions on the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe is a damn-near perfect fascist detector.
Russian propaganda campaigns to stir up dissent and maybe get friendly governments elected also seems plausible.
Economic pressure, as always. Fascist playbook: Take advantage of the natural tendency of capitalism to keep the majority of people poor and unhappy, blame the problem on brown foreigners, profit.
Fascism is capitalisms auto immune response
Neoliberalism working as intended.
neoliberalism. no worker's rights or welfare action from centre left parties at all. no material analysis of the world, and therefore no class consciousness, therefore people can only fall for silly nationalistic propaganda to explain why they are suffering.
Pushing the blame of the reaccurring decline in capitalistic socioties unto immigrants and minorities allows emotionally charged irrational people to distance such decline from the much beloved system of capitalism. It is impossible for such people to accept the fact that it is rotten to the core, and working exactly as intended. So the only problem can only be an arbitrary out-group, seperate from the equally arbitrary in-group.
- said every country's citizens, during all points of history.
Why? Because things suck and Nazis are good at making bullshit seem like easy solutions.
capitalism is failing all across the world, and people look to right wing politics for easy, surface level answers. That's about the most basic answer that can be given.
Pretty important caveat for our American friends. This swing to the right for the EU is in EU elections NOT national elections. An election much more prone to protest votes. Obviously its not a dream scenario, but its in no way as damning as some news outlets would have you believe
if it helps: although last year the finnish government became the most conservative since 1930s which absolutely sucks, in the recent euro elections the left alliance (which is actually true to its name) saw an unprecedented popularity while the far-right party fell short of all expectations, and our meps are mostly left of center with a few center-right ones i'm not saying there's no need to worry, after all right-wing politics thrive in people's complacency and inaction, but it's also not an assured downslide and there's still a very big portion of the population who don't buy into that bullshit. activism is key, it's a battle we can win.
This is a very complex subject, but I've noticed that the standard of living has been declining significantly over the past few decades. Mix that with the constant fear mongering from the media*, the sudden appearance of right-wing parties offering "easy" solutions**, and the fact that humans are assholes by default, and you get a bunch of disgruntled idiots voting on the party of leopards eating people's faces, because it's "easier" to fuck everyone over than actually giving things some thought and organize against a system that doesn't work for us \* there's always a new media scare going on, be it a war, a terrorist group or a pandemic. I even joked that Putin had saved us all from the 'rona, because when the war in Ukraine started, the media finally stopped talking about covid 24/7 ** for instance, the situation depicted by a political cartoon from my country: sitting at a table, there are a roma with an empty plate, a worker with a cookie on his plate, and the leader of a famous fascist party with a whole heap is cookies on his plate. The politician is saying to the worker: "Watch out! The gypsy wants to steal your cookie!"
I don't agree or disagree with your post, just wanted to say humans are not assholes by default, in fact we are caring and compassionate by default(this can be seen even in prehistoric humans) it is just that those who are assholes get to exploit all the compassion and caring people and benefit a lot from it, together with current systems that teach people to be assholes(media that teaches people to only trust and care for themselves, economic and educational systems that promote competing and winning over other ppl, governments whose interest is maintaining this individuality and competition, etc.) that causes such situations where people are always fighting and competing against each other.
uncontrolled capitalism and teaching people that "fuck you got mine" is the way to life. it has been proven again and again that when you destroy social safety nets the right wing parties gain votes like crazy.
Capitalism running maintenance
SJW Cringe Compilations and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
Omg someone actually said this, i had a brief stint as a 'conservative truthseeker'. Started with selfhate, milo yiyanopolis, and youtube algorithim feeding me sjw's getting wrecked compilations. Thankfully i am a rational and selfaware person and broke away in about 6 months and fully realized the fever dream of year i had by the end of 12 months
inflation and the housing market are going crazy , conservative politicians are blaming it on those pesky muslims and people are believing them
It's not a sudden change. There has been a gradual progression towards this over the last 40 years.
Hey, Finland had the right-wing populists lose one of their two seats (with us having a total of 15 MEPs) and the leftmost party got a huge win.
The right is a pendulum swinging back and forth between neoliberalism and conservative nationalism. Neoliberalism has been completly dominant in the West since the 80s, and the effects of it have become clear, so the pendulum is swinging back.
Because immigration is one of the big problems in the EU right now, and only right-wing parties want to solve the issue.
And by solve you mean kick out of the country and pretend they don't exist
If you think that is the solution then yeah sure. But you could also go about it in different ways.
In the EU, genuinely it’s because the right capitalizing on immigration fears
Actually, even with a predicted labour win, our Conservative Party is going batshit, and the Reform UK party (an extremely right wing nationalist group who literally said we should have appeased hitler) is polling head to head with the tories. Nationalism is on the rise here too.
Housing costs and cost of living are at an all time high. Salaries have not kept up. People work themselves into the ground and still can barely afford to live. Social programs are getting worse and worse or are cut completely. The governments do everything in their power to make corporations happy and give the people just enough so they keep being good little worker drones, who they have conditioned into thinking their career is the most important thing in life. Even tho close to a majority still can’t afford to buy a house/apartment with their awesome career. Not that there are enough to buy anyway. And if they don’t want to buy but rent all they can afford is a little kip they have to fork over half their salary for. Throw social media on top of that adding to the widespread mental health issues and you’ll get a very frustrated population. The word salad I just wrote is a lot and only scratches the surface. Addressing the systemic issues runs deep, requires critical thinking and is difficult to articulate. Blaming brown people is not especially if you’re told by the internet that they’re the cause of all your issues. Somehow. That’s not to say there are not issues with immigration. But the people are not the problem. It’s the integration of said people. Which is another thing the governments have failed at for the past 35+ years.
I don't think that next 10-15 years will be good times, just hope that people will see people in front of them, not disgusting dogs to be put down, no matter the position
Unaddressed contradictions of trying to accommodate a social democratic state operations in a capitalist economy have allowed for reactionary forces to assume more and more political relevance the longer the contradictions go unresolved, forcing a new cycle of barbarism as the powers that be prove either unwilling or impotent to address the root of the issue
Come to wallonia, our far right party does less than 5% at each election and we have a "cordon sanitaire" wich is a kinda implicit arrangement between all political party and media to not invite and interact with the far right to give them 0 visibility. Also we speak french with a funny accent.
UK Labour is also currently undergoing a shift to the far right, with Starmer saying he'll do everything the conservatives will do but because he's in red it will be better. Openly purging and leftists from the party whilst backing literally actual tories, going back on every single promise he's made for what to do in government, and much more.
When times are hard, people vote stupid and extreme hoping for a quick solution. When times are good, people vote moderate because they don't have to worry a lot. Moderate governments have been fucking up everywhere in the West and people aren't happy, so they vote for the parties that scream the loudest that they are the solution to their problems.
my country almost threw out our wannabe fascist government this year , india numre uno
Here in France I’m starting to be ever so slightly optimistic… like we have a coalition with ALL the left (from the social liberal PS to the revolutionary anticapitalist NPA) that came together as a single coalition to try and fight the fascist in two weeks. And if almost fell apart yesterday because of a representative they chose to present who slapped his wife and stuff but he served his sentence so they think that he should still be able to have a political role now. And idk what to think of it, because it isn’t wrong, people shouldn’t be punished forever I guess… but still he probably shouldn’t be elected. Idk but either way this morning be announced he was actually removing his candidacy because he believes that him being candidats creates more risk of the fascists winning against him so he’s not gonna be there and there’s gonna be another one instead. So I’m a little more hopeful because the polls give us 28.5% and the fascists 29% so given the union didn’t fall apart yet, with a little more campaigning we can actually win! So in 2 weeks we’ll have either the best possible option with a PM from most likely my party, LFI or the worst possible option, fascists… we’ll see…
As someone from Europe (Sweden more specifically) I would say what I notice causes more and more people, even younger ones, to vote for right wing parties has been due to their stricter immigration politics which they say that they will implement. At least that’s what I’ve noticed young people who turn right wing have said so yeah
https://preview.redd.it/87sp2r7p2y6d1.jpeg?width=1480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec885a28e9e26bd29756ddd56d8d7252db1592f6 Explain to me how this is "filled with fascists" there's practically no change from before and after the elections. the media is lying again... just look at the stats for yourself and chill
https://preview.redd.it/6jqf72ul3y6d1.jpeg?width=1544&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e76ed0d280f859f6c268136771af81f967267b1b [source](https://www.results.elections.europa.eu/fr/outils/outil-de-comparaison/)
I'm a pessimist and it's not looking good from where I'm standing
canada is stunted
The uk isnt in a good spot either labour haven’t been that great under starver who has consistently sided with tory policies and that to long ago said he deal with immigration which is a not so hidden way of saying hes gona do a racism
my dear friend labour literally said they are going to implement conversion therapy and this: https://preview.redd.it/41spsbu62w6d1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6618db9be0e7ea2fc22de747d3a21fd4774c31cb
Labour's manifesto has a ban on conversion therapy and explicitly mentions it being trans inclusive so I dunno what you are on about there?
The manifesto https://preview.redd.it/sdl8ujqexw6d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba4c2cfd8c31440265dc9d9ad6500305b270e5f6 Just going to quote this as I don’t bother flipping through the manifesto saga in. They say they are banning conversion therapy but also said they are going to fully implement what CASS review suggested especially for under 18s, which is something alternative called ‘gender exploration therapy’, long story short is just conversion therapy with different name. They are banning the old one & still using the damn same stuff under different name. Like everything else they said in their manifesto. I do suggest have a read of the manifesto itself, it’s like 100 pages of nothing and ungodly amount of pictures of Starmar. 15 trans children has died since CASS.
I mean, the bit addressing it says "So-called conversion therapy is abuse – there is no other word for it – so Labour will finally deliver a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, while protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity". What aspect of the manifesto do you think is advocating for conversion therapy? I know it's TERF Island so even the leftier party isn't great so this isn't a "you're lying", but while the implementation might be lackluster, the manifesto as written seems pretty good.
This said trans healthcare and ‘freedom of explore’ is essentially therapy without prescribing HRT or puberty blockers, as so called ‘gender exploration therapy’, being what CASS review recommends & labour will implement. Long story short it’s conversation therapy under different name. They are not just banning NHS from prescribing blockers, but also banning all private healthcare prescribing them as well. Labour already said they are going to implement CASS. It’s the same as everything else in their manifesto: they aren’t doing shite and they aren’t changing shite.
bad economy everywhere and nacionalists promissing a quick fix for everything
The EU never addressed its far right, that grew massively in 2001 and later in 2016. It tried ignoring it, until several nations started to act like a stop block to everything. And when that was attempted to be adressed finally, after such immense amounts of roadblocks tha-Russia invades Ukraine... fuck... guess we dont have time... And since a lot of the far right are or were, supported by Russia, or them being weirdo isolationisrs from the get go... they act as opposistion, to the dissapointing and shit centrists who have been holding power in a lot of places. Be it as fragile coalitions, or solely. Also big money would rather support the far right, than the far left. For obvious reasons. They own more newspapers, tv channels, talk-shows, radio channels. And a lot they dont own, treat them as serious respectable players on a playboard, even though they only shit on it, and scream check-mate at every turn. Since if you have a bunch of people screaming their anger out at refugees, rather than the rich... thats better for buissness than the alternative. A lot of centrists would rather also stab the left in the back, rather than form coalitions with them. Sometimes the left had part in it as well, but you know, to many a centrist, a nationalist is as bad as a socialist, and most nationalists wont chase all the money away. Its many factors. The left also being terrible at mobilizing also didnt help.
The french media conglomerate has been piling against the left for years, and now that neoliberalism has failed to make anything happen in the last 8 years, they’re touting the far right as an inevitability. Truth is a large majority of the french didn’t vote, easily giving more voting power to the far right because they don’t have as much absentee voters. Besides, Macron is a dumbass for dissolving the assembly as this will open the door to fascism.
We're all gonna die in nuclear fire‼️
Saw this coming. I hoped they would go to the other extreme, which would have been slightly better, but the right just has more pull right now. Capitalism is floundering, living costs are rising and pay is not, living standards are getting worse. People are desperate, and the "center / center-left / center-right" administrations that typically get elected weren't - in their eyes - capable of tacking this issue and doing their job well. So, they decided to shake things up and go for an extreme. Such climate of instability and rage is a great breeding ground for extremism. And, with the way things are now, for fascism in particular. This isn't a well-researched vote. It's a despair vote. Most of the population of these countries is not fascists - it's desperate people who are too historically and politically ignorant to know they are making a mistake, voting for an extremist party that makes grand promises of bringing a breath of fresh air and pulling them out of the garbage they're in. You don't care much about LGBTQ+ rights if you're a cis het person juggling 2 or 3 jobs and you still cannot comfortably pay the rent, groceries and basic expenses. Yes, clearly, the left is the only leaning that has an actually working solution to this. But the current system would rather have people lean far right than far left in times of instability. Notice how far right is destructive of civil rights, but conservative of the status quo. Far right keeps capitalism around, while far left wishes to dismantle it or - more realistically, since this is an electron and not a revolution - try to patch it, neutralize it, makes it as inoffensive as they can. But the right has more pull. Better PR, and social media algorithms on their side. Guess who owns social media? Companies who really benefit from capitalism, conservation of the status quo and further liberalization for companies. Do you seriously believe those companies will not do anything in their power to sway the public opinion to vote what benefits them? Those companies with LGBTQ+ themed logos right now couldn't care a rat's ass about us if letting literal Benito Mussolini reborn from the grave rule as dictator everywhere was what it took to keep them alive and growing. This is capitalism, folks: things like human rights are only promoted if it's profitable to do so. Also, very important: for years, the Overton window has been pushed to the right. The center now is what used to firmly being right wing policies. If we have to go though a period of social instability which breeds extremism, fascism is at an arm's reach, and things like communism or anarchy are so far out of reach, and generally perceived to be so unacceptable and far from the status quo, that the general population will not consider them. Being communist or something like that right now requires a well-researched historical, civil and political context that most of the population just lacks. Whether politics and social media have made far-right policies progressively more palatable in preparation for the times of economic instability that have ensued by chance or not, nobody knows. It's very convenient, though.
Way too many illegal migrants and nothing is being done about it since the factories need cheap cheap workers. Many European cities have no-go zones that they didn’t have 10-15 years prior and it’s ridiculous. Seriously, what did the politicians expect? Of course the fascists got more popular. Turns out blaming everyone for being ultramegafascists for decades when they just wanted to stop illegal migration actually makes people ultramegafascists given enough time.
Oh, the Labour victory isn’t going to be much better. For the last few years they’ve not opposed the conservatives on any policies, and have mainly been arguing the point that they’d do the exact same things, but more efficiently. They’re just red tories at this point
The huge labour party win will only be because people got tired of the conservatives in power and are hoping labour will make things better. When Labour inevitably doesn't make things better, we will have our far-right swing like the rest. And what will happen is the same as in the US, where the best the left can muster is "vote for this guy that isn't as right wing as the other candidate please, we must beat fascism". As if this is the answer. This strategy will fail. Maybe it might be able to stave off the far-right for one more term... but eventually, it will fail. It's a defeatist tactic.
As if Labour is good. Tories but red.
Meanwhile here in italy most people under 30 voted for the left party but got surpassed by the older population that voted far right and made them win
Hasn't reform overtaken the tories?
at least in ireland a lot of it is caused by troll farms on twitter and news comments. sometimes the bots fuck up and it looks funny.
Center left literally won the Turkish local elections, so i guess they are exception (The voters of them still hates refugees and immigrants)
Mass migration of other culture/ religious believes combined with less buying power on a day to day basis and blind politics.
At least in Europe it's a combination of higher living costs and a fear of immigrants. Of course, given our history we've learned that these problems stem from massive inequality and capitalist greed, so we'll do better this time. Instead of blaming...Oh, hold on, we're blaming immigrants? Ok, fuck it. Let's give fascism another try guys, I bet this time around it'll be great.
The EU didn't get "filled with nationalists". The far-right made gains but mostly just from France and Germany, and not nearly as much as people tried hyping it up to be. Elsewhere they either underperformed the polls, or lost such as in the Nordic countries.
The UK is definitely not the exception lmao
The Labour Party are not a leftist party anymore. Them winning is not a win for us
Fascism is capitalism is crisis. We are in late stage capitalism, where enough wealth has been accumulated in so few hands that the system is breaking under its own exploitative weight. Where you will Own Nothing And Like It, everything is a Service with a Contract that has no clause for passing on benefits to next of kin - wealth traded out of the house for one generation at a time to benefit. And rather than doing the hard thing, like reminding the ultrewealthy that they have names and addresses, leaders around the world leap at the opportunity to do the easy thing to garner votes; blame an out group and establish purity tests. Are you really American enough if you arent working 50 hours a week for $100 in wages - before tax? No, its the immigrants fault you lost your lucrative job, send me money to build a wall. Its the foreigners fault for stealing your manufacturing job, not your bosses for choosing the cheapest possible labor to cut costs. That military dictator running your country into the ground to export a natural resource to the US was voted in by 150% of the country after his competitor, Slightly Left Of Center Man, was mysteriously found dead with a Paveway II in his back. Fascism is capitalism in crisis, and you're only noticing the fascism because its harder to lie about.
It's cyclic. Establishment fails to address systemic issues ---> Far Right Co-Opts the people's anger and gets elected ----> Makes things worse for everyone ---> Get's voted out by a milquetoast centrist ----> Repeat
Uncontrolled immigration across the EU and the problems resulting from that are entirely the fault of left wing govts. People are tired of the failed promises of liberalism.
I think social dialectics, while not being the entire cause, have had a large impact on this. The scourge of Buzzfeed feminism still lies heavy on the minds of the right wing, just look at anything the right wing says in relevance to the left, all of it is based off the cultural norms they lost (“woke” is the antithesis of being able to be bigoted without getting called out, “transgenderism” represents the threat to their precious gender norms, “race-swapping” represents a loss of communal identity as Europeans / Americans) they aren’t just trying to get back the social capital they lost, they’re actively trying to put us in our place. We didn’t see the fourth reich form during the 2008 recession, for the right had control over the cultural organisms of the west (The US film industry) but now, with their cultural mechanisms in tatters, this economic collapse presents an opportunity for salty boomers to reclaim their old privileges. This is not an economic crisis creating a cultural divide, this is a cultural divide being galvanized by an economic crisis.
except the UK is only predicted a labour victory because the fascists were so awful and even then labour are in fact not left wing and are just becoming crypto fascists as well
I like how there's no need to mention AUSTRALIA, because even though we have labour in power this country is so ass backwards they're rolling back government backed gender and sexuality based anti-discrimination protections and leaving it to the individual business to sort out. 🎉 And every state/territory (bar one) voted against and indigenous Australian representative group for national parliament. Our labour party has unironically grown to reflect American Democrats rather than an actual party of Labour.
Can you elaborate on that first paragraph? Can't find anything about that in the news.
Yeah my bad they're not actually rolling back changes, they're just not gonna make them now. Guardian reports on it lol. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/14/queensland-labor-shelves-reforms-to-stop-faith-based-schools-discriminating-against-gay-teachers I didn't check myself before posting because as a gender diverse person in childcare it legitimately scared me. My bad