Russia.

Something common among the rising rightwingers is a “Stop punishing poor Russia!”. The AfD in Saxony Anhalt and Meklenburg-Vorpommern for example are very heavy on “give us back the cheap Russian oil and gas!”

I actually hope that the AfD will somehow rule Saxony Anhalt - it would little damage, as it is an irrelevant backwater state, but it would show that they cannot put their election promises in reality. That would either violate the Grundgesetz (Constitution), violate federal law, require gift showers from the federal government, or plain and simple miracles like raining money. Or even several of those points at once.

The current system no longer works for an average citizen. Current and future generations can’t expect a higher standard of living than our parents had while the environment gets destroyed all around us. This disillusionment with current ruling class leads people to support anti-establishment candidates which tend to be far right populists. It’s still possible for socialists to provide a valid alternative but in many countries the left is too fragmented and/or too focused on the wrong issues.

Without wanting to be controversial….

Society tends to swing back and forth wildly, attempting to find communality. Gay people were openly oppressed, then accepted, then granted legal equality in marriage, then some adoption agency starts giving gay couples a boost up the waiting list - and somebody completely loses their head and the reverse process begins.

We went from housewife who knew her place (/s) to “believe all women” in less than 3 generations. Some people can’t cope with the change of pace or seeming over-correction.

Again, immigration: they should stay over there. We actually do need some medical staff and shop keepers. Wow, their food is nice. He was born and grew-up here and is one of us. I look like I’m the foreigner in my own high street. Send them all back.

If society goes too far, or too quickly, one way then there tends to be a knee jerk reaction back there other way.

Conservatism has always been popular, because a lot of people like the status quo. WHEREVER THAT MAY BE AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME. The fact that conservative values change over time is immaterial.

russia troll farms, disinformation, and funding right wing grifters an groups. LIBSoftiktok, joe proesebic, ROGAN, j peterson,etc. and they also fund right wing parties too: Le penne, maybe ADP, everyone knows gop is on thier payroll.

In the case of Europe it is going on for some time like a decade that kind of sharpening to the right. Im telling that from the perspective of seeing who atm around Europe supports Vučić’s politics. There are many right wingers in EU.

The mechanisms by which civilizations grow, stagnate, collapse and recover have fascinated people since at least the ancient Greek philosophers.

Civilizations initially grow because they make life better for the average citizen. Cooperation leads to more reliable food and more babies survive to make more babies.

After some time some stressors on the civilization lead to widespread conflict. Historically this have been linked mostly to famine and plagues. Economic instability can also lead to a civilizations segmentation and conflict. The “fall of civilizations” is historically the segmentation of large civilizations into smaller entities as people rally around a local leader who promises them the “right” things.

So what’s happening right now - a shit ton of stressors.

Birth rates are negative in most industrialized nations. This indicates that on a widespread basis, globally people do not feel that they have the resources to raise kids.

Climate change is triggering serious fears of famine. This is why denying the obvious heat increases is so popular. “Oh no, it’s not the hottest and dryest summer on record. Our crops are hunky doey.”

Plagues - Well COVID happened and triggered a lot of widespread fear. That disease is still seen as a curse from the supernatural for most humans instead of a biological inevitability was made crystal clear.

Wars - stealing someone else’s resources looks pretty good when you fear there is not enough resources to go around. “It’s too hot in the U.S. to grow crops, let’s invade Canada and steal Greenland!”

So humans are doing what they have always done when stressed. Look for someone who looks like a “strong leader” who can make things right in their world again.

Now I’m not political

In large part, this is fueling it. Think. In what way are you not political? Are you uninformed about political topics-- important topics, that are life or death for others? Or are you informed but choose not to do anything about them? Neither option sounds too good when put more clearly than the very vague “not political”. You can claim to be apolitical because you can afford not to care about politics; whoever gets elected, your life doesn’t appear to change much. But rest assured, it does, and sooner or later politics will care about you, whether you care about it or not.

For most countries where the alt right is rising, and specially among alt right voters, “immigration” is among the first perceived problems in the polls.

Most people I’ve talk that vote all right don’t really care about the rest of the agenda of the party they vote, they are even agaist it, but they vote alt right because they perceive immigration as a severe issue.

So, for the people who vote for those parties, that’s the main reason they are doing it.

Now, why they perceive immigration as such a threat as so vote for something they don’t even like? That’s a much more complex issue, that I think it has a lot to do with the fall in socioeconomic progress many countries are living right now.

Most of these answers lack a broader understanding of the history and systems which produce this phenomenon. There’s a good video that talks through multiple examples of a similar rise in right wing populist dictators and the theoretical through-line that connects them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GQP-IRVqM

To summarize: Privileged classes in a hierarchical society fear popular will turning against them and taking away their privilege, whether by election or force. When times are good the threat of this is relatively low. But when things start to fall apart, people start organizing against the elites. Fearing this, even liberal members of the upper class choose to side with those to their right, because even if they disagree with their more extreme positions, to them it’s better than losing their privileged positions in society.

From there, the right wing uses all sorts of tactics to suppress opposition and cloak themselves in faux populism. Everything from propaganda to direct acts of violence.

Why is the right on the rise in a lot of these social democracies? Because they’re still capitalist, so that structural need to suppress popular will still exists despite their nicer social programs. It was going to happen eventually, it’s just a matter of when. Capitalism and imperialism around the world is reaching another moment of crisis, so this is exactly the time when they’d be doing this.

TL;DR: Surprise! It’s capitalism again!

I think a very interesting perspective on this is given by the book Doppelaganger: a Trip into the Mirror World, which is generally a banger and a worthwhile read!

There are foreign powers and corporate powers deliberately trying to foul up western democracies. They use social media as well as traditional media to spread hate, fear, anger and generally divide communities. The more they can divide us, the more control they can seize.

And utilizing nationalism, racism, bigotry in general… that’s just a force multiplier. That’s a technique that lets you influence a small number of people, and then that group of people continues to influence their communities.

It turns out that it’s really easy to tip the scales toward chaos, hate and selfishness, it’s easy to make people angry or scared. It’s a lot easier to convince someone to blame someone else than to take responsibility for their own problems.

Selfishness, Greed “Got mine fuck off”, desperatly, they want to feel like they have power and are in the ‘in group’, russian and chinese money

Everyone is political. Politics is where alternate perspectives intersect in a social setting. Everything in life that involves multiple individuals shaping a shared experience is politics, and so you cannot functionally be the thing you claim. To say “I’m not political” is actually to say “I am afraid of taking a stand, I can’t handle conflict, and what I believe means less to me than the risks I fear for showing it”. Be political, embrace having views and things you care about and being ready to advocate for them, stand for them, and act, because I promise you the people who don’t believe your perspective matters or can be tolerated are acting on their beliefs.

The overall left has been very weak for the past decade. Some shift happened where the loudest left parties largely focused on identity politics and nearly ignored everything else the left is overall supposed to stand for.

Or to put it differently; the left gave nearly no resistance to the extreme elements of the right. So the most awful elements of the right could rise unopposed.

Far right says “We found the issue with society: brown people”

(American) Far left says “We found the issue with society: the far right”

Far right followers are people who are susceptible to indoctrination.

(American) far left followers are people who think they arent susceptible to indoctrination.

No ones doing anything productive, but the far right IS doing SOMETHING, its just incredibly distructive and dick-waving.

Meanwhile something like 80% of people agree about 80% on 100% of topics. They just are too dumb or cowardly or poor to do anything about it (mainly poor).

The parties keep them poor and promise good things, the right is just louder and angrier and usually wins out the monkey brain