- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Alternative for Germany has joined France’s National Rally and Reform U.K. in becoming the most popular party in its country, according to polls.
A poll Tuesday showed Alternative for Germany — which is under surveillance by the country’s intelligence services over suspected extremism — is now the most favored by voters. The survey by broadcaster RTL put the AfD at 26%, ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats at 24%.
This is a high watermark for the European far right, a once fringe movement whose virulently anti-immigration, anti-Islam and culture-war politics were shunned by the mainstream just a decade ago.
Today, these parties have developed deep ties with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who openly cite nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as inspirations on policy and tactics.
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Sigh
It isn’t rocket science, people become uneasy when they see or at least perceive there to be an influx of newcomers, they don’t even need necessarily to be from a different race or culture. It’s simply a fact that isn’t going to change any time soon. And more and more people globally are going to be on the move as the climate breakdown and more wars break out. If you don’t want to see populists thriving then you need to put in the leg work to slow the pace of change that people see and reassure them.
Billionaires control the polls, own the news, own the social media, and have foundations and think tanks pushing society to the right. It’s all manufactured and twisted. They use lobbying / corruption to ham string all democratically started socialist programs so they no longer work well and it turns people against them. Billionaires are parasites that slowly suck society dry. They shouldn’t exist.
Far right parties are a product of stupidity and foreign money. The stupidity of the establishment parties in Europe ignoring the people’s will on immigration enabled the far right, and Putin’s Russia gave them the means to run with it.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
This is exactly what has been happening in Germany (most notably with the CDU and SPD) and it’s not working. All that happens when these parties take on AfD talking point is that their voters no longer want to vote for them while the AfD’s positions get normalised in the mainstream.
What they actually should do is stop picking uninspiring and corrupt candidates and push for things that would actually benefit the working class (wealth tax, tackling the housing crisis, etc.) instead of funneling more wealth upwards. At the end of the day the AfD is strong because people are struggling to make ends meet and the AfD is using the racism that’s always been present in Germany to offer them an easy scapegoat.
Can you link me to some credible sources on legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe? I’m in the US and I don’t see the downside of immigration. Most of the folks angry about immigration here are just being sold a scapegoat.
Admittedly, we’re much more culturally diverse to begin with, harder to get to, and have quite a large base population so maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges.
I think it is a case of comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying this as a first gen immigrant from Iraq myself, I’m in the US but I have family in Europe (Finland, Sweden, and Germany), and it’s just a very different dynamic. The national narrative about immigration, the ways immigrants are treated by society, and the way government assists immigrants in Europe and the US are quite different. They also get different kinds of immigrants, which is also important. All these factors contribute to very different situations economically, politically, and socially.
But I think this is the wrong way to approach this topic in this context because what matters more in politics is perception. When you look at the polls of any European country with a large immigrant population, virtually all of them have a pretty big chunk of the population, usually ethnically native and working class, that are heavily anti-immigration. This implies that the big issue with immigration in Europe is integration and assimilation. Since the establishment parties over there outright ignore them entirely, they end up flocking to far right parties instead since they’re the only ones who want to place restrictions on immigration.
legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe
Just my opinion, but: There are no systematic ones that can’t just as plausibly be explained by anti-immigrant stances of the locals. Yes, of course, immigration also means SOME people immigrating will be bad in one way or another, but statistically significantly not more or less than the amount of bad people born in the country. Most of the problems “with immigrants” arise from a mutual escalation of people not willing to integrate. In short, and without saying which comes first:
- immigrant does bad thing X
- anti-immigrant people point at X and claim it’s because they are immigrants
- some people will believe the accusations and behave more poorly towards immigrants
- some immigrants will turn the prejudice against them into a dislike / hatred of their host country
- immigrants do bad things
- rinse and repeat
Speaking for Germany, all of this is FAR outweighed by the richness that immigrants bring to our country. Germans - and I say that as a German - really needed (and still need) a lot of lessons in empathy and kind-heartedness - and we have more of that now than 50 years ago, thanks to not only evolution of society, but also thanks to immigrants from the mediterranean - Italians, Spanish, Greek and Turks. If Germany had no immigrants, I would leave this country in an instant.
people not willing to integrate
This is the only “issue” I can think of from my own experience in the US. I imagine some resentment can form if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake. An influx of people with different “culture” might feel like an attack on your own culture. I frankly don’t understand but that’s why I mentioned the base population of the US being large and diverse. Perhaps we’re already such a “melting pot”, at least in the densely populated cities and suburbs, and having so many pockets of cultures is just what I’m used to. I want to better understand but it still just sounds like ignorant fear of a different culture.
Hell, it’s a well established statistic, that many people pretend doesn’t exist, that criminality is lower among the immigrant population. Any population will have some bad apples, but the incoming population is thinning them out if anything.
if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake
The irony is that the racist people typically do not have any culture, they spend their days with faces glued to smartphones, trashtalk and being egoistic assholes. Where smartphones / social media are part of the root cause, and the rest (egoism, trash talking, being racist) come from the same character trait: lack of empathy.
I think there’s multiple ways it can happen. Sometimes, incoming cultures aim to be inviting and inclusive, and do what they can to become involved with the surrounding community. But other cultures really silo themselves and never speak to “the foreigners” - while continuing to take up more and more of the area. They speak their home language, don’t discuss the existing culture or even share their own. They don’t act like guests, just tenants - sometimes not realizing that thanks to refugee programs they’re often paying “guest rate”, not “tenant rate”.
However, that certainly isn’t always the case. I’d point to the Italian and Hispanic cultures in America as some that have become distinctly American. It’s harder for me to give examples of the “silos” since, by definition, you don’t see much of them; but sometimes during elections, church gatherings, or other census-related actions, you’re reminded they exist.
The thing that people ( not you of course) just do not understand, is that for a lot of western countries the birth rate is under 2. So every year the population has a larger part of old people.
Our systems for retirement, government, social programs, etc only really work when more young healthy people are added.
So we actually really need young immigrants to basically keep the boat floating.
If the boat requires an infinitely growing population then it’s bound to sink sooner or later.
There’s that, too. But I hope we can find a way to keep the population size stable at most, because the world already has too many humans…
Thanks Elon, for your financial support of Hitler acolytes worldwide. Also, get fucked you Boer-reject piece of shit
A Brit told me
I vote for whomever says they will get rid of the boat people
The Danes, or the Angles, or the Saxons? Or the Romans? Or the …
I wonder, how can people look at what Trump/MAGA has done to the US and think to themselves “I want THAT for my country”.
People are fed up with being broke and not able to afford the same things that they or their parents could afford even 20 years ago. Populists do not have to offer policies they can or event intend to implement so they can promise any old shit to the gullible who want change. Wrap that in a reassuring racist package: immigration is out of control, send back the small boats, etc. so that it doesn’t smell like communism (not that communism cant be racist) that people confuse even moderate socialist policies for due to decades of western propaganda.
Couple this with the Overton window being moved ever towards the right due to left and center left parties being captured by neoliberals who seek funding and patronage from the Rich, plus decades of the press putting pressure on any left wing policies by enforcing a double standard of left wing policies required to fully document how they will work and be funded, while right wing fantasy policies are waved through without any scrutiny from the majority of press.
Then the right deliberately break any essential service, under fund it and spend it elsewhere, making it time consuming and expensive to fix, leading them to point at their opponents being ineffective, and the press refuse to hold the right to account over this.
This has reduced any coupling between those left of the far right and the general population in terms of policies meeting the requirement. You can start to see why they are gaining ground.
I feel that in 50 years from now there will be documentaries about how the Russians won over Europe and the US by influencing voters and just straight up frauding right wing parties into the government.
I refuse to believe that many people are this stupid/brainwashed to fall for literal 1930’s Nazi propaganda.
Your comment presupposes that there will be some kind of back to normal in 50 years, which is unfortunately not going to be the case. Climate change accelerates, economic and political crisisl follows, and these kinds of populist movements are going to thrive in that kind of environment.
Climate change will not have stopped in 50 years, on the contrary.
IF there will be a free enough country to make this documentary
The documentary might be in Russian. Even Hitler had planned a museum to feature all the people he had exterminated; once you’ve won and everybody is dead, there’s no reason to hide it any more. Another example would be our (the United States) fascination with native american culture, now that it’s far too late to reverse that particular genocide.
But they do, even if Russia can flood the information space and all that. I have no doubts there.
Still, a lot of stupid people need to believe this crap.
I go about my day not believing that crap but others are seemingly open to this.
They don’t. But the wealthy, the corporations, etc, they do.
They do, the majority of voters are fucking illiterate idiots. It’s not always an evil plot by big business, reality is usually far more depressing
I think it’s both. With enough illiteracy, enough misinformation and corrupt media, enough evil corporations, and potential election interference, and there you go - far right movements driven by lack and entitilement and hate and greed. Malignent leadership manipulating others and the system to get what they want. Combine it with cost increases because of evil corporations and their clutch on politics and climate change inaction, and resulting cost increase on foods and other products due to major climate events and instability, and that’s where we’re at. It sucks because with all of our knowledge, our technology, perhaps things could’ve been way better. But malignant greedy leadership and the worst traits of humanity have given us this outcome.
They are retarded that’s how
Maybe ask a Trump supporter?
Racism and other kinds of bigotry mostly.
They don’t,this shit reeks of right propaganda
Billionaires are people, too. Sorta.
Not really surprising, social networks are dividing people up and rather than recognize it, people on all political isles are following up with more barriers, essentially demolishing the need for an objective truth for democracies to work in. Social networks as of now are social slaughterhouses designed to lull in people like cattle and turn enough of them into pawns for those with pockets.
You identify issues that certain groups will crowd around divisively, you foster them into ridiculously zealotry, and you break them up into small bubbles you can politically manipulate. Take Reddit - before they used to think they would have more power by focusing on centralized communities that got legitimacy from rigorous contributions, now they are perfectly ok with each community being taken up by whatever brigade is interested in them and whereas communities like T_D were banned before, now they are actively encouraged for each international, localized domain of users.
Britain: Conservative + Labour starts Online Safty Act, Reform tops polls shocked pikachu face
Labour: We were sure continuing purging our own left base and adopting all Tory policies would make us look good! Fucking traitors the lot of them.
I’m sorry, but I’m about to go the escapism route.
I would like to escape (physically) but where to?
This is bewildering. As an American citizen who has no idea how the actual fuck we wound up with another Trump presidency, all I have to say is, if you live in any other country and think the answer is to import this bullshit into your own country, I have no sympathy for you.
Social media plays a big role in this. People have been inoculated with a state of mind that allows this kind of ideas to succeed.
Nah, fuck that. I plan to blow my head off anyway. Might as well stick an axe in some nazi as well.
It’s not as simple as “Europeans are also voting for Trump-like parties”. You have multi-party system in Europe and the far-right parties are mostly anti establishment movements. People are mad at lack of action from the governments when it comes to housing, climate, crime, immigration and social services issues. They are tired of both left and right wing parties so they voting for the alternatives now. It’s not exactly some anti-intellectual, extreme conservative, anti-democratic movements like MAGA. Yes, it’s still bad but most people support EU and democracy. While MAGA is a purely fascist movement trying to regain their dominant position over the minorities in EU it’s more about frustration with the ruling class.
As an American, thank you for explaining this. It’s still not great because it echoes what happened here. We are also stuck in a duopoly that was slowly being cranked to the right over decades. A lot of people were initially drawn to Trump because of his ideas of “draining the swamp” and sounding anti-establishment. I think the duopoly and the sense of anti-establishment under a capitalist economy (that turned into hypercapitalism) is where fascism really dug it’s claws in and when things really started to accelerate. I have hope that this will result in something better after whatever happens happens, but I’m deeply worried about my family, my friends, my self with whatever comes next. I don’t want people to die and suffer but that’s already happening and has been happening. I feel powerless and it’s awful.
Everyone everywhere is worried now. I really hope EU as a whole will survive and guard basic human rights (at least internally) but who knows?
election was rigged like 3 times, plus Dems wont do anything, they are afraid of being labed the riggers by the conservative. at least the old guard is very complicit with the gop(they benefit from his tax cuts, and many are Dinos themselves)
That’s the thing. We have a foresight Americans don’t necessarily have and we’re still making a mess. It’s an even more damming reflection of our society.
As an American citizen who has no idea how the actual fuck we wound up with another Trump presidency,
I can help you, here.
We skipped the primary and coronated Liz Cheney as our party leader.
Holy hell, what a comment section. I’m seeing Americans calling out Europeans for being all talk about what America is supposed to do, several people lamenting impending doom, and more blame targeting the ultra wealthy.
Our future needs to be Solarpunk and have class mobility. Do something for your community this week. The answers lie with the people that think differently than you. De-propagandize your neighbor by giving them a shared enemy. Nothing binds people together like conflict. While we’re at it, encourage boxing matches between government officials. Mabne then we’ll keep younger, highly motivated individuals in office.
Do not split.
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.
If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
Schizo rant about media manipulation
We are isolated from the right wing side of it here but propaganda is dominating most media. Its really sophisticated and resourced by different states and groups.
On mainstream platforms open Nazi imagery and ideas go viral in hyper specific pockets. Its targeted at groups they think will be suspectable then those groups adopt it, wash it and then spread it. At this point its several stages in and most of the work is done by actual people for free.
They compile emotional imagery, videos and stories and blast them in the face of average people and it baits them hook line and sinker. If you can show a 35 year old white women clips of vicious attacks on women from refugees of the course of the year she will internalise it and become radical. These dont have to be recent she just needs to see them regularly. Strip context, make up different narratives for the same clip it doesnt matter.
With the lovely invention of social media and targeted advertising you can get your message put in front of these average people. People dont choose what they see, they just view what comes across their feed.
This – people determine themselves by consuming media. If you consume media with algorithms, then you are determining yourself even more, because you are not in charge of what you are consuming next. It doesn’t matter what you will publish against this, because the algorithms decide if your peaceful living is more “viewable” than the right wing propaganda.
The dangerous blend of political funding, ideological media, and the power held by those who design and control algorithmic behavior – combined with insights from modern psychology – is part of what’s driving us toward the dystopian future we’re now living in.
If you want to get a glimpse of the hellscape in which our adversaries are conditioned, I would urge you to peruse the MSN start page in Edge.
I’m forced to use Edge at my job. It’s honestly not bad. It even has a built in PDF editor!
However, every time my eyes glance at that start screen, my blood pressure skyrockets. It’s all blatant propaganda.
The best/worst part? THERE ARE COMMENTS…
The scary part starts when you think about how much lurkers are using this MSN start page and just watch these 3 comments there. I think of all these boomers.
I checked it out. Ahh these people are lost souls.
the most sublte forms are copaganda, and military propaganda, to assure people that is right to support these people. is it a coincidence that these genre popped in the MSMs around the time of trumps 1st term, not really.
the news are blatantly bias because trumpers actually own these networks. as soon as you hear people quoting fox, or another MSN, they consume that garbage daily.
You’d think what’s going on in what used to be the US (now a crater of burning shit) would have been a lesson for the rest of you.
Do Not Vote Con If You Don’t Want Life To Suck.
Stupid euros always talking mad shit about hep they’re better than us and turn around and do the same dumb shit
It’s going to be worse than you have. Not the same, living there, seeing the things: Europe is on the verge of going the hardest right wing way again, trumpism will look like amateur far-right compared to what is about to go down here.
Idk. Were already just blackbagging brown and homeless people off the street for concentration camps, queers are probably next. Unless you skip straight to the killing part
I also want to add on how big our military, police forces, and prison systems are. It seems like the imperial boomerang is finally crashing back into it’s citizens. Add ontop of that our technology, Silicon Valley and all it’s tech moguls, and our lack of privacy. I don’t know how Europe compares in terms of tech and privacy though, but I know we are around the top for military, police, and prisons. Yay - America is so exceptional in brutality and imprisonment off of our taxes… :(
Lol welcome to Lemmy tho
While it didnt kill the right wing populist parties, it did stall many of their efforts to get their chosen leaders into office. We shall see how the all shakes out.
What disgusts (but doesn’t surpise) me is that the media have almost completely ignored the fact that each Europen fascist party is exactly following the Moscow line, with the possible exception of the Italians, who claim to support Ukraine. Those parties are fronts operated by a hostile power, and should not only be shut down, but their leaders sent to prison for treason.
Instead: crickets.
yeah, and when you point this out, even with evidence of connections with the media and russian oligarchs and russian money going to media personalities they just yell about how the west’s favorite scapegoat blah blah
like do I think russia created a right wing populist movement in the west? no, however they are the reason they are all toeing the same line on issues important to them, and repeating, word for word, the same propaganda
