Summary
Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party founded in 2013, is poised for its strongest national election result yet in Germany.
Initially focused on eurozone bailouts, AfD shifted its focus to migration, gaining significant support and entering parliament in 2017.
The party, now advocating for large-scale deportations and opposing support for Ukraine, has become a significant political force, particularly in eastern Germany, and is under observation for suspected right-wing extremism.
To those saying Germany is experiencing the same dynamic that lead to the anti-democratic government takeover in the US: Hold your horses.
- AfD is polling at ~20%. That’s objectively very bad, however, 80% of voters support democratic parties. US fascists won a majority of voters - we‘re far from that.
- AfD is isolated in the parliament - other parties ignored their existence in the parliament for the entirety of this parliament‘s turn. They simply refuse to work with AfD. This means that every vote for AfD becomes meaningless the day after the election.
- For weeks, there have been millions in the streets all over Germany, demonstrating against AfD and fascist movements. That’s happening despite Germany going through a recession for the third year in a row - we’re experiencing the worst economic crisis in decades.
There are way more differences than that, but I’ll stop here. We’re far from what’s happening in the US. The trend is concerning though, and if the economic crisis continues, together with soaring inequality and the creation of an oligarch class of the super-rich, we might be in a bad spot in a decade or so.
There’s also the small issue of “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes”.
The rest of the world watching the US be an extra dysfunctional mess for the last forty years and finally blow its own legs off: “well, okay, but they said it’ll be different for us”
Oh, so far we’ve got one European or Canadian downcoping and telling themselves “but it really will be different for us”.
Fuck around and find out, bud. Hope you don’t enjoy your social programs.
Maple millhouse will be so fucking bad for canada
They are no longer supected to be right-extremist, they are assured-right-extremist by now.
They even have a convenient Hitler face appearing as a watermark in their leaflets.
Got a link to an example?
Ofc i just demonstrated against them today and grabed one of their hate pamphlets just because I was made aware of this fact:
Front:
Back:
Truth:
LMAO ok that’s hilarious. Thanks for sharing. What a bunch of losers.
Why is the whole world getting shittier?
Oligarchs are targeting democracies.
There’s more stupid people than there are smart people. Stupid people always have more kids. They raise their kids to be stupid.
We’re doomed.
If it’s always been that way, how did things ever get better?
We used to shun stupidity. Social media and the internet has emboldened stupid people to support other stupid people spouting stupidity. Used to be if no one would listen to you in person, you’d just have to keep your dumb thoughts to yourself.
I mean yeah the internet has proliferated stupid. But I think everyone was always stupid, but just nowhere near power.
We need a meritocratic system that is also based on modern science and social psychology, and it needs to be diverse, equitable, and inclusive too…
Agree with your points, stupid people still existed, but would be shunned from important roles once others realized they were stupid. Social media and the systematic underfunding of education and science also is a factor of dumbing down the general population and overall lack of critical thinking. It’s one of the reasons so many mistrust scientist or experts and think watching youtube or tiktok videos counts as “research”.
Can you imagine, governments made up of highly educated people that are actually experts in the fields their role is responsible for? We might actually progress as a society.
That or we’d overspec into stem education and neglect humanities until we get a whole generation of genius niche engineers who will sit down and gladly explain the most eugenicist viewpoint you’ve ever head from a living human in your entire life the moment you ask them a single question related to social issues…
Oh wait.
There is a little bit of an assumption of the mad scientist here. Most scientists and engineers are very compassionate and caring people, even if many are excentric. We care about a thriving humanities department.
The psychopath cohort you’re thinking of is the executive branch, or the people who made it to sales manager.
That’s not exactly what I mean… they should be experts in their respective field or at least something related to their role in the government. Not just everyone’s a tech engineer.
Greed and oligarchs.
Media conglomerates pushing right wing propaganda
Because a lot of people feel like the world is getting shittier, and so they’re voting for the parties that tell them “the world is shitty and we have the solution. It’s simple and straightforward and someone other than you will bear the brunt of it.”
If the left wants the far-right to stop gaining then it has to defuse this argument. They should be working to make people feel like the world is less shitty, convincing people that they have solutions for the world’s shittyness, and ensuring that those solutions are simple and straightforward and put the brunt of the effort on someone else.
This is the downside of democracy, you have to do what the people want. Sometimes that’s kind of annoying and difficult.
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Where the hell are these steamers and ytbers leftists that are ‘defusing’ the problems and breaking them down easy to understand, while giving a solution? Only thing I see, is people telling you the Dems are trash and not on your side. And the current system wouldn’t work and needed to be changed, everything sucks. Really where are these positive left channels? I mean, your post in itself tells me everything is controlled by the ultra powerful, wealthy. So what could I poor worker do anything to change that, hell even voting doesn’t work, cause all of them are controlled by lobbies… Can you really not see what you are saying?
Because propaganda works.
And the only antidote is to understand media, the main driving force of so many things in the world. The media ownership will not be doing that. Governments, under control of the media ownership, will not be doing that.
Therefore: shittier.
History repeats itself, especially because people don’t remember or don’t know what happened in the past.
I know right. The only issue is instead of a world at war with countries fighting each other, it’s going to be like 20 separate civil wars.
We’ll see, hopefully world wars are a thing of the past but history tends to rhyme.
It’s pretty complicated to explain but humans in general are pretty shit at this whole civilization thing. Above all we’re selfish, greedy, and envious. The only systems we’ve ever built were based on exploitation and suffering of the populace so that the „elite” can fuck around in wealth and luxury. When these stop working because the „elite” is more and more idiotic we just go to war because instead of identifying and beheading the problem we let them convince us it’s somehow the other unfortunate to blame.
It’s pretty grim but that’s what we are, rabid fucking animals who can sometimes say something intelligent.
And to add what the others said, things are getting more expensive. Raw material prices keep going up, price of energy is rising but wages aren’t. Growth of the western countries went way down but the elite still insist on their usual cut even if they means taking a cut from the general population to make up the difference.
Then comes climate change making insurances more expensive or impossible, what makes things more difficult for housing. After that the climate also messes with food production. Not to mention how modern industrial animal husbandry is a pandemic generator what’s going to make it worse.
I think there’s an easy solution. Left wing parties should start tackling the problem of immigration, because yes, it’s a problem and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can stop extreme right wing parties from using that as a lever to come into power.
Or wait check this out: they promise to fix housing and solve things people want.
iTsThE IMMIGRANTS fAuLt!!
My man, if you knew how much of the economy was based on immigrant work you’d tout another tune.
I didn’t say we should stop immigration. But everybody can see that some immigrants don’t come to Europe to work, not at all. And people are angry about that; left wing parties should tackle that problem in a rational way. Otherwise people get fed up and then they resort to vote for extreme right wing parties.
Oh no only 99.7% of immigrants come here to work! Let’s kick them all out!
Shouldn’t we kick out any people if they don’t want to work with that logic? I hope you’re having a job!
Smh
This hits extra hard given Tim Allen’s MAGAness.
O good, it’s not just us in the US
Canada also has a bunch of far right assholes who’re currently leading in our polls. Luckily the US clusterfuck is making Canadians think twice about voting for them though and they’re dropping in the polls
Quick edit: it’s hilarious because they have to court both the moderate conservatives who hate Trump and the far right who idolise him and they’re fumbling both
How does that even sound ? How would you defend and attack him at once?
Wait…why would that be good?
You’ve heard the saying “misery loves company?”
The entire world including lots of Europe has been shifting significantly right despite what leftist US haters often say about the US left being a European right. That hasn’t been true for a decade or more.
Regarding important economic issues such as healthcare, welfare, taxes, consumer protection & industry regulation this is certainly the case.
The part where the European right mainly differs from the US left is on more recent additions to leftist ideology - such as identity politics & intersectionalism.
First, I find it kind of irritating when someone attributes opinions to an undefined “they”. Was this a thing Bernie Sanders said? Was this something started in a press release by the DSA? If you’re talking about Twitter, might as well say ‘I heard from the propaganda machine…’
I’m left as heck, and I’m very aware that countries are moving right all over the world. It seems to be especially driven by migration. And I think folks need an affirmative message besides either ‘we’re ignoring your concerns and letting folks in’ or ‘fine, we’ll lock the gates and kill the migrants. Please like us.’
It seems to be especially driven by migration.
No, that’s just the scapegoat. Neither the number of immigrants, nor the number of illegal immigrants, nor the crime rate among immigrants are especially high right now.
All of these numbers are currently lower (in Germany) than 10, 20 or 30 years ago.I think maybe I was unclear. I believe that much of the shift rightward is because migrants are an ideal boogyman. They’re a natural target for nationalists, and liberals are largely apathetic.
As late stage capitalism, automation, and outsourcing create greater and greater economic precarity, the far right has a perfect opportunity to enter the mainstream by giving voice to two of the biggest unspoken concerns that many politically disengaged voters relate to but often feel pressured not to talk about.
The fascists say, ‘your life is worse! And your neighborhood has changed ethnically! And we have a whole explanation for all your problems that the people in charge are trying to suppress! Lol at how aggressively they try and prevent us from saying these things!’
And the dominant liberal order can’t say ‘It’s not what it looks like! The rich are actually just taking advantage of you, and those migrants are just the earliest victims of climate change and greed!’
The truth is that migrants don’t drive down wages: criminalizing migrants does. And given enough time, you could be a migrant too. That’s the thing I’d like more folks to know.
Misery loves company
Hell yeah
Every time someone pointed out problems caused by migrants, legal and illegal, they got downvoted. Now I’m sure that the left and those infected by the woke virus really hate their country. No one in their right mind would ignore damages done to their own country.
Every time someone pointed out they hate groups of people, in arbitrary subcategories, they got downvoted.
There, I fixed that for you.
Every time someone pointed out the truth, they got downvoted.
Nah. This version is more precise and concise.
Every time people try to blame immigrants for problems they don’t cause they get downvoted.
Fixed that for you.
That’s the woke virus talking through you. How blind can people be?
" I don’t have any valid claims to make or evidenced arguments to cite, so I’m just gonna say ‘woke virus’ a few times to dismiss everyone else’s position. I’m so edgy and smart."
Check the picture i shared somewhere here. You blind bastard.
Imagine acting like white American citizens don’t do things that horrible or so.much worse literally every fucking day. This is nothing but racist propaganda by a braindead parrot taught only enough to repeat the words his master trained him on. If that wasn’t an illegal immigrant, you never would have heard her name unless you lived in that specific local community, because mental illness and human atrocities are everywhere and immigration has nothing to do with the incident.
Really, where? Be honest, we don’t see that kind of news every day. Because it’s not real. You just made that up.
There were 52.7 homicides every day in the US in 2023, most committed by US citizens. As a follower of true crime podcasts, I assure you, every week there’s a new twisted, horrific murder straight out of a horror movie. Again, the vast majority of which are by US citizens. Pretending violence is an immigration issue an not a human issue is, at best, woefully ignorant, or worst, deliberately xenophobic and harmful.
Wow, now that’s an argument. The woke virus… Are you a conspirationist?
The bastard even smiled after stabbing a girl. You know what nationality he is? People like you are the one enabling the crimes perpetuated by those people.
Yes let’s bag all people from that country together because of one douchebag.
Where are you from, so that I can mark everyone from that country as racists?
You’re the only one here who’s saying that all people from that country do that.
no u
Dude fuck off, we don’t want you here. Why don’t you emigrate from this platform?
Now you sound like the far-right militants. Lol.
Just speaking to an absolute cock like you in words you’ll understand.
You should start calling yourself a Nazi for the words you said earlier. Lol.
What part of “dude, fuck off” were you too simple to understand?
Speaking like a true Nazi. Lol.
