Far-right populists top polls in Germany, France and Britain for the first time
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.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/far-right-populists-top-polls-germany-france-britain-first-time-rcna224706Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Maybe if the left wing party that got in for the first time in 15 years actually behaved remotely like they should, this would not be happening in the UK
All Kier Starmer has managed to accomplish is vindicating the idiots that say "both sides are the same" and fuelling Reform's populism.
His government's current policy focus areas make Tony fucking Blair look like a socialist by comparison—and he earned the fucking red-tie Tory assessment of his policies.
When a “left wing” party is still far right, the people who complain have a point. Yes, there is a difference between extreme right and far right, but in the absence of any meaningful leftist options, people will gravitate toward those they hope will implement actual change, even if the change is worse than every other alternative. This most often tends to be those who want to pull the world even further to the right.
Yeah. I naively thought that finally there might be some change now the fucking Tories have imploded, but no.
What a monumental turdpile.
Same thing is happening in Australia. It's controlled opposition. The real leftists have been progressively out-capitaled from the center-left parties. Now their majority are corporate whore "centrist" neoliberals that continue to screw the workers, just slower than the center-right party, which is now a borderline fascist party.
I'm still waiting for people to realise that we live in corporate dictatorships with the illusion of democracy; you can vote for whoever you want, but the oligarch-financed candidates are statistically guaranteed to win a majority 90+% of the time, coz capitalism. The major difference is how much lube they apply before they fuck you.
People having this realization and solidarity amongst the common folk are the only way to we have a hope of fighting this pile of shit back.
It's still nowhere near a guarantee of a win, and it's made monumentally more difficult by the oligarchs plotting to divide us up (using the politicians and social media platforms they own) but it's the only chance we have.
Labour has been a joke of a party for the past 3 decades. The only reason they are in power right now is that the Tories actually managed to completely destroy the UK. Labour and the Tories are going to go the way of the Whigs the nezt election and will be replaced by Reform UK and Corbyn's new leftist party.
All these leftists become conservatives when their wealth is threatened.
Who the fuck looks at the US right now and thinks "I want that?"
Fascists
This is EXACTLY what leftists have been trying to warn liberals about. People everywhere are struggling under late stage capitalism. Centrists liberal parties like Labour, CDU/PSD, Renaissance, and PO are telling everyone that everything is great and the ship will right out soon. Meanwhile far right parties acknowledge that everything is fucked and they promise to punish "those responsibile" for it (they of course are referring to social minorities instead of the wealthy capitalists that are plundering our societies.
The current status quo parties if Europe either need to pivot their platforms to radical change and clamping down on the capital class whome literally everyone hates or they are simply paving the way for fascist takeovers.
What happens instead is that the established parties decide they can win the voters back if they adopt far-right policies. We get extra-shitty governance and they still lose voters. It's a lose-lose situation but they're committed.
Yes, and every election season we will see liberals decry any leftist movement and demand that now is the time to rally behind feckless "electable " neoliberal politicans that everyone hates and will drive away more voters, and then blame everyone who warned them that they would lose. The establishment parties will blame "extremest messaging" or some such nonsense and then push further right the next time around and the leftmost fringe of the party will be expelled.
And this all is thanks to those very same far-right figureheads pushing that every form of leftism is Stalinism, will immediately cause mass starvations, censorship, white genocide, mandatory homosexuality, etc.; so no "sane" people dares to implement anything that is deemed "too far-left".
Then the far-right figureheads push even harder on what is "too far-left".
Then the far-right figureheads slowly redefine what far-right is. The nazis slowly become cartoon villains, who ran on the program of "killing Jews for fun", thus if you bring up any reason to justify your hatred, then you're a savior, a messiah, the moderate between leftist lunacy and far-right genocide for fun.
Then the far-right figureheads play lip service to various issues. They'll claim to protect your free speech from the far-left. They claim to defend your workplace. They claim to stand for the flag. And most of all, they claim to be moderates on every issue, but with caveats more obvious to those who are more well-versed in politics. Their free speech issue is mostly about hate speech for some reason, but still want to protect children to some degree (I personally wouldn't be surprised if Nigel Farage only dropped the age verification on hate speech, then issued a full-on porn ban). They talk ill of unions for going "too far" and celebrating "hard workers" and those within the "hustle culture". They will cry "communism" if they have to buy something else instead of that beloved "foreign brand".
(This all gave me an inspiration for an article, I just need to find a good outlet.)
If that were true then wouldn't leftists be winning in the polls? Why would Late Stage suffering cause a shift to the right? Makes no sense.
You anti-liberal crowd seem like precisely the reason this kind of thing is happening. You're like a pipeline for people to go from socialists to Trump supporters and anarchists.
Maybe you should look at how governments have reacted to right wing movements vs left wing movements over the past century and you'll answer your own question. The US wasn't paying communists to terrorize fascist groups in Italy and Greece, nor were they suddenly forgiving if war crimes to incorporate communist leaders into their societies.
There was a just a news story posted this week about the German court ruling that a communist book club could legally be disbanded amd broken up by the state, yet that same government does nothing to Stop AFD
Angry people
More like idiots
Idiots are allowed to be angry.
Idiotic angry people.
Vladimir Putin.
Man it's the 1920s all over again!
This is so depressing. I remember 10 years ago seeing how the world was changing, I was full of hope for the future, we were slowly becoming more socially accepting of minorities and it seemed to be slightly getting better. Now the progress didn't stop, it fucking reversed and shit is so much worse than it was. This makes me really sad.
The people pretending they cared about the gays and the minorities ignored people's basic human needs.
That's how we got here.
Who got all the new wealth from increased productivity post 1980? The gays and minorities?
The billionaires who are scapegoating gays and minorities just like they almost always do.
I don't think they're saying helping gays and minorities was the problem. I think probably more that rich and powerful for a while learned they could get votes while enacting predatory economic policies by marketing social issues where the government doesn't actually do a ton there but put minority groups into marketing campaigns for what public programs there are out there and advertise non-governmental things minorities can seek. So minorities and LGBQT were really good marketing for politicians and the rich while they were pushing privatization, lower taxes, austerity, higher surveillance/police state, etc
We are speedrunning robber-barrons through WW-II in one shot this time. What a ride. Can I get off, please?
"My wage-slaves are getting a bit too comfortable. Here's a bunch of money. Go fuck with them."
It didn't reverse itself. Huge amounts of effort and organization went into that reversal.
That's why it's a called a "reaction"
Are people not paying attention to how destructive these parties are to democracy?
Nope and by design from the media to keep them distracted from it. Get people riled up about trans people in toilets and asylum seekers in small boats rather than the rich destroying the planet and causing horrendous inequality in basic living.
Tyrants are also usually to blame for the asylum seekers in small boats. The irony knifes me. They're often seeking asylum because they're fleeing a tyrant, and the response of the countries they try to find safe harbor in is to turn themselves into the very type of tyranny they were fleeing.
People want change, they promise change, no matter how bad of a change. That, coupled with a massive propaganda network made up of a few billionaires, and there you have it.
No, they promise the world and then shit in your mouth. These people are being duped.
They definitely are, "strangely enough", it follows trends of cost cutting measures on education that have been happening in the last few decades.
People are getting shit on ny the current parties as well. Prisoners don't riot because they think they will get out of jail, they riot to get even with their keeps that have been fucking them over. All the status quo parties in Europe/the West are responsible for the current mess we are in and people know it.
That's the whole point. Look to the now infamous Jubilee video of the man proudly claiming that he is indeed a fascist and he wants an authoritarian ethnostate.
Most people are essentially animals. 50% of the population doesn't have an inner monologue.
idk, this doesn't mean they are more subtle to propaganda. There is currently no scientific evidence, that this would indicate that people are not able to self reflect or other things. Not having an inner monologue means that these people are using different techniques to accomplish these tasks. The reality is more complex than that.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This could help give some explanation of the election of Trump/MAGA, but 8 months into that election everyone outside can see that they just made all the problems worse. And when this rise was noted last year, I wouldn't have asked that question because the people don't have something to give an an honest response of what would really happen if such groups were elected to power (which these exact same problems happened the last time Trump was elected, but it's happened now twice in a row with a safety bumper between these elections which would help dismiss any claim of it was a fluke/bad timing). Which comes back to my question, how can you look at Trump/MAGA and say "I want THAT for my country?"
We aren't dealing with hypotheticals anymore, we are already seeing cause and effects.
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.
Racism and other kinds of bigotry mostly.
They don't,this shit reeks of right propaganda
Maybe ask a Trump supporter?
Billionaires are people, too. Sorta.
Hey UK, they're all being funded by Russia, just like to dipshits who told you brexit was a good idea. Don't fall for it again
Narrator: They were going to fall for it again
King Farage pledged the UK's loyalty to the Russian Empire.
UK has been on a dark path for a while now, Kier Starmer has done a great job of pushing the population down that dark path. When people say both sides are the same, Kier has made sure that everyone feels as though that is true.
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
WTF is happening in the world rn? Why are all the right wingers taking control? I thought it was just the US going through a crazy-stupid phase
Billionaires learned how to use the world wide web as an AI powered disinformation network
perfectly written.
Social media. Muskrat, Zucc, Thiel, etc. are high on the fumes of the AI hype, and want that sweet AI money, from the surveillance state using AI.
Well right now in the UK we voted for the supposed
left, centre,centre right wing party (The UK has the same 2 party issue as the US more or less) and they reacted by being even more right wing than the right wing we just got rid who recently also just imploded their popularity and now we're stuck with the far right party next election because UK politics is such a caste based exclusive club that no one on the left or even real centre has enough political or monetary capital to form an opposition.actually i think rich people don't really personally profit from extra money. They have already more money than they could ever spend to fulfill personal wishes. in that sense, the money is not "sweet".
the reason they're hoarding so extreme levels of wealth is because they believe in "greatness", in being a part of something greater and bringing the world progress, one way or another. that's why "techno-optimism" is such a common theme among them. "mars settlement" might go in a similar direction, though that one has more reasons (jobs programs, mostly). it's more for a desire for greatness (you could call it imperialism, but without the bloodshed) more than a desire for money, i think.
They only believe in the "greatness" of themselves. Which is expressed monitarily.
Their entire self worth is based on the size of their bank accounts, on what they "could do" with their money.
Instead of, you know, what they're actually doing with their money: nothing.
They hoard it to feel special. They could literally give away billions to the right places to fix shit immediately and still be billionaires. But they don't.
Despite that very literally leading to them being worshipped. Which would be more greatness for them then they have now. And more greatness for the world. And it ain't happening.
Because. They're all convinced they're the smartest people ever, and not big idiots that never learned the basic social benefits of sharing.
"Greatness" isn't found on top of a pile of money. It's found at the bottom once it's been spent. That's how people and the economy actually benefit from it. By the velocity in which it changes hands. Which so far, is near 0% for these billionaires seeking "greatness."
It's embarissing, if anything, to see them so incapable of achieving their goals of greatness simply because they're too insecure about having anyone else that isn't them spend their money. Especially when it comes to actually using it to benefiting the world instead of their egos.
It's more that they use the accumulated wealth as a leaderboard score to show off to other rich people.
But the reality is that economic power is power, and a healthy society must limit the amount of power any individual can accrue.
I think you'll get a lot of different answers depending on who you ask, and i think liberalism and allowing other people their own opinion / interpretation of things is important. Yet here's my take:
I don't want to love on this planet anymore
I like the idea of an AI apocalypse
We can either blame the western political system for it or some other agents interested in making it fail...
Asimov's second foundation spoilers ::: spoiler spoiler As with the second foundation, it was strange to see psicohistory predicting so precisely the future, here it is very strange to see all western democracies fail at the same time :::
The Foundation has been out for 75 years. I think we're past the time limit needed for spoilers
Imo we are never past the spoilers... someone may be doing its first steps into it and deserves to have the full experience.
Idk man, while it's possible that this is russian influence, I think it's beating around the bush and facing the fact that people are capable of being terrible all on their own* (talking about the manipulative people in politics, not the gullible citizens)
Russia and china are only using failures in western policies against us. They don't create them. It's up to our nations to resolve those tension spots so they cannot be used against us.
The Russian argument is understandable because it's what our governments point to as the origin of their failures. It allows them to keep pointing at that "outside interference", invest in surveillance while not investing in what the subjects used by the interference reveal about the real wants of the population are.
Russia certainly is no friend of democracy and hatred towards the Putin regime is healthy but to fight it does take more than just saying a third of your citizenship is dumb and brainwashed, you have to remedy what they use against us.
This is true. But at the same time, a THIRD of our population ACTUALLY IS dumb and brainwashed. How the fuck do you fix that?
That's true as far as it goes, but breaking the chain of Russian (and other hostile nation) influence on our politics is still the most direct way of dealng with the fascist problem. They're puppets and we must cut the strings.
I think this is the beginning of Foundation's Edge, tho. Second Foundation book deals with the First Foundation looking for the planet where that homes the Second and revolves around Arkady Darell
You're confused because you're existing in a censorship bubble.
it's not just censorship. people have fundamentally different instincts, and that leads them to see different behavior as "normal" or acceptable.
It seems that democracy is beyond saving in the age of social media and all the misinformation that circulates there. I mean, you can't be that incredibly stupid if you live even halfway in reality.
You only have to look at the US to see very clearly how corrupt the goddamn neo-Nazis are and that the promises they make to their ignorant voters are nothing but lies. It's more than obvious that the US fascists are pursuing policies that are by no means in the interests of the people, but rather the work of a criminal syndicate, which is what they truly are. There is no difference between these barbarians and those in Europe – they are all agents of the power hungry billionaires and do nothing but pursue their interests, which is of course at the expense of the citizens.
Anyone who still doesn't understand this is living entirely in the imaginary parallel world that the Nazis have built together with their financial backers.
Since this obviously affects so many people and these people cannot be convinced with rational arguments, it is probably hopeless.
Democracy is on it's way out. Humanity is completely fucked on every fucking angle possible.
Democracy has always been the beard for Fascism since the creation of the US. It was a good lie to sell the people while the wealthy did whatever the fuck they want. Once you come to realize this everything makes sense and falls into place.
That may be true for the US, but we're talking about Europe here, where many countries have a welfare state, workers' rights exist, and education is handled very differently. That's precisely why I find it even more incomprehensible how people can be so incredibly stupid and vote for Nazis who are not only inhuman racists, but also want to create US-style conditions in Europe.
If Europe is such a great representation of idealism why are they marching lockstep to the right?
The truth is the wealthy, because of concentration of capital, have a disproportionate amount of representation. The wealth gap continues to get worse in all of Europe. This is not a coincidence!
The US doesn't need to impose their shitty conditions on Europe because they are doing it to themselves. It is a race to the bottom and the wealthy are laughing the whole way.
What else can I say? Every thinking person is aware of the problem, but you're not going to achieve anything with your propaganda slogans – on the contrary, you're scaring off people who basically agree with you.
The truth is fucking terrifying and you have a lot of propaganda running around in your head like everyone, including me. This propaganda creates cognitive dissonance.
Every thinking person is not aware of this or even close. I studied communications with an emphasis on propaganda and persuasion. I learned a lot of disturbing things about humanity.
While we may agree on a few points I highly doubt you believe what I do. Perhaps you are right though, stranger things have happened.
The actual Nazis didn't really drop in popularity much, or rather their policies didn't, even after those very policies resulted in much of the continent being burned down. People literally looked around at the rubble and hoped that fascists would fix things. In Italy, they stayed in power ffs.
You need strong constitutions to protect from this shit, because people will vote for their own death when they are scared.
Constitutions without a mechanism of enforcement are just a piece of paper. Much of what is occurring in the United States right now is absurdly unconstitutional, but it doesn't matter because the institutions -- that are full of living, breathing humans -- all ignore it.
Social media. They are disproportionately pushing right wing media. That's it.
Please. Europe is a dozen times less stable than the US. You guys can't stop from blowing each other up every 30 years.
If you add the words “liberal, capitalist” in front of democracy, I agree with you. But I believe that democracy as a whole is a worthy ideal worth striving towards, in all areas of public life.
Most importantly, they paint the liberals as the left option to pretend that left does not work.
So glad the liberals, both in government and voters, that always lead us to fascism are so invested in shit like "respectability politics", politics "being boring" and being on their supposed intellectual high horse because "emotions are bad, you should never raise your voice when people are starving and being genocided, you're just the same as the far right." But then while saying this just doing mostly what the far right want, pretending it's somehow their idea. It's really working so well to stop them.
But then the liberals would happily throw us into fascism if it meant there was an "I told you so" they could somehow twist out of it to say to the left
I will give you that.
Although I hope you give me that taking this level of dissatisfaction and managing to get negligible gains while the populist far right turns it into an outright lead in the polls is a massive failure of the left.
I am pretty staggered at the absolute incapability to make a dent on this trend by anybody at this point. It takes some hardcore commitment to 20th, if not 19th century politics to suck this badly at this.
The left has been getting kneecaped by the center at every opportunity. Macron formed as far right of a government as he could despite the left taking the most seats in parliament. Labour kicked Corbyn out of the party for trying to take them back to actually focusing on the needs of workers and not capital. SDP in Germany only cares about making sure Israel is loaded up with all the missles and arms it needs to carry out it's genocide in Gaza. Liberals will give the reigns of power to the fascists before they ever make a concession to the left
Again, how come the far right has been able to pull the center right to the extreme but the left has sucked so bad at gaining concessions from centrist liberals?
I swear, step 1 to stopping fascism is we all collectively stop pretending the dog ate our campaign strategy.
This thread is bumming me out immensely. There is zero reaction here. Just whining and deflecting, from centrists and leftists alike. We are not turning this around this way.
How come i can get my alcoholic brother to go to a brewery with me, but i can't get him to go to rehab with me? Liberals DO NOT WANT to make concessions to the left.
Ah, so they are right and we are wrong.
As in, we literally have losing cards. People are just naturally inclined to be right wing, and leftist positions are inherently minoritary.
That not only flies in the face of history and common sense, it's defeatist to the point that a century ago it would have gotten you pegged as some fifth columnist infiltrator in any self-respecting leftist organization.
Human nature seems to be a huge part of it. Blaming someone else for all your troubles is such a winning concept, it's really hard to fight against it. Plus actually having to acknowledge real issues and trying to fix them often comes with people having to change or sacrifice and that's a hard sell compared to someone just pretending to have perfect solutions and that everything will be fine.
Sadly emotions win debates against facts almost every time.
That sounds good, but I'm going to need a bit more proof than just the premise that leftist politics are inherently a harder sell than race wars, genocidal urges and actively voting against one's own interests.
It's a cop out. An excuse. "It's not that we suck at selling this, it's that we're right and it's hard to do the right thing".
Not buying it. Even discounting the places where they do have left-leaning governments holding back the far right, the obvious retort is "well, lie to them, then". I mean, do you think the fascists have a plan for when they seize power and persecuting migrants and giving the rich control of most of society turns out to not fix everybody's problems? If people are so emotional and dumb, then manipulate them for their own good.
Either the left has been bad at normal politics or they've been bad at populism. It's abject failure either way.
Don't ignore the media. A lot of money also means a lot of media attention which is skewed to the right and the whole social media, advertising industry and getting paid by clicks favors emotional content.
Right. So you're telling me that these filthy liberals control the media and they're still unable to stem the tide of extremist countercultural fascists about to unseat them from power all over Europe? What good is tilting the media to the right if you are entirely powerless to stop the fringes from kicking you out?
More to the point, where is the social media manipulation towards the left? How come the fascists can use social media to normalize an extreme but the left cannot?
I'm exhausted by the victimism. At least when the far right plays the victim card they have the common decency to do so in a call for rage-induced action. The left has become accustomed to the "what can you do" school of being a victim. It's infuriating.
I say it again. Get good at old politics or get good at new politics. If Breitbart managed to become the acceptable template for what used to be centre-right conservative press the left has zero excuses.
Capital controls the media, not the left. The concept that the left controls the media is made up in order to justify pushing the goalpost to the right.
It is no different than the conservatives' beef with colleges not giving their ideology safe spaces. This is most pronounced in law schools where conservatives are demanding their "constitutional originalism" reasoning be taught. The problem is, of course, there is no actual legal theory. They just made it up.
You seem to be upset that the left, which is not represented by any political party or corporation is not in control of the narrative. This is by design.
Listen, appealing to the dark side of human nature, othering people, blaming government is easy and works great. It is low hanging fruit stuff. It is effective for control and manipulation. It is also the opposite of what people on the left want.
They are not victims, they just don't have any real power. The US has always been controlled by the wealthy and they are choosing the easy way out to stay in power. Giving the illusion of democracy takes a lot of work and even some occasional minor concessions. It is and always will be an illusion though in our current system.
We really need to form a government that is designed by nature to resist corruption instead of embracing it. Until we have something like that nothing meaningfully will change.
Eh... the left controls my government. There are plenty of leftist parties in Europe (which is what the thread is about).
I mean, last I checked France, Germany and the UK were not in the US, but I may have missed something in the news today.
Otherwise, I can´t stress enough how little I care about what happens to the US. Which is as little as possible but not zero, because I am not allowed to make it zero, which is what I'd really want.
Hey buddy. You're talking real fast. I dont think you know what you're talking about.
Commenter clearly said billionaire media outlets are right leaning and control discourse. Billionaires are all right leaning. Billionaires fund breitbart. How did breitbart become mainstream? Because they were funded by multiple fascist Billionaires to advance their agenda.
Oh you mean on the nazi platform owned by a nazi billionaire? Or do you mean on Facebook, also owned by a billionaire? I guess you mean lemmy, because thats what "leftist" social media looks like. Oh wow we arent dictating discourse because our app doesn't make anyone money, big fucking shocker. Not to mention every kamala voter on this app needs to make sure than anyone to the left of her is shouted down. The left is really making waves.
People feel this way because it is literally only regular people asking for left wing policy and all of the power to influence politics is in the money. Nobody has any money because it was stolen from them by these same people who control all the social media, the news, and all the politicians. So people say "theres nothing we can do" because none of the Billionaires are going to suddenly stop being Billionaires and then nuke the rest of them from orbit.
If its so easy to start communist breitbart then go do that shit dude, if you've got it so figured out then why are you here talking? You wont, because this is cope. Plenty of people are making left wing media and driving conversation towards socialism but they're making no money from it and getting no reach because they're principled socialists doing educational socialist advocacy. Read: nobody with money would ever in a million years fund them the way the right wing funds tim pool, benny johnson, ben shapiro, jordan peterson, joe rogan, matt walsh, and you get the point now? Billionaires OPPOSE our viewpoints. Our shit is in workshops and union halls, not on TV. Thats why this disconnect is so large, because you dont broadcast socialism into people the same way you do bigotry.
Build a cadre and start doing the work, we dont need a top down authority to direct us like the troglodytes on the right. The "what can you do" attitude is towards billionaires controlling media not social revolution.
See, that's some more excuses.
Turns out that a) back when the centrist liberals were quite close with those billionaires and didn't want to rock the boat the far right still managed to sway both the billionaires themselves and politics overall rightward straight from the fringes, which the left hasn't been able to mirror then or now.
But, more importantly, b) why is your app so shitty? I mean, sure, the other guys were able to cozy up to money, create, fund or buy platforms and pull poltiical strings. So we were what? Developing open source communication protocols that didn't manage to get people to stick around even when the nazi billionaire had multiple public breakdowns?
See, the problem with that is the "if you don't like it fix it yourself" attitude works about as well in politics as it does in open source software. Which is to say, not at all. It's... actually kinda scary how well those two things map together. Nobody is in charge, nobody is getting paid, nobody wants to do anything and if enough people get together to actually try without corporate sponsorship you end up with a bunch of identical forks, none of which work particulary well.
But hey, by all means, enjoy your artisanal socialism and lose with dignity. I'm sure the moral pangs will make the well organized fascists really regret steamrolling the loose smattering of well informed cadres in union halls.
I don't have it "figured out", but I can certainly tell you that small scale zero budget grassroots action splintered across a multitude of factions delineated by random purity tests is not going to do much. That's also why I have zero interest in starting yet another useless splinter of any kind.
There is an opportunity to rally anger around an alternative and yes, it will take unification, a charismatic leader and plenty of top down authority to get it going. The left is dropping the ball massively on all of those fronts. Get me that and I won't care if it aligns with my particular brand of leftism, I'll vote for it and support it publicly.
I mean, I already do, I live in a country with a left-leaning government, at least for now, and I will continue to vote for leftist parties here regardless of what happens or what they do for the foreseeable future. But... you know, in places where they don't have a functional left wing apparatus.
We’re all in hell.
Nah, the human species is finally being honest. This is what we are. We are shit.
We have and can be better. There is no excuse.
No, we can't. It's time we accept the truth. Humans are, at their core, evil, hateful, selfish creatures.
Idk I don't think it's so black and white - that's a cognitive distortion. There are good/better people who work hard to help people. Or people who are kind and uplifting to others around them even if it's not their job. What we're seeing now is malignant greedy people taking advantage of multiple collapses: our governments, the sixth extinction, climate change, etc.
I've spent time thinking and learning about the worst parts of humans, and I'm no expert, but the good, the bad, the ugly, and all the shades of gray inbetween, are all things that humans have used to survive. Just some people, whether by nurture or nature or culture, skew to the worser traits and some to the better traits. I guess I'm telling you all of this because there are good people who aren't evil at their core, there are good people who make life worth living and that should give you hope and maybe something to hang onto during these awful times.
And literally nobody is stopping them. Why is that? It's because every human is a malignant greedy person.
I'll leave the optimism to others. I've officially seen enough. We are beyond redemption.
So why are you commenting? Why not fuck off to your cave of misery?
I have, but you goddam humans have infested the entire planet.
I'm sorry that this is how you feel. There are good people fighting fascism right now. All is not lost yet.
Well, maybe both of you are right, actually. We all suck so much and have been putting off a lot of responsibility for such a long time, and now it's coming back to roost. Kinda nuts to think about, that it works that way.
The US is a huge cautionary tale that other countries would do well to heed. I see "Why don't the Americans do something??" all the time, but meanwhile, your country is creeping towards the same conclusion. "We'll do something to stop it if it gets too bad!" Yeah, that's what we said while the far-right continued to gather support.
I thought Nazism, Hitler and WWII was the cautionary tale? I wasn't present at the time, but i heard that Bad Things happened.
I also thought that after WWII, systems were put in place to ensure that it would not happen again. Where are these systems and why aren't they working?
Right after WW2 pretty much every European country that still had colonial holdings in the Americas, Africa, and Asia went straight back to ruling them with a iron fist. Wars swept across the world outside of Europe and the Anglosphere. Wars of independence.
To that point I don't think there were truly any safeguards put in place for minorities. Really it was just ban Nazi imagery and formation of European trade zones that would progressively include more governance cooperation eventually forming the EU.
The safeguards in place were done to prevent EU member states from waring with each other, not safeguards for minorities or anyone outside of EU member states. Solution for Jewish people wasn't to make the EU safer for Jewish people, it was to take land elsewhere and make Israel. Anyone outside of EU member states including colonial holdings were fair game for mass destruction. A lot is made about the civil rights era in the US, European countries had there own versions of that too. The lesson of WW2 was that war sucks, wars should be fought on other continents, move the Jews to Israel. Modern civil rights in European countries had to be fought for as well post-WW2 but I think it was easier there because the minority groups were much smaller in number compared to the US so there was less racist blowback against social safety nets that non-whites could benefit from. Minorities were politically irrelevant until the past couple decades once the children grew up and population sizes grew and they started making it into significant political offices and corporate leadership positions. Now racists started feeling insecure a lot more regularly against the growing number of successful and visible minorities. People that were certain they weren't racist are finding themselves racist as minority populations are now in their surroundings rather than just a passing mention
Colonialism largely collapsed after WW2, with the unwinding of the British Empire (what's left largely consists of Gibraltar and the Falklands) and the end of French dominance in Algeria and Vietnam. It was US policy after WW2 to support decolonization.
Imperialism remained, but more as an arms-length interference in the politics of former colonies (especially by the French in Africa).
Like the Catalans, Basques and Galicians in Spain, who together comprise 13 million of Spain's 48.7 million population? The same could be said of groups in a number of other European countries.
I think you're specifically referring to immigrant-descended minorities. They're not the only ethnic minority groups within a country-- almost all countries have long-term ethnic minority groups as well as descendants of relatively recent arrivals.
Colorism and religion. Like Jews being made to wear an armband for easy identification. Black people in Europe are easily identified. East and southeast Asians are easily identified visually. The darker skinned middle eastern peoples are easy to identify visually as non-European.
Every country has historic minorities but it's more recent that migration across huge distances became common so that adjacent skin tones and visually identifiable features from far away became common in huge numbers.
In Australia, pretty much all the mostly genocided countries, there were programs to breed the savage out of natives. That being taking children mostly young girls and raising them to be married off to white men and after enough generations of this, they would visually look European and would graduate to being a white person.
Europeans in discrimination discourse seem to acknowledge far less easy visual markers for discrimination than the mostly European descendant inhabited former colonies where multiculturalism would be just as much colorism as regional differences in tradition old and new. Like in the US, Canada, etc significant migrations of people from the former states of Yugoslavia. Their children joined the default American or Canadian identifier in those countries because they're visually European descendant and no longer have the accent. But even with an accent because they come from the adjacent culture that dominates in the US and they fit the color, they face less default discrimination than minorities with easily distinguishable visual differences. They can't easily be identified as outsiders until they speak but if they can nail a close enough to a common domestic regional accent, then they can be treated like a native better than the people with native American, African, Asian characteristics
You have natives, native Hispanic, black, Asians that have been in those countries for decades to long before Europeans arrived but are identified with a qualifier. Native American, African American, Asian American, Latin American.
Like I don't think I've ever seen a Europeans call China diverse because Han Chinese is distinct from Manchu which is distinct from Korean which is distinct from Dai. Uyghurs look distinct enough that white people see them as distinct from Chinese but I have not seen that same for Hui people or all the other distinct Muslim minority groups in China.
The same with India. Colorism and religious and ethnic visual markers that vary significantly in visual identification that cause groupings and discrimination in local communities to federal governance. These two are geographically large with huge population countries.
In the same way Germany and Spain have distinct historic minority groups, so do Japan and Vietnam before getting to immigration to those countries from like India let alone the large ethnic Chinese populations in those countries but I'm certain almost everyone in Europe and America would look at them as monoethnic. People out here generally don't look at a Chinatown in Thailand like they do a Chinatown in the UK and Thailand and China are right next to each other but historically have vastly different languages, different religions (I'm including the difference of folk religions and school of buddhism and the resultant syncretism). I never hear these countries spoken up for their experience in handling minority groups and multiculturalism because they have historic, tracing back centuries to over a thousand years, old minority groups that aren't easily visually identifiable. It's different than modern migration minority groups. An Indian minority in Vietnam is far different than one of the common historic minorities of Vietnam that trace damn near the whole minority groups existance to modern day Vietnam
So minority groups like Basque and Catalans will experience minority life far differently than people from Africa and Asia. Just subsetting to Muslims, Muslims from northern Africa and the Middle East can expect different treatment from people they've never met based on skin color and Muslims can expect different treatment if they look Malaysian, Indonesian, Hui, etc because in Europe and the anglosphere, Muslims aren't expected to look like southeast asians or chinese
It was. We fucked up. Badly. Now we're another cautionary tale.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's not as simple as "Europeans are also voting for Trump-like parties". You have multi-party system in Europe and the far-right parties are mostly anti establishment movements. People are mad at lack of action from the governments when it comes to housing, climate, crime, immigration and social services issues. They are tired of both left and right wing parties so they voting for the alternatives now. It's not exactly some anti-intellectual, extreme conservative, anti-democratic movements like MAGA. Yes, it's still bad but most people support EU and democracy. While MAGA is a purely fascist movement trying to regain their dominant position over the minorities in EU it's more about frustration with the ruling class.
As an American, thank you for explaining this. It's still not great because it echoes what happened here. We are also stuck in a duopoly that was slowly being cranked to the right over decades. A lot of people were initially drawn to Trump because of his ideas of "draining the swamp" and sounding anti-establishment. I think the duopoly and the sense of anti-establishment under a capitalist economy (that turned into hypercapitalism) is where fascism really dug it's claws in and when things really started to accelerate. I have hope that this will result in something better after whatever happens happens, but I'm deeply worried about my family, my friends, my self with whatever comes next. I don't want people to die and suffer but that's already happening and has been happening. I feel powerless and it's awful.
Everyone everywhere is worried now. I really hope EU as a whole will survive and guard basic human rights (at least internally) but who knows?
I'm not sure how corrupt the politicians are in your country, but they are here. We've had laws repealed one by one so politicians can get bought off like by oil companies, health insurance, war profiteers, housing investment companies (renting out homes to people instead of people owning), etc. That seems to be a major issue for us in why no progress was made in terms of climate change and other issues too. Although our democrats made progress on social issues, which honestly democrats won't lose much with some policies and laws for some social progress, they're still protecting corporate interests because they want their slice. I'm not sure if there's a good future for us or not, but I've been reading that getting involved in one's community and grassroots helps. Best of luck to you and yours from across the pond.
I can help you, here.
We skipped the primary and coronated Liz Cheney as our party leader.
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.
Nah, fuck that. I plan to blow my head off anyway. Might as well stick an axe in some nazi as well.
Thanks Elon, for your financial support of Hitler acolytes worldwide. Also, get fucked you Boer-reject piece of shit
Cause the far right did so well for the UK (Thatcher, Brexit, Boris, Liz Truss) - they want more????
It's about getting rich not making their nations better
Plus hurting brown people
We are living in the Age of the Grifter.
Its pretty easy to score points when the government is doing everything it can to become unpopular.
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.
It's easy to blame Russia and China, but it's not really that. It's clear that this is a symptom that something is wrong, and that is stagnating or worsening living conditions, unhappiness with how society operates and people hearing that turn to reaction.
Left doesn't have an answer given how marginalized they are, all you get are center-lib parties that pretend everything is okay or that focus on liberal middle class issues. It's no surprise
The problem is simply humanity. At any given moment in time, there are a lot of these ugly, angry, nasty, unhappy people, and they want control of everything so they can take their anger out on those they hate. This is a natural human archetype. They are with us now, and they have ALWAYS been with us. The are the MAGAs and the European far right, they are the warlords that run various small nations, they are the Vikings, the Huns, the Mongols, the Romans, etc.
It was the Nazis in the 20th century, it's the MAGAs in the 21st. It's not that MAGA is copying the Nazis, they are both the same sort of people following the agenda that those people always follow - just generally making life miserable for as many innocent people as possible.
The archetype includes being arrogant and demanding, but that doesn't mean we have to allow it. Most of the time, a strong moral leader can keep the assholes at bay, but every now and then, someone drops the ball, and they gain power, and start fucking with the world. The 21st century Dems dropped the ball badly, over and over, and did nothing to prepare for the MAGA onslaught.
Even after decades of the worst possible election behavior, the Dems instantaneously defended MAGA, and declared the 2024 election "fair & square," before even waiting to see if there had been any review of the election at all. These people are treasonous criminals who will do literally anything. This election was the ONLY thing keeping him from getting a life sentence, how could anyone believe that this is the first election that he didn't cheat on?
We aren't going to defeat these people by appealing to their better nature, they have none. It's who they are, and who these people have always been. We tend to forget from generation to generation that we have to hold the line against the worst people in the world, because they are out there, and they are ALWAYS planning to take control. It's important to remember that, and fight them every single step of the way. We can't accept any excuses like we have to let them do it because we don't really know that the outcome will be bad until we do it. Yes we do, because we've let these people have their way over and over, and they ALWAYS kick us in the nuts.
We need to stop trying to kick the football that our enemy is holding.
Depends on, the outer rings often have better nature that is being slowly eroded by hate fed from the inner rings.
They get these people by trying to appeal to things liberals at least seem to glimpse over, then they give you scapegoats instead of real solutions. Then slowly they feed you even more "problems" that don't affect you, with scapegoats to get rid off, often with a web of conspiracies tying it all together.
I was a Fidesz voter in 2010. They told me the previous government were radical communists, who will kick me out of college, then force my disabled ass to work in underpaid factory jobs, with mandatory overtimes that may not get paid for a while. I saw a lot of my girl classmates getting groomed as teens, and thanks to the fucked up laws of Hungary, it was all legal. I got targets to hate for it; feminists, who forced these girls to "marry rich guys ASAP"; and LGBTQ+ people as MSZP did not raise the AoC to match it to homosexual relationships, but lowered it for everyone.
Then after 2010, my face got eaten by the leopards. On the day Fidesz added a "close in age" exception to our fucked up AoC laws to allow 17 year olds to prey on 12 year olds, I was so angry I couldn't sleep. I also was a young atheist who just didn't believe in a "Stalinist form of persecution of religion" (of which I got a horribly distorted description), but after how strongly religion got pushed by Fidesz, I started to gravitate towards stronger forms of secularism. And lastly the widely criticized implementation of mandatory internships only got solved for those in vocational education, meaning as a college student I would have had to paid a used car's price to a HR personnel to hire me, especially due to my autism, which at leas in one place thought was actually "intellectual disability, like in Forrest Gump".
So interesting to read a perspective from another country dealing with much of the same issues.
The feeling of not being able to sleep, of impotent outrage? Yeah, that's how I felt when he started that family separation policy, and they started stealing children from their parents. It was the most egregious thing they'd done to that point, and it was beyond belief that this was happening in my country. There was nothing I could do except call and email my elected representatives, most of whom agreed with it.
I FEEL your frustration.
Oh, they very much are, though.
No, the problem is a set of very specific political conditions that derive from geopolitical power struggles.
If you're implying that we should kick the enemy instead, I agree.
Our specific political issues aren't really causing this. These people have ALWAYS been with us, throughout human history. Sometimes we have rulers strong enough to resist them, sometimes we don't, but the problem with evil humanity is that they are infinitely patient, and they never give up. So if this generation manages to resist them, they'll make what progress they can, and wait for the next generation. That's what they've been doing since Reagan and Rush took over the American political scene in the 80s, and have been mucking it up ever since, until they finally saw their chance, and grabbed it.
My point is that no matter what the political situation is, good or bad, these people are always waiting in the shadows, organizing, planning, and getting into position. We can never forget who they really are, and what they really want, so that when they emerge, we can tell them that we know they are liars, and shove them back into their hole. Evil people don't deserve the privilege of walking among us with their hate on full demonstration mode.
Congratulations, you've written probably the most hitlerite comment I've seen on Lemmy so far, and I'm genuinely concerned.
Instead of investigating what makes people act this way in terms of material conditions, incentives and values that are promoted, maybe the way power is organized and how it leads to inevitable opportunism or this being an inevitability of a class dictatorship that we have now, you instead go for the "undesirables" angle.
People didn't vote for the candidate you wanted because they were irredeemably evil. What do we do, kill all MAGA voters now for having the wrong human archetype? Prohibit them from voting? That only seems the natural conclusion from everything you wrote.
Yep, your kind of thinking is the problem. No sense of history, or the people who have consistently rampaged through it. People have been people for as long as there have been people, and we've ALL seen the variations between humans. To PRETEND that somehow everybody is born exactly the same is contrary to everybody's experience, especially anyone who had siblings raised in the same situations.
Some people are born with wiring to be decent people, and some people are just born to be evil. There are videos of Stephen "Pee Wee Himmler" Miller in high school arrogantly defending highly racist concepts, illustrating that this psychopath has been a bad seed his entire life.
It's time to stop pretending these are normal people for whom we have a normal philosophical disagreement. By definition, MAGA supports a POLICY of treason, pedophilia, rape, racism, intolerance, corruption, slavery, hate, and more, and they aren't novel. People with these same sorts of philosophical leanings have emerged over and over throughout history. Pointing that out, and telling people like you that it is your responsibility to hold the line against that sort of oppression, is not "hitlerite," it's patriotic. If you can't see that, you're either MAGA, or one of those weak, spineless Democrats who allowed all this to happen with your political weeniness.
"Pee Wee Himmler"
Fuckin' lmao. Absolutely cannot explain to my coworker why I'm laughing in my office.
Happy to provide the giggles. I have declared it public domain, so feel free to steal it and use it as much as possible.
RFK, Jr is Great Value Mengele.
The "something" that's wrong has been wrong for multiple generations, but it has only flared up now, when Russia and China started interfering. Surely that's a coincidence.
Ooof. That’s 50% of people who are CDU or AfD voters. As an immigrant in Germany, that’s terrifying.
Trans American, i fucking feel that pain and it only gets worse. If you can, please, not just vote, make sure everything is above board, hold everyone's hand you know to the fire. You are not hysterical, you are having a balanced sensible reaction to the fucking insane
This is because our empires declined, since which we’ve hidden behind Uncle Sam’s skirts, and now US hegemony is also beginning to fade. People go to reactionary populism when they’re afraid.
I'm afraid of the reacrionaries, they're destroying my country, i fully expect to be genocided; where's my suthoritarian?
Do not split.
https://sh.itjust.works/post/42969194
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.
A Brit told me
The Danes, or the Angles, or the Saxons? Or the Romans? Or the ...
Thanks Liberalism, preciate it! /s
My fellow Europeans, fight! Keep fighting until we drive them back to their basements!
Honestly, this is way past that point now.
I know an otherwise perfectly normal middle-aged woman who has booked herself train tickets to a pro-Tommy Robinson protest march in London next month.
It's not National Front skinheads with dog whistle tattoos any more. It's hit the normies. If they want the normies back, the ruling parties are going to have to stop putting asylum seekers in local hotels in shithole towns like mine, because it's just going to take a spark to set this whole country ablaze right now. They need to get processing people to an insane level, build actual accommodation to house them (because this isn't stopping any time soon).
The whole asylum process needs a radical overhaul, like being able to apply for it without having to trek across the world (go to an embassy for example, and then get distributed to countries according to their means). If they carry on with this "we have to take them in because they made it to our country and it's the law" routine, the whole continent will fall to fascism. If sane rulers do not listen to the people, they will turn to monsters to fix their perceived problems.
100% agree. With climate change, folks are not going to stop coming, not going to just stay at home and die. We have to urgently reform the whole immigration system with an emphasis on integration.
And by integration I don't mean giving up their own cultures or language, but rather that life is better for people when they are comfortable in their environment. You won't get comfortable if no one shows you how the culture works, which, it's been my experience, they don't.
I'm sorry, but the fact our peoppes are doing fascism because immigrants and trans people just goes to show how much we suck. We SHOULD be able to just do it and not collapse
Damnit I was planning to move to Germany in the next year or so and now I feel like it'll just be out of the frying pan into the fire.
I feel this trying to move to the Netherlands. My only solace is that the quality of life there is so measurably better there than it is where I am now. They would have to fall a lot further to get to the same dogwater conditions as the US, so there is some buffer time.
We're still fighting here and still have a free press. Join us.
It's sad that I read "still have a free press" and got legitimately excited.
Will the Netherlands accept an Asian software engineer? lol
NL would probably take you. Check out: https://dutchpat.nl/finances-admin/taxation-system/netherlands-30-percent-ruling-expat-guide/
Super useful, thanks!
I'll bring my activism organizing experience over there happily, just figuring out the best way to move over. New job + getting a place requires a residence permit, which requires having an address already
Already have a family sponsor so just need the two other things to fall in place.
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.
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.
It's the wrong approach to take the talking points of AfD to begin with. They're neo fascists, why would they try to copy them? Not only is that lazy, but it's also shows that these establishment parties are out of touch with the populace. These far right parties are gaining ground because there's no viable alternative to them on immigration. Establishment parties trying to compete with far right parties at their own game is a losing strategy, and it shows. If they want to win people over on immigration then they need to actually understand what people are concerned about and then actually take the time to provide a viable and pragmatic alternative for people to vote on.
I don't think the issue is really immigration at all. It's that working class people are being squeezed harder and harder and no party, including the AfD, seems to take it seriously. The AfD is just good at populism and pretending they have a solution by blaming it on immigration and selling themselves as less corrupt and incompetent than the others, while actually being just as bad or worse. If the CDU and SPD in particular hadn't allowed things to get this bad while spending decades in power, the AfD's populism wouldn't have fallen on fertile ground.
And there is also an argument to be made that the media has dropped the ball by allowing the AfD on talkshows and debates without sufficiently pushing back and calling out their bullshit and thus allowing them to paint themselves as a legitimate alternative despite being fascists that are found to be at odds with the constitution (Grundgesetz) time and time again.
Also the AfD is probably the best out of all the parties at social media.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 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.
The thing that people ( not you of course) just do not understand, is that for a lot of western countries the birth rate is under 2. So every year the population has a larger part of old people.
Our systems for retirement, government, social programs, etc only really work when more young healthy people are added.
So we actually really need young immigrants to basically keep the boat floating.
If the boat requires an infinitely growing population then it's bound to sink sooner or later.
That's true, can't have something infinite (population growth) on a finite planet. It could possibly work with expansion to space and other planets.
There's that, too. But I hope we can find a way to keep the population size stable at most, because the world already has too many humans...
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.
I'm sorry, but I'm about to go the escapism route.
I would like to escape (physically) but where to?
Sigh
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.
Anyone who speaks the language / can go through to that RTL site able to tell us the specifics of the poll done? Like what was used for a sample, confidence level, etc.
One thing I've seen in other areas are polls claiming broad support for right wing politics, based on internet polls that have huge bias / confidence issues -- like in Canada, they claim Alberta's suddenly separatist, based on online polls where they can't verify the respondents were even in Alberta. Elevating that sort of non-poll to news-worthy story is likely a combination of click bait journalism and right-wing/US propaganda biased.
(rough) Translation:
I looked up the current ownership structure of RTL, which is owned mainly by the Bertelsmann Group; It doesn't look like there was much bias at play here on a cursory glance.
Thanks, I appreciate the help.
A Wild Mimic's info is what you asked for, but for what it's worth, you can just look at the election that happened earlier this year to see if it passes the smell test (and it does):
The AFD won 20% of the vote in the election earlier this year and then the incoming chancello passed a policy with the old parliament (as leader of the opposition still) that would change a financial rule that would have no chance to pass once the new parliament was seated (because the AFD and most of his own party opposed the change), so a lot of the people who voted CDU/CSU (his party) felt betrayed and said "fuck it, I'll vote AFD next time"
POC around the world just took a deep breath.
Queer folks too
Europeans have a legitimate brain rot issue. There's so much information that their little brains get a stack overflow.
Every time I go back to Europe I'm blow away by quality of life improvements as well as the endless whining and just the insanity of the information landscape. It's just tabloid after tabloid creating problems where there aren't any.
Please, don't follow these "brain rot" narratives. But yes, a lot of problems are artificial made ups or strawmens, made by political powers to empower themselves even more.
How is this any different to the US?
Quality of life
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.
tosses last shred of hope over my shoulder
welp time to get a rifle and move to the woods.
Top thr polls in uk? I mean,they won a single seat i think
Oh no ....
I am not surprised. Europe isn't constant on the same level of racism across it but it's definitely worse everywhere compared to the US. A lot more acceptable to say something racist to non-white people and then be like, it's just a joke have a sense of humor just trying to lighten the mood. Like step into a bar and be the wrong color and the music stops and you're stared at (not joking random bars in Dusseldorf and Stuttgart)
East and nordics worse than west but the west has Italy and Spain. Even then, better in the west but outside of the large cities that are also international tourist destinations it's rough to not be white.
And then the significance of far right political parties and neo Nazi orgs always looked worse in Europe to me. In the US the 2 party system dulls out identity politics a bit even though it's getting worse whereas a 5-30% minority party that's primarily about ethnocentrism is fully possible across European countries and wield a strong influence in coalition forming. In the US, be more scared of law enforcement organizations. Europe fear more the young populace hanging around and the old people staring and progressively law enforcement organizations
Trump was not going to stymie interest in right wing politics for much time at all. It would give way to nationalism. Anti-globalisation that always gives way to anti-immigration that always gives way to anti whatever skin color or religion isn't the majority. Nationalism. Europe's boiling point for centuries. Even before Trump 1 were far right/neo Nazi orgs growing in size across Europe. In my opinion because of how much more of Europe is closer to ethnostates than the US, Europe can quickly devolve into far worse than the US faster. Benefits of Europe for non-whites is the better social safety nets but in terms of institutionalized/unaddressed racial bias/casual racism - all over Europe it's worse than the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The US just makes more headlines.
A joke is that the worst thing for Mexico is being next door to the US. The joke can swap the US for Europe and stick pretty much every country across Asia, Africa, and Oceania for Mexico. If you go back before like Monroe, replace the US with European countries for the former native nations in the americas
Talk about assimilation of immigrants in Europe compared to the US always sounded weird to me. Like there needs to be some major pervasive program to make immigrants like locals however the US manages to do. In the US first and second gen immigrants mostly live in neighborhoods composed of similar background people like Europeans complain about and then by 3rd generation they're mostly fully assimilated but disadvantaged minorities if they're not white but also not necessarily doing worse economically. Usually disadvantaged socially. Disadvantaged in media. There's plenty of effort for higher represeation for black people in everything but like no effort for non-black minorities. Assimilation programs in the US are practically non-existent or nothing burgers. Little effort just Americans mostly don't think about assimilation programs. Assimilate to what defined culture. Things monoculture from the ones born in the US. Out in Europe people are so close to saying reeducation camps for immigrants
TL;Dr "we throw brown people in ghettos so we don't see how much more racist our country is"
Ghettos to me are just the natural destination. People these days try to conflate immigrants all as wealthy immigrants to downplay immigrant successes in upward mobility but pretty sure most non-white people across Europe and the US came over as refugees/asylum seekers usually from wars from invading Americans and Europeans. My impression of what immigrants across Europe are mad about and it's all former colonial holdings that were Muslim countries and have been proxy war central since after the Ottoman empire fell.
They're broke. They're traumatized from a warzone and/or poverty (level of poverty unfamiliar to Americans and Europeans) and then traumatized again from the uprooting their life from tgeir community to another country where they will undoubtedly face some level of racism and language barrier
They're broke so of course they'll end up in poor communities and communities of similar background where they can function day to day with less language barrier issues. Language barrier assimilation. Classic and ongoing solution for people is their children learn the language in elementary/middle school and as elementary/middle school children, they're helping their parents fill out paperwork and talk to doctors/school admins/whoever. Why are children of immigrants so resilient and resourceful but oftenly not so whimsical as kids with long lineages in a country, those children often are doing adult stuff from a very early age to support old people in the community that have trouble learning the countries language. Early age responsibilities mentally age kids quick
Then as the children grow up make money and the neighborhood economically stabilizes from a large community of hard working immigrants, now the white people want to move in for all the high quality food and grocery stores. Not the best landscaping and fresh paint buildings, but possibly the most convienent neighborhoods to live in now that the neighborhoods economically grown and stabilized.
So convienent and ethnic while still mostly anyone under the age of like 50 can speak the countries primary language. There's very little active efforts to force assimilation. It's just children that grow up watching the same media as all the other children wanting to fit in growing up. I don't know what assimilation program even means when Europeans keep talking about it's necessity and using the US as a measuring stick of assimilation program success. The US barely does anything in that regard. Just let's it play out over a couple generations
Canada got the message. Why don't you?
Canada didn't get the message. Poilievre's Conservative Party won 24 new seats and came within 2% of plurality. They just didn't get the landslide election pollsters were predicting a few months earlier.
That's nothing compared to the Labour Ba'ath Party-esque majority Starmer was handed last year. And it's a bit crazy that UK Labour has fallen so far and so fast, by doing dick all about the tanking economy while demanding you make eye contact with a state censor while you jerk it.
Schultz and Macron have similar problems. People hate them, and for good reason.
Labour has lost more support by its benefit cuts to the disabled and its willingness to kowtow to US defence corporation lobbying to suppress Palestine Action. Relative to those violations of fundamental rights and basic human decency, the porn ID brainfart is just noise.
We must leave Earth or the species will die.
The problem is not Earth, it's us.
The species was dead on arrival. This is the great filter, we know now.
The US could certainly do with a factory reset.
Problem: Idiots calling women men when they are, in fact, women.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/minnesota-teen-says-server-forced-prove-gender-restaurant-bathroom-rcna224562
Pro-tip: Someone elses gender identity is none of your fucking business.
Then why do they keep shoving it down our throats?
Nice censorship, by the way. You're part of the problem.
"Existing" is not "shoving it down your throat."
Moral purity testing on the left has reached exhausting and reality defying levels.
I get the impression that feminist movements in the late 2000s got the impression that they'd no longer "need men" and that they could safely dispose of them. that's why you see so many comments talking badly about "men".
surprise, 2020 election saw 25% of young men (aged 18 - 30) vote for far-right politicians. and so-called feminists really have the audacity to ask "how could this happen?" duh.
It’s a bit more complicated than feminists bad. What happened is that they were successful in many ways for example education is now dominated by women and girls have better grades and achieve higher than boys. Boys have fallen by the wayside. Boys only institutions that catered to their needs have shrunk, ceased to exist, or been replaced by mixed. Men’s issues like higher mental health issues, more homeless, more incarceration, more suicide, loneliness, addiction, etc. don’t get much attention. That’s not the feminists’ fault. Blaming men and patriarchy for every ill in society is of course an easy scapegoat and makes men feel guilty.
The far right caters to this feeling, telling men that they are okay, important, and accepted. They explicitly try to deepen the gap, not bridge it.
A better future and society is possible when we overcome the division.
--ended up writing a rambling rant of ways the left are really bad communicators and single minded in their activist interests--
I thought this would happen but you get ostracized, at least scolded, if you tried to bring up the risk that not providing men the same outreach that women get for expanding career field interests and mental health counseling would possibly end up with a generation(s) of men falling behind and feeling isolated and attacked
Bring it up now and you'll still get an incredulous reaction like it's impossible for men to have struggles that aren't their fault and should be mitigated.
Two areas where I see it as mind blowingly dumb. Guy grows up in an abusive environment or possibly came from extreme poverty domestically or as an asylum seeker/refugee - they get lumped into the stereotypical male/female culture war and are encouraged to be supportive of these culture wars and eventually they'll have their time. Anyone with experience know men and women that are traumatized take time to get them to open up. With women patience is expected. With men spit it out or get out of the way to open the stage for VP of whatever company making 300k a year to tell you how if they were a different demographic they'd have made that 10 years earlier and be CEO now, maybe president of the country.
It's been decades in my opinion since poverty and income inequality has been at the forefront of leftist social communities. At least not when it's targeting straight guys that grew up in terrible circumstances
The other is say a married couples, male and female couple, child dies - pretty much everyone is going to be consoling the mother and ignoring the father. Maybe telling the father they have to be strong and supportive of their wife. Both need support. Homeless beds at like soup kitchens or elsewhere. I understand women are more vulnerable, but it's pretty messed up how much more resources there seems to be to prevent homelessness of women compared to men
Rates of depression especially with boys have been going up for a long time now but I feel like we've been heads in the sanding it for a while now because for some reason being mindful for boys and mens mental health is the patriarchy and that's those a part of the patriarchys responsibility
Still though rates of depression has skyrocketed with women too especially teenage girls but we're in some state of no introspection currently certain that our leftist behavior and rhetoric must be true, we read the literature
But on that literature we read it doesn't mean we interpret well and choose the correct action. And in speech we overuse academic jargon and get mad at people when they misinterpret our academic jargon and instead of speaking in a more consumable fashion, we say we won't dumb things down (which is disrespectful speech to always calling it dumbing down) and spend years arguing with people that they just don't get it, read the literature
Ehhhh. I feel like us on the left are charisma and speech deficient, people who see poor and non-college educated people and get the ick, really bad interpreters of data. Like rising depression and isolation from guys have been a thing for over a decade. Same with women. 2020 demographic voting data should have been a huge siren but somehow 2024 everyone was still like, if you're a minority or woman, you default to never Trump and care more about social issues than safety and finances. Shock of his demographic gains that showed up increasingly since 2016
I regularly hear mocking of people in poor neighborhoods who place security as their highest or like top 2 concern along with jobs because don't they know crime rates since the 90s are way down. Damn, think. Poor people live in the high crime rate areas. High crime rate areas are just shrinking but it's still bad for those that live in them.
Same with how going to them and praising the wanton graffiti as culture and art and not understanding why community members paint over them and really dislike graffiti taggers who are often gang affiliated (where do suburban people think taggers get their start along with the money for spray paint and who's permission to tag up peoples property?). Like data. It's not new data about crime rates before and after painting over graffiti but on the left and it's obsession with art and performance, got to communicate with poor communities with art they see like graffiti. Of course it falls flat
Fantastic post!
Elite champagne socialists looking down on the actual desires of the poor and working class.
women dominate in health and bio, something like representing 60% of bio degrees alone, and many get grad degrees and actually get jobs in them. while men struggle alot more even in the fields they dominate.
i posted another comment, they pretty much make a large amount of biotech employees, comparetively to men as well. Only the old school people in (scientist/phd)biotech are men (that had the job like 20-30+years ago), and when i was UNIversity, they made up a a majority of lab volunteers too. probably because bio-health is a safe degree for jobs, and not something like PSYCH or a stem that has no jobs at the bachelors level.
How do you intend to fix the divide?
It's not as if you can just make men earn more and have more prestige in society that easily. Who would do that? Also, wouldn't that be countered by feminism?
How do you realistically solve the men loneliness problem? Do you have any approach to making women less biased against dating men that they "don't need"? But if women need men, doesn't that counter feminism? How do you solve this problem?
Helping men is possible in many ways that are totally independent of women. Better education from child level on how to process, express, and handle emotions. More spaces for boys and men to bond and do things as a group away from screens. Non commercial third spaces have almost vanished and are needed direly.
Sounds like a typical incel meme. Almost all (hetero) women want a man as a partner. Even if they don’t necessarily need one to have a career, children, a bank account, live their own lives, and so on. The desire to share their life with a man is certainly there and strong. Maybe not in the basement you retreated to. The outside world is packed full of women looking for a suitable man as a partner.
Sexuality, procreation, and pair bonding are hardwired instincts in humans and still there.
Spend some time in places where actual real women are and listen to them to get a reality check.
There are so many mid 30s to early 40s women desperately looking for a husband to have a family with. That’s when those who thought they didn’t need a man, realize their deeper desire.
i mean i don't think what you just said is true, because i see a lot of women in their 20s and 30s without partners, and they don't seem set on getting one either. idk why that is, but the phenomenon is there. not having partners is on the rise objectively, i'm quite sure, though i should go check for better statistics about this, actually.
also please don't be so insulting. "Maybe not in the basement you retreated to". this is exactly why the left doesn't have traction. because they insult their audiences instead of listening to them and taking their concerns seriously.
i dont think thats real feminism lol, you might be thinking the few talking heads that profess ultra-feminism(we dont need men anymore) which is conservative in nature, same how men want a patriarchal society. also people like rowling doesnt count as feminists, they are transphobes.
you probably getting signals from certain medias(women are always cleaning up the mess of men), yes this was a real qoute by j lawrence in x-men movie.
at this point it's quite different to say what is feminism? i.e. you say that's not real feminism, but what even is real feminism? i am getting less sure every year. what are the goals? what are the methods?
Lol, of course this got censored.
You literally can't make this up.