Summary
Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right party founded in 2013, is poised for its strongest national election result yet in Germany.
Initially focused on eurozone bailouts, AfD shifted its focus to migration, gaining significant support and entering parliament in 2017.
The party, now advocating for large-scale deportations and opposing support for Ukraine, has become a significant political force, particularly in eastern Germany, and is under observation for suspected right-wing extremism.
Why is the whole world getting shittier?
Because a lot of people feel like the world is getting shittier, and so they’re voting for the parties that tell them “the world is shitty and we have the solution. It’s simple and straightforward and someone other than you will bear the brunt of it.”
If the left wants the far-right to stop gaining then it has to defuse this argument. They should be working to make people feel like the world is less shitty, convincing people that they have solutions for the world’s shittyness, and ensuring that those solutions are simple and straightforward and put the brunt of the effort on someone else.
This is the downside of democracy, you have to do what the people want. Sometimes that’s kind of annoying and difficult.
Where the hell are these steamers and ytbers leftists that are ‘defusing’ the problems and breaking them down easy to understand, while giving a solution? Only thing I see, is people telling you the Dems are trash and not on your side. And the current system wouldn’t work and needed to be changed, everything sucks. Really where are these positive left channels? I mean, your post in itself tells me everything is controlled by the ultra powerful, wealthy. So what could I poor worker do anything to change that, hell even voting doesn’t work, cause all of them are controlled by lobbies… Can you really not see what you are saying?
It’s pretty complicated to explain but humans in general are pretty shit at this whole civilization thing. Above all we’re selfish, greedy, and envious. The only systems we’ve ever built were based on exploitation and suffering of the populace so that the „elite” can fuck around in wealth and luxury. When these stop working because the „elite” is more and more idiotic we just go to war because instead of identifying and beheading the problem we let them convince us it’s somehow the other unfortunate to blame.
It’s pretty grim but that’s what we are, rabid fucking animals who can sometimes say something intelligent.
I know right. The only issue is instead of a world at war with countries fighting each other, it’s going to be like 20 separate civil wars.
There’s more stupid people than there are smart people. Stupid people always have more kids. They raise their kids to be stupid.
We’re doomed.
We used to shun stupidity. Social media and the internet has emboldened stupid people to support other stupid people spouting stupidity. Used to be if no one would listen to you in person, you’d just have to keep your dumb thoughts to yourself.
And to add what the others said, things are getting more expensive. Raw material prices keep going up, price of energy is rising but wages aren’t. Growth of the western countries went way down but the elite still insist on their usual cut even if they means taking a cut from the general population to make up the difference.
Then comes climate change making insurances more expensive or impossible, what makes things more difficult for housing. After that the climate also messes with food production. Not to mention how modern industrial animal husbandry is a pandemic generator what’s going to make it worse.
This hits extra hard given Tim Allen’s MAGAness.
To those saying Germany is experiencing the same dynamic that lead to the anti-democratic government takeover in the US: Hold your horses.
- AfD is polling at ~20%. That’s objectively very bad, however, 80% of voters support democratic parties. US fascists won a majority of voters - we‘re far from that.
- AfD is isolated in the parliament - other parties ignored their existence in the parliament for the entirety of this parliament‘s turn. They simply refuse to work with AfD. This means that every vote for AfD becomes meaningless the day after the election.
- For weeks, there have been millions in the streets all over Germany, demonstrating against AfD and fascist movements. That’s happening despite Germany going through a recession for the third year in a row - we’re experiencing the worst economic crisis in decades.
There are way more differences than that, but I’ll stop here. We’re far from what’s happening in the US. The trend is concerning though, and if the economic crisis continues, together with soaring inequality and the creation of an oligarch class of the super-rich, we might be in a bad spot in a decade or so.
The rest of the world watching the US be an extra dysfunctional mess for the last forty years and finally blow its own legs off: “well, okay, but they said it’ll be different for us”
Oh, so far we’ve got one European or Canadian downcoping and telling themselves “but it really will be different for us”.
Fuck around and find out, bud. Hope you don’t enjoy your social programs.
O good, it’s not just us in the US
The entire world including lots of Europe has been shifting significantly right despite what leftist US haters often say about the US left being a European right. That hasn’t been true for a decade or more.
First, I find it kind of irritating when someone attributes opinions to an undefined “they”. Was this a thing Bernie Sanders said? Was this something started in a press release by the DSA? If you’re talking about Twitter, might as well say ‘I heard from the propaganda machine…’
I’m left as heck, and I’m very aware that countries are moving right all over the world. It seems to be especially driven by migration. And I think folks need an affirmative message besides either ‘we’re ignoring your concerns and letting folks in’ or ‘fine, we’ll lock the gates and kill the migrants. Please like us.’
It seems to be especially driven by migration.
No, that’s just the scapegoat. Neither the number of immigrants, nor the number of illegal immigrants, nor the crime rate among immigrants are especially high right now.
All of these numbers are currently lower (in Germany) than 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
Regarding important economic issues such as healthcare, welfare, taxes, consumer protection & industry regulation this is certainly the case.
The part where the European right mainly differs from the US left is on more recent additions to leftist ideology - such as identity politics & intersectionalism.
Canada also has a bunch of far right assholes who’re currently leading in our polls. Luckily the US clusterfuck is making Canadians think twice about voting for them though and they’re dropping in the polls
Quick edit: it’s hilarious because they have to court both the moderate conservatives who hate Trump and the far right who idolise him and they’re fumbling both
