For anyone wondering about the far-right “label”. The AfD among other things has multiple people in their ranks who used to be member of outlawed Nazi terror organizations. One of their most popular politician, Björn Höcke lost a defamation case, because the court ruled that there is enough indicators that calling him a fascist is a factual statement rather than an insult. He also most likely wrote articles in the journal of the former NPD, now called Heimat (homeland) under the pseudonym Landolf Ladig, where he shows his classic, as in Hitler classis, nationalist ideology. The NPD was ruled to be an enemy of the constitution a few years back but was not forbidden because the ECJ ruled that forbidding unconstitutional parties requires them to also be politically relevant.

It is so annoying that this is true and could have been easily prevented by focusing on renewable energies and electric vehicles sooner, instead of artificially slowing them down. Europe could be a lot less dependent on energy imports already.

Well it wasn’t her directly and alone, but her family who used to rule Bangladesh until a few months back. I wouldn’t be surprised if other corrupt authoritarians have amassed similar or more money in bribes throughout their reign. Putins private residence is estimated to have cost more than a billion dollar too.

The crazy part is that she became a high ranking minister in the UK despite her family ties. Even if it wasn’t for the money, her Aunt has a lot of blood on her hands.

The same shit happens in systems with more than two parties. You also have the problem to think about rallying behind the main party on the left or right side vs. one that is closer to your ideals but probably wont become part of the government coalition. In Germany, where i am from, we had 12 out of 16 years under Merkel with a “big coalition” of the conservative CDU and the social democrat SPD. All that happened was the SPD moving more and more to the right. Now we had a coalition that was supposedly progressive but collapsed hard as well as the Green party and liberal party FDP also moving strongly to the right. We now in 2024 have policies among the supposed center/center-left that used to be fringe far right by German standards. This is why voting “tactically” or for “the lesser evil” fails. It gives a false sense of what is demanded by the people.

Also for the narrative control just take the win of Biden in 2020 as a counter example. Despite Trump holding office the Dems managed to win.

Well, they would get my vote if they changed their policies and behaviour. If you vote them no matter what they dont have to fight for it. (Note i am not a US citizen but the same principles apply. I have similar dissapointment with the formerly progressive parties in my country moving to the right)

And we can also observe this empirically with the current election. The Dems were so tone deaf that they thought to compete over Reps not too happy with Trump, fielding people like Dick fucking Cheney as their advocates. Meanwhile they lost a lot of votes they expected to just have secure because they expected the voters to be blindly loyal hence irrelevant to their strategy.

I like to think of it in a “market” way. By voting there is a signal into the market, that their is a demand for a certain political direction. So “stocks” with that profile increase in value. This might be individual politicians, specific laws, parties, or general ideology/values.

Politicians want their portfolio to be attractive, so they get more votes. As a result they will adjust their portfolio of political positions accordingly.

If you vote “tactically” you send a false signal into the market. So instead of getting more politicians to represent the ideas you like, you reinforce them in the ideas you don’t like, as that had more buy signals. On the flip side if you send your sell signal, by removing a formally loyal vote from them, you can show them that their portfolio has gotten lopsided.

The difficulty is to think these things longer term. It is not just this election cycle, but 8 years, 12 years maybe even 20 years ahead. The way media and politicians like to represent elections got more and more pointed towards just this single one being the one and only. This is not just a problem in the US, but also countries without FPTP. Also the reporting got less about the specific policies and more about the how and who, turning it into a show of game of thrones, rather than a fight for the best ideas.

All you do by consistently voting the “lesser of two evils” is kicking the hangover down the road by keeping to drink more alcohol. You know every time that it will get worse and the sooner you get through the hangover, the sooner you could actually move on, but in fear of the hangover you grab the bottler another time.

With the measures you mentioned the problem is in particular that the current Democrats are not caring about them. They assume they will get the votes nonetheless and if they don’t it is fine because the Republicans will cover most of the donors interests anyways. Making noise only works, if it is followed by consequences. Leaving political violence aside, the only consequence a normal person can realize is not giving the vote if they aren’t heard.

This is a lie spread by corporate elites that want to make sure both parties align with their interests instead of having Democrats create a popular platform and win on that basis.

Did you learn nothing from hanging on to Biden until even the billionaire donors got scared by his dementia?

Voting for non evil is the way to go. By keeping to vote for the lesser evil, you get it to become more evil while keeping non evil out of power. This is how the system games you.

So if you don’t vote for the lesser evil it gets salty and joins the evil? Yeah i am not voting for that psycho manipulating abusive shit.