this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (4 children)

They are no longer supected to be right-extremist, they are assured-right-extremist by now.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Misery loves company

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Maple millhouse will be so fucking bad for canada

[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Why is the whole world getting shittier?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Greed and oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Oligarchs are targeting democracies.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If it's always been that way, how did things ever get better?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean yeah the internet has proliferated stupid. But I think everyone was always stupid, but just nowhere near power.

We need a meritocratic system that is also based on modern science and social psychology, and it needs to be diverse, equitable, and inclusive too...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Agree with your points, stupid people still existed, but would be shunned from important roles once others realized they were stupid. Social media and the systematic underfunding of education and science also is a factor of dumbing down the general population and overall lack of critical thinking. It's one of the reasons so many mistrust scientist or experts and think watching youtube or tiktok videos counts as "research".

Can you imagine, governments made up of highly educated people that are actually experts in the fields their role is responsible for? We might actually progress as a society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That or we'd overspec into stem education and neglect humanities until we get a whole generation of genius niche engineers who will sit down and gladly explain the most eugenicist viewpoint you've ever head from a living human in your entire life the moment you ask them a single question related to social issues...

Oh wait.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

We'll see, hopefully world wars are a thing of the past but history tends to rhyme.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago

Because propaganda works.

And the only antidote is to understand media, the main driving force of so many things in the world. The media ownership will not be doing that. Governments, under control of the media ownership, will not be doing that.

Therefore: shittier.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago

This hits extra hard given Tim Allen's MAGAness.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

O good, it's not just us in the US

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wait…why would that be good?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

You've heard the saying "misery loves company?"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.'

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I think maybe I was unclear. I believe that much of the shift rightward is because migrants are an ideal boogyman. They're a natural target for nationalists, and liberals are largely apathetic.

As late stage capitalism, automation, and outsourcing create greater and greater economic precarity, the far right has a perfect opportunity to enter the mainstream by giving voice to two of the biggest unspoken concerns that many politically disengaged voters relate to but often feel pressured not to talk about.

The fascists say, 'your life is worse! And your neighborhood has changed ethnically! And we have a whole explanation for all your problems that the people in charge are trying to suppress! Lol at how aggressively they try and prevent us from saying these things!'

And the dominant liberal order can't say 'It's not what it looks like! The rich are actually just taking advantage of you, and those migrants are just the earliest victims of climate change and greed!'

The truth is that migrants don't drive down wages: criminalizing migrants does. And given enough time, you could be a migrant too. That's the thing I'd like more folks to know.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe we'll avert WW3, since every country is just going full Axis. World harmony achieved, I guess?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

If the axis won they would've ended up fighting amongst themselves. Their ideology requires scapegoats, and they will always find them. The ideology itself is counter to peace. We had 80 years of peace because we pushed it to the fringes, but now that it's resurging I feel like I'm surrounded by people who grew up in a different world with a different history.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Don't forget what eventually becomes necessary to retain domestic control.

They're not liberals, they don't stomach the idea that the populace could choose something else if they prove themselves unable to deliver on their promises. Liberals get around this by embracing change, giving people the option to change the status quo if they wish. Even to the point of discarding liberalism itself.

Authoritarians don't believe in that option though.

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