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If you live in Europe and think your democratic system is resistant to these things: it's not.
Don't wait until your version of Trump gets elected. Start organizing now.
Italy elected Berlusconi (a corrupted tycoon who had ties with the mafia and bribed his way to the top of the Italian broadcasting world) in 1994. Y'all just catching up.
RIP Berlusconi.
Absolutely, over here we’ve recently elected a horrible party as the biggest one, with 25% of the votes. Dark times.
The difference is that in many European countries the head of state is more of a ceremonial position (at least in practice) and the head of the government holds nowhere near the amount of power a US president does. With proportional representation, the biggest party often doesn’t have an absolute majority and needs to form a government together with other parties, or might even end up in the opposition. Together they agree on who’s going to be the head of government (usually the head of the largest party), who will be the ministers and what will be the policy. If it doesn’t work out because of disagreements, the government breaks up and new elections will be held.
My point is: the risk is real, populism is growing, policy is shifting, but the dynamics are different. Having a first past the post system and concentrating so much power into a single political position feels like an accelerator.
Don't wait until your version of Trump gets elected. Start organizing now.
No worries, he already has been elected last year!
Dick Schoof (yes, English speakers, that really is his legal name) is our Trump?
I'd say Geert Wilders matches that description, and he did not become PM...
Dick Schoof didn't get elected though, at least not by the people... Wilders was
Correction: Wilders received the most votes from the people, but could not become PM as his party needed to form coalitions to gain enough seats. Essentially, he did not get elected PM because most others did not want to work together with him.
Was our parliament filled with lunatics vehemently agreeing with him, we'd have Wilders as PM.