A far-right party is heading for its strongest result yet in Germany's election
A far-right party is heading for its strongest result yet in Germany's election
Alternative for Germany appears to be heading for its strongest national election result yet this month and is fielding its first candidate to lead the country.
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.
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.
There's also the small issue of "history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes".
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.
Maple millhouse will be so fucking bad for canada
Why is the whole world getting shittier?
Oligarchs are targeting democracies.
Greed and oligarchs.
Media conglomerates pushing right wing propaganda
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.
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.
History repeats itself, especially because people don't remember or don't know what happened in the past.
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.
We'll see, hopefully world wars are a thing of the past but history tends to rhyme.
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.
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.
O good, it's not just us in the US
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
How does that even sound ? How would you defend and attack him at once?
Maybe we'll avert WW3, since every country is just going full Axis. World harmony achieved, I guess?
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.
Wait…why would that be good?
You've heard the saying "misery loves company?"
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.
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.
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.'
Misery loves company
If it happened to us it will happen to you. Guaranteed. Maybe now everyone will get off their high horse and help us figure this shit out so we will be alive to help you figure it out.
Happened to us in 1933 already. Question is if we manage to remember what that lead us into. Will people make the same mistake twice?
Every time someone pointed out problems caused by migrants, legal and illegal, they got downvoted. Now I'm sure that the left and those infected by the woke virus really hate their country. No one in their right mind would ignore damages done to their own country.
Every time someone pointed out they hate groups of people, in arbitrary subcategories, they got downvoted.
There, I fixed that for you.
Every time someone pointed out the truth, they got downvoted.
Nah. This version is more precise and concise.
I think there's an easy solution. Left wing parties should start tackling the problem of immigration, because yes, it's a problem and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can stop extreme right wing parties from using that as a lever to come into power.
Or wait check this out: they promise to fix housing and solve things people want.
iTsThE IMMIGRANTS fAuLt!!
My man, if you knew how much of the economy was based on immigrant work you'd tout another tune.
I didn't say we should stop immigration. But everybody can see that some immigrants don't come to Europe to work, not at all. And people are angry about that; left wing parties should tackle that problem in a rational way. Otherwise people get fed up and then they resort to vote for extreme right wing parties.
With the recent mass murder by immigrants, no wonder.
What 'mass murder'? There were some attacks, but no 'mass murder'.
German prosecutors on Sunday released the name of the 26-year-old Syrian man suspected of a multiple stabbing attack in the western city of Solingen that killed three people and injured eight others.
On 20 December 2024, an SUV was driven into a crowd at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing 6 people and injuring at least 299 others. The driver of the car, allegedly 50-year-old anti-Islam activist Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen, was arrested at the scene.
There was just days ago an attempt at mass murder that injured 30. This sort of shit obviously gets people worried and reacting out of that fear and worry
E: A mother and child in the München attack have just died today and an hour ago there was a knife attack in Austria
A 14-year-old boy has died and four people have been wounded in a knife attack in Austria.
The suspect is a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker and has been detained, AFP news agency reported citing a police official.
Fucking hell.
I'm still waiting for the Bavarian minister of the interior to resign over those repeated specifically Bavarian failures.
Hell yeah