this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
244 points (97.7% liked)

World News

40780 readers
2498 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 104 points 2 days ago (10 children)

Why is the whole world getting shittier?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago

Media conglomerates pushing right wing propaganda

[–] [email protected] 11 points 14 hours ago

Greed and oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 15 hours ago

Oligarchs are targeting democracies.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

History repeats itself, especially because people don't remember or don't know what happened in the past.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours 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] 7 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

As new technologies arrive they destabilize societies. This can be good (the pill giving women freedom from unwanted pregnancy), bad (distilled alcohol leading to widespread alcoholism), or mixed (the Internet).

There are always people in the upper echelons of society who yearn to be in charge. They seize any chance to take over. Sometimes this requires support from the masses. One way to do this is selling a dream of a better future for all. They may even believe it!

If the power balance shifts there may be a time of genuine progress, but eventually the people with power figure out how to exploit the new system, and everything new is old again.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours 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] 9 points 16 hours 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 16 hours 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 14 hours 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

There is a little bit of an assumption of the mad scientist here. Most scientists and engineers are very compassionate and caring people, even if many are excentric. We care about a thriving humanities department.

The psychopath cohort you're thinking of is the executive branch, or the people who made it to sales manager.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

That's not exactly what I mean.. they should be experts in their respective field or at least something related to their role in the government. Not just everyone's a tech engineer.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 days 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] 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The left constantly tries to defuse it... the problem is that the ultra-wealthy do everything they can to control governing opposition... they run social media conglomerates that tilt people's highly tailored "feeds" toward a media diet that consequently most benefits them, they donate to all major parties and contests to ensure they most likely get friendly figures into positions, regardless of their supposed political leaning, and they then lobby them heavily. This is worst in the U.S. but people like Mr. X are working hard to do it everywhere else, too.

This means "the left" has so much harder of a time getting a foot-hold in power... and we're not even really talking about "the left" - we're talking mildly off-center social democrats. "The left" is nowhere in power outside of a few popular Twitch and YT streaming personas.

The ultra-wealthy are so narcissistic that they think they can rule better than governments, and in their hubris, they are breaking the world and inviting chaos that no one - including them - should want.

"Mario bros. events," military coups, market instability, outright corruption, and disregarding of agreed-upon societal norms are a direct result of their refusal to just pay taxes, their attempting to tilt scales in their favor, and tin-pot dictatorships will harm ALL of us (including them as well) tangibly. A dragon sitting on a pile of gold being merc'd out of the blue is not a result of a "loss of moral values" or "respect for life" - it's a result of dragons making people both inconsolably angry and legislatively powerless, and thereby hopeless for anything other than "revenge." They don't care they might be burned in "dragon fire."

Still... besides all major parties being lobbied heavily and infiltrated by the ultra-rich, the world's almost universal neo-liberal response to COVID has had a major backlash swing - because people suffered, and demagogues swept in to blame scapegoats when in reality, they and their opposition party counter-parts all pushed policies that resulted in everyone else but those at the top suffering far more than they ever should have.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days 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] 8 points 1 day 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 day ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days 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.