this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025

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240

A far-right party is heading for its strongest result yet in Germany's election (apnews.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 32 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

There's also the small issue of "history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes".

[+] [email protected] -17 points 2 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 55 minutes ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

Dude fuck off, we don't want you here. Why don't you emigrate from this platform?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Every time people try to blame immigrants for problems they don't cause they get downvoted.

Fixed that for you.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 hour ago

Every time someone pointed out they hate groups of people, in arbitrary subcategories, they got downvoted.

There, I fixed that for you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago

They even have a convenient Hitler face appearing as a watermark in their leaflets.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

iTsThE IMMIGRANTS fAuLt!!

My man, if you knew how much of the economy was based on immigrant work you'd tout another tune.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 33 minutes ago

Oh no only 99.7% of immigrants come here to work! Let's kick them all out!

Shouldn't we kick out any people if they don't want to work with that logic? I hope you're having a job!

Smh

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

Or wait check this out: they promise to fix housing and solve things people want.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

With the recent mass murder by immigrants, no wonder.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

What 'mass murder'? There were some attacks, but no 'mass murder'.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

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

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

I'm still waiting for the Bavarian minister of the interior to resign over those repeated specifically Bavarian failures.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 22 hours 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 20 hours 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 11 hours ago

Maple millhouse will be so fucking bad for canada

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago

Misery loves company

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

Why is the whole world getting shittier?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 hours ago

Media conglomerates pushing right wing propaganda

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 hours ago

Greed and oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 hours ago

Oligarchs are targeting democracies.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 12 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 10 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 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] 8 points 9 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 8 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 8 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 6 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 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 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 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 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 1 day 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 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day 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 3 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] 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] 25 points 1 day 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.