this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025

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246

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

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

84 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] 36 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (2 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"

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 5 days ago (10 children)

Why is the whole world getting shittier?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

Oligarchs are targeting democracies.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Greed and oligarchs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Media conglomerates pushing right wing propaganda

[–] [email protected] 58 points 5 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] 9 points 4 days 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 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days 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 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days 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] 25 points 5 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] 3 points 4 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days 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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days 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] 52 points 5 days ago

This hits extra hard given Tim Allen's MAGAness.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago (8 children)

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

[–] NotSteve_ 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days 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] 21 points 5 days 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 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days 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.