- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Alternative for Germany has joined France’s National Rally and Reform U.K. in becoming the most popular party in its country, according to polls.
A poll Tuesday showed Alternative for Germany — which is under surveillance by the country’s intelligence services over suspected extremism — is now the most favored by voters. The survey by broadcaster RTL put the AfD at 26%, ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats at 24%.
This is a high watermark for the European far right, a once fringe movement whose virulently anti-immigration, anti-Islam and culture-war politics were shunned by the mainstream just a decade ago.
Today, these parties have developed deep ties with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who openly cite nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as inspirations on policy and tactics.
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Who the fuck looks at the US right now and thinks “I want that?”
Angry people
More like idiots
Idiots are allowed to be angry.
Idiotic angry people.
Fascists
This is EXACTLY what leftists have been trying to warn liberals about. People everywhere are struggling under late stage capitalism. Centrists liberal parties like Labour, CDU/PSD, Renaissance, and PO are telling everyone that everything is great and the ship will right out soon. Meanwhile far right parties acknowledge that everything is fucked and they promise to punish “those responsibile” for it (they of course are referring to social minorities instead of the wealthy capitalists that are plundering our societies.
The current status quo parties if Europe either need to pivot their platforms to radical change and clamping down on the capital class whome literally everyone hates or they are simply paving the way for fascist takeovers.
What happens instead is that the established parties decide they can win the voters back if they adopt far-right policies. We get extra-shitty governance and they still lose voters. It’s a lose-lose situation but they’re committed.
Yes, and every election season we will see liberals decry any leftist movement and demand that now is the time to rally behind feckless "electable " neoliberal politicans that everyone hates and will drive away more voters, and then blame everyone who warned them that they would lose. The establishment parties will blame “extremest messaging” or some such nonsense and then push further right the next time around and the leftmost fringe of the party will be expelled.
And this all is thanks to those very same far-right figureheads pushing that every form of leftism is Stalinism, will immediately cause mass starvations, censorship, white genocide, mandatory homosexuality, etc.; so no “sane” people dares to implement anything that is deemed “too far-left”.
Then the far-right figureheads push even harder on what is “too far-left”.
Then the far-right figureheads slowly redefine what far-right is. The nazis slowly become cartoon villains, who ran on the program of “killing Jews for fun”, thus if you bring up any reason to justify your hatred, then you’re a savior, a messiah, the moderate between leftist lunacy and far-right genocide for fun.
Then the far-right figureheads play lip service to various issues. They’ll claim to protect your free speech from the far-left. They claim to defend your workplace. They claim to stand for the flag. And most of all, they claim to be moderates on every issue, but with caveats more obvious to those who are more well-versed in politics. Their free speech issue is mostly about hate speech for some reason, but still want to protect children to some degree (I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Nigel Farage only dropped the age verification on hate speech, then issued a full-on porn ban). They talk ill of unions for going “too far” and celebrating “hard workers” and those within the “hustle culture”. They will cry “communism” if they have to buy something else instead of that beloved “foreign brand”.
(This all gave me an inspiration for an article, I just need to find a good outlet.)
If that were true then wouldn’t leftists be winning in the polls? Why would Late Stage suffering cause a shift to the right? Makes no sense.
You anti-liberal crowd seem like precisely the reason this kind of thing is happening. You’re like a pipeline for people to go from socialists to Trump supporters and anarchists.
Maybe you should look at how governments have reacted to right wing movements vs left wing movements over the past century and you’ll answer your own question. The US wasn’t paying communists to terrorize fascist groups in Italy and Greece, nor were they suddenly forgiving if war crimes to incorporate communist leaders into their societies.
There was a just a news story posted this week about the German court ruling that a communist book club could legally be disbanded amd broken up by the state, yet that same government does nothing to Stop AFD
Vladimir Putin.
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The US could certainly do with a factory reset.
Hey UK, they’re all being funded by Russia, just like to dipshits who told you brexit was a good idea. Don’t fall for it again
Narrator: They were going to fall for it again
King Farage pledged the UK’s loyalty to the Russian Empire.
UK has been on a dark path for a while now, Kier Starmer has done a great job of pushing the population down that dark path. When people say both sides are the same, Kier has made sure that everyone feels as though that is true.
It seems that democracy is beyond saving in the age of social media and all the misinformation that circulates there. I mean, you can’t be that incredibly stupid if you live even halfway in reality.
You only have to look at the US to see very clearly how corrupt the goddamn neo-Nazis are and that the promises they make to their ignorant voters are nothing but lies. It’s more than obvious that the US fascists are pursuing policies that are by no means in the interests of the people, but rather the work of a criminal syndicate, which is what they truly are. There is no difference between these barbarians and those in Europe – they are all agents of the power hungry billionaires and do nothing but pursue their interests, which is of course at the expense of the citizens.
Anyone who still doesn’t understand this is living entirely in the imaginary parallel world that the Nazis have built together with their financial backers.
Since this obviously affects so many people and these people cannot be convinced with rational arguments, it is probably hopeless.
Democracy has always been the beard for Fascism since the creation of the US. It was a good lie to sell the people while the wealthy did whatever the fuck they want. Once you come to realize this everything makes sense and falls into place.
If you add the words “liberal, capitalist” in front of democracy, I agree with you. But I believe that democracy as a whole is a worthy ideal worth striving towards, in all areas of public life.
That may be true for the US, but we’re talking about Europe here, where many countries have a welfare state, workers’ rights exist, and education is handled very differently. That’s precisely why I find it even more incomprehensible how people can be so incredibly stupid and vote for Nazis who are not only inhuman racists, but also want to create US-style conditions in Europe.
The actual Nazis didn’t really drop in popularity much, or rather their policies didn’t, even after those very policies resulted in much of the continent being burned down. People literally looked around at the rubble and hoped that fascists would fix things. In Italy, they stayed in power ffs.
You need strong constitutions to protect from this shit, because people will vote for their own death when they are scared.
You need strong constitutions to protect from this shit, because people will vote for their own death when they are scared.
Constitutions without a mechanism of enforcement are just a piece of paper. Much of what is occurring in the United States right now is absurdly unconstitutional, but it doesn’t matter because the institutions – that are full of living, breathing humans – all ignore it.
Social media. They are disproportionately pushing right wing media. That’s it.
Please. Europe is a dozen times less stable than the US. You guys can’t stop from blowing each other up every 30 years.
If Europe is such a great representation of idealism why are they marching lockstep to the right?
The truth is the wealthy, because of concentration of capital, have a disproportionate amount of representation. The wealth gap continues to get worse in all of Europe. This is not a coincidence!
The US doesn’t need to impose their shitty conditions on Europe because they are doing it to themselves. It is a race to the bottom and the wealthy are laughing the whole way.
What else can I say? Every thinking person is aware of the problem, but you’re not going to achieve anything with your propaganda slogans – on the contrary, you’re scaring off people who basically agree with you.
The truth is fucking terrifying and you have a lot of propaganda running around in your head like everyone, including me. This propaganda creates cognitive dissonance.
Every thinking person is not aware of this or even close. I studied communications with an emphasis on propaganda and persuasion. I learned a lot of disturbing things about humanity.
While we may agree on a few points I highly doubt you believe what I do. Perhaps you are right though, stranger things have happened.
Democracy is on it’s way out. Humanity is completely fucked on every fucking angle possible.
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Cause the far right did so well for the UK (Thatcher, Brexit, Boris, Liz Truss) - they want more???
It’s about getting rich not making their nations better
We are living in the Age of the Grifter.
Plus hurting brown people
Its pretty easy to score points when the government is doing everything it can to become unpopular.
Anyone who speaks the language / can go through to that RTL site able to tell us the specifics of the poll done? Like what was used for a sample, confidence level, etc.
One thing I’ve seen in other areas are polls claiming broad support for right wing politics, based on internet polls that have huge bias / confidence issues – like in Canada, they claim Alberta’s suddenly separatist, based on online polls where they can’t verify the respondents were even in Alberta. Elevating that sort of non-poll to news-worthy story is likely a combination of click bait journalism and right-wing/US propaganda biased.
A Wild Mimic’s info is what you asked for, but for what it’s worth, you can just look at the election that happened earlier this year to see if it passes the smell test (and it does):
The AFD won 20% of the vote in the election earlier this year and then the incoming chancello passed a policy with the old parliament (as leader of the opposition still) that would change a financial rule that would have no chance to pass once the new parliament was seated (because the AFD and most of his own party opposed the change), so a lot of the people who voted CDU/CSU (his party) felt betrayed and said “fuck it, I’ll vote AFD next time”
Die Daten zu den Parteipräferenzen, zur politischen Kompetenz und zu den Wirtschaftserwartungen wurden vom Markt- und Meinungsforschungsinstitut forsa im Auftrag von RTL Deutschland im Zeitraum vom 5. bis 11. August 2025 erhoben. Datenbasis: 2.505 Befragte. Statistische Fehlertoleranz: +/- 2,5 Prozentpunkte.
Die Daten zur Zufriedenheit mit Friedrich Merz sowie zum Fortbestand der Regierungskoalition wurden im selben Zeitraum (bzw. vom 8. bis 11. August 2025) erhoben. Datenbasis: 1.001 Befragte. Statistische Fehlertoleranz: +/- 3 Prozentpunkte.
(rough) Translation:
Data for party preference, political competence and the expectations for market development were collected by market- and opinion research institute forsa for RTL Germany in the time frame from 5. to 11. August 2025. Basis for analysis: n=2505, error tolerance +/- 2,5 percent points.
Data for approval of Friedrich Merz and about the continuation of the coalition in power were collected in the same time frame (or rather from 8. to 11. August 2025). Basis for analysis: n=1001, error tolerance +/- 3 percent points.
I looked up the current ownership structure of RTL, which is owned mainly by the Bertelsmann Group; It doesn’t look like there was much bias at play here on a cursory glance.
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Most importantly, they paint the liberals as the left option to pretend that left does not work.
Sigh
It isn’t rocket science, people become uneasy when they see or at least perceive there to be an influx of newcomers, they don’t even need necessarily to be from a different race or culture. It’s simply a fact that isn’t going to change any time soon. And more and more people globally are going to be on the move as the climate breakdown and more wars break out. If you don’t want to see populists thriving then you need to put in the leg work to slow the pace of change that people see and reassure them.
tosses last shred of hope over my shoulder
Far right parties are a product of the stupidity and foreign money. Thr stupidity of the establishment parties in Europe refusing to adopt ignoring the people on immigration enabled the far right, and Putin’s Russia gave them the means to run with it.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
These parties are here to stay unless the establishment parties take the Denmark approach and become more anti immigration.
This is exactly what has been happening in Germany (most notably with the CDU and SPD) and it’s not working. All that happens when these parties take on AfD talking point is that their voters no longer want to vote for them while the AfD’s positions get normalised in the mainstream.
What they actually should do is stop picking uninspiring and corrupt candidates and push for things that would actually benefit the working class (wealth tax, tackling the housing crisis, etc.) instead of funneling more wealth upwards. At the end of the day the AfD is strong because people are struggling to make ends meet and the AfD is using the racism that’s always been present in Germany to offer them an easy scapegoat.
It’s the wrong approach to take the talking points of AfD to begin with. They’re neo fascists, why would they try to copy them? Not only is that lazy, but it’s also shows that these establishment parties are out of touch with the populace. These far right parties are gaining ground because there’s no viable alternative to them on immigration. Establishment parties trying to compete with far right parties at their own game is a losing strategy, and it shows. If they want to win people over on immigration then they need to actually understand what people are concerned about and then actually take the time to provide a viable and pragmatic alternative for people to vote on.
I don’t think the issue is really immigration at all. It’s that working class people are being squeezed harder and harder and no party, including the AfD, seems to take it seriously. The AfD is just good at populism and pretending they have a solution by blaming it on immigration and selling themselves as less corrupt and incompetent than the others, while actually being just as bad or worse. If the CDU and SPD in particular hadn’t allowed things to get this bad while spending decades in power, the AfD’s populism wouldn’t have fallen on fertile ground.
And there is also an argument to be made that the media has dropped the ball by allowing the AfD on talkshows and debates without sufficiently pushing back and calling out their bullshit and thus allowing them to paint themselves as a legitimate alternative despite being fascists that are found to be at odds with the constitution (Grundgesetz) time and time again.
Also the AfD is probably the best out of all the parties at social media.
Can you link me to some credible sources on legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe? I’m in the US and I don’t see the downside of immigration. Most of the folks angry about immigration here are just being sold a scapegoat.
Admittedly, we’re much more culturally diverse to begin with, harder to get to, and have quite a large base population so maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges.
I think it is a case of comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying this as a first gen immigrant from Iraq myself, I’m in the US but I have family in Europe (Finland, Sweden, and Germany), and it’s just a very different dynamic. The national narrative about immigration, the ways immigrants are treated by society, and the way government assists immigrants in Europe and the US are quite different. They also get different kinds of immigrants, which is also important. All these factors contribute to very different situations economically, politically, and socially.
But I think this is the wrong way to approach this topic in this context because what matters more in politics is perception. When you look at the polls of any European country with a large immigrant population, virtually all of them have a pretty big chunk of the population, usually ethnically native and working class, that are heavily anti-immigration. This implies that the big issue with immigration in Europe is integration and assimilation. Since the establishment parties over there outright ignore them entirely, they end up flocking to far right parties instead since they’re the only ones who want to place restrictions on immigration.
legitimate problems caused by immigration in Europe
Just my opinion, but: There are no systematic ones that can’t just as plausibly be explained by anti-immigrant stances of the locals. Yes, of course, immigration also means SOME people immigrating will be bad in one way or another, but statistically significantly not more or less than the amount of bad people born in the country. Most of the problems “with immigrants” arise from a mutual escalation of people not willing to integrate. In short, and without saying which comes first:
- immigrant does bad thing X
- anti-immigrant people point at X and claim it’s because they are immigrants
- some people will believe the accusations and behave more poorly towards immigrants
- some immigrants will turn the prejudice against them into a dislike / hatred of their host country
- immigrants do bad things
- rinse and repeat
Speaking for Germany, all of this is FAR outweighed by the richness that immigrants bring to our country. Germans - and I say that as a German - really needed (and still need) a lot of lessons in empathy and kind-heartedness - and we have more of that now than 50 years ago, thanks to not only evolution of society, but also thanks to immigrants from the mediterranean - Italians, Spanish, Greek and Turks. If Germany had no immigrants, I would leave this country in an instant.
The thing that people ( not you of course) just do not understand, is that for a lot of western countries the birth rate is under 2. So every year the population has a larger part of old people.
Our systems for retirement, government, social programs, etc only really work when more young healthy people are added.
So we actually really need young immigrants to basically keep the boat floating.
If the boat requires an infinitely growing population then it’s bound to sink sooner or later.
people not willing to integrate
This is the only “issue” I can think of from my own experience in the US. I imagine some resentment can form if a country has a lot of what I’ll call “culture” for simplicity’s sake. An influx of people with different “culture” might feel like an attack on your own culture. I frankly don’t understand but that’s why I mentioned the base population of the US being large and diverse. Perhaps we’re already such a “melting pot”, at least in the densely populated cities and suburbs, and having so many pockets of cultures is just what I’m used to. I want to better understand but it still just sounds like ignorant fear of a different culture.
Hell, it’s a well established statistic, that many people pretend doesn’t exist, that criminality is lower among the immigrant population. Any population will have some bad apples, but the incoming population is thinning them out if anything.
I think there’s multiple ways it can happen. Sometimes, incoming cultures aim to be inviting and inclusive, and do what they can to become involved with the surrounding community. But other cultures really silo themselves and never speak to “the foreigners” - while continuing to take up more and more of the area. They speak their home language, don’t discuss the existing culture or even share their own. They don’t act like guests, just tenants - sometimes not realizing that thanks to refugee programs they’re often paying “guest rate”, not “tenant rate”.
However, that certainly isn’t always the case. I’d point to the Italian and Hispanic cultures in America as some that have become distinctly American. It’s harder for me to give examples of the “silos” since, by definition, you don’t see much of them; but sometimes during elections, church gatherings, or other census-related actions, you’re reminded they exist.
A Brit told me
I vote for whomever says they will get rid of the boat people
The Danes, or the Angles, or the Saxons? Or the Romans? Or the …
Not really surprising, social networks are dividing people up and rather than recognize it, people on all political isles are following up with more barriers, essentially demolishing the need for an objective truth for democracies to work in. Social networks as of now are social slaughterhouses designed to lull in people like cattle and turn enough of them into pawns for those with pockets.
You identify issues that certain groups will crowd around divisively, you foster them into ridiculously zealotry, and you break them up into small bubbles you can politically manipulate. Take Reddit - before they used to think they would have more power by focusing on centralized communities that got legitimacy from rigorous contributions, now they are perfectly ok with each community being taken up by whatever brigade is interested in them and whereas communities like T_D were banned before, now they are actively encouraged for each international, localized domain of users.
I am not surprised. Europe isn’t constant on the same level of racism across it but it’s definitely worse everywhere compared to the US. A lot more acceptable to say something racist to non-white people and then be like, it’s just a joke have a sense of humor just trying to lighten the mood. Like step into a bar and be the wrong color and the music stops and you’re stared at.
East and nordics worse than west but the west has Italy and Spain. Even then, better in the west but outside of the large cities that are also international tourist destinations it’s rough to not be white.
And then the significance of far right political parties and neo Nazi orgs always looked worse in Europe to me. In the US the 2 party system dulls out identity politics a bit even though it’s getting worse whereas a 5-30% minority party that’s primarily about ethnocentrism is fully possible across European countries and wield a strong influence in coalition forming. In the US, be more scared of law enforcement organizations. Europe fear more the young populace hanging around and the old people staring and progressively law enforcement organizations
Trump was not going to stymie interest in right wing politics for much time at all. It would give way to nationalism. Anti-globalisation that always gives way to anti-immigration that always gives way to anti whatever skin color or religion isn’t the majority. Nationalism. Europe’s boiling point for centuries. Even before Trump 1 were far right/neo Nazi orgs growing in size across Europe. In my opinion because of how much more of Europe is closer to ethnostates than the US, Europe can quickly devolve into far worse than the US faster. Benefits of Europe for non-whites is the better social safety nets but in terms of institutionalized/unaddressed racial bias/casual racism - all over Europe it’s worse than the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The US just makes more headlines.
A joke is that the worst thing for Mexico is being next door to the US. The joke can swap the US for Europe and stick pretty much every country across Asia, Africa, and Oceania for Mexico. If you go back before like Monroe, replace the US with European countries for the former native nations in the americas
TL;Dr “we throw brown people in ghettos so we don’t see how much more racist our country is”
Ghettos to me are just the natural destination. People these days try to conflate immigrants all as wealthy immigrants to downplay immigrant successes in upward mobility but pretty sure most non-white people across Europe and the US came over as refugees/asylum seekers usually from wars from invading Americans and Europeans. My impression of what immigrants across Europe are mad about and it’s all former colonial holdings that were Muslim countries and have been proxy war central since after the Ottoman empire fell.
They’re broke. They’re traumatized from a warzone and/or poverty (level of poverty unfamiliar to Americans and Europeans) and then traumatized again from the uprooting their life from tgeir community to another country where they will undoubtedly face some level of racism and language barrier
They’re broke so of course they’ll end up in poor communities and communities of similar background where they can function day to day with less language barrier issues. Language barrier assimilation. Classic and ongoing solution for people is their children learn the language in elementary/middle school and as elementary/middle school children, they’re helping their parents fill out paperwork and talk to doctors/school admins/whoever. Why are children of immigrants so resilient and resourceful but oftenly not so whimsical as kids with long lineages in a country, those children often are doing adult stuff from a very early age to support old people in the community that have trouble learning the countries language. Early age responsibilities mentally age kids quick
Then as the children grow up make money and the neighborhood economically stabilizes from a large community of hard working immigrants, now the white people want to move in for all the high quality food and grocery stores. Not the best landscaping and fresh paint buildings, but possibly the most convienent neighborhoods to live in now that the neighborhoods economically grown and stabilized.
So convienent and ethnic while still mostly anyone under the age of like 50 can speak the countries primary language. There’s very little active efforts to force assimilation. It’s just children that grow up watching the same media as all the other children wanting to fit in growing up. I don’t know what assimilation program even means when Europeans keep talking about it’s necessity and using the US as a measuring stick of assimilation program success. The US barely does anything in that regard. Just let’s it play out over a couple generations
