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.

  • ur_ONLEY_freind@lemmy.zip
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    16 hours ago

    WTF is happening in the world rn? Why are all the right wingers taking control? I thought it was just the US going through a crazy-stupid phase

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Social media. Muskrat, Zucc, Thiel, etc. are high on the fumes of the AI hype, and want that sweet AI money, from the surveillance state using AI.

      • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Well right now in the UK we voted for the supposed left, centre, centre right wing party (The UK has the same 2 party issue as the US more or less) and they reacted by being even more right wing than the right wing we just got rid who recently also just imploded their popularity and now we’re stuck with the far right party next election because UK politics is such a caste based exclusive club that no one on the left or even real centre has enough political or monetary capital to form an opposition.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        14 hours ago

        and want that sweet AI money

        actually i think rich people don’t really personally profit from extra money. They have already more money than they could ever spend to fulfill personal wishes. in that sense, the money is not “sweet”.

        the reason they’re hoarding so extreme levels of wealth is because they believe in “greatness”, in being a part of something greater and bringing the world progress, one way or another. that’s why “techno-optimism” is such a common theme among them. “mars settlement” might go in a similar direction, though that one has more reasons (jobs programs, mostly). it’s more for a desire for greatness (you could call it imperialism, but without the bloodshed) more than a desire for money, i think.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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          2 hours ago

          It’s more that they use the accumulated wealth as a leaderboard score to show off to other rich people.

          But the reality is that economic power is power, and a healthy society must limit the amount of power any individual can accrue.

        • EightBitBlood@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          the reason they’re hoarding so extreme levels of wealth is because they believe in “greatness”

          They only believe in the “greatness” of themselves. Which is expressed monitarily.

          Their entire self worth is based on the size of their bank accounts, on what they “could do” with their money.

          Instead of, you know, what they’re actually doing with their money: nothing.

          They hoard it to feel special. They could literally give away billions to the right places to fix shit immediately and still be billionaires. But they don’t.

          Despite that very literally leading to them being worshipped. Which would be more greatness for them then they have now. And more greatness for the world. And it ain’t happening.

          Because. They’re all convinced they’re the smartest people ever, and not big idiots that never learned the basic social benefits of sharing.

          “Greatness” isn’t found on top of a pile of money. It’s found at the bottom once it’s been spent. That’s how people and the economy actually benefit from it. By the velocity in which it changes hands. Which so far, is near 0% for these billionaires seeking “greatness.”

          It’s embarissing, if anything, to see them so incapable of achieving their goals of greatness simply because they’re too insecure about having anyone else that isn’t them spend their money. Especially when it comes to actually using it to benefiting the world instead of their egos.

    • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      We can either blame the western political system for it or some other agents interested in making it fail…

      Asimov’s second foundation spoilers

      spoiler

      As with the second foundation, it was strange to see psicohistory predicting so precisely the future, here it is very strange to see all western democracies fail at the same time

      • Nastybutler@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        The Foundation has been out for 75 years. I think we’re past the time limit needed for spoilers

        • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          Imo we are never past the spoilers… someone may be doing its first steps into it and deserves to have the full experience.

      • JustARaccoon@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Idk man, while it’s possible that this is russian influence, I think it’s beating around the bush and facing the fact that people are capable of being terrible all on their own* (talking about the manipulative people in politics, not the gullible citizens)

        • Renohren@lemmy.today
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          10 hours ago

          Russia and china are only using failures in western policies against us. They don’t create them. It’s up to our nations to resolve those tension spots so they cannot be used against us.

          The Russian argument is understandable because it’s what our governments point to as the origin of their failures. It allows them to keep pointing at that “outside interference”, invest in surveillance while not investing in what the subjects used by the interference reveal about the real wants of the population are.

          Russia certainly is no friend of democracy and hatred towards the Putin regime is healthy but to fight it does take more than just saying a third of your citizenship is dumb and brainwashed, you have to remedy what they use against us.

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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            33 minutes ago

            That’s true as far as it goes, but breaking the chain of Russian (and other hostile nation) influence on our politics is still the most direct way of dealng with the fascist problem. They’re puppets and we must cut the strings.

      • Meowing Thing@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        I think this is the beginning of Foundation’s Edge, tho. Second Foundation book deals with the First Foundation looking for the planet where that homes the Second and revolves around Arkady Darell

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      14 hours ago

      I think you’ll get a lot of different answers depending on who you ask, and i think liberalism and allowing other people their own opinion / interpretation of things is important. Yet here’s my take:

      • There was a gross mis-interpretation of reality around the 2000s when people believed that we could lay down all violence and gross behavior and enter a “perfect, soft world” which was understood as an absence of sexism and nationalism, mostly. However, these are instincts so deeply rooted in people that you can’t just “get them out” in any way, even if you try to create a social movement around “calling out” men who show sexist behavior. What happens instead is that these suppressed groups seek their own expression, and you end up with far-right populism.