Europeans have a long history of blaming foreigners for their problems when times are tough. This isn’t really anything new.

Unfortunately, American politics is so toxic, its infected nearly every country its come into contact with.

Understanably, american money and election interference is the reason European politics is becoming more americanised. For example, it was regan who radicalised thatcher. It was American and Russian dark money that funded vote leave (brexit). It was the CIA who funded far right groups all over Europe. Its American, far right Christian groups who try to lobby to take away reproductive freedom for women etc. etc.

America is empire now and no ones laughing anymore.

Arguably the hard right foreign policies of the US from the last 10-20 years are responsible for a lot of the migrant waves Europeans are fearing. You guys blew up the middle east…

For what it’s worth, it’s incredibly frustrating as a European with a functioning brain too.

Don’t worry man, we will get you a megaphone to shout “I told you so” as (only men) are conscripted to go throw our lives away for D-Day v2 in Europe, lol. Have fun in the tailgunner’s seat.

Every 70-100 years, some absolute cunt like Putin or Xi rises up and decides it’s a brilliant idea to kill all their young men, some other country’s young men, and the “undesirables” on the other side. They that the war will only last four weeks and victory is guaranteed. It. Never. Is.

Fuck populism and authoritarianism. People get bored and never learn.

This comment shows a large misunderstanding of european culture, policits, everything really. And I mean this with no offense, but there’s no nice way to say it.

The people who were - and still are - clowning on Americans for their politics are a different group than the people currently voting far right. You’re not dunking on the people you think you are. It’s tragically funny in a way because internet active and mostly left leaning circles still spend a lot of their time dunking on american politics while failing to see the growing trend of far right acceptance in Europe.

Europeans also aren’t a singular entity. The comparison of the US vs Europe is almost always bad IMO, as much as people of the internet love to make it - both americans and europeans alike - because the differences between two neighboring european countries are often larger than those between the two most culturally different US states. The country next over is so radically different to mine in terms of politics, economic choices, language, culture, that the only thing making us both “European” is a similar looking ID card and similar looking road signs. When I cross the border and order a coffee they look at me strange and then serve me what I would expect to get at an american coffee shop.

Europe is facing some of the same problems of the US politically speaking. Summing it up to “getting one big wave of immigration” is naive to say the least. There’s a growing discontent with traditional and more moderate parties, which have fundamentally failed to solve what many people see as big issues in their lives. There’s a housing crisis, an ever increasing wealth gap - which even left leaning socialist european parties, which were in power for decades in countries such as mine, have done next to nothing to prevent. There’s a perceived decrease in security - which is real in some places, while false in others but amplified by social media -, a bunch of high profile corruption cases all throughout Europe - often associated with high ranking members in more moderate parties. In short, there’s an ever increasing number of real issues which traditional parties have fundamentally failed to solve. Some because they’re genuinely complex issues, others because of sheer incompetence.

The media in Europe has spent the last few years treating far right parties the same way the media in the US initially treated Trump - painting them and their followers as crazy people which should be ridiculed and often pushing aside whatever issue they pushed as their political flag. The problem is that far right parties in Europe often pick very real problems as their political flags - such as corruption in the case of my country. They offer no actual solutions to the problems, of course, but the attitude of the media helps them paint the idea that the media and traditional parties are aligned in protecting corrupt individuals and that the only way to tackle the problem is to vote for extreme parties. Whatever the “main” political flag is varies from country to country, but the logic is always the same: Problem exists -> problem is pushed aside by media and traditional parties for whatever reason -> far right party picks up problem as their political flag even though they offer no solutions -> people vote for far right party after years of seeing problem be apparently ignored.

The last part on healthcare makes little sense as well. Public or partly public health services are culturally ingrained in a lot of European countries and many of the far right parties have been very outspoken about defending these services - not because they like their existence I’m sure, but because these healthcare systems are too popular to openly attack. A common attribute in a lot of European far right parties is that though they often claim to despise “the left” and make big claims about socialism having destroyed everything and etc, they’ll quickly incorporate any left leaning measure they perceive as popular - often defending measures which are so far left that you won’t even find them in the political plans of far left parties. Far right parties in Europe will incorporate anything they see as popular in their political plans - which they then use as a promotion point, arguing that they are “above” the left and right divide, instead focusing on whatever is “better for the country”.

Add to all of this a fundamental failure in left wing and moderate right wing parties to address many of these issues, even while being in power for decades in the came of some European countries, and the constant attempts by these same parties to silence anyone who so much as mentions hot topics like immigration - often by labeling them as racists, fascists, etc and what you get is a growing distrust in these parties.

I don’t know what deregulation of sewage plants would even look like. Do you mean I’m how they are built or their design or their day to day operations or how many of the workers at them are private vs public?

It’s all about immigration and housing.

I’m pretty fair left. It’s weird that traditionally left leaning parties were about housing and jobs. But they seem to have lost their way.

The more you care about certain things the more you have to vote right because the left got their head in the sand.

I would always point out that European security has been subsidized by the American taxpayer for 70 years. Finally starting to see that change, I just hope idiots like Geert aren’t the ones leading that charge.

I don’t know how it is in Germany, though I am convinced our methods in the U.S to educate and school kids and teens actively hurt critical thinking skills. They’re not taught to make decisions. They’re taught to follow set rules, ask for permission, and be ashamed if they fail. They’re not taught to learn, they’re taught to work.

I was coming in here to suggest this. The right around the world, almost certainly with the aid of Russia’s massive troll farm, has really stepped up its game in terms of internet outreach to young people.

I do agree that social media is a huge driver of our societal problems and not fixing them, but I think you have the order reversed, social media is extremely effective at transmitting short, easy answers to our problems because that’s what people gravitate to on the whole. Especially extremely scared and desperate people, and young people especially see a lot of reasons to be afraid about what the future is going to look like.

We haven’t even really gotten to ecoFascism yet, but I think it’s inevitable to rise as things continue marching forward without dramatic societal changes

Also worth pointing out that only a slight majority of boomers are very conservative. If you look at the demographics of the last couple presidential elections, you’ll see that only slightly more boomers voted conservative than liberal, and only slightly more younger folks voted liberal than conservative.

There’s this impression that the distinction is much more significant than it actually is. As a liberal boomer, I’m a little sensitive about it.

A socialized capitalism will always be coopted by the ones with more money in pursuit of even more money.

That what I read out of it, too.

Disillusion with our future is setting in (and to what part it’s due to the negative news cycle, the growing gap between rich and poor, social media propaganda or other things can be argued).

But there was, and is, no large, left movement with an attractive message to pick up those people, and right wingers both own all the big media and have long been conditioned to blame liberals and the left at large for all of their problems.

During the Occupy Wallstreet days, I had hope, but what once was a movement of angry people with a good cause feels like it has since been replaced by a movement of even angrier people fighting those that want to fix things.

Look, socialism never fucking works. Far-right governments, while unpleasant, do.

who else can win the White House if not Biden.

Yup, everyone who doesn’t like your president or your team is a horrible no good far right troll. It’s amazing how well one can do when you get paid by Soros and Koch!

They asked you if you’re not racist, as if it’s normal to be racist??

It’s sad to see how people get manipulated to the point that they can’t understand that even a natural population growth without immigration can cause a housing crisis, if we don’t build and maintain the houses. And immigrants come to work anyway, which provides a disproportionately high value to the economy compared to what most of them are paid.

Hold up. Are you telling me that 100,000 refugees already own homes? Be right back, need to go vote conservative real quick.

Which is why the right work so hard to assure Gov. does not work.

This is not about conservatives, many of the countries listed here currently have or recently had conservative governments. The far right is a whole other level.

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Which makes no fucking sense since conservatives just make those issues worse.

in stress, they will always vote conservative to ensure their own survival

That isn’t a safe bet, though.

The cornerstone of the conservative M-O is withdrawal of services and opportunities for the 99%. Sure, this sticks it to immigrants, but only because it shafts everyone but the rich.

And when those services go away - healthcare, unemployment protection, programmes sponsoring training so people can get back to paying tax sooner - they never come back under this administration. It’s left as the sole focus of the fools who follow them and have to stoch a country back together out of the unmaintained underpowered mess of a system the elitist scum left them with.