Far-right AfD win in Germany is ‘grave moment’ for Europe, politicians warn

No they aren't. The liberals and conservatives are both being blamed because they are both part of the problem. 2 sides of the same coin.

Liberals are being assigned blame because they are worthy of blame.

Conservatives know they are to blame, telling them that does nothing. Liberals think they are helping the working class and at the very least are discomforted when confronted with the reality of their actions (sometimes).

Nobody is giving conservatives a pass. But we aren't going to solve the problem if we don't spend time understanding why people are voting the way they're voting in an international trend, and it isn't that everyone just became a lot more racist overnight; it's because in many countries, the reality has become choosing between a more social liberal or social conservative neoliberal party, and one would need to be blind at this point to not see it's the second part of that descriptor people are done with.

I'm saying this as someone who is absolutely a lesser of the evils voter and advocated for such; but I also understand what's actually driving support for people like Trump, AfD, and the like, and it isn't a surge in intolerance; it's material conditions, like it almost always is.

The criticism gets directed at the center left more than the center right because they are the ones more politically viable to change, or at least that's been the view. Conservatives concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few is itself a conservative position in the traditional sense. Any party claiming to be left should be antithetical towards that.

Don't mistake that for giving conservatives a pass. They're worse, I'll absolutely vote center left neoliberal if they are the only alternative; but convincing them is to fundamentally change their views more than a center left party.

Sometimes I think it must be a psyops by the billionaires to divide and demoralize the left. Then I remember some people are just so dumb.

There may be a gap here in the definition of "liberal". Liberalism is a political philosophy that also encompasses most traditional conservatives. It is different from the colloquial usage. It's loosely defined as the belief in individual freedoms, including the right to private property. It is inherently capitalist and therefore socialists, communists and anarchists generally do not consider them to be of the left.

It's their go to.

Like yeah, milquetoast policies ultimately lead us here but they have more fury for the people doing moderately OK but ultimately unsatisfactory things than the people actually going hog wild, robbing everyone blind, instituting fascism, etc.

When the home team who is on defense just allows goal after goal with no defense, and scoring no goals of their own... that's a bad team and deserves criticism if they're the bulwark defenders who are supposed to oppose fascism. Fascists are winning and that is the fault of liberals for a lack of opposition.

because liberals are the prime reason of fascists rise in power. They pretend to be good while oiling the fascist machine

Who are the liberals if not the conservatives?

Liberals are fascist collaborators and work on behalf of the elites. The sooner liberals are gone the faster we can fix these issues. Conservatives are just plain evil.

Mainstream politicians don't get it, despite seeing it play out in multiple countries with varied culture: people are so done with neoliberlism they will vote for literal fascists before they vote for another neoliberal.

No the regions in the east have gotten too much funding for infrastructure and such. The money that was worth exactly zero got exchanged 1:1 to DM.

This cost billions. Streets in the east look fantastic. Where I grew up in the west everything is broken.

This is the thanks the west gets from these fuckin people.

Fuck them, fuck their "problems"

Other way around: the tragedy is first.

May I ask why you hope for even worse?

There are many actual legal actions taken against AfD and AfD members already, including a period of time where AfD was not allowed to receive briefings regarding national security, something that is a right for all members of the Bundestag.

But nothing to actually solve ordinary people's problems and show that there's a way other than fascism. In the absence of that, defensive democracy is nothing more than theater.

people vote for because they are unhappy with the current situation. Caused by Covid, Ukraine War, Russian energy sanctions against EU before the Ukraine war that was very damaging to German industries, and now Eu sanctions against Russia that have similar effect. Followed by the damage on energy supplies like wood pellets from the Ukraine war, and on top of all that Trumps ridiculous tariffs and the effects of the Iran war. This is at the same time we have increased competition from China.

Yeah, it's all those evil foreigners. It can't be the awful mismanagement of the political establishment. Housing crisis? No way.

PS: The impact of Ukraine on energy prices is a direct consequence of EU countries slow-walking decarbonization.

Legal actions are the anti-solution. Making people feel that they don't need the afd because other parties are meeting their needs is the real solution.

Personally I'm sad they didn't get a majority, because that's probably the best cure, people need to see how damaging their policies are, and how stupid they really are.

Be careful what you wish for. That’s the attitude America had that earned us another run of the Orange pedo.

It was also the attitude of Weimar Germany towards the Nazi party.

No, not as much as the role of the national liberal DNVP (which Hindenburg was effectively a part of, too) and partially the Social Democrats collaborating with the Nazis to kill the communist party. It was the liberals.

You can ban the group, but you can't ban the ideas or support that led to it.

The other parties need to take an honest look at themselves and ask why people would support a party like that over themselves.

So it goes…

This is a global class war.

even if i have to drive half an hour to get to it or take a day off from work.

No offense, but this sentence alone shows just how disconnected you are from the struggles of Americans

HALF AN HOUR! I’m laughing I’m sorry. Half an hour! Holy fuck half an hour is like a trip to the grocery store in America.

So you tried to stop people from getting together and talking to each other?

Good job, fascist.

Fuck off with protests. Holy fuck. They don't do jack shit except give the opportunity for the organizers to fill their CV and collect them like those marathon running stickers on the back of a Volvo.

Fuck

This entire time the strategy was and only ever was to protest online. You protest by building networks and creating memes and identifying when people are paying millions to convince people on the left to go commit to the most high energy low retard efforts like it described where all of us have to drive 3 hrs just to get arrested and beat up.

The internet has literally been here the whole time. Turns the fuck out that the goal is protesting is actually what is done online every single fucking day. Go figure. Meanwhile we all left social media and chose the smallest corner of the internet to exist in crying about how bad everything is. Fucking hate it here. The left fucking suck.

MAGA started as a small section of the republican party known as the tea party. They were thought of as an annoying but small group that was likely to fade on its own. People here thought the small wins weren’t important either and here we are. Once that shit catches on it spreads like a wildfire.

The other half belongs to their rich backers.

"Mainstream politicians" didn't suddenly change and become less competent than before.

Maybe, but they're less restrained due to the death of radical labor. There's a reason social welfare in most of Europe develops to more or less its current state between 1945 and the 80s and just stops there.

This is especially true in East Germany, where living standards have risen dramatically since the fall of communism.

Actually increases in standard of living have proportionally basically the same in all of Germany since then, but also that doesn't make the housing crisis or insane energy prices sting any less. Radical politics in general takes off due to a perception that the mainstream politics isn't doing the job.

I have serious doubt, but I'd prefer to be shown up as a monumentally incorrect fool. Defeating fascism is a lot more important than petty schadenfreude.

We won't, unless Germany somehow gets invaded by France. Only they know how to revolt, and we can't/won't communicate with them..

What.

100% always the case with the people who have the least amount of contact with a specific minority. It’s very easy to manipulate people into hating someone they personally don’t know.

Ultimately what needs to be done is to solve those existing problems. You get extremists like this when the people feel like there's something wrong that the "mainstream" politicians are unable or unwilling to fix.

So has public education been gutted in Germany like it has been in the US? Trying to figure out why people still fall for this.

it's better to not roll those in the first place. We should never accept it as inevitable.

Agreed on both counts, but how? Here in UK we've had brexit and Reform. You can try to talk these people out of believing right-wing nonsense until you're blue in the face. It doesn't work - they'll call 'fake news' or accuse you of talking down to them. The only thing that seems to work is letting it happen and allowing them to draw their own conclusions.

If you have any good ideas on what to do I'm all ears.

You cannot force those who are too dumb to see the error of their ways to do something. You'll only breed contempt and embolden them more. There is no nipping this in the bud. You won't convince these people they're wrong. They must come to it on their own. Hopefully not many of us have to die.

Take the MAGA movement for example. We've been telling these idiots for years that they're wrong and they won't listen. Only now that the policies negatively affect them do you see some changing their tunes.

That's not lost on me, my point is what exactly is to be done about it?

Have you ever been around just a single AfD voter?

Well, no, I'm not German. But they sound an awful lot like Brexiteers and Reform/Restore UK voters.

That's what we are up against. Not in any way rational actors.

That's exactly my point.

This is false.

Fine, but what's your solution?

Look into the US and you know that this plan is successful. It does not even matter what the party is delivering. That’s the whole problem. Morals and ethics do not matter. The immoral and unethical politician is always going to win. The politicians playing by the rules will always lose.

We had so many fucking years to exactly see that, and yet in the US and even here they fail to address the issue properly.

shut up libshit, go lick genocide joe's boots

this retard thinks every communist supports putin, fuck you

That person has a pfp of Mao. They love dictators it seems

GDR was indeed extremist dictatorship

extreme left, dictatorship of the proletariat

bourgeosie democracy is not real democracy, I am gald its getting fucked