What’s fuelling the rise of the far right?

Changes in the media landscape. Up to the 1990s, mainstream media in Western democracies were dominated by intellectuals, who are typically against racism and fascism. This gradually changed as media became more commercialized and sensationalist, a change that rapidly accelerated with the advent of social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.

Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s, and the fact that we have seen fascists massively gaining popularity even in societies that are among the most prosperous in human history. This is especially obvious in Germany, where in East Germany (where the fascist strongholds are) the economic situation has in fact dramatically improved since the 90s.

Wealth and power.

Unscrupulous rich people benefit from the far right, so it is to their advantage to amplify it in media and technology.

There is real and legitimate discontent and disillusionment with the political mainstream, and they're steering those people towards the far right by feeding the public lies that are plausible on the surface and provide an easy target for blame.
They're supported by opportunic charlatans who can get rich by being the mouthpiece.

Propaganda. The elite get people fighting a culture war instead of seeing what’s really happening: the continued funneling of wealth to the few.

Standard of living is going down, via cost of living crisis, not being able to pollute like we did in the past, and billionaires taking all the productivity increases. People don't understand why, they can't accept the situation, so they get angry, find an outgroup to blame it on, which the right says they'll fix by getting rid of the outgroup.

Inequality and decades of painting anything left as evil communism.

Plus liberals would rather hand the reins to fascists than socialists.

Fear is the fuel.

Scared people are selfish, and selfishness is the only common denominator in all right wing politics. They don't have great visions of how to run a society. All they want is to stop someone else from having "their" piece of the imaginary pie.

It takes a lot more positive outlook to have the trust to build a society where people take care of someone they don't know directly.

Billionaires.

Billionaires are pouring infinite money into right wing movements. They have no scruples and can pay anyone they need to get what they want done. The problem is capitalism because it creates extreme unelected power in an extremely small self interested minority. They also fund the power centers of the left to keep things from moving too far against them. Elections move on money far too much. In the end, you can’t have democracy and capitalism. Slowly capitalism always tries to swallow democracy.

Occupy Wallstreet.

People like to joke that it did nothing, but it terrified the corporate masters of the world. They have been trying to teach us uppity poors a lesson ever since.

• Rising costs / decline in incomes
• Failing infrastructure
• Decline in education
• Repression of history
• Brainwash through social media
• Nostalgia

Billionaires. They fund right-wring advocates, because tearing down establishment concepts like "rule of law", "industrial standards", "equality", and so forth is very useful to the wealthy.

People are dissatisfied with the economy and the far-right says, "This is happening because of immigrants," the left says, correctly, "This is happening because of billionaires," while liberals just say, "This isn't happening, everything is fine." The far right's narrative beats the liberal one because it at least acknowledges that people are struggling, even if the reasons and solutions it offers are totally wrong. Unless the economic conditions can be reversed, and the far-right are the only ones people see offering an alternative, the growth of the far-right is inevitable.

As for the left's (correct) narrative that the billionaires are the problem, it has the advantage of actually being true and making sense, but it has the disadvantage of threatening monied interests, which are going to try their best to subvert and silence it. Billionaires will generally prefer to promote the far-right because it doesn't threaten their interests.

However, the left's narrative is the only thing that can really counter the right's narrative. You can't keep insisting there's no problem as things get worse and worse and expect it to work. The left is weak right now and faces an uphill battle, but it's a battle where there's a possibility of winning, while the liberals are ultimately doomed.

The current system no longer works for an average citizen. Current and future generations can't expect a higher standard of living than our parents had while the environment gets destroyed all around us. This disillusionment with current ruling class leads people to support anti-establishment candidates which tend to be far right populists. It's still possible for socialists to provide a valid alternative but in many countries the left is too fragmented and/or too focused on the wrong issues.

Economic despair.

We all know something is deeply wrong with the world, but it's easier to see and blame brown people than to see all the ways that we are being squeezed by the Epstein class.

In a US context, but perhaps the dynamic is the same around the world, is that Republicans blame immigrants and the Democrats, defenders of the status quo, blame nobody.

This is a serious electoral handicap, when your side is prevented from effective world building, when you are not allowed to identify enemies.

Billionaire money. Oligarch money.

Without wanting to be controversial….

Society tends to swing back and forth wildly, attempting to find communality. Gay people were openly oppressed, then accepted, then granted legal equality in marriage, then some adoption agency starts giving gay couples a boost up the waiting list - and somebody completely loses their head and the reverse process begins.

We went from housewife who knew her place (/s) to “believe all women” in less than 3 generations. Some people can’t cope with the change of pace or seeming over-correction.

Again, immigration: they should stay over there. We actually do need some medical staff and shop keepers. Wow, their food is nice. He was born and grew-up here and is one of us. I look like I’m the foreigner in my own high street. Send them all back.

If society goes too far, or too quickly, one way then there tends to be a knee jerk reaction back there other way.

Conservatism has always been popular, because a lot of people like the status quo. WHEREVER THAT MAY BE AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME. The fact that conservative values change over time is immaterial.

The world is complex. Humans aren't equipped to deal with that level of complexity. Also the amount of information we are bombarded with is far beyond what we have evolved to deal with.

The right offers a simple solution.

There is one group, "the other", that is the root cause of all your problems. Get rid of them and everything will be swanky again.

This plays on one of our earliest and most ingrained senses of survival. As a social tribal species, we are very good at noticing things that are "like us" and "normal". "Different" and "new" was a potential threat. It literally kept our species alive against far more powerful predators and competition from like species back we we huddled together against the dark night.

Unfortunately we're just wired that way. It takes knowledge, wisdom and a healthy dose of curiosity/wonder to overcome that. Why do you think one of the first goals of the right is to dismantle education?

I think it's a combination of stupid people, misinformation, disinformation, and social media

It started with the War on Terror of the 2000s destabilizing the Middle East and leading to an influx of refugees into Europe. White supremacists naturally freaked out when they saw more than one brown person, so this started an anti-immigrant sentiment which only continued to build throughout the years. Couple that with funding from rich white supremacists and propaganda from foreign agents like Steve Bannon, and here we are.

"US tech giants allying with European far-right to strip back EU rules", Jan 14 2026

https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules

Same thing that happened to the US.

I see a lot of blame on “brainless idiots” or similar labels when discussing this, but I think that’s dismissive of issues many parties seems to be ignoring, or exacerbating, and that the alt-right is pouncing on.

Not everyone who voted Trump is an idiot, and doubling down on that thinking will make the issue worse.

Another is that the far-right parties tend to be “modern” and very social media savvy, whereas establishment centrist parties are out of touch, and campaign in archaic ways. And (from my impression on the outside) the more leftist European parties are prone to disunity and infighting. They don’t benefit from scandal and controversy like the far right does.

The west has been in the imperialist stage of capitalism for a bit more than a century. As was described back then, this is a parasitic, moribund stage of capitalism. It's parasitic in an obvious way, but what's most interesting is the moribund factor. Imperialism essentially becomes the dominant factor in a capitalist economy once it fully saturates the national economy, when monopoly bank and industrial capital begin consolidating into finance capital, and when these groups must expand outward, not just can.

The reason this is moribund is because it hollows out industrialization, seeking cheaper labor in the global south. It also seeks more specualtive than real returns, and sharpens the divide between rich and poor on an international scale, even if temporarily it reduces inequality in the national level (see FDR's New Deal, before imperialism began decaying and Reaganomics forced austerity to preserve superprofits). What's happening now is a sharp rightward turn in response to this system breaking down as the global south develops and gains independence from neocolonialism, giving them agency in how the world is run and tools at their disposal not purely linked to the west.

It's the protracted death of imperialism that is forcing many people into austerity in the west, which drives reaction. Everyone trying to blame it on foreigners and propaganda are missing the point, the actual material system the west runs on is dying away as has already been predicted before by analyzing the very mechanisms of capitalism.

Billionaires trying to distract people from their ever increasing wealth and the powerful people in positions of influence. Who owns the vast majority of media, at least in the global west?

It's been seen so many times through history if the status quo is challenged find a scape goat. Every possible example can be seen, different religions, different skin colour, different political beliefs, different gender, different abilities, different sexuality, etc. As soon as power/money is threatened a different focus of hatred is found.

not political

you should be. you need to be. because otherwise the assholes win.

The mechanisms by which civilizations grow, stagnate, collapse and recover have fascinated people since at least the ancient Greek philosophers.

Civilizations initially grow because they make life better for the average citizen. Cooperation leads to more reliable food and more babies survive to make more babies.

After some time some stressors on the civilization lead to widespread conflict. Historically this have been linked mostly to famine and plagues. Economic instability can also lead to a civilizations segmentation and conflict. The "fall of civilizations" is historically the segmentation of large civilizations into smaller entities as people rally around a local leader who promises them the "right" things.

So what's happening right now - a shit ton of stressors.

Birth rates are negative in most industrialized nations. This indicates that on a widespread basis, globally people do not feel that they have the resources to raise kids.

Climate change is triggering serious fears of famine. This is why denying the obvious heat increases is so popular. "Oh no, it's not the hottest and dryest summer on record. Our crops are hunky doey."

Plagues - Well COVID happened and triggered a lot of widespread fear. That disease is still seen as a curse from the supernatural for most humans instead of a biological inevitability was made crystal clear.

Wars - stealing someone else's resources looks pretty good when you fear there is not enough resources to go around. "It's too hot in the U.S. to grow crops, let's invade Canada and steal Greenland!"

So humans are doing what they have always done when stressed. Look for someone who looks like a "strong leader" who can make things right in their world again.

It's a two-pronged attack.

One is russia. They have "chaos campaigns" going back decades just to sow discord and cause disruption in Europe. There's no better discord and disruption than threatening the EU as a whole.

The second is big American businesses and billionaires, because they hate how the EU presents a unified front against their bullshit and actually forces them to do things that chip into the bottom line.

Ever since Neoliberalism became dominat amongst mainstream "center" large parties in the West:

• Inequality has explode.
• Social Mobility has collapsed.
• The super-wealthy who are behind all of it because they paid the mainstream politicians to reduce their taxes, to have the State stop controlling, shapping or in any way participating in even the provision of life's essentials (most notably housing), to enact policies that support big asset owners all paid for with austerity for those who income mainly comes from their work and to remove any and all oversight over money making activities, have been heavilly funding political parties that blame the consequences for the many (especially those at the lowest end of the wealth ladder) of all that on foreigners ("immigrants", "foreign interference") as well as News companies to parrot such ideas.

I mean, the first two things could also have made the (non-center, non-mainstream) leftwing grow, but unlike the far-right the people who have most of the wealth aren't funding parties fighting for more equality or buying newspapers to have them spreading the idea that we should tax the rich more to pay for universal healthcare and high quality education for free or that the democratically elected state should have greater oversight over and participation in the provision of life's essentials such as housing, so the left only ever advances amongst the well-informed and politically aware, not amongst whose beliefs come tabloid headlines, privatelly owned "news" channels and loudmouth "influencers" who make money from ragebaiting and reinforcing those views.

There are a few little leftwing victories here and there (the recent win of Die Linke in Berlin's municipal elections, Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York and so on), but almost all of the money and pretty much all the propaganda that passes for News nowadays is pushing rightwings views so of which being pretty much Fascist views.

Tech bros? Especially Peter Thiel. I thought this is common knowledge already.

Honestly, i genuinely believe that social media algorithms are being manipulated by billionaires to push an agenda that saves them from tax or accountability.I am centre left and try to mould fb and insta feeds by specifically flagging content i dislike or dont agree with and it keeps coming back. Some of the insane 'stop the boats' shit i see here in the uk from creators and bots i have never heard of or interacted with in anyway is very, very suspicious.

That's a question for the ages for sure. I'm worried it's going to get quite a bit worse before it gets better.

As far as I can tell, there are multiple ongoing components to what's going on.

There is definitely some Russia-driven agitprop going on, with the apparent aim of weakening the West through division. But on its own I think it's not a sufficient explanation, for two reasons. The same research showed that Russia is also pushing left-aligned agitprop points to increase division. And Russia was not similarly involved in the 1930's, which nevertheless saw a somewhat similar trajectory.

But it's still a factor either way of course.

The main force, I think, is the collapse of capitalism. That capitalism is its own self-destruction mechanism has been observed for centuries; it's kind of one of the main takeaways from Das Kapital. With the ceaseless rise of wealth capture by the ruling classes, discontent rises correspondingly among the general population, and the beige centrist neoliberals that tend to occupy power seats in most democracies keep onboarding more and more far right talking points in an apparent effort to keep this discontent from getting an actual left wing government elected: drawing false equivalency between left and far right policies, forming coalitions with the far right to prevent even a mildly left wing party from forming a government, etc.

The latter seems particularly driven by the flow of donor money from the wealthy elites.

But it also looks like in many countries, the national media are disproportionately captured by said wealthy elite, who also increasingly push the same far right societal framing for the same core reason.

Historically speaking, this private capture of wealth and power does not stop on its own, and it goes to some pretty bad places before it gets better. It's bleak as hell, but we can take hope, I think, from another historical observation: it always gets better, eventually.

Till then, take care of each other, y'all.

Chuds noticing things getting worse, and their leader offering solutions and someone to blame. It's always been like that. Happened in Germany in the 1920s, happened in the US in the 2010s.

Now that it's accelerating, it's gonna be interesting to see which conclusions are drawn after their chosen ones have been in charge almost the entire time.

Nobody said it and I'm sure it's not the only source, but Russia has funded at least Germany's main right wing party. I think I read about them funding others as well.

Plus they try to make their own sabotage look like left wing extremism. And they employ bot farms to spread hate online.

This has done a great job of destabilising basically every western country.

Big money interfering. Social media was just the latest iteration, billionaires have been buying news outlets since we had news outlets.

Life is getting shit for everyone, but it's a lot simpler and more accessible to blame a handful of brown people for everything. When a man in a tie says the same shit you've been saying down the pub, it's too easy for people to fall into lockstep with them.

Social media

Anti-immigration sentiment and Islamophobia have surged in Western and Central Europe, especially when many of the establishment parties have made moves to increase immigration, i.e. the Boriswave in the UK, enacted by the centre-right party that wooed voters just months earlier by promising to "Get Brexit Done."

Can't really elaborate on the rise of National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany, but here in the UK we've had grooming gang scandals that have led to several national inquiries, numerous protests focused around the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, and three riots in the last two years which were sparked by violent crimes.

Now I’m not political

In large part, this is fueling it. Think. In what way are you not political? Are you uninformed about political topics-- important topics, that are life or death for others? Or are you informed but choose not to do anything about them? Neither option sounds too good when put more clearly than the very vague "not political". You can claim to be apolitical because you can afford not to care about politics; whoever gets elected, your life doesn't appear to change much. But rest assured, it does, and sooner or later politics will care about you, whether you care about it or not.

The failure of neoliberal capitalism to deliver freedom and equity.

We were told that's what it would bring. But there is an inherent tension between the freedom to grow capital and the freedom of an individual. The wealthy and our legislators chose the former.

And so, people get left behind. They grow bitter and selfish and angry (just as capitalists intend.) Combine that with a lack of education that teaches critical thinking and healthy skepticism (again, purposefully defunded by capitalists, educated proletariat and all that), and you get people primed to hate. Individuals who care nothing for others and a community, only about themselves and how they're affected. And taking on an abstract entity like a corporation or government is much harder for an individual to comprehend. But hating Muhammed next door? Or Hasan? Or Abdul? Or Devonte? Or Reshawn? That's easy, especially when the news networks or their chosen news sources or influencers tell them to. They already look different and speak differently. And the unknown scares the uneducated. (I.e. see the creation of religions.)

There's a lot more to it, but that's a big one.

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

--Robert A. Heinlein, Take Bank Your Government

Replace "communism" with far-right ideology, and that's it. People, humanity in general, are fairly agreeable and cooperative, when they are getting along even tolerably well. It's only when conditions on the ground become intolerable that you see extreme political movements take hold, either left or right, because the established political order has demonstrated that it is either unwilling or unable to provide for the people's needs.

If more people were able to afford education, medicine, housing, and had the financial breathing room to take the occasional vacation and provide for their and their children's future, you wouldn't see extremism. You'd see people happy that things were working out okay. It's because we've allowed economic inequality and environmental chaos to become so widespread that people have become desperate enough to look to anyone who is at least saying they'll make real changes to fix what's wrong with the world.

Far right says "We found the issue with society: brown people"

(American) Far left says "We found the issue with society: the far right"

Far right followers are people who are susceptible to indoctrination.

(American) far left followers are people who think they arent susceptible to indoctrination.

No ones doing anything productive, but the far right IS doing SOMETHING, its just incredibly distructive and dick-waving.

Meanwhile something like 80% of people agree about 80% on 100% of topics. They just are too dumb or cowardly or poor to do anything about it (mainly poor).

The parties keep them poor and promise good things, the right is just louder and angrier and usually wins out the monkey brain

Billionaires -> full control of MSM, social media, algorithms, politicians -> fueling right wing everything to increase the wealth gap / avoid taxes / avoid control by the masses

People feel betrayed because they can't feel the benefits of economic growth. Jobs aren't safe anymore. But funding a family still requires a stable income. Humans love having social and economic security. If a government refuses to make that happen, they will vote for whoever promises to punish the old government - even if no fix for any of the actual problems is proposed.

If you are a politician, the solution is disgustingly trivial: stop taking bribes and do your job. Governments are infrastructure. They are meant to support the people governed by them.
So far the solution implemented by the big old parties was to double down on making everyone but the Epstein class poorer until voter morale improves.

it's funny how last year everyone was blaming Americans for being "dumb white racist shitbags" while Americans were asking this same question.

welcome to the club assholes.

want to know what's driving fascist ideologies?

instability. poor governance. fear.

so the question becomes, who benefits the most when world leading countries begin to fall apart?

• Russia
• China
• Israel
• Corporate Interests / Banks

out of those four, who has the track record to run psyops at a worldwide scale. Who has a successful history of buying politicians? Who has the best ability to manipulate the world population without them knowing?

Most of these answers lack a broader understanding of the history and systems which produce this phenomenon. There's a good video that talks through multiple examples of a similar rise in right wing populist dictators and the theoretical through-line that connects them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GQP-IRVqM

To summarize: Privileged classes in a hierarchical society fear popular will turning against them and taking away their privilege, whether by election or force. When times are good the threat of this is relatively low. But when things start to fall apart, people start organizing against the elites. Fearing this, even liberal members of the upper class choose to side with those to their right, because even if they disagree with their more extreme positions, to them it's better than losing their privileged positions in society.

From there, the right wing uses all sorts of tactics to suppress opposition and cloak themselves in faux populism. Everything from propaganda to direct acts of violence.

Why is the right on the rise in a lot of these social democracies? Because they're still capitalist, so that structural need to suppress popular will still exists despite their nicer social programs. It was going to happen eventually, it's just a matter of when. Capitalism and imperialism around the world is reaching another moment of crisis, so this is exactly the time when they'd be doing this.

TL;DR: Surprise! It's capitalism again!

The predominant online presence of leftist anarchists all but vanished as corporations and social media took root. For a long time the corporate world remained skeptical of the internet. It was "just a fad" that would go away eventually. They started buying everything up, monopolizing, and controlling the narratives.

I have no doubt the fediverse makes them nervous again like they haven't been in years. There are obvious bad actors running around these parts.

American billionaires

Misinformation to the highest degree, constant propaganda seems to be the issue and the fact that a lot of civilians in Europe are uninformed how their government works. It doesn't help that the said left wing democrats have been failing at their jobs, and Europe's infrastracture can't even handle a influx of immigrants.

It doesn't also help that Europe also is quite racist in it's old age. The constant testimonies of visitors from America and many more places of darker skin tone, you'd be surprised to see how the Italians treat black people. Makes you think they learned from their American Cousins in hospitality.

Billionaires

Elon.

Lots of stuff but in general bad economic conditions and lots of propaganda to point fingers. It amazes me how badly right wing goverments want immigrants out, yet without them they wouldn't have a fraction of the success they had. If anything, they will employ policies that make the divisions more stark and immigrants more predisposed to not being able to adapt.

Fear.

When people are afraid, they are less likely to help others, and want to protect their family and posessions.

It's money. Of you're ever unsure it's money. It's always tax breaks for the rich and hating minorities. It's always money. All the time.

It's mainly that they graduated from reactive backlashes. They are seriously organized now, and are taking advantage of the inability of incumbent parties to fix the worsening everything. The far left could be doing that too, but they're not anywhere near as organized.

The economic injustice, the feeling of hopelessness and representation is the soil, and misinformation and populism the exponentiator.

People vote right against their own interests because they don't know better, because they feel heard, or because they feel that something has to change, or because they're indoctrinated in these views and communities.

Everyone is political. Politics is where alternate perspectives intersect in a social setting. Everything in life that involves multiple individuals shaping a shared experience is politics, and so you cannot functionally be the thing you claim. To say "I'm not political" is actually to say "I am afraid of taking a stand, I can't handle conflict, and what I believe means less to me than the risks I fear for showing it". Be political, embrace having views and things you care about and being ready to advocate for them, stand for them, and act, because I promise you the people who don't believe your perspective matters or can be tolerated are acting on their beliefs.

I'm not political why is far right on the rise

Bruh. Inaction/neutrality helps the oppressor. Far-right is both a distraction from inequality and a tool to promote the interests of the elite by propping them either established success stories, or (alt-right) as alternative voices of genius fighting the corruption of public sector and big governments, even though they benefitted from that more than anyone else.

That is why.

Vladimir Putin.

To me as a (jaded) centralist, it feels like the reason is a lack of action against societal issues and the far right always beating their chest saying "IM GONNA FIX EVERYTHING WITH AN IRON FIST!".

But they never seem to do and then the far left gains popularity saying "WE'RE GONNA DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY TO THEM" and then the main issues hang around. Then both sides aim their hate at each other rather than the parties, and then the cycle repeats years later.

Big money and hostile, foreign interests. That's basically it, you'll find Russia pushing a lot of far right candidates and the oligarchs convinced techno-feudalism will work.

pieces of shit.

and elon musk.

but i repeat myself

Stupidity, gullibility, and hate mostly.

South African white nationalists and "centrist" politicians.

Wealth concentration, information manipulation and concentration, lack of education and media literacy. We’ve slowly pulled back the taboo of being a Nazi.

Economic issues stemming from Covid. Hatred of minorities fueled by misinformation

Centrist governments aren't doing shit to fix the problems people are having because they've been bought by billionaires. Far right is something different and it's pointing at "problems" that hateful morons find easy to solve. The result is a lot of people checked out of engaging with politics because it feels pointless and a lot of hateful morons checked in because there's finally someone talking their language.

Part of it comes from the failures of the left.

Russia.

Something common among the rising rightwingers is a "Stop punishing poor Russia!". The AfD in Saxony Anhalt and Meklenburg-Vorpommern for example are very heavy on "give us back the cheap Russian oil and gas!"

I actually hope that the AfD will somehow rule Saxony Anhalt - it would little damage, as it is an irrelevant backwater state, but it would show that they cannot put their election promises in reality. That would either violate the Grundgesetz (Constitution), violate federal law, require gift showers from the federal government, or plain and simple miracles like raining money. Or even several of those points at once.

Growing wealth inequality combined with global migration; mix in tech companies that need social division and antagonism to survive, and a healthy dose of foreign interests trying to break down rivals, and here you are.

The overall left has been very weak for the past decade. Some shift happened where the loudest left parties largely focused on identity politics and nearly ignored everything else the left is overall supposed to stand for.

Or to put it differently; the left gave nearly no resistance to the extreme elements of the right. So the most awful elements of the right could rise unopposed.

What's the old the saying? The love of money is the root of all evil. Nice people aren't billionaires nor do they want power.

The rest of the world sees the USA and says hold My beer, we can do it better

Disindustrialisation, reduction of purchasing power imo

For most countries where the alt right is rising, and specially among alt right voters, "immigration" is among the first perceived problems in the polls.

Most people I've talk that vote alt right don't really care about the rest of the agenda of the party they vote, they are even against it, but they vote alt right because they perceive immigration as a severe issue.

So, for the people who vote for those parties, that's the main reason they are doing it.

Now, why they perceive immigration as such a threat as to vote for something they don't even like? That's a much more complex issue, that I think it has a lot to do with the fall in socioeconomic progress many countries are living right now.

It's a tool used by elites to maintain control. Capitalism has always used fascism as its survival strategy of last resort.

We lost bad versus good because of moral ambiguity. Now all we have is left and right. My experience with left and right is that they are both parts of the same bigger body that controls their movements.

When you are losing control of a situation but desperatly need things to change, you can either accept waves of change and try to move and hopefully grow with it or violently reduce the complexity of the problem by enforcing ridge structures around the problem set.

Think about it in terms of food spoiling. One option is to actually encourage it, make beer, wine, vinegar. Maybe replant it sooner. Maybe encourage other creatures to eat it first like your pets.

The other option is to sterilize everything. Destroy all life so only no living food stuffs remain. Isolate it, vaccum seal it, can it, dry it, freeze it. Try evertthing you can to turn the dynamic into the static.

Both options honestly work in this small human scale problem. We do it for all sort of things invluding social problems. Maybe throwing yourself out there will help you get over that breakup, maybe just focusing on yourself is what you need.

The allure of the right wing is the idea that we can do that at sociotal level. Ignore the world. The other. Just your countrymen, just the ones that act like the genders you expect, just the moral systems you know, etc etc.

As if you vaccum sealed the world by ideolgical catagory alone. It static. Its white bread just like when you imagined, just like when you bought it, just like when you had as a kid.

I'm actually really sympathetic to it. I want a sinpler world that is easy to reason about too. Its just not reasonable. Its boiling the ocean so you don't have bateria eat your fish. Its a very human handons thinking applied by the man made deity we call the state.

Knowing this flaw in human reasoning, the immoral can exploit it. They can say 'i found a bug", "i found mold" and then sell a "solution" to thr "problem" that billions of people operation of the scale of trillions of tons of matter moved is going to more complex then how 20 to 150 should orginaize to move a couple tons per year.

largely stupid humanity paired with interference from the usual suspects

The internet and very wealthy, very evil people.

epstein class. they are always the reason for shittification of the world. always

I cant speak to european causes, but as Americas' culture tends to set the pace of world events since the end of the second world war, it's entirely possible that there is a connection.

in the united states you need to know about two individuals that are primarily responsible for the rise of right wing populism and corporatocracy. The first is a Proto-Christian Nationalist and white supremacist by the name of Barry Goldwater, and the other was a Neo-Calvinist and Objectivist "thinker"* Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (*and I use the term loosely)

Barry Goldwater was a driving force in opposition to the civil rights movement, and primary architect of the modern Conservative platform. He played a rather large part in the Great Lane Swap where Southern Democrats switched to the Republican Party and Northern Republicans became the core of centrist Neoliberalism.

Where Lewis Powell comes into the mix is his treatment (now known simply as the "Powell Memorandum") called "Attack On the American Free Enterprise system" where he bemoans Corporate regulation as "holding back" the potential of not just American but Western Capitalism to enrich those who he deems worthy of greatness. (If you are familiar with the writings of Ayn Rand, this kind of "why do I need to share?!" Objectivist whining should sound similar.)

In both cases, they set up the groundwork and built the nascent foundations of the conservative political strategy we see to day that has resulted in much of the worlds' oligarchic tendencies. Goldwater's contribution was to recognize that conservative messaging had an image problem and rather than accept that the message was the problem, it was the recipients of that message who needed to be controlled and reeducated. To that end he further recognised that what kept the populace averse to conservative messaging was the Institutions of Liberal Democracy, namely free access to education, the social safety net, and strong labor movements. By eradicating these pillars where able, and eroding their influence continually, this would allow a formation of a systemic return to fundamentalist christianity as the fall back for what he deemed a corrupt and wonten society. (To wit; This guy would have thought "The Handmaid's Tale" was a fine book if only the main narrator was one of the men leading Galead, and not the woman who's rights had been stripped away.)

Powell, on the other hand, was a corporate lawyer by trade, and the person most responsible for corporate deregulation and "trickle-down economics." He promoted the idea that "a rising tide lifts all boats" as a justification for these actions, and used outmoded Calvinist ideas (just given a fresh coat of paint for the times) to justify the rule that the economically unsuccessful should move out of the way for those who could maintain economic success, and that such a system would be a driver of economic mobility by "encouraging" people to take agency in their own social status (Read: He thought the welfare state made people lazy and that forcing them to face a choice between destitution or participation would be a motivating factor for them to work harder, and thus increase profits at the top, which would then percolate down as the wealthy invested in new opportunities and ideas.) He saw labor unions as not just Socialist Infections but as the driving force preventing these phantom profits from bubbling up to those who he believed would be most suited to "properly" distributing them. If this sounds alot like "the peasantry don't know how to spend their money, better to let the nobility have it" congrats, you win a gold star.

In both cases, the philosophies meshed very well as each supported the goals and methods of the other. By deregulating business, it allowed corporations to attack traditional power bases of the left wing, entrenching a kind of Capitalist Nobility as the only people who could actually make it in the new system, and blinding the working class to the fact that social mobility was little more than a myth used as a ideological carrot on a stick that kept productivity KPIs artificially high.

Other factors that lead to this situation are supreme court rulings in the 1920's, specifically Henry Ford Vs. The Dodge Brothers, that inadvertently set the precedent that the point of any business was not to enrich its workers evenly or even commensurately with its owners, but to maximize profits to the shareholders. Another stumbling block for Leftist thought is Article One of N.A.T.O. which states that every member state must engage in a capitalist free market economy - a damn shame because otherwise N.A.T.O. is one of, if not the, most important defensive alliance in the promotion of omnipax world politics in human history. (Not to say it has always been successful toward that goal, mind.) Even more than the United Nations, in many regards.

That last bit may be more salient to the European perspective, as there is STILL a mindset of eurocentrism even as the world becomes more globalist and western influence wanes now that the age of colonialism is largely over. Mass migrations due to the policies of unchecked corporate power causing the lands these migrants hail from despoiled and unlivable, makes the supporters of these same mentalities quite ironic. Instead of bemoaning the influx of such individuals, and chafe at their presence, one would think that expending resources and investing to improve the living conditions of these places such that immigration from them be unnecessary, would be a more adroit course of action, and yet here we are. It's easier to complain that the world is ugly than face the fact that your ideology is partly to blame, I suppose.

Predominantly a media which is on the right, and politicians who blame migrants for everything.

Protein shakes.

The rich steal money, so the poor cannot afford to live.

The poor revolt, but since the rich control the media, the rich tell the poor that other poor people are at fault (foreigners, trans, leftists).

So we've got:

• Trump winning seemingly out of nowhere so people trying to emulate that
• just good ol racism
• "white erasure"
• conservative backlash against progress feeling like it's "their turn"
• the Christian doomsday evangelicalist people who want to jump start the rapture by manipulating the wars and politics in the middle East while also controlling everyone in their own country
• the tech bros who think a different apocalypse is going to happen, partially because of a fandom for a Harry Potter fan fic, who are trying to either make real AI as soon as possible or just ditch the rest of humanity to live in a bunker
• good ol sexism
• good ol homophobia n transphobia
• capitalism
• dude deciding to get a sandwich, which led to Nazis.
• Leftists not being able to get their shit together/following through with things, especially in the US which led to point 1.
• social media trying to make money off of what should be free using algorithms that oopsie radicalize people and not oopsie on purpose radicalize people.
• did I mention the Nazis?

That's just off the top of my head, and from what little I know in the States. Also I wasn't kidding about any of these.

I think it works on an exponential scale. The more power you get, the easier it is to become powerful.

Billionaires have reached some kind of "endgame" where they seem to have conquered every market there is to conquer so now they must keep their power. Rightists ideologies typically have a lot more control (read repression) over their populations. Combine the two with bribes and corruptions.

Astroturfing, bots and opinion control on the web are a real thing.

Theses are my conclusions, but to be honest, I'm also surprised that they are gaining this much traction when we are approaching harder climatic conditions that are now directly affecting people.

it makes the powerful people more money and power

that's about it. also people are selfish and dumb and buy into it because they're selfish and dumb

Lack of success of non-far right (and non-right) in many areas where only far right provide answers, plans or solutions. Instead of accepting this people instead suggest it's illegal to have different ideas to them. Lemmy is one such place. And then congratulations, you're making the problem worse.

Also consider that the regime needs or thinks it needs a "far right" and "far left" so it can posit itself as the "reasonable centre." Maybe when we analyse some things proposed by so called far right and far left they don't look so "far" after all, and can even exist in synthesis with one another. But when you say far left or far right you think of the worst thing that you're told to associate with that movement.

in the case of the AFD, musk's money.

Can't discount the capture of institutions, consolidation of media, and trans-border collaboration. There's also overt and covert acts of war against liberal democracies by far right governments. We're due for another oopsies in Europe real soon.

There are foreign powers and corporate powers deliberately trying to foul up western democracies. They use social media as well as traditional media to spread hate, fear, anger and generally divide communities. The more they can divide us, the more control they can seize.

And utilizing nationalism, racism, bigotry in general... that's just a force multiplier. That's a technique that lets you influence a small number of people, and then that group of people continues to influence their communities.

It turns out that it's really easy to tip the scales toward chaos, hate and selfishness, it's easy to make people angry or scared. It's a lot easier to convince someone to blame someone else than to take responsibility for their own problems.

Billionaires. It's not just a coincidence that so many countries are shifting far right. In any sane society, billionaires wouldn't exist while there are homeless people living on the street

You had a rise in conservative movements starting in the 1970's as the post war economic boom stopped. The dismantling of various government services had short term benefits and long term costs. We're at the point where these groups are trying to cling on as it is becoming more apparent that new government economic intervention is needed for most people. A lot of wealthy people don't want to pay for this.

You also have new industries which formed and were very lightly regulated. Those who want to improve the economy also seem to want to institute effective regulation of these industries. Since typical conservatism has collapsed, the far right is being supported.

It's tempting to blame economic conditions, because they are objectively terrible, but really, it's the rise of unchecked garbage media masquerading as news.

People have shown a consistent and maddening resistance to reacting and making decisions based on real conditions. The fact is, humans on the whole don't look at reality to make decisions, and they never have. They build their worldviews on whoever tells them the best story.

The bad news is, this means you will NEVER beat the alt right just by fixing things in reality.

Billionaires and democracy are not compatible systems

Wealth disparity and disenfranchisement blamed on immigrants.

Some of it is to blame on COVID, as money went to businesses rather than people - so wealth disparity jumped. Compare this to the 1919 Spanish Flu, during which welfare became more prevalent and well funded (due to strikes and collective social actions), resulting in wealth disparity shrinking.

Basically this time we went in the other direction. So now we have extra anxieties about unemployment, extra inflation, extra cost of living pressures, extra housing insecurity, and a sense we're not being listened to.

Things far right groups like to blame on immigrants via grievance politics, these insecurities are then used to recruit people.

P.S people elsewhere are acting like right wing media is the sole cause and hasn't always been dogshit. This is incorrect. It's more potent now because more people have more legitimate grievance that can be appealed to

Ignorance.

Russian psyops, companies being bothered by regulation jumping at the opportunity, the same companies optimizing for rage bait, people being fed up with broken promises by "liberal" parties, the world getting more unstable.

General economic dissatisfaction combined with bucketloads of propaganda designed to point the ire of said dissatisfied people downwards instead of upwards.

(Social) media control

I think a very interesting perspective on this is given by the book Doppelaganger: a Trip into the Mirror World, which is generally a banger and a worthwhile read!

There was an Australian man on ITV or BBC's morning show about a year or so ago. He was a very good speaker, but I've no idea who he was. He reckoned (I'm going by memory) it started when the left pushed for more left leaning politics - beginning after the US started a domino effect in the middle East, and caused a surge of immigration.

That coupled with people having their own platforms with the likes of facebook, instagram, twitter etc.

Initially many countries had sat in the middle and were complacent, then there was that surge, with other things that angered the far right and voices started appearing in printed media and online.

I've probably made a balls of what exactly he claimed was the start of it, but he reckoned it was a sleeping giant anyway.

He had been researching it since the 80's iirc.

I watched it as I was getting ready for work and having breakfast. I wouldn't normally watch TV, so wasn't paying great attention to it, it was only a few days later, maybe a week that I was retrospectively going over what he was saying and thought he made good points. if anyone knows the guy I'm talking about, would be great if you could put me out of my misery and name him. I've searched a few times without success. I don't even know if I could say what he looked like, older with thinning grey hair I think..

With the creation of the Internet, we celebrated the opportunity for every voice to be heard!

This is the result of listening.

The capitalist system always needs a scapegoat to unify a divided society. That marginalized role has traditionally been filled by immigrants, psychiatric patients, drug users, queer people, and the like... Furthermore, these days, social subsumption by capital has been intensified, which implies that hate toward these people is fueled by some systemic actors, such as the far-right. Some people, in this context, adhere to this discourse out of the need for social cohesion and fear.

Selfishness, Greed "Got mine fuck off", desperatly, they want to feel like they have power and are in the 'in group', russian and chinese money

It's mostly [xeno/queer]phobic people who don't understand politics much blindly supporting the one thing they do "understand".

I assume politics goes through generational pendulum swings.

In the case of Europe it is going on for some time like a decade that kind of sharpening to the right. Im telling that from the perspective of seeing who atm around Europe supports Vučić's politics. There are many right wingers in EU.

Malaise.

same. in Australia with the One Nation Party

why ? The same reason the Nazi's rose, there was slavery, why 9 million a year die from starvation etc 80% of humans are basically assholes, not going to rock the boat if they're content enough, when they're not content enough...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Contentment

Hate is cool again

Information warfare is almost entirely responsible for this. People are generally good and generally doing better than in the past but led to believe the world is ending and that their life sucks.

No one is immune to this but also many aren't even aware they are victims. Just read this thread: "everything sucks wha wha wha" when objectively everything is better than 30 years ago literally everywhere. I'm not diminishing people's issues but the consensus does not match reality and yall know that. It's so easy to capitalize on these pains and gain control, "divide and conquer" etc. etc.

Too many things honestly. Hidden racism, normalizing "if you can do it, you should do it" with unshakable faith that "the system will take care of itself" and the belief that "white culture is supposed to be the one on top".

So now the world is going to shit, EU and US (ie "the west") is panicking now. The rest of the world is starting to take over in technology, science and other things.

So what is the solution that people has decided? Fascism!

The other (for OG nazi it was socialist then jews then eastern europeans but today it is muslims then immigrants then people of color) is destroying our (read white colonialist) values so "we must use force against our enemy", "we must be not be soft", "it is the woke left mafia that is helping the other" so on and so forth...

The Left is gaining also. The center is losing because they tied their party to unpopular war and sanctions that have destroyed their economy and climate goals.

The Left is refusing to arm Ukraine and is offering Mamdani-like reforms in Berlin.

Give people what they want and you win, and it's certainly NOT war.

DW Griffith had to direct The Birth of a Nation to paint the KKk as the good guys, today you AI slop of it

russia troll farms, disinformation, and funding right wing grifters an groups. LIBSoftiktok, joe proesebic, ROGAN, j peterson,,,etc. and they also fund right wing parties too: Le penne, maybe ADP, everyone knows gop is on thier payroll.

The insanity of the far left

this will likely be downvoted to hell but it's true

There's the ideologies: conservatism and xenophobia. Two sides of the same coin; wanting to keep society as they believe it used to be, and fear of outsiders coming in and bringing about social change.

Then of course there is the is apparatus of money, power and traditional/social media control.

Cowardice.

It's burning because the fuel exists. The fuel is the naturally dumb population. Since I was born, there have always been a large population of idiots. Maybe the upper class designed the lower classes to be that way, but there's at least 30% of the population that are absolutely unconscious, violent, immoral, and degenerate. They especially prevalent in the southern US states. I have no idea the history behind how their ancestors survived to produce them, but they are the bane of the united states.

The left.

And I hate to say that.

.ml users

The rise of the far left.

4th wave feminism is a big one, for example.

As always these things feed off of each other.

The left refusal to acknowledge preocupation of the population. The willing to believe in infinite redistribution and that all cause are equal and must be defend.

I'm gonna take one exemple. Immigration. For real. Find me one argument about it that immigration is in my best interest. U can't. But in front of the massive disproval your only answer is to call this massive electorate facist racist and so on. I dont care about them. It doesn't serve my interest, quite the opposite. Everywhere where anti immigration sentiment is at an all time high the right rise.

Politics isn't being nice it's being pragmatic. And if I live in a country with strong redistribution letting ppl freely come that are net negative contributor impact the standard of living of everybody. I dont care if they are sad if their shithole country is in constant state of war. I specifically dont want ppl that created this state of things to come into my country to recreate thoses states.

It has nothing to do with infinite money being push to convey ppl. U could also have infinite money but you will never convince me to vote for other interest while being unfavorable to me. U can try to convince ppl the impact isn't big but that s a lie easily disproven simply with my own eyes in my own life everyday of it.

Its just immigration, people. Always has been. The alt-right will continue to win elections until immigration is reduced. Literally all countries have to do to stop the alt-right is restrict immigration. Just look at Sweden.

Do misinformation and greed play a role? Sure. But handwaving away people's anxieties about their culture being taken away from them - even if those fears are overblown - is elitist and out of touch. Telling people they are racist and fascist doesnt work either.

Open borders has always been a political loser. Id rather have greatly reduced immigration with an otherwise liberal democratic government than greatly reduced immigration with alt-right neofascists in power. Cause those are the 2 options.

Jordan Peterson wrote a rather interesting essay earlier this year about the situation in the UK:

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog/theyre-not-rape-gangs/