It’s been reported that in the German elections, a far right party has made ‘significant gains’.
In the UK (at least before the scandals) Reform UK seems to have had a significant boost and has even surpassed the right-wing Conservative Party in some polls/predictions.
Even France, one or two years ago, was threatened with a far-right government due to the French far right party gaining a lot of support.
Now I’m not political, but it feels like in the last few years, the far-right has exceeded itself and had a surge in popularity. Is this the case? And if so, wtf is fuelling it?
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.
Do you think that the boost has more to do with the fact that the general political mainstream is collapsing (i.e. perceived as useless) across multiple nations all at once? I mean, we’ve had wealthy businessmen pretty much all throughout history, so is this like a ‘trigger event’, so to speak?
I think the change is that today’s ultra-rich don’t act the same way the rich of the past did.
The “robber-barons” of the early 20th century were phenomenally rich and powerful, and they built schools, libraries, parks, and other public goods with a small fraction of their wealth because they understood that they had at least some tiny obligation to give back to the society that provided the conditions under which they could get so wealthy.
Today’s rich are actively preaching against the concept of empathy, and resisting any notion that they owe anyone anything. They are convinced that even a single dollar of their fortunes going to anything other than their own personal aggrandizement is a deeply offensive idea. And they are so willing to resist doing anything positive for the world that they spend enormous amounts of money to create propaganda networks to convince others that they don’t owe anyone a single cent of their fortunes. They buy ad campaigns to convince people that taxing them is bad, spending in some cases more money than the taxes would cost them… all because they firmly believe no one but themselves should see even the tiniest benefit from their money.
The legitimate reasons for discontentment have existed for a long time, but I suspect that powerful people have found a way to capitalize on it en masse. They’re taking the kernel of truth (that the mainstream political options aren’t being effective) and directing people to solutions that benefit themselves.
Idk if it happening internationally is just collateral damage, if they’re trying to operate internationally, or other powerful people elsewhere have just learned from the previous successes.
So no, I don’t think there is a trigger event, so much as reaching a critical mass. They’ve come into the means of control (digital media making distribution of ideas so cheap, making manipulation of media exposure so easy), and a public who is so used to being lied to and mislead that they can’t identify trustworthy sources (FUD), and they’re striking while the iron is hot.
Ah, I see. So it’s more like a ‘tipping point’ that’s built up over a long time?
I think so. And they’ve certainly helped us toward a that tipping point, but there is no single event that got us there.
Imo that is. I’m not exactly a political scientist.
In the early 2000s in Europe, many governments significantly worsened social services, including “centre-left” governments like Blair in the UK and Schröder in Germany. This eroded trust in the established parties, and the large influx of migrants from 2015 on in many European coutries on was easily exploited by rightwing parties. Add the significant rightwing bias of US social media that dominates the social media landscape in most western countries and voila, people voting for neonazi parties en masse.