this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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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.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

This is because our empires declined, since which we’ve hidden behind Uncle Sam’s skirts, and now US hegemony is also beginning to fade. People go to reactionary populism when they’re afraid.

[–] IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago* (last edited 10 minutes ago)

I'm afraid of the reacrionaries, they're destroying my country, i fully expect to be genocided; where's my suthoritarian?

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Schizo rant about media manipulation

We are isolated from the right wing side of it here but propaganda is dominating most media. Its really sophisticated and resourced by different states and groups.

On mainstream platforms open Nazi imagery and ideas go viral in hyper specific pockets. Its targeted at groups they think will be suspectable then those groups adopt it, wash it and then spread it. At this point its several stages in and most of the work is done by actual people for free.

They compile emotional imagery, videos and stories and blast them in the face of average people and it baits them hook line and sinker. If you can show a 35 year old white women clips of vicious attacks on women from refugees of the course of the year she will internalise it and become radical. These dont have to be recent she just needs to see them regularly. Strip context, make up different narratives for the same clip it doesnt matter.

With the lovely invention of social media and targeted advertising you can get your message put in front of these average people. People dont choose what they see, they just view what comes across their feed.

[–] Vupware@lemmy.zip 3 points 57 minutes ago

If you want to get a glimpse of the hellscape in which our adversaries are conditioned, I would urge you to peruse the MSN start page in Edge.

I’m forced to use Edge at my job. It’s honestly not bad. It even has a built in PDF editor!

However, every time my eyes glance at that start screen, my blood pressure skyrockets. It’s all blatant propaganda.

The best/worst part? THERE ARE COMMENTS…

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 19 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] MisterOwl@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago

Nah, the human species is finally being honest. This is what we are. We are shit.

[–] selkiesidhe@sh.itjust.works 36 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

You'd think what's going on in what used to be the US (now a crater of burning shit) would have been a lesson for the rest of you.

Do Not Vote Con If You Don't Want Life To Suck.

[–] Treetrimmer@sh.itjust.works 14 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Stupid euros always talking mad shit about hep they're better than us and turn around and do the same dumb shit

[–] Surp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Lol welcome to Lemmy tho

[–] Renohren@lemmy.today 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

It's going to be worse than you have. Not the same, living there, seeing the things: Europe is on the verge of going the hardest right wing way again, trumpism will look like amateur far-right compared to what is about to go down here.

[–] IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 points 7 minutes ago

Idk. Were already just blackbagging brown and homeless people off the street for concentration camps, queers are probably next. Unless you skip straight to the killing part

[–] Jiggle_Physics@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 hours ago

While it didnt kill the right wing populist parties, it did stall many of their efforts to get their chosen leaders into office. We shall see how the all shakes out.

[–] ur_ONLEY_freind@lemmy.zip 38 points 7 hours ago (5 children)

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

[–] Witchfire@lemmy.world 34 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Billionaires learned how to use the world wide web as an AI powered disinformation network

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 30 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

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 9 points 6 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.

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[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

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

Asimov's second foundation spoilers

spoilerAs 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 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 1 points 39 minutes 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 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago

This is true. But at the same time, a THIRD of our population ACTUALLY IS dumb and brainwashed. How the fuck do you fix that?

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[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.
[–] IzzyJ@lemmy.world 1 points 4 minutes ago

I don't want to love on this planet anymore

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[–] fluxixx@piefed.social 70 points 9 hours ago (5 children)

Man it's the 1920s all over again!

This is so depressing. I remember 10 years ago seeing how the world was changing, I was full of hope for the future, we were slowly becoming more socially accepting of minorities and it seemed to be slightly getting better. Now the progress didn't stop, it fucking reversed and shit is so much worse than it was. This makes me really sad.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 17 points 7 hours ago

We are speedrunning robber-barrons through WW-II in one shot this time. What a ride. Can I get off, please?

[–] thoro@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours ago

That's why it's a called a "reaction"

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 20 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (4 children)

The people pretending they cared about the gays and the minorities ignored people's basic human needs.

That's how we got here.

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[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Anyone who speaks the language / can go through to that RTL site able to tell us the specifics of the poll done? Like what was used for a sample, confidence level, etc.

One thing I've seen in other areas are polls claiming broad support for right wing politics, based on internet polls that have huge bias / confidence issues -- like in Canada, they claim Alberta's suddenly separatist, based on online polls where they can't verify the respondents were even in Alberta. Elevating that sort of non-poll to news-worthy story is likely a combination of click bait journalism and right-wing/US propaganda biased.

[–] Rekhyt@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

A Wild Mimic's info is what you asked for, but for what it's worth, you can just look at the election that happened earlier this year to see if it passes the smell test (and it does):

The AFD won 20% of the vote in the election earlier this year and then the incoming chancello passed a policy with the old parliament (as leader of the opposition still) that would change a financial rule that would have no chance to pass once the new parliament was seated (because the AFD and most of his own party opposed the change), so a lot of the people who voted CDU/CSU (his party) felt betrayed and said "fuck it, I'll vote AFD next time"

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Die Daten zu den Parteipräferenzen, zur politischen Kompetenz und zu den Wirtschaftserwartungen wurden vom Markt- und Meinungsforschungsinstitut forsa im Auftrag von RTL Deutschland im Zeitraum vom 5. bis 11. August 2025 erhoben. Datenbasis: 2.505 Befragte. Statistische Fehlertoleranz: +/- 2,5 Prozentpunkte.

Die Daten zur Zufriedenheit mit Friedrich Merz sowie zum Fortbestand der Regierungskoalition wurden im selben Zeitraum (bzw. vom 8. bis 11. August 2025) erhoben. Datenbasis: 1.001 Befragte. Statistische Fehlertoleranz: +/- 3 Prozentpunkte.

(rough) Translation:

Data for party preference, political competence and the expectations for market development were collected by market- and opinion research institute forsa for RTL Germany in the time frame from 5. to 11. August 2025. Basis for analysis: n=2505, error tolerance +/- 2,5 percent points.

Data for approval of Friedrich Merz and about the continuation of the coalition in power were collected in the same time frame (or rather from 8. to 11. August 2025). Basis for analysis: n=1001, error tolerance +/- 3 percent points.

I looked up the current ownership structure of RTL, which is owned mainly by the Bertelsmann Group; It doesn't look like there was much bias at play here on a cursory glance.

[–] wampus@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

Thanks, I appreciate the help.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 23 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

The US is a huge cautionary tale that other countries would do well to heed. I see "Why don't the Americans do something??" all the time, but meanwhile, your country is creeping towards the same conclusion. "We'll do something to stop it if it gets too bad!" Yeah, that's what we said while the far-right continued to gather support.

[–] r0ertel@lemmy.world 9 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I thought Nazism, Hitler and WWII was the cautionary tale? I wasn't present at the time, but i heard that Bad Things happened.

I also thought that after WWII, systems were put in place to ensure that it would not happen again. Where are these systems and why aren't they working?

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago

I thought Nazism, Hitler and WWII was the cautionary tale?

It was. We fucked up. Badly. Now we're another cautionary tale.

[–] commander@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Right after WW2 pretty much every European country that still had colonial holdings in the Americas, Africa, and Asia went straight back to ruling them with a iron fist. Wars swept across the world outside of Europe and the Anglosphere. Wars of independence.

To that point I don't think there were truly any safeguards put in place for minorities. Really it was just ban Nazi imagery and formation of European trade zones that would progressively include more governance cooperation eventually forming the EU.

The safeguards in place were done to prevent EU member states from waring with each other, not safeguards for minorities or anyone outside of EU member states. Solution for Jewish people wasn't to make the EU safer for Jewish people, it was to take land elsewhere and make Israel. Anyone outside of EU member states including colonial holdings were fair game for mass destruction. A lot is made about the civil rights era in the US, European countries had there own versions of that too. The lesson of WW2 was that war sucks, wars should be fought on other continents, move the Jews to Israel. Modern civil rights in European countries had to be fought for as well post-WW2 but I think it was easier there because the minority groups were much smaller in number compared to the US so there was less racist blowback against social safety nets that non-whites could benefit from. Minorities were politically irrelevant until the past couple decades once the children grew up and population sizes grew and they started making it into significant political offices and corporate leadership positions. Now racists started feeling insecure a lot more regularly against the growing number of successful and visible minorities. People that were certain they weren't racist are finding themselves racist as minority populations are now in their surroundings rather than just a passing mention

[–] RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world 9 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

My fellow Europeans, fight! Keep fighting until we drive them back to their basements!

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 6 hours ago

Honestly, this is way past that point now.

I know an otherwise perfectly normal middle-aged woman who has booked herself train tickets to a pro-Tommy Robinson protest march in London next month.

It's not National Front skinheads with dog whistle tattoos any more. It's hit the normies. If they want the normies back, the ruling parties are going to have to stop putting asylum seekers in local hotels in shithole towns like mine, because it's just going to take a spark to set this whole country ablaze right now. They need to get processing people to an insane level, build actual accommodation to house them (because this isn't stopping any time soon).

The whole asylum process needs a radical overhaul, like being able to apply for it without having to trek across the world (go to an embassy for example, and then get distributed to countries according to their means). If they carry on with this "we have to take them in because they made it to our country and it's the law" routine, the whole continent will fall to fascism. If sane rulers do not listen to the people, they will turn to monsters to fix their perceived problems.

[–] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's easy to blame Russia and China, but it's not really that. It's clear that this is a symptom that something is wrong, and that is stagnating or worsening living conditions, unhappiness with how society operates and people hearing that turn to reaction.

Left doesn't have an answer given how marginalized they are, all you get are center-lib parties that pretend everything is okay or that focus on liberal middle class issues. It's no surprise

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 5 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

The problem is simply humanity. At any given moment in time, there are a lot of these ugly, angry, nasty, unhappy people, and they want control of everything so they can take their anger out on those they hate. This is a natural human archetype. They are with us now, and they have ALWAYS been with us. The are the MAGAs and the European far right, they are the warlords that run various small nations, they are the Vikings, the Huns, the Mongols, the Romans, etc.

It was the Nazis in the 20th century, it's the MAGAs in the 21st. It's not that MAGA is copying the Nazis, they are both the same sort of people following the agenda that those people always follow - just generally making life miserable for as many innocent people as possible.

The archetype includes being arrogant and demanding, but that doesn't mean we have to allow it. Most of the time, a strong moral leader can keep the assholes at bay, but every now and then, someone drops the ball, and they gain power, and start fucking with the world. The 21st century Dems dropped the ball badly, over and over, and did nothing to prepare for the MAGA onslaught.

Even after decades of the worst possible election behavior, the Dems instantaneously defended MAGA, and declared the 2024 election "fair & square," before even waiting to see if there had been any review of the election at all. These people are treasonous criminals who will do literally anything. This election was the ONLY thing keeping him from getting a life sentence, how could anyone believe that this is the first election that he didn't cheat on?

We aren't going to defeat these people by appealing to their better nature, they have none. It's who they are, and who these people have always been. We tend to forget from generation to generation that we have to hold the line against the worst people in the world, because they are out there, and they are ALWAYS planning to take control. It's important to remember that, and fight them every single step of the way. We can't accept any excuses like we have to let them do it because we don't really know that the outcome will be bad until we do it. Yes we do, because we've let these people have their way over and over, and they ALWAYS kick us in the nuts.

We need to stop trying to kick the football that our enemy is holding.

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