this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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Canβt protect democracy if the electorate is idiots.
The electorate has been systematically driven into the arms of of those people by both the political establishment and the media for decades.
The political establishment has contended itself with turning austerity into some kind of state religion and administrating the resulting shortages. Whenever this has lead to discontent, they were happy enough to jump on the far right's bandwagon and adopted their talking points because they deluded themselves that they could get back lost votes this way, rather than admitting that they had caused the problems themselves and even trying to rectify them. The media have happily been helping this process along by rarely questioning the never ending austerity at the expense of the middle and lower classes, while parroting every single far right talking point. Now we're reaping what has been sowed in the past decades.
That the far right makes disproportional gains in the East is no surprise, as the East, especially its rural regions, has been systematically sold out and run down even further than under the GDR since reunification.
I think there have been studies that showed people vote for the AfD because they are racists and fascists and not because they're somehow left behind or don't feel included. However, I do think racism is driven up by our current capitalist society where we have to fight for the scraps the billionaire class deems sufficient for us. This makes it much easier to hate every foreign person, because you feel there will be even less scraps left for you.
People have been racists and fascists before the AfD, too. But there wasn't a political climate that allowed anyone to publicly support a fascist and/or racist party without instantly being ostracised. As a result, fascist and racist parties were getting relatively little positive publicity and their election results were so meager that an attempt to ban the NPD failed for the simple reason of them not posing a realistic threat to democracy.
The entire political spectrum shifting towards the right, and the media increasingly taking up the far right's talking points, giving them a platform and positive publicity has emboldened the fascists and racists who previously would rather vote something else than throwing their vote away for a party that's not going to make it anyway to vote for the AfD. The reaction of the political establishment has been, rather than opposing their rhetoric, adopting their talking points, to such an extent that recently an AfD politician publicly boasted how the AfD doesn't even need to be in government in order to make changes, because everyone is doing their bidding anyway.
That's a big problem indeed and a large part of the current political climate. And instead of offering an alternative to the rat race, all relevant political parties have embraced and furthered it. There is a big vacuum on the left side of the political spectrum, a lot of the supposedly "left" political parties are neoliberal capitalists through and through and contend themselves with feel good leftism for a very small bubble of privileged (pseudo) intellectuals. Most people don't give a shit about things like gendered language (or are annoyed by it), but would instead be very much interested in making ends meet and having a life worth living with their hard earned income. But there is little to no classic working class leftism left in the left end of the political spectrum, at least not with any relevant party.
Actually Piketty writes about this in his book "capital and ideology". The left has been slowly losing support in the lower education classes which traditionally voted left, this has apparently been going on since the 1960s/70s. They either went to conservatives or stopped voting. Now that there is a new party that claims to actually listen to their concerns (even if they won't actually solve any of these concerns) causes them to flock to that party. They have been disappointed by everyone in the political system and the populists are using this to their advantage.
The left, for the most part, has also shifted away from traditional working class leftism towards a bizarre kind of ivory tower leftism catering to a relatively small bubble of people in higher education and is tearing itself apart with perpetual infighting over ridiculous and inconsequential things.
This new left has little to nothing to offer for the working class. If you ever heard them speak or tried to read their pamphlets, you might wonder whether they are actually reaching the working class at all, because the works of this new left tend to be infuriatingly tedious to listen to and/or read and are very capable of giving anyone a mighty headache. Additionally, the centre left has gone full neoliberal, as /u/LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee already said here. This might account for a lot of the people who gave up on voting. (Ever wondered why the SPD keeps scoring worse and worse every election? They abandoned the notion of being a working class party, and people are finally catching onto it)
Yep that's why the left is losing voters. This is, somewhat funnily, a result of them being partly successful. One of their main programs they actually achieved back then was to make education more accessible to the lower classes. While the education systems still have a lot of flaws, they are more egalitarian than they used to be. Percentages of people with higher education have exploded. (This is of course also driven by market demand and that's why the liberals supported these policies to an extent making them possible). With this they split their former voting group into academics and non-academics. But they source a lot more party-personelle from the academic portion which leads to a feedback-loop that favours the academics. Since academics tend to have higher incomes and sometimes accumulate a little wealth they'd like to keep, the left depending on these voters looks a lot like the parties that always wanted to protect higher incomes and wealth.
The ones that were left behind by that development are the ones that got turned away from the left.
The "market demand" is insane, the amount of bullshit jobs that can be done by a trained monkey but supposedly require a whole bunch of high level degrees for comparatively low pay is just ridiculous.
The entire "labour market" is broken and highly skewed in favour of corporations who can and will happily offload the training of their employees on the taxpayer while avoiding paying any taxes themselves wherever possible.
Yeah that's true. But the market demands it nonetheless and thus liberals are happy to use public funds to further corporate goals, even if it means that there is also some egalitarian aspect to it.
This is a really good take, imho closest to what I believe to be the truth as well.
People vote for Nazis but the democratic parties and the media are to blame... Of course. It's never the Nazis who vote, it's always the others who made them do it who are at fault.
Fuck that. Get lost.
Nazis don't just become the way they are. There are reasons people flock to the far right. Not naming these reasons and being content with "Nazis will be Nazis" isn't productive.
Politics that consistently benefit the upper classes, while always framing the necessary helps for the weakest as stealing from the lower classes will get you there.
This didn't just happen, we did this to ourselves.
The established political parties and the media have created a societal climate in which it's no longer unacceptable to openly support Nazis. The entire political spectrum has shifted so far right that openly supporting a Nazi party isn't a taboo anymore. Thanks to that, people are now losing their inhibitions. On top of that, the established political parties have shown again and again that they don't give a flying shit about the wellbeing of the lower and middle classes. Of course, the Nazis don't either, but that doesn't matter to the people voting for them, because they are buying their propaganda, which is way too often just parroted by the media.
Please stay civil.
How about you go do that fuck off thing yourself. These movements need a failing political system in which to pedal their bullshit and the world's neoliberals have been more than happy to provide it for them.
History repeats itself even in this aspect. The original Nazis couldn't have come to power, weren't it for the Weimar Republic's political establishment turning into a colossal perpetual failure.
To be fair, at least in Saxony, the ruling CDU has fostered a complacent, uninvolved but ultimately unhappy populace for 30 years, because they thought that would keep them in their seats forever.