• Stovetop@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    From the outside looking in, it does feel like Germany and France are ignoring a lot of the warning signs that other countries have fallen into with regards to rising fascist movements.

    Germany’s always seemed like this semi-utopic heart of Europe that learned all the right lessons from its history and miraculously emerged free and strong despite everything. But I’m worried there’s been more laurel-resting than progress as of late, and the seeds of discontent are taking root.

    • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Civilization is never more than two missed meals away from collapse. In a more general sense, existential threats (or the perception thereof) erode civility and make people susceptible to tribal thinking.

      We (Germany) have a number of such threats:

      • Several immigration and refugee waves.
      • A flagging economy due to the impeding loss of several once-reliable markets. (China lost its appetite for German cars and the States have been increasingly volatile in recent years.) The German economy is very export-oriented.
      • Rising food costs due to the Ukraine war.
      • COVID-19.
      • The housing crisis.
      • Climate change.
      • The whole woke/anti-woke thing.
      • An increasing perception of all established political parties as useless or even actively detrimental.
      • The botched reunification. The Eastern federal countries have been disappointed by the mainstream parties so severely and continually that populists like the AfD can easily find an audience.
      • A (now defunct) government coalition where one of the parties had no interest in actually cooperating with the others, the second one has a recent-ish reputation for having no idea what they’re doing, and the third one is the target of a sustained attack meme campaign. Oh, and the chancellor had a corruption scandal.

      Add to that the massive online presence of the hard right and you get a lot of people who stop caring about civility and start caring about simple solutions to complex problems.

      • shaserlark@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        Although the immigration and refugee waves have only become an issue due to the right wing narrative of a great replacement that got fueled by mainstream media and what were formerly centrist politicians. It was never actually as much of an issue as the other things you mentioned are.

    • lulztard@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      We’ve had nothing but politicians working with americanism and populism for the last 25 years, people have become stupid and lazy. I remember the last time a right-wing populist party had 30% votes, the day before the election it came to light that they planned to work with extremist/nazis. They dropped below 5% over night.

      Today the same situation just led to even more people voting for that party.

      Only 40 years apart.