I think the rise of populism/ultra-nationalism/far-right is the residual effects of the end of the Cold War. For over three decades the Western Democracies tried to build the narrative of the Other World to justify their policies and actions. They ended up (intentionally or otherwise) creating a fertile ground for Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, and whatnot.
You will notice that while the Populists champion the economic grievances, they are inherently racists.
It would be interesting when/how policy is made/enacted and what trade offs/Faustian pacts are knowingly made. Whitehall/Pentagon/somewhere similar, deep calculations based on politico/socio/economic trends are made and projections put forward to ultimately inform on policy.
As the custodial of a country can one really bet on “Imagine” by a Liverpudlian?
When it comes to the west it’s precarity and lack of dignity.
When your ‘free’ and end up living with your parents until your 40 or more that hurts.
‘They’ want what their parents had and it’s not forth coming.
‘They’ are so uneducated and stupid they think voting for far right will help. Exclude handycapped peaople from the welfare system = more money for me syndrome.
I would say that the cold war helped to creat an economy and tyhe end of it caused states to reduce defense spent which was an important part of many countries economies. Still the biggest problem is surely the ever increasing gap between rich and poor, which is causing the middle class to shrink daily which means less money is circulating in each country.
More shameful shit……
Whenever the CDU tries to move to the right their voters move to the centre. I seem to recall that when they tried something similar it ended well for the Greens and FPD.
I’ve never quite worked out where the core of the AfD vote comes from but it isn’t the educated or the socially conservative.
I suspect the current rise in AfD support is linked to the collapse of Die Linke.
AfD is now dominating the eastern region where Die Linke used to be strong.
Any idea how the recent break-up of the Left is going to play out?
TBH I’m not sure. The Bundestag requires 5% of the vote so a party requires a certain head of steam before they are a realistic voting option.
Die Linke and AfD are both populist parties offering simplistic solutions to complex problems. They tend to fall flat if elected because their policies don’t work in the real world.
The big problem with the former Eastern states (outside Berlin) is that they suffered from years of depopulation which was exacerbated after reunification because anyone with a skill or education was free to move to the more prosperous (mainly Western) cities.
The AfD are quick to blame the usual suspects: immigrants, the “elite”, capitalism etc but they really aren’t held up to scrutiny. Most of their campaigns is online and when they are mentioned in mainstream media it is usually because they have said something offensive or anti-constitutional which they then frame in their victim narrative.
The odd thing is that a vote for the AfD is most likely to result in a CDU-SPD or CDU-Grünen government.
Easy, give it to me!
Sounds like European version of Nigerian Prince scams coming up
At its heart, conservative politics was never about fixing problems in the broad sense. It is about getting the most of the economy as it is for themselves. It is about viewing the economy as a zero sum game and then wanting to control the situation so that the most possible gets syphoned off to them. Few traditional conservatives ever articulated it that way, but you understand the throughline to MAGA-far right politics ones you see it that way.
I think it also explains the horseshoe theory pretty well. There is a demographic on the left, especially the online left who are pretty nihilistic. The perfect is always the enemy of the good…the person who they argued for 2 months ago is now a ghoul because they said one thing they dont agree with. If its not 100% it’s nothing. The direction of change there is to demand more and more purity from a political system that simply can never deliver that even if run by someone with 100% ideological alignment, and if that goes far enough the nihilism takes over to conclude that government can never work the way they want it to and so the only thing left is to figure out how to get theirs out of an economy/society that is never going to be fair.
I had a good friend in university who was superficially your typical college republican. Raised on Regan and all the beliefs in bootstrap, personal responsibility politics and ended up going to work in DC for the GOP. What was unusual for its time was despite the otherwise “respectability” of his politics, this was his perspective that he very unambiguously argued. There was no pretense about how the conservative interpretations of lafer curve were real - he just didnt believe the government could spend that money in a way that gave him better benefit than if he got to keep it and spend it himself. That thought does not need to be extended very far before it gives way to full fledged nihilism where you no longer think there is any value in trying to improve anything, and next think you know every new immigrant is a threat to your slice of the pie. Like I said, there is very clear throughline from that Regan/Bush conservatism to Maga politics and so it is not much of a surprise to me to see that guy who I once thought was the most respectable and understandable form of politics I did not agree with is now a full blooded MAGA chode. And other than the loss of decorum, his arguments are not that much different than they were in the mid 90s.
His party scored 1.3% of votes in 2019’s election but jumped to 7.3% in 2022 and has since climbed by about 19%.
Three million Muslims, one million of them Italian citizens, just five authorized mosques. 
With EU elections only three months away, this has been all over the news here in France , and presumably all over the union. It seems , belatedly , member states are finally starting to take seriously the destabilising danger of malign Russian influence operations. Free to read.
More disturbing shit…