I’ve been telling Europeans this!
Not in a “I told you so” way, more of a cold bucket of water in the face. There’s this attitude like there’s no way a set of Trumplikes could win power in Germany, France, Sweden, Swizerland, the Nordic countries and such like they did in the US, but its already happening!
Its exactly what Americans thought right up until the instant he won, and didnt go away.
Ironically this is what has been exasperating me about Canada lately (as someone from US), unlike the US and Europe, Canada saw Trump get elected and then actually did wake the fuck up and they turned around and elected Carney instead of Polievre… but now it doesn’t really feel like maybe much of Canada understands that they just pulled the handbrake and powerslided narrowly out of a catastrophe… and Carney isn’t in any sense an alternative or a solution, but rather a plug shoved into the dam.
I say the above statements with the caveat that I know that many Canadians know this, I just see Carney getting contextualized as if he really was what Canada needed or wanted in the moment, he was the best alternative! Remember that!!! Don’t let the media turn him into a hero if he doesn’t actually back up his bold speeches with bold progressive actions.
The really dangerous thing in my opinion here is when centrist status quo managers begin to lose a belief that if they screw over the average person enough they will turn on not just the people shittier than them (conservatives spouting violent and racist rhetoric), but them too. This is the opening all extremist, rightwing and violent movements exploit.
Ultimately this is a story as old as time right? The wealthy elite jam up systematic change and squeeze the structures that sustain them until one awful day a breaking point is reached and people decide they want everything to burn damn it all, at which point the wealthy elite point at the coming wall of fire and say incredulously “Why!!? This burns down the homes of the poor people and good elites too!!? That is irrational!” right before they are swallowed in the firestorm.
The kinds of people like Carney and Biden sleepwalked us up to this brink of collapse in fascism, which doesn’t make them worse than fascists, it just makes them the necessary precursor to fascism, like how you have to dig a hole to plant a tree…
There are only two choices, embrace bold, hopeful policies and visions that address the suffering in people that causes that desire to burn everything down, or wait until your society becomes so brittle and weak that it shatters into violence and chaos. There is no “Third Way”.
Carney was also in the exact right place at the right time, no? A central banker already in the race when a trade crisis erupts; you can’t make that stuff up.
but now it doesn’t really feel like Canada understands that they just pulled the handbrake and powerslided narrowly out of a catastrophe… and Carney isn’t in any sense an alternative or a solution, but rather a plug shoved into the dam.
Unfortunately, voters dont think very long term, in aggregate. We just have to hope the short term aligns with the long.
…when centrist status quo managers begin to lose a belief that if they screw over the average person enough they will turn on not just the people shittier than them (conservatives spouting violent and racist rhetoric), but them too. This is the opening all extremist, rightwing and violent movements exploit.
And their supporters, too. I distinctly remember all the hand-wringing from fiscal conservatives in the US that co-opted the far-right forever… they are all but extinct, now.
I’m afraid Europe isnt in such a “fortuitous” crisis though. The countries mostly dont have economic apocalypse and annexation hanging over their head, nor an obvious “solution” like Carney, excepting the countries near Russia and Ukraine (who seem to have woken up).
The thing that totally breaks my brain about European conservatives is how blatantingly they support russia, parts of the German military are wildly concerning for how sympathetic they are to russia and Putin, and yet the public attention of Europe is held firm with a leather glove on fearmongering about desperate immigrants goaded into tragic political stunts and how Europe needs to give tons of money to fascist rightwing leaders to be tough enough to fight russia… and how societies have to close themselves down and engage in cultural and geographic isolationism to protect themselves… when the opposite is desperately true.
What European conservatives want is the same as russia wants ultimately, which is for the movement of the poor and working class to be heavily restricted between countries while the flow of goods, money and power in the hands of the rich are given absolute freedom.
How the hell does anyone look at the state of far-right politics globally and think ‘I want that for my country’?
Propaganda.
Letting Tiktok, Meta and X do their thing equals letting chinese and and nazi state media broadcast directly 30 years ago.
Right wing morons WANT fascism because they think the pain is only for people that seem different than themselves. That kind of hate doesn’t follow logic.
Yeah from the perspective of the US it feels like I fell into a sewage pit and started yelling for help until a bunch of people saw me from the rim… at which point they start clapping and cheering and charge down the hill as fast they can to join me like they are chasing a cheese wheel.
It is horrifying madness.
TLDR: Because neoliberals are leading us into oblivion. The current state of politics in Europe is completely dysfunctional. Just as Trump is a symptom of economic and political collapse, so this this.
Like are you for or against Europe joining sanctions against Iran? Are you for or against Europe enacting sanctions against Israel and the USA? Find one of the established parties that is on the right side of these things.
Say what you want but I think “Le Pen has pledged to take France out of NATO and the US sphere of influence” is wildly popular. You say Le Pen is insane and people voting for it is insane, but the alternative parties and media you consume are insane as well. People are increasingly in a dream world and blaming Russia or China for all our own failings (including far right parties).
Just to be clear I do not support Le Pen’s racist and Islamophobic rhetoric one bit and do not intent so vote for any far right party. But there isn’t a single sane electable mass party right now in Europe that hasn’t continued to support the US and Israel in their genocide and imperialism. I think only Spain’s Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón and suddenly found himself in lots of “scandals”, but I have to read up on that.
Europe is chaining itself to the collapsing US empire. None of them spoke out against the attacks on Iran or Venezuela. They are cowards not leaders and will bring Europe to ruin. I strongly dislike the far right politics - but the cause of that is neoliberal politics so I hate them more.
It’s INEVITABLE these parties will come to power. INEVITABLE! Why? Because people simple do not like more and more immigrants, refugees or otherwise foreigners in their countries. They simply don’t. There could be like a billion refugees until 2050. This is some basic animal instinct shit that you can’t argue away. And by painting ANY sensible policy against immigration as fascist they actually strengthened the actual fascists like Le Pen or AFD in Germany or Örebro in Sweden.
And because our economic future is bleak and the neoliberals have captured all mainstream parties and believe in NOTHING. They know nothing but do more neoliberalism.
And not everyone is so crazy about confronting Russia and escalating to WWIII. Why would any halfway selfish person in Europe want to ruin their own country over Ukraine? Fuck NATO.
So what’s left? Either hard right or hard left.
And the democratic socialist parties almost face MORE resistance and smears against them in the media.
I agree except people have no inevitable disdain for immigrants, what determines that is culture not genetics or instinct.
Probably the wrong word. Deep fears? I think as long as there is prosperity and some sane media and education you can have immigrants / refugees. But we’ve seen a big rise in numbers over the last two decades and face economic doom. Some European countries are now 5-8% Muslim (even though only like a quarter are actually practicing). I don’t think it’s so much that they are different, it’s that people fear there won’t be enough for everyone. And neoliberal policies do love immigrants to depress wages. And imperialist conflicts in the last decades have produced refugees en masse. Plus a gigantic wave due to climate change.
Ideally Europe would massively invest into technology to produce more food / calories on minimal land, clean water and how to build massive green metropolis’s with very low energy footprint and circular economies that can sustain themselves mostly. So we can harbor refugees in Europe or build these cities in their home countries. The alternative is genocide.
Even better if Europe stopped supporting shitty rulers in Africa and helped African people to have a better life on their own country.
I don’t think it’s so much that they are different, it’s that people fear there won’t be enough for everyone.
Yes which is why immigrants are existentially necessary in societies both to provide an influx of younger people looking to find a new life and more abstractly immigrants are necessary to counteract the ingrown tendency of cultures to secrete themselves in their ways and resist change until they are obliterated.
The future requires change and adaption, which means to get to the future we must embrace what immigrants provide rather than keep tiptoeing around dehumanizing them as much as we can without saying it outright.
We have enough food, the starvation and suffering the world is experiencing right now is a feature not a bug.
Actual left parties, I won’t call them hard left as that’s in relation to the conservatives that seized control of the so called center left parties, suck.
Look at France unbowed, they aren’t popular enough to win, yet they don’t change what they are doing, not their positions, not their delivery. We already know we are being ganged up on by all mainstream parties with no powerful support to speak of unlike the far right.
Yet here we are, doing the same goddamned thing. The left is fucking worthless politically at this moment in time, unless we take control and change things.
They are looking at the right wing through the prism of rw oligarch controlled media. It’s like they are getting their news from the palantir (seeing stones,) with sauron on another stone mind fucking their dumbasses.
They tend not to think.
Internet and billionare-owned media have helped with this greatly.
well, when after a long boring day at work, or at home cause unemployed/selfemployed or retired, you watch TV/news/sn and see that foreigners get everything for free, without even working, and bitching about La France, yes thoose ones who are always causing problems and making violences against beautiful french people, allied with leftists, and ecologists that want to take our liberty with their standards and regulations, after few months of hearing this speech you begin to integrate it.
disclaimer : yes it was sacarsm.
problem : many people have the same speech, and it is so similar that it becomes obvious they did not think about it from themselves, it is propaganda digested and spat. Billionnaires bought medias, and thoose media are normalizing hate speech since almost a decade now.
Apologies for bad wording, I’m a bit angry cause this lobotomy is reaching people closer and closer. Even people I thought had a brain are now braindead, please be careful guys and don’t pause your critical thinking when consuming news.
Some hope : thoose surveys are shit.
I have always said: the people I hate MOST in this world are not the billionaires, but the fucking PROPAGANDISTS that actually make the billionaires wishes possible.
There is no punishment too horrid, no bridge too far, for what I’d want to have happen to these fucking scum that literally destroy society. I don’t wish death on them, I wish for perpetual medieval style torture for them. Keep them living but keep them in an iron maiden.
France, please be smart.
le gulp
I thought they found her guilty of something and barred her from running for office. Or am I thinking of another French politician?
She was found guilty of embezzlement of public funds, one of the worse crime for a politician. She was condemned to ineligiblity to run for office but she filled an appeal.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/31/g-s1-57262/france-marine-le-pen-embezzlement-verdict
She was found guilt which if I remember correctly prevented her from running in the municipal elections (which she wasn’t planning to run for anyways) but she can still run for president. she also has to wear an electronic bracelet to track her, she said she would not run for president with it and has tried to appeal the decision, if the court finds she has to wear it, Jordan Bardella the new president of her party (RN) will most likely run in her place
Did they fire the old writers for this season of Reality or something? It really seems like the quality of the villain plotlines has shit the bed. There is no subtlety and all of them are blazing idiots.
Always good to check who did the poll, who commissioned it and what are the significant numbers.
Published on Monday and conducted by Toluna Harris Interactive for French broadcasters RTL and M6, the poll predicts Le Pen to win and be at least 16 points ahead of any other candidate.
The poll, which surveyed 1,764 people registered to vote in France aged 18 or over
I don’t know about Toluna Harris Interactive, I can’t judge their seriousness and neutrality. RTL, is a radio with a political alignment to the right. 1764 people answer the poll, when the number of registered voters in France is just shy of 50 millions.
Polls like this are massively utilized as a campaigning tool. They are used as “neutral facts” dictating the outcome of the election, when they rarely are. In the past few major elections in France, countless polls have given RN or Marine LePen as the winners. They still haven’t won.
Let’s not forget that Marine LePen and many of her associates have been found guilty of corruption and stealing 2.8 million Euros from the EU, in 2 separate courts of law. This also has an impact on her voters-base.
1764 people answer the poll, when the number of registered voters in France is just shy of 50 millions
That in itself doesn’t invalidate the poll. There are standard statistical methods for figuring out how many people you need to ask to get a representative sample and it can be a lot less than one might imagine. But whether people were really chosen in an unbiased way is another question. A good survey will publish its methodology.
How much help is she getting from Musk/Trump/Putin/Xi/Kim?
Not as much as from Macron
She is a woman though, so she can’t really be in JD Vance’s Boy’s Only Club.
I wish someone would just assassinate these far right individuals. The people are obviously too stupid or hateful to stop them, so it falls on the benevolent few I suppose who can find an opportunity to strike.
Maybe we just need another pandemic to cull the herd of some more of the idiots.
Far better if these scumbags end up dead while doing erotic asphyxiation and having a giant dildo on their asses, all recorded and live steam.
You fool, martyring these incompetent rightwing fascists is the only thing that could allow the far right to craft a true hero.
They need you to play the part, so then they can step in and convince everyone else to stomp you brutally down with the boot.
None of the leaders of the far right parties can govern… ANYWHERE ON EARTH, which doesn’t mean that far right parties aren’t wielding immense power all over the world but NONE of their leaders are competent at it, and the way forward to fighting that is turning a mirror on the leaders of these parties not as a way to distract from the evil of the far right parties backing them but rather to make the point that every far right leader is the same hateful idiot with the same failed plan.
Fascism is the height of incompetence but nothing hides incompetence better than violence.
I’m fine if they want to be a martyr. I haven’t heard Charlie Kirk spread any of his hatred recently. Kinetic solutions seem to be working.
If that was your take away from Charlie Kirk, you have a very warped and distorted view of reality.
Charlie Kirk immediately became a platform to test the whole rainbow of artillery barrages the far right has ready for when/if there is a “genuinely leftwing” attack.
It is pathetic that you think it is cowardly and ineffective not to desire pointless violence on the figureheads of fascist movements when you don’t realize you are just screaming at everyone to charge headfirst into the beartrap with you.
Take your calls for violence elsewhere.
Tolerance of fascists and allowing them to live has resulted in them festering and gaining more and more power. I think we should change tactics because the live and let live/debate them instead approach hasn’t been working and, if anything, has allowed them to undo decades of progress. I’d rather we finally try out John Brown’s approach.
Exactly!
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Yeah I’d take this poll with a big pinch of salt. The french electorate is very divided, split 1/3 each between Left, Right and Centre. No candidate is going to win the 1st round, and the 2nd round is quite different from the 1st.
In the 1st voters vote for who they want, but in the 2nd many voters are voting against the candidate the hate the most. If Le Pen comes first in the first round, it’s really all about who she’s facing. If it’s Melenchon then things will be unpredictable as it’ll come down to who the centrists vote for - and there are plenty on the right who would never vote for Melenchon. However if shes against a centrist, then she’s more likely to lose even if they’re deeply unpopular now, because they’re the easier “anyone but Le Pen”.
The outcome of the election is very unpredictable; no one is going to give any idea of what the outcome might be until closer to the election in April and even then it’ll probably be down to the wire.
If it’s Melenchon then things will be unpredictable as it’ll come down to who the centrists vote for - and there are plenty on the right who would never vote for Melenchon. However if shes against a centrist, then she’s more likely to lose even if they’re deeply unpopular now, because they’re the easier “anyone but Le Pen”.
Where is the evidence of this? This assumption proved catastrophic in US elections, Biden was an awful choice to run against Trump and so was Harris.
