Social media

Elon.

Anti-immigration sentiment and Islamophobia have surged in Western and Central Europe, especially when many of the establishment parties have made moves to increase immigration, i.e. the Boriswave in the UK, enacted by the centre-right party that wooed voters just months earlier by promising to “Get Brexit Done.”

Can’t really elaborate on the rise of National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany, but here in the UK we’ve had grooming gang scandals that have led to several national inquiries, numerous protests focused around the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, and three riots in the last two years which were sparked by violent crimes.

Billionaires trying to distract people from their ever increasing wealth and the powerful people in positions of influence. Who owns the vast majority of media, at least in the global west?

It’s been seen so many times through history if the status quo is challenged find a scape goat. Every possible example can be seen, different religions, different skin colour, different political beliefs, different gender, different abilities, different sexuality, etc. As soon as power/money is threatened a different focus of hatred is found.

People are dissatisfied with the economy and the far-right says, “This is happening because of immigrants,” the left says, correctly, “This is happening because of billionaires,” while liberals just say, “This isn’t happening, everything is fine.” The far right’s narrative beats the liberal one because it at least acknowledges that people are struggling, even if the reasons and solutions it offers are totally wrong. Unless the economic conditions can be reversed, and the far-right are the only ones people see offering an alternative, the growth of the far-right is inevitable.

As for the left’s (correct) narrative that the billionaires are the problem, it has the advantage of actually being true and making sense, but it has the disadvantage of threatening monied interests, which are going to try their best to subvert and silence it. Billionaires will generally prefer to promote the far-right because it doesn’t threaten their interests.

However, the left’s narrative is the only thing that can really counter the right’s narrative. You can’t keep insisting there’s no problem as things get worse and worse and expect it to work. The left is weak right now and faces an uphill battle, but it’s a battle where there’s a possibility of winning, while the liberals are ultimately doomed.

The rest of the world sees the USA and says hold My beer, we can do it better

Stupidity, gullibility, and hate mostly.

Ever since Neoliberalism became dominat amongst mainstream “center” large parties in the West:

• Inequality has explode.
• Social Mobility has collapsed.
• The super-wealthy who are behind all of it because they paid the mainstream politicians to reduce their taxes, to have the State stop controlling, shapping or in any way participating in even the provision of life’s essentials (most notably housing), to enact policies that support big asset owners all paid for with austerity for those who income mainly comes from their work and to remove any and all oversight over money making activities, have been heavilly funding political parties that blame the consequences for the many (especially those at the lowest end of the wealth ladder) of all that on foreigners (“immigrants”, “foreign interference”) as well as News companies to parrot such ideas.

I mean, the first two things could also have made the (non-center, non-mainstream) leftwing grow, but unlike the far-right the people who have most of the wealth aren’t funding parties fighting for more equality or buying newspapers to have them spreading the idea that we should tax the rich more to pay for universal healthcare and high quality education for free or that the democratically elected state should have greater oversight over and participation in the provision of life’s essentials such as housing, so the left only ever advances amongst the well-informed and politically aware, not amongst whose beliefs come tabloid headlines, privatelly owned “news” channels and loudmouth “influencers” who make money from ragebaiting and reinforcing those views.

There are a few little leftwing victories here and there (the recent win of Die Linke in Berlin’s municipal elections, Mamdani’s election as Mayor of New York and so on), but almost all of the money and pretty much all the propaganda that passes for News nowadays is pushing rightwings views so of which being pretty much Fascist views.

I think it’s a combination of stupid people, misinformation, disinformation, and social media

Centrist governments aren’t doing shit to fix the problems people are having because they’ve been bought by billionaires. Far right is something different and it’s pointing at “problems” that hateful morons find easy to solve. The result is a lot of people checked out of engaging with politics because it feels pointless and a lot of hateful morons checked in because there’s finally someone talking their language.

“US tech giants allying with European far-right to strip back EU rules”, Jan 14 2026

https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

–Robert A. Heinlein, Take Bank Your Government

Replace “communism” with far-right ideology, and that’s it. People, humanity in general, are fairly agreeable and cooperative, when they are getting along even tolerably well. It’s only when conditions on the ground become intolerable that you see extreme political movements take hold, either left or right, because the established political order has demonstrated that it is either unwilling or unable to provide for the people’s needs.

If more people were able to afford education, medicine, housing, and had the financial breathing room to take the occasional vacation and provide for their and their children’s future, you wouldn’t see extremism. You’d see people happy that things were working out okay. It’s because we’ve allowed economic inequality and environmental chaos to become so widespread that people have become desperate enough to look to anyone who is at least saying they’ll make real changes to fix what’s wrong with the world.

Growing wealth inequality combined with global migration; mix in tech companies that need social division and antagonism to survive, and a healthy dose of foreign interests trying to break down rivals, and here you are.

Big money and hostile, foreign interests. That’s basically it, you’ll find Russia pushing a lot of far right candidates and the oligarchs convinced techno-feudalism will work.