In Germany, social media algorithms are pumping out huge amounts of far-right, pro-AfD content.
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Same un France. All the major parties have been tougher and tougher with immigration for decades, and the far right popularity keeps increasing. It's just validating them and it solves nothing.
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“Hey boss I lost the election to right wing xenophobes.”
“Why?”
“I refused to give voters what they want in a democracy.”
Feel free to stay on your high horse. That doesn’t win election and I promise you, milquetoast immigration reform is better than what AfD is planning.
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I think that’s your opinion and you’re making a claim for which you don’t have any evidence. We have real world evidence that giving voters what they want wins elections. I cited the Danish example. The Social Democrats adopted slightly tougher immigration policies after the 2015 election, in which the right wing Danish People’s Party (DF) won 21.1% of the votes. Following these changes, the DF lost most of their votes, dropping to 8.7% in 2019. I would hardly call Denmark a right wing hellscape today.
I take issue at your broader contention that it’s somehow wrong to give voters what they want. That’s how democracy works.
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By your logic, AfD should now be below 5% because all major parties in Germany are now tougher on immigration, the CDU is now directly taking positions of the AfD a few years back.
In Denmark this may have worked, might just be correlation, but in general, what your saying is wrong and would make AfD even stronger.
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“Hey boss I lost the election to right wing xenophobes.”
“Why?”
“I refused to give voters what they want in a democracy.”
Feel free to stay on your high horse. That doesn’t win election and I promise you, milquetoast immigration reform is better than what AfD is planning.There are possibly a few things to unpack here, but I'm mostly concerned with the central implication I'm reading into this: Are you resigned to accepting that political power in modern democracies lies with those with the highest advertising budget and/or most ruthless advertising practices? That's certainly an bleak and interesting thing to discuss, but I'm not entirely sure it's what you meant. Is it, or am I reading this incorrectly?
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because all major parties in Germany are now tougher on immigration
But they aren’t. Only the CDU has proposed some changes which they haven’t implemented, and aren’t expected to make any measurable impact. It is far too little, far too late.
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No, but I don’t believe voters are mindless drones which vote for whatever they are told to. Do you? This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.
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This is the opposite of true. Appeasing the far right on immigration in other countries has led to disaster, every time. It's caused Brexit. It shifts the overton window., allowing their rhetoric to become mainstream, making it credible. You do not give these fucks an inch. You tell them no. They have to be fought as early as possible, because they're like bedbugs: if you allow them in you can't get rid of them.
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Apparently telling voters “no” is working terribly because right wing parties keep rising in polls. The evidence directly contradicts your claim. I don’t see how Brexit was caused in any way by appeasement. If anything, Brexit was caused by derision and dismissal, leaving low socioeconomic voters in particular no other way to vent their anger than by burning an institution to the ground. If you don’t give voters what they want they will vote extremists into power, or vote for extreme solutions out of spite.
Broadly speaking I find the argument of telling voters “no” in a democracy absurd and authoritarian.
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Germany has enacted border controls to catch illegal immigrants, causing massive traffic jams. There are huge pushbacks kicking out thousands of refugees. Social services have been cut for refugees. All of that leads to a doubling of the right wing party, because migration ends up a topic in the media and the right wing is calling for everybody who is not 100% ethnic German to be kicked out of Germany, which is obviously insane.
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Voters are not asking for temporary border patrols. They want lasting solutions. The CDU reduced refugee benefits by less than 4%. They retain all their other benefits like free and subsidised housing, free medical care, free education, and free daycare in most states and very cheap in all others. These measures are not addressing the root cause. They aren’t going to make any lasting change. The social benefit change was only enacted last month. It’s far too little, far too late. As long as incumbents refuse to listen to the needs of voters, the AfD will continue to gain in popularity.
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What makes it tricky is, I think, that there are both kinds of voters so both viewpoints are kind of correct but piss the other side off with the implications.
E: typo -
I was talking about telling the far right "no", not the voters.
If you don't see how Brexit was caused by appeasing the right wing then you aren't in possession of all the facts, as it is a fact. Go read about it.
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That’s probably a fair and nuanced take. Perhaps some voters are swayed by TikTok ads. I suppose I believe this contingent is small and inconsequential, while the person above believes it is large and consequential. Perhaps my perception is coloured by my belief in the principles of free speech. I think it is essential to the functioning of a democracy, and for science. Free speech only exists if we protect speech we don’t like. I grow very uneasy with equivocating over which political dissent is allowed. History has taught us that it is inevitably used for nefarious purposes eventually.
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I have, and I think you are wrong. However both of us are using very vague words like “appeasement” and I’m beginning to think we’re not using the same definitions. We might be remembering the facts which align with our narrative and ignoring those which do not. The truth might lie somewhere in between.
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Brexit happened because David Cameron needed to appease the right wing of his party. That is a fact, and I won't be ceding any ground there. It looks like you might try and rewrite history next, and I had taken you for someone who just didn't know, rather than someone spreading lies.
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No, but I don’t believe voters are mindless drones which vote for whatever they are told to. Do you?
No, I wouldn't agree with that statement.
This contempt for voter agency is a major reason the AfD is polling so well.
Voters will vote in favor of addressing whatever issue is important to them. And whatever issue happens to be important to them can be influenced by advertising, just like the purchase decision of a customer. That's why that 4-trillion-dollar industry, on par with the petrochemical sector, exists. That's neither a secret nor an insult to individualism, but an academic and economic reality. Do you... not agree with that?
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I see this as well. "Nationalist" parties only have traction because they keep on talking about immigration problems (which they enhance). Take that away and their fascist and elite agendas become extremely obvious.
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The voters from DF mostly switched to other populistic right wing parties. In total very few voters moved across the middl, even if the middle has moved further to the right.
People are being polarized more which is exactly the intention with the foreign propaganda. So, no, Denmark did not solve the problem.
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I don't think that's accurate. You can see voter turnout for the 2015 and 2019 elections here. It's true that some voters went to KF and Nye Borgerlige, but even more voters went to RV and SF. I think you are right to argue it caused more people to vote for parties further on the left and right, but the far left appears to be the aggregate winner.
