It’s been reported that in the German elections, a far right party has made ‘significant gains’.

In the UK (at least before the scandals) Reform UK seems to have had a significant boost and has even surpassed the right-wing Conservative Party in some polls/predictions.

Even France, one or two years ago, was threatened with a far-right government due to the French far right party gaining a lot of support.

It feels like in the last few years, the far-right has exceeded itself and had a surge in popularity. Is this the case? And if so, wtf is fuelling it?

Disindustrialisation, reduction of purchasing power imo

Billionaires -> full control of MSM, social media, algorithms, politicians -> fueling right wing everything to increase the wealth gap / avoid taxes / avoid control by the masses

Economic despair.

We all know something is deeply wrong with the world, but it's easier to see and blame brown people than to see all the ways that we are being squeezed by the Epstein class.

In a US context, but perhaps the dynamic is the same around the world, is that Republicans blame immigrants and the Democrats, defenders of the status quo, blame nobody.

This is a serious electoral handicap, when your side is prevented from effective world building, when you are not allowed to identify enemies.

It’s like mind control the way they use things (e.g. advertising, social media) to influence people to vote, not just right, but far-right

Wealth and power.

Unscrupulous rich people benefit from the far right, so it is to their advantage to amplify it in media and technology.

There is real and legitimate discontent and disillusionment with the political mainstream, and they're steering those people towards the far right by feeding the public lies that are plausible on the surface and provide an easy target for blame.
They're supported by opportunic charlatans who can get rich by being the mouthpiece.

Billionaires.

Do you think that the boost has more to do with the fact that the general political mainstream is collapsing (i.e. perceived as useless) across multiple nations all at once? I mean, we’ve had wealthy businessmen pretty much all throughout history, so is this like a ‘trigger event’, so to speak?

What I don’t get though, is we’ve had millionaires and billionaires all throughout history, so what’s triggered this specific boost?

Changes in the media landscape. Up to the 1990s, mainstream media in Western democracies were dominated by intellectuals, who are typically against racism and fascism. This gradually changed as media became more commercialized and sensationalist, a change that rapidly accelerated with the advent of social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.

Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s, and the fact that we have seen fascists massively gaining popularity even in societies that are among the most prosperous in human history. This is especially obvious in Germany, where in East Germany (where the fascist strongholds are) the economic situation has in fact dramatically improved since the 90s.

social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.

Well, you’re not wrong there.

Thats interesting, good explanation.

The legitimate reasons for discontentment have existed for a long time, but I suspect that powerful people have found a way to capitalize on it en masse. They're taking the kernel of truth (that the mainstream political options aren't being effective) and directing people to solutions that benefit themselves.
Idk if it happening internationally is just collateral damage, if they're trying to operate internationally, or other powerful people elsewhere have just learned from the previous successes.

So no, I don't think there is a trigger event, so much as reaching a critical mass. They've come into the means of control (digital media making distribution of ideas so cheap, making manipulation of media exposure so easy), and a public who is so used to being lied to and mislead that they can't identify trustworthy sources (FUD), and they're striking while the iron is hot.

Jordan Peterson wrote a rather interesting essay earlier this year about the situation in the UK:

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog/theyre-not-rape-gangs/

I think the change is that today’s ultra-rich don’t act the same way the rich of the past did.

The “robber-barons” of the early 20th century were phenomenally rich and powerful, and they built schools, libraries, parks, and other public goods with a small fraction of their wealth because they understood that they had at least some tiny obligation to give back to the society that provided the conditions under which they could get so wealthy.

Today’s rich are actively preaching against the concept of empathy, and resisting any notion that they owe anyone anything. They are convinced that even a single dollar of their fortunes going to anything other than their own personal aggrandizement is a deeply offensive idea. And they are so willing to resist doing anything positive for the world that they spend enormous amounts of money to create propaganda networks to convince others that they don’t owe anyone a single cent of their fortunes. They buy ad campaigns to convince people that taxing them is bad, spending in some cases more money than the taxes would cost them… all because they firmly believe no one but themselves should see even the tiniest benefit from their money.

Ah, I see. So it’s more like a ‘tipping point’ that’s built up over a long time?

It's mainly that they graduated from reactive backlashes. They are seriously organized now, and are taking advantage of the inability of incumbent parties to fix the worsening everything. The far left could be doing that too, but they're not anywhere near as organized.

I’ll be sure to read

I think so. And they've certainly helped us toward a that tipping point, but there is no single event that got us there.

Imo that is. I'm not exactly a political scientist.

The dynamic is quite different around the world.

For one, most other Western democracies have multi-party systems where the choice is not restricted to just moderate conservatives and fascists.

Secondly, many of these democracies where the popularity of fascists has surged are doing much better than the US economically.

Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s,

wut

There was an Australian man on ITV or BBC's morning show about a year or so ago.
He was a very good speaker, but I've no idea who he was.
He reckoned (I'm going by memory) it started when the left pushed for more left leaning politics - beginning after the US started a domino effect in the middle East, and caused a surge of immigration.

That coupled with people having their own platforms with the likes of facebook, instagram, twitter etc.

Initially many countries had sat in the middle and were complacent, then there was that surge, with other things that angered the far right and voices started appearing in printed media and online.

I've probably made a balls of what exactly he claimed was the start of it, but he reckoned it was a sleeping giant anyway.

He had been researching it since the 80's iirc.

I watched it as I was getting ready for work and having breakfast. I wouldn't normally watch TV, so wasn't paying great attention to it, it was only a few days later, maybe a week that I was retrospectively going over what he was saying and thought he made good points.
if anyone knows the guy I'm talking about, would be great if you could put me out of my misery and name him.
I've searched a few times without success. I don't even know if I could say what he looked like, older with thinning grey hair I think..

Billionaire money. Oligarch money.

I wouldn't consider anything Peterson has to say about anything.

I don't mean there haven't been recessions, just that on the whole the economic situation is not significantly worse (and in fact probably somewhat better) than in the 1990s.

Not that Peter tachiel fellah (idk his politics but that description matches him)

What's the old the saying? The love of money is the root of all evil. Nice people aren't billionaires nor do they want power.

Dunno.
I'll look him up..I don't think this guy leaned left or right. Or at least didn't seem to during that. He just spoke of his research.
I left out tons obviously. But think that was the jist of it.

Edit..

Hmm.... I'm not sure.. it doesn't look like him in some images (thick head of hair and thinner), but then in other images.
I think this guy wrote about it, either in papers or a book.

Thanks, I'll look a bit more into that guy.

The "on the whole" economic situation is not what you want to be looking at.

If you look at the real wage growth compared to expenses, life has been being getting grimmer and grimmer for the vast majority of individuals since the 1970s, even if GDP continues to climb.

Occupy Wallstreet.

People like to joke that it did nothing, but it terrified the corporate masters of the world. They have been trying to teach us uppity poors a lesson ever since.

Predominantly a media which is on the right, and politicians who blame migrants for everything.

Did you, in fact, look at real wage growth?

Here is data for the US specifically, which shows modest growth of median real wages over the past decades.

There's the ideologies: conservatism and xenophobia. Two sides of the same coin; wanting to keep society as they believe it used to be, and fear of outsiders coming in and bringing about social change.

Then of course there is the is apparatus of money, power and traditional/social media control.

With the creation of the Internet, we celebrated the opportunity for every voice to be heard!

This is the result of listening.

Ignorance.

In the early 2000s in Europe, many governments significantly worsened social services, including "centre-left" governments like Blair in the UK and Schröder in Germany. This eroded trust in the established parties, and the large influx of migrants from 2015 on in many European coutries on was easily exploited by rightwing parties. Add the significant rightwing bias of US social media that dominates the social media landscape in most western countries and voila, people voting for neonazi parties en masse.

Nobody said it and I'm sure it's not the only source, but Russia has funded at least Germany's main right wing party. I think I read about them funding others as well.

Plus they try to make their own sabotage look like left wing extremism. And they employ bot farms to spread hate online.

This has done a great job of destabilising basically every western country.

Protein shakes.

Reactionary brain rot from a man who rotted his own brain with drugs and a medically induced coma because he was too dumb to take his doctor's advice.

Peterson is an idiot's idea of a smart man. He's even more of a dipshit than he was a decade ago, and that's really saying something.

Take your racist drivel somewhere else.

There was one particular morning in 2014 when Google dropped articles from The Daily Stormer directly into the personalized news feed widget on my phone. I grew up in the South, so I know the ins and outs of racism there. This was completely different. It was wildly genocidal anti-Semitism; straight up Nazi shit. Right there on my phone and presented as news.

That's when I knew that something was seriously wrong.

He writes like he has just discovered a thesaurus and would like you to know he is verbose. His writing is convoluted and grandiloquent, and often wilfully ambiguous. Its difficult to tell if he has a point, much like George Galloway. I think he thinks a grandiose tone is what is most important.

Millionaires didn't have enough clout to control the media or didn't need to, billionaires do and do need to.

Edit: I'd also see the shift in the media landscape as a very conscious effort made by oligarchs to control the media landscape, including Reagan removing the Fairness Doctrine, and Fox News being explicitly created to allow Republican presidents to engage in criminal activity.

Not sure what you're seeing. Everything I see things pointing to life getting worse and harder economically.

Rise in consumer debt: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG
Decline in housing affordability: https://worththen.com/tools/housing-affordability
Increase in student loand debt: https://thecollegeinvestor.com/32031/average-student-loan-debt-by-year/

Medical bankruptcy is another thing to look into.

Culture is another window, maybe less valid. The idea behind the Simpsons was a family of 3 was barely scraping by, yet they owned two cars, a house, and Homer had a union job and no college degree, and usually Marge didn´t need to work. In the 1980's Anthony's Song complained about, "Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that all you get for your money?" would be a flop today because a house out in Hackensack isn't conformity, it's just unattainable.

By which metric is the economy better than the US's?

Overall the US economy has been fairly strong since the mid 2010's, with the exception of inflation and a Covid related unemployment blip. And a chronic shortage of housing that has been brewing for decades.

Of course, the products of that economy haven't been distributed equitably so perhaps that's what you mean?

Standard of living is going down, via cost of living crisis, not being able to pollute like we did in the past, and billionaires taking all the productivity increases. People don't understand why, they can't accept the situation, so they get angry, find an outgroup to blame it on, which the right says they'll fix by getting rid of the outgroup.

By which metric is the economy better than the US’s?

By compound broad economic metrics (IHDI, etc.), as well as certain specific metrics like life expectancy, poverty and violent crime rates, income inequality, corruption, and so on.

Wealth disparity and disenfranchisement blamed on immigrants.

Some of it is to blame on COVID, as money went to businesses rather than people - so wealth disparity jumped. Compare this to the 1919 Spanish Flu, during which welfare became more prevalent and well funded (due to strikes and collective social actions), resulting in wealth disparity shrinking.

Basically this time we went in the other direction. So now we have extra anxieties about unemployment, extra inflation, extra cost of living pressures, extra housing insecurity, and a sense we're not being listened to.

Things far right groups like to blame on immigrants via grievance politics, these insecurities are then used to recruit people.

P.S people elsewhere are acting like right wing media is the sole cause and hasn't always been dogshit. This is incorrect. It's more potent now because more people have more legitimate grievance that can be appealed to

It's tempting to blame economic conditions, because they are objectively terrible, but really, it's the rise of unchecked garbage media masquerading as news.

People have shown a consistent and maddening resistance to reacting and making decisions based on real conditions. The fact is, humans on the whole don't look at reality to make decisions, and they never have. They build their worldviews on whoever tells them the best story.

The bad news is, this means you will NEVER beat the alt right just by fixing things in reality.

Well, even if we accept (which I don't) that things like increasing student debt would be a major factor, how do you explain fascism being on the rise in many other (pretty much all of them) Western democracies? You can't really use US-specific things like medical bankruptcy and student debt as explanations for a trend in societies where these aspects just are not relevant at all. Most Western democracies have universal access to health care and education.

The Fairness Doctrine, however, has clear parallels in other societies. Not because they have legislation similar to it (though some did or still do, like France) - but because even in those places where no such formal legislation exists, social media have almost completely negated the role journalists used to play in moderating public debate from a (relatively) neutral and, more importantly, non-fascist viewpoint.

same. in Australia with the One Nation Party

why ? The same reason the Nazi's rose, there was slavery, why 9 million a year die from starvation etc 80% of humans are basically assholes, not going to rock the boat if they're content enough, when they're not content enough...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Contentment

The media was always racist, they just hid it better... Sometimes.

You're too smart to convince of anything.

Have a great rest of your day.