Alternative for Germany has joined France's National Rally and Reform U.K. in becoming the most popular party in its country, according to polls.

Alternative for Germany has joined France’s National Rally and Reform U.K. in becoming the most popular party in its country, according to polls.

A poll Tuesday showed Alternative for Germany — which is under surveillance by the country’s intelligence services over suspected extremism — is now the most favored by voters. The survey by broadcaster RTL put the AfD at 26%, ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats at 24%.

This is a high watermark for the European far right, a once fringe movement whose virulently anti-immigration, anti-Islam and culture-war politics were shunned by the mainstream just a decade ago.

Today, these parties have developed deep ties with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who openly cite nationalists such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as inspirations on policy and tactics.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    72·
    14 hours ago

    I think you’ll get a lot of different answers depending on who you ask, and i think liberalism and allowing other people their own opinion / interpretation of things is important. Yet here’s my take:

    • There was a gross mis-interpretation of reality around the 2000s when people believed that we could lay down all violence and gross behavior and enter a “perfect, soft world” which was understood as an absence of sexism and nationalism, mostly. However, these are instincts so deeply rooted in people that you can’t just “get them out” in any way, even if you try to create a social movement around “calling out” men who show sexist behavior. What happens instead is that these suppressed groups seek their own expression, and you end up with far-right populism.