this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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From the outside looking in, it does feel like Germany and France are ignoring a lot of the warning signs that other countries have fallen into with regards to rising fascist movements.
Germany's always seemed like this semi-utopic heart of Europe that learned all the right lessons from its history and miraculously emerged free and strong despite everything. But I'm worried there's been more laurel-resting than progress as of late, and the seeds of discontent are taking root.
Civilization is never more than two missed meals away from collapse. In a more general sense, existential threats (or the perception thereof) erode civility and make people susceptible to tribal thinking.
We (Germany) have a number of such threats:
Add to that the massive online presence of the hard right and you get a lot of people who stop caring about civility and start caring about simple solutions to complex problems.
Although the immigration and refugee waves have only become an issue due to the right wing narrative of a great replacement that got fueled by mainstream media and what were formerly centrist politicians. It was never actually as much of an issue as the other things you mentioned are.
We've had nothing but politicians working with americanism and populism for the last 25 years, people have become stupid and lazy. I remember the last time a right-wing populist party had 30% votes, the day before the election it came to light that they planned to work with extremist/nazis. They dropped below 5% over night.
Today the same situation just led to even more people voting for that party.
Only 40 years apart.