The last election was a shitshow.
As usual, the younger generation didn’t bother voting, and the older one voted en masse for conservative candidates because they are those our media push for, while at the same time slandering progressive ones.
In the election runoff, we had the choice between an openly fascist candidate from a party literally founded by former Nazis, and a “light fascist” one that people were seeing as the lesser evil. Though it’s pretty obvious now that his fascism isn’t so light (he openly admires Petain, a french leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany), and I hope people will remember that for the next election and understand that voting for a democratic candidate in the first turn if very important.
Weird how this sounds alot like what’s happening in the US. Almost like fascism is encroaching all acrost the world as it crumbles.
Yeah, it’s happening all over western liberal democracies. Inflation is going crazy and wealth inequalities are growing at an alarming rate. Because of that, people in power are afraid of a popular uprising, and they would rather see fascists rise to power and protect capitalism, than an economical shift to the left and lose some of their wealth.
It happened many times before. The more commonly known examples being:
- Prominent industrialists and agricultural landowners providing financial support to Mussolini’s party because they feared the rise of socialism, and saw in him a means to counter it.
- German industrialists who were fearful of the rise of the Communist Party and provided financial support to the Nazi party.
- Spanish landowners and businessmen who were alarmed by the social and economic reforms of the Second Spanish Republic and supported Franco’s rise to power.
History tends to repeat itself.
To add to this, it would simply be remiss for any actual rival of the west to not attempt to stir their democracies against them.
It’s a fundamental weakness that only representative governments have, and authoritarians would simply be stupid not to target it. It’s very inexpensive to operate in the modern information space.
I mean, we got all these checks and balances in the first place because our systems are fundamentally very vulnerable. If you’d like a story on a less-secure system, look into the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
I mean, in the craziest of crazy scenarios, we could wind up with civil wars. Wouldn’t there be some folks out there that’d just love to see that? You think they can’t make bots, produce content, hire cheap labor?
Recently I read it’s actually worse in Europe, because the far-right has noticeable youth support, unlike here where it’s proportional to age.
That makes me very, very nervous.
This seems to be the case yeah. The rhetoric of the left is preaching acceptance and solidarity, but in an uncertain world “feelgood rhetoric” isn’t strong enough. The right are preaching what appear to be solutions (close borders, nationalism, tax cuts to income and gas, segregation and defunding social programs to adress debt) so people buy into it.
What they don’t realise is that the tax cuts hurt the debt cutting messures and eroiding social security hurts nations and paves way for more insecurity, hate and fear (which fuels the right wing machine).
There’s precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings, and people are left to try and understand what the media pushes out. Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.
As far as I know in the Global South we have a wave of left wing governments, maybe you forgot white people is not the world.
If people get out and fucking vote like it’s your last chance, we can get some sanity.
Oh? Should people vote for the lesser of two evils? Because that’s your only choice if you continue to insist you can vote your way out of this.