Not smugposting. Shit sucks. :(
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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The AfD is the German version of the present day US Republicans and they only got 20% of the vote, not won both a Presidency (which in Germany is mainly a symbolic post) and an absolute majority in the Bundestag (roughly, their Congress).
Further, just like the effects of Brexit on the UK cooled down for at least a decade the anti-EU sentiment in the rest of Europe, what Trump and the Republicans are doing with the power they got in the US is likely to (once enough of the side effects of his actions pile up) cool down any love for that kind of Fascism in the rest of the West.
The Far Right has an ideological framework of purelly criticizing/complaining/accusing, which is great when you're an observer sitting on the sidelines and shouting about how those who are actually doing things are doing it all wrong, but doesn't at all work when they're in a position where they actually need to do things themselves, so they invariably fuck things up badly, generally because over the mid and long term the side effects of their actions completelly wipe-out any positive direct effects those actions were expected to have and then remain active and further destroying for far longer than the positive effects do.
IMHO, the danger for the rest of the West is far more that Elon and Trump start WWIII, than that people in other countries will be inspired to follow their ideology by seeing what they do with it in the US.
(The danger for the US, which I suspect is pretty much guaranteed since both major parties there have sided with the Pillager segment of society, is the country will be firmly and forever dethroned from its position as super power within a decade)
The CDU guy who's about to be chancellor is the classic "economically liberal, anti regulation, blame foreigners for all violence" far right who pretends he's not far right by taking the head of a party that keeps helping the far right rhetoric, instead of straight up joining the far right party, for some reason. He's been mad at Merkel for 20 years because she sidelined him in the party because he was too much further right. He's not Musk, but he's the guy who keeps making sure Musk and Trump never get shut down.
Well, then it might very well be that the effects of Trump's policies did not manifest themselves on time to sway Germans away from the Far-Right.
Having lived through Brexit, I still very much expect that what Trump is now doing in the US will fuckup most of the Far-Right in Europe. This belief is also anchored on what we are now seeing in countries which were "ahead of the curve" in bringing the Far-Right into Government, such as Poland, who are now turning away from it as well as things like the recent, sudden and somehow unexpected growth of the (real) Leftwing reversing the trend of moving to the Right in places like Finland.
I expect that, given its much greater economic dominance, size and footprint of reporting about it in of the media space, the example of the US will be far more visible and impactful in the general population of Europe than the examples of Hungary, Poland or Finland.