what are they even turning fascist for? it's not like there's communists anywhere near europe right now, are we just going to start doing pogroms against immigrants now? fucking worthless "continent" and i use that very loosely
While the Russia-Ukraine war made things worse for Germans, far right has been on the ascend for a while and things weren't even that bad in Germany! Like lots of issues with the German center-right, but they were doing a good job of extracting wealth from the rest of the EU.
Anxiety and rage about incipient climate collapse probably, coupled with the universal alienation that they especially have no vocabulary to grapple with
If only there had been some German philosopher they could read to inform them about capitalist alienation. Ah well
Last time they took it out on mostly white minorities. The excuses don’t even have to be air tight
Love to be in danger eventually by being a marginalized out-group
Fascism doesn't require the threat of communism to exist, it simply requires capitalism to start showing signs of failure and then those who profit circle the wagons around their hoarded wealth and you're gonna get a fascism out of that if people don't stomp it down and replace capitalism so it can't happen again. They're the immune response of capitalism. The white power blood cells if you will.
Europeans have been shitting their pants about Muslims for decades now
the amount of concentrated
that stem from a single german are enough to put the particle accelerator to shame
i dont think fascism requires the presence of communism to show up. Neoliberalism is destroying everything, the anger and energy of the masses has to be directed somewhere and there are only a few possible ways for it to go. Fascism is the least bad for the bourgeoisie.
Yeah and it is much easier (I.e. less pushback) to direct that towards the vulnerable and under privileged than those with power, guns, and money. One of those could get you killed.
I don't think even Putin realized the war in Ukraine would result in the US staging a silent coup of western Europe. It's obvious now in hindsight Russia's economy would be fine going into the war, despite harsh sanctions by NATO. What isn't obvious is how Europeans would sell themselves out to American energy and food suppliers. This whole thing has been a godsend for American companies running out of people to exploit in the US as its working class never recovered from 2008.
Oh yeah the US has been doing this for centuries at this point. I'm just surprised the Europeans didn't realize they were getting played, given they invented colonialism. It's a real "leopards for eating people's faces party now eat faces of people who let them out of the cage."
I think you're landing on why allusions to historical fascism or the interwar period are kind of a limiting framework to understanding these parties
Europe has been steadily losing its neocolonial grip on the Global South, so it is inevitable they turn to fascism in hopes of reasserting their position as colonial metropoly.
Does fascism really need an actual communist enemy now that they're all convinced that even the blandest liberals are literally Mao reborn though?
I'm thinking no. And that's kinda scary.
Because they think muslims are a subhuman horde destroying Western™ civilization, and it's all orchestrated by the Woke©®™ (usually they mean jewish communists controlling society secretly)
The Germanic brain pan is incapable of complex thought and so turns to simplistic tribalism instead of civilization
Few Germanic brainpans developed scientific socialism so hold your horses there.
German unification first time as tragedy in 1871. Second time as farce 1990.
Europeans when they arent fash for 7 years straight.
‘Oh my god how could our forward thinking society become like this?’
This was bound to happen. Liberals win against fascists by 2% and think that they've defeated fascism forever and never try to actually remove the rot.
If they tried to remove the rot, they would have to remove themselves.
Leopards hasn't change its spots and I'm not referring to the German tank
It is uncharted in that there can't be a state government in Thuringia and Saxony (and who knows maybe in all of germany eventually) that either doesn't include the far right or doesn't include every party except the far right
It really seems like the living memory is the only reall window in which one can hope for a lesson humanity learns to persist. It's not lost on me the very last few people who remember WW2 are approaching zero by the day, and the closer to 0 living that number gets, the more violently capable fascism seems to be at re-asserting itself.
Shame the cold war is so much further than that from exiting living memory - every generation that grew up under duck and cover drills can't be redeemed.
