I live in the Netherlands and the amount of deluded conspiracy theorists has been increasing steadily for several years now. Unfortunately things have really accelerated since COVID-19, people think the virus is fake, they think Bill Gates created the virus to put mind control chips into your brain, they think masks are a form of mind control somehow, these are just a couple of examples. I always enjoyed reading about Q on r/cth because it's just so ridiculous, I had a good time laughing at those silly Americans, that is, until it came to my own country. Q anon finding it's way to the Netherlands is weird because it is a conspiracy theory about American politics, it has nothing to do with our politics (which also suck, just not as much as US politics). But as with most bad things nowadays the culprit is the profiteering of Facebook and Google, their algorithms work here in the same way they do in the US and have led a huge amount of dutch people into a long and harmful rabbit hole.
The realest consequence is probably the direct action that these groups (most of them formed on facebook) are now doing, they are genuinly harassing politicians on the streets of our capital city. Our Prime Minister almost always cycles to his work or to meetings, no motor parades with cops and secret service agents, just him on his bike. That is now almost certainly a thing of the past because the Qanon groups here keep shouting death threats and such to every politician they see. The mere numbers of people still surprise me to this day, our most famous Qanon conspiracy theorist is probably Lange Frans, white rapper turned Qanon admirer. His podcast consistantly get close to half a million views in a country of 17 million people, which is like almost 10 million people watching one of these videos in the US.

Sorry for the long rant but just the fact that all of these people are also going to vote next year and the absolute state of the left in the Netherlands is plain sad.

  • OhWell [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Neoliberalism has completely detached the gears of politics from the gears of the economy and people can feel it, the right wing at least offers conspiracy theories while “the left” only offers docile compliance to neoliberal ideals and “european corporation” through the EU (more debt traps for Southern Europe). Corona has in many EU member nations completely destroyed any belief in their government by the people, leading to the current spike in infections and surfacing of conspiracy theories you mentioned.

    Neoliberalism has been destroying the earth since it was introduced. It always eventually leads to fascism, which is the short explanation to why fascism has been on the rise in Europe for the past several years now and as for the US, we've had a carefully laid brick road to fascism since neoliberalism first came into play in the Reagan era.