TLDR: The free marketplace of ideas has spoken and decided that Strasserism is the political direction people want. What can be done about it?

In my country the old established social democratic party has found a recipe for success: Combine social welfare for carefully selected middle class groups with being as racist and authoritarian as anyone to their right. This has given their coalition electoral support the like of which has not been seen for decades.

The parties to the left of the social democrats can't do much about it as they have massive parliamentary support from the right for all their nasty shit. If the left stopped supporting the social democrats the alternative would either be a right wing government who will still do all the nasty shit but not any of the welfare things.

And people here love it. The majority supports shipping asylum seekers to Nauru-style overseas concentration camps, demolishing housing blocks because of the ethnicity of the tenants or the proposal that police should be allowed to strip the clothes off young people they meet in designated no-go zones in order to sell it to cover unpaid public debts. People love when the minister of justice says that surveillance is freedom. People loves when the minister of integration says that ideally no asylum seekers would come here. Most people love that shit!

Previously those views belonged to those who paired them with welfare cuts and tax cuts for the rich. This made them unpopular. But now they are paired with welfare improvements aimed at the middle class. We get more workers in our kindergartens and unskilled manual labourers can retire earlier (provided they have not spent time in the education system and haven't had significant periods of unemployment, that is). These are good things although the social democrats don't give a single fuck about the poor who are hurt by racist motivated brutalisation of the unemployment system, public housing etc.

Overall the social democrats has become Strasserites. The common man no longer has to choose between welfare and racism. He can have both now.

I fear that this is only going to get worse as the contradictions of capitalism increases and the climate crisis escalates. We think of ourselves as a little safe boring country where nothing dramatic ender happens but I fear that this can end in a very scary situation. No powerful and organised force seems to stand in the way of this slide towards fascism.

Why are people so horrible? What can you do about it as a leftist? And how do you manage to keep your sanity in a society where most people takes racism as common sense?