[inglor_cz]

The most ironic thing to me is just how fast the political pendulum swings.

One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

This is no way to live, 80%+ of the population is neither committed progressives nor committed conservatives/reactionaries, but they rule (or ruled) the social networks and thus dominate(d) in elections.

By the grace of the algorithm, you majesty the king.

[Terr_]

> taking the knee

Taking the knee to say what though?

1. Before: People warning about a problem of corrupt police forces of power-tripping fools and bullies that routinely get away with murder.

2. After: A corrupt police state has metastasized onto the national state age, with its own fools and bullies, including illegally imprisoning and murdering people.

I wouldn't label that a "pendulum swing" between opposite situations.

[inglor_cz]

Taking the knee because everyone around you is taking it as well. Pure social pressure. Remember the soccer matches in places like the UK, where some continental teams or players were booed for not doing so?

Political theatre by people who wouldn't be able to tell you who was the Prime Minister, how much does milk cost etc.

Even well-meaning US liberals overestimate the count of black people shot by the police by three orders of magnitude. That is some serious divergence from reality, and it was hyped by social networks.

[Terr_]

> who was the Prime Minister

> how much does milk cost

> the count of black people shot by the police

Whoah, hold up: One of these things is not like the others. (♫ One of those things just doesn't belong.♫)

The Prime Minister's name shows up regularly in news stories, and the price of milk is literally in front of you as you buy it...

So why are you expecting anybody to be decent at "estimating" even the easier version of "all people shot by police this year"? It's not like there's a daily figure shared after the weather-report.

[FatherOfCurses]

> Even well-meaning US liberals overestimate the count of black people shot by the police by three orders of magnitude. That is some serious divergence from reality, and it was hyped by social networks.

Definitely gonna need a citation on that

[aprilthird2021]

> Taking the knee because everyone around you is taking it as well. Pure social pressure

Pure social pressure. Whereas now everything is completely political pressure dictated from the top down. Idk social pressure seems more organic at least. Biden didn't order that anyone who didn't take a knee will be deported to a torture prison in Guatemala

[Yizahi]

By the grace of first past the post, winner takes all. This ancient system prevents people from picking shades of grey parties, since they simply don't exist in any significance. And from the other end it doesn't allow parties to split, since it will mean than the smaller block is immediately equal to zero (zero votes, zero seats). In when parties aren't allowed to split, they trend towards reactionism and radicalism, when radicals can hold the whole party "hostage". Applies to both sides btw.

[bryanlarsen]

The standard complaint is the opposite. In a generic first past the post two party system you should end up with two barely distinguishable centrist parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law

But the US system is far from generic. Instead it has several tweaks that make it tend towards extremism. The primary system is probably the biggest factor.

[refurb]

Don’t mistake what you see online or in the news as evidence of broad agreement.

Plenty of people might disagree but choose to keep their mouth shut.

[truckerbill]

Never underestimate the amount of people that just go where the wind blows

[csb6]

> One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

How are these at all comparable? One is a photo op at the Capitol, and one is leading a massive immigration raid campaign full of civil rights violations. Even if you believe these raids are lawful, they are not performative like the photo op stunt was - they are massive operations that greatly affect millions of lives.

If you are making a “both sides are bad” argument then that is a pretty poor comparison.

[nosianu]

This did not happen fast though, but over decades.

On one side, the right preparing by slowly taking over positions, on the other side people ignoring the problems of many.

Here in Germany I fear the AfD too may get into power, because instead of fixing the problems that people complained about for decades (costs, bureaucracy, rents, no vision apart from "consume and work") people are fixated on that right wing party itself.

When I did some skydiving in my youth I was fascinated by watching sooo many skydivers barely avoiding the lone single tree near the landing zone. Turns out, if you concentrate on something ("I must avoid that tree I must avoid that tree...") you end up steering towards it. The winning move is to instead concentrate on where you do want to go. There are precious little positive ideas in our politics, it's mostly about what we don't want, or distractions on things that while it sounds nice and it's definitely okay when it gets done should never be the main focus.

[mikkupikku]

> the problems that people complained about for decades (costs, bureaucracy, rents, no vision apart from "consume and work")

Insofar as people are actually going over to AfD (and it's not just exaggerated hysterics, the sky is always falling these days...), it's probably got something to do with the issues which are conspicuously absent from your list, which AfD ostensibly addresses, at least more convincingly than the other parties. Namely, immigration. You may not want to admit that as a real problem at all, but that refusal to engage with the issue is the primary reason people line up for the politicians who at least pretend to care about it.

[em-bee]

immigration is a scapegoat. it's not the problem. reducing immigration would not improve anything.

[mikkupikku]

> immigration is a scapegoat. it's not the problem

When you tell people their problem isn't real, you'll more likely drive them to somebody else than gaslight them into siding with you.

[locknitpicker]

> When you tell people their problem isn't real, (...)

Their problems might be real, but they sure are not caused by immigration. The Trump administration boasts about having deported 1M immigrants, and yet everything turned to shit, there are less jobs, pay hasn't increased, and things haven't became more affordable.

The first step to fix a problem is to identify it. Failing to do so risks aggravating the actual problems.

[tstrimple]

Tons of morons bought the Trump administration lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets. Their problem isn’t real. They are complete idiots with zero critical thinking skills who have more influence in elections than more rational populations due to this stupid ass country’s prioritizing empty land over actual citizens. Isn’t it funny how when “centrists” compromise with conservatives it always seem ruin things for decades if not centuries?

I had some hope as a millennial youth that we were “evolving” past the conservative mindset. It was insane to me that an ideology that has been consistently wrong from supporting slavery to opposing women’s suffrage would continue to have any support. But here we are still talking about gay marriage again because fucking conservative bigots cannot let anyone live in peace. But I’m sure you consider their “concerns” to be very valid and worth entertaining.

[em-bee]

well, the concerns do need to be addressed. it is important that everyone gets an opportunity to voice their grievances and not be ignored. but grievances that come from lack of understanding the reality can only be addressed with education.

[em-bee]

i am not telling people that their problem isn't real. i am telling them that their understanding for the cause of their problems isn't what they think it is, or what they are being told it is.

the people who are having problems finding work, facing crime, etc, do not actually have a problem with immigration. they are only getting told by deceptive politicians that dealing with immigration would solve their problems. they are the ones being lied to. that's the nature of a scapegoat.

[mikkupikku]

Tomato, potato. If you refuse to address the issues people have, or even just wrongly feel they have, and the only party that even pretends to care is your spooky boogieman right wing party, and you're so sincerely worried about the implications of that, then pull your head out of your ass and meet people where they are.

[inglor_cz]

People are tribal, and the clash of values between Islam and postmodern secular Europeans is very real.

[em-bee]

again, that clash is not the cause for the problems we are facing.

[machomaster]

People/institutions didn't want to fix real problems. This unwillingbess/inability causes problems to spiral and more and more problems to appear. Including the clash.

[inglor_cz]

Cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo weren't killed by capitalism or global climate change.

Personally, I consider the chilling effect of such events on freedom of speech and art quite a huge problem. This freedom was crucial to European prosperity.

[inglor_cz]

Well, roots of everything are long. We are a long-lived species and our political attention spans decades or longer. People still think of the Roman Empire and write in Latin alphabet, after all.

But the actual short-term jumps in policy are absolutely wild now. That wasn't the case in the 1990s.

[throwawayqqq11]

Imagine left leaning orgs being as organized and funded as the right.

GP made the same mistake by putting the AfD on the right and anything else on "the other side that ignores problems". This other side is not the left, its the center or the non-left, which gets good funding too.

The decades of political development were always meant to bolster the current power structures, and i am not talking about pol. parties or the interests of the many and their problems. From that angle, the current political swing is not suprising. Musk and Co are winning their war on the left mind virus, which is much older then them.

[inglor_cz]

The left has a nasty problem with autophagy.

If you are left (I am not, but I have observed it) and you agree with 90 per cent of the ideas of some group, but disagree on the remaining 10 per cent, they will turn on you in fury, denounce you as a traitor, hate you more than an actual opponent. Deviation from orthodoxy is a capital sin.

(This is not new, see how Trotskyists were extirpated by their Stalinist comrades 100 years ago. Heresy is simply not tolerated.)

The right wingers of today are a lot more capable of building a bigger tent, at least right now. Personally, I am somewhat rightwing, but very secular, as usual in Czechia. I still get invited to Christian events even though they know that I am not a believer, and they won't grill me to convert.

[throwawayqqq11]

The same can be said about the right, but you are correct, infighting is stronger on the left.

But...

Orthodoxy (or better: tribalism) is actually stronger on the right, the key difference is, the right has less political complexity to argue over. "Our pure native culture will fix our problems and the other left outgroups must be suppressed" is pure identity politics, which is imo the core of the right.

The left has, tribalism aside, at least identity independent topics like wealth distribution. Which, unfortunately, threatens the existing power structures.

I can confirm the left ostracizing their own. It happened to me too, but i still consider myself left, because my political ideals are based on more than a group membership.

[inglor_cz]

I think you underestimate the complexity of the right. It is not just secular nationalists all the way down.

First, there are still religious people there, and this very wing is splintered among several groups at least. Famously, many Catholics including JDVance were in a value conflict with their own late Pope Francis. The actual religiously educated people tend to be very good at writing, because the schools that they graduated from are good at teaching persuasion.

Second, there are libertarians, not very numerous but somewhat influential, especially in tech circles.

Then, there still are some trigger-happy neocons, nowadays marginalized, but they may yet come to the fore in case of a bigger war that directly involves the US.

Then, there are reactionary types like Curtis Yarvin, who dismiss any nationalist ideas as blind alley of "demotism".

Even the practical question of "how many people from which country should get a visa yearly and under what conditions" will hit enormous ideological differences in the right-wing tent.

[nosianu]

> This other side is not the left,

How is that my mistake??? YOU came up with "left". I very deliberately did not say such a ridiculous thing, given that any "left" party has never in power.

I would also appreciate if you did not paraphrase what I wrote when what I wrote still is right there, or at least don't attribute your words to me.

I always find it fascinating, and quite disturbing, how people rewrite what other people wrote to base their "counter-"argument on their rewrite.

[throwawayqqq11]

You wrote:

> On one side, the right preparing by slowly taking over positions, on the other side people ignoring the problems of many.

You bisected the political landscape, but not into left and right. I did this and, as you may agree on, the center is shifting right too. An aspect i wanted to bring up by adressing your "problems of the many" and where/why the political focus has been on in the past.

Maybe you are familiar with the whole lefty concept of "capitalism inevitably turning into fascism". The right and the status quo center have more in common, so you can group them together and i called it "your mistake".

[expedition32]

The reality is that Northern Europe is the safest, most free and wealthiest part of this godforsaken planet. People don't know how good they have it.

It is understandable that Germans voted for the Nazis in 1933. In 2025 they have no excuse. When Germans get grand ideas inside their heads everything always goes bad.

[inglor_cz]

The economic difference between rural former GDR and, say, Denmark, is pretty huge, and AfD mostly dominates in the former GDR regions, where local industries collapsed almost overnight and all talents got picked off by West German employers.

I traveled around most of Europe with a backpack. Former GDR is a dying country, and no amount of subsidies into fixing roads will help it. You cross the border to Poland, nominally you entered a poorer country, but everything is so much more lively there. Poles are so much more optimistic about their future than Germans in general, and East Germans extra.

This psychological difference cannot be appreciated if you only look at GDP per capita tables.

[machomaster]

People don't compare themselves with countries on other continents, but with their neighboring countries or with the memories of their own country (how it was in the past).

Swedes look at the statistics of bombing and shooting incidents in this century, while Finns look at economic growth, GDP and salary growth in the last twenty years, especially compared to other Nordic countries.

[UncleMeat]

Right wingers have always run law enforcement. While there was some performative stuff from left wing lawmakers, nobody really defunded the police.

[pjc50]

> One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere,

Voluntary actions including a protest against police brutality ..

> and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

.. versus the pro-brutality side of the argument. Social media has made it more acute, but the same line runs through e.g. the pre-social-media Rodney King riots. I think people mistook a suppressed problem for stability.

Of course, suppressing problems works quite well for stability. We can see in Hong Kong how having several tower blocks burn down might be destabilizing. There were calls for accountability. Accountability would be destabilizing to the political and real estate elite, so that can't happen and now everyone is quietly agreeing that it was just a tragic accident, no need to investigate further.

[inglor_cz]

There is no society without suppressed problems, but that does not rule out the social media contagion either.

Every real problem can be made worse by putting histrionic personalities in charge, and the current digital environment promotes and rewards hysteria.