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Comment by myaccountonhn | Hacker News Reader

Uh, I have a few immigrant friends in Germany. This is really uncomfortable.

There are parties like this in every European Country. E.g. RN in France, FPÖ in Austria, Fidesz in Hungary, PVV in Netherlands and so on. These populist parties get a lot of votes, mainly because the parties that have been in charge for the past 10-30 years have failing to address issues of voters. Doesn't mean that these ones are any better - they arent.

The only advantage most of these parties have is not having been in a position of power to demonstrate they are at least as incompetent as other parties that have, if not significantly more so.

The PVV in The Netherlands twice (once as a coalition supporter, once as part of a coalition). Both times were a disaster. People just go to the next populist right-wing party (e.g. FvD, which is more extreme right than the PVV, pretty similar to the AfD) and then after a few years they come back.

I guess the upside is that in countries with a multi-party system (happens more frequently without first-past-the-post), they virtually always have to form a coalition, which typically ends up in infighting within a party or between parties. E.g. in The Netherlands you typically need four parties nowadays to form a coalition.

Germany's immigration policy over the last decade wasn't an ooopsie though but a deliberate choice by the establishment.

I know, I have them in my country too. But sometimes this reality fades in the background and every now pops up again and hits you hard.

The people funding the Nazis won't let the moderate parties do anything useful for the common person, they protect their own wealth while they force the politicians to implement austerity that drives people to support Nazis.

I leave it to the reader to decide if I'm talking about now or the 1930s.

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