Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwa356262 | Hacker News Reader

Are you not a fan of AfD if you believe everything they claim and completely demonize the other side?

I don’t really understand what you’re asking, but I don’t think the AFD is really a unique phenomenon. The popularity of right wing parties is across the entire West and IMO it’s for the exact reasons I just wrote.

Harris lost to Trump in 2024 for what I see as exactly the same reasons.

I think you downplay the role of social media in fanning the flames.

"Careless People" talks about it and how it was the inception of Meta's powerplay into politics by becoming indispensable for politicians to use their platforms to reach voters. The only thing they cared about is engagement and avoiding regulations, both are easily achievable if polarisation becomes the norm, the obliteration of proper political discourse into the form it exists now is a consequence of that.

I don't believe those far-right parties would have this much support if public discourse wasn't mostly focused on online platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X, etc., they wouldn't have the reach nor the tools for creating information bubbles as existing right now. Those platforms allow for the formation of entire separate realities that are self-reinforcing.

Sure that’s a factor. But I think it’s pretty obvious in reality that a lot of people are not having a good time in contemporary western society. Social media didn’t invent that.

> Social media didn’t invent that.

Hence why I started with "fanning the flames". It means the issues are there, they need to be worked on but with social media we are stuck, solving complex issues require compromises, long-term thinking and planning, nothing that is enabled by social media's knee-jerk reactions, ephemeral messaging, etc.

I think both can be true: there are issues with affordable housing and integration of immigrants. But at the same time parties are poisoning minds with mass-scale disinformation, propaganda, trolling, through social media. These are even more effective when issues already exist.

Sadly, some of the parties that are involved (tech bros, Russia, etc.) are not going to do any good when it comes to these issues. They'll only make the housing issues worse (by accumulating even more wealth and invading your country, respectively). But blaming everything on immigrants and elites has always worked extremely well, in-group vs. out-group is something that our brain needed for survival in the past, so it is very easy to trigger.

The saddest part is that those that push the anti-elite narrative (Trump, Musk, etc.) are often the elites themselves.

That's like saying the establishment would have an easier time controlling the unruly populance if they still had an iron grip on all public communication. True, but doesn't exactly advance the argument that I think you want to.

That's not at all what I'm saying, you can make your point without trying to stuff words in my mouth.

The mistake in your analysis is that it is not just the far right but populism in general is on the rise, Mamdani, Green party in the UK etc.

I don’t see how that goes against what I’ve said. It’s not about right wing parties becoming more inherently popular, it’s about them taking advantage of the unpopularity of the establishment, and voters looking the other way on moral issues because of it.

That doesn’t imply that the candidate must have morally dubious character, just that morally dubious characters are taking advantage of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com