The election of the first head of a county administration by the far-right Alternative of Germany in a rural eastern region recently has led to concern among opponents of the party.
If the politics don't change and stop pushing a neoliberal agenda, it won't stop. Inequalities are rising in Europe, what makes the far right “against the system” semantic looking nice. It's up to the traditional parties to change and stop the last 40 years of politics to stop this rise.
I agree. Major parties are increasingly at odds with voter sentiment, then everyone pretends to be surprised when voters turn to smaller parties. Migration is a massive issue in Europe following the 2015 Refugee Crisis. Very little has been done to solve the resulting major social issues. Instead, many parties are doubling down on policies which have been a complete failure.
Denmark is a really interesting case study. Their large leftwing party started losing votes on the migration issue, so they stole policies from the right and implemented them in a softer, more moderate manner. They proceeded to dominate polls for years. I don’t understand why leftwing parties across Europe don’t replicate that. Surely it is preferable to be in the driver’s seat to shape how migration is controlled, rather than being relegated to being a spectator for the next decade.
Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk. Democracy will prevail and Europeans will ultimately decide the fate of their nations.
From everything I've heard about Denmark's immigration policies, I can only describe them as inhumane racist scums. They don't even treat the immigrants as people.
Well that’s not true at all. Denmark arguably offers the best refugee benefits and support programs in the entire world. They’re extremely expensive, hence the desire to keep refugee numbers at a sustainable rate, and minimise people who abuse the system. It’s very common in Europe for people from poor countries to burn their passports before entering Europe, travel all the way up to Denmark, passing many safe countries, then claim asylum while pretending to be from a country at war. It’s very difficult to expel these migrants because it’s hard to determine where they’re from. Even if we do, often their home countries won’t take them back.
You say that the Danish system tries to avoid people trying to abuse the system, but here’s my problem with that: Where do you draw the line for abuse? Do you think that people from poor countries don’t deserve a better chance at life? Even if they lied about escaping war, they probably did it out of fear of being sent back to their home countries. They immigrated the way they did, because Denmark or other EU countries wouldn’t have granted them visas to travel there legally. People “abusing” the system is very broad & could be a lot of things including sending people home for “only” wanting to escape poverty.
I can answer that very succinctly: those seeking to falsely invoke the articles under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
There are six billion people on the planet who are poorer than Danish citizens. Denmark is a tiny country. They can’t all fit in Denmark. That’s not a solution to global poverty.
You have to understand the rich country side. They cannot just accept anyone and everyone, their economy would collapse and then the country would just be as shitty as the one refugees are trying to escape.
It’s a global issue though. Capitalism is demanding cheap labor fodder, and sooner or later societies will crack. See how in the whole western world, which has a comparatively high living standard, fascism Is on the rise?
Yeah the problem is that the world is kind of running out of dictatorships and underdeveloped countries that "first world countries" can exploit without a second thought - so the reality of having to adapt to a far less glamorous life will have to settle in sooner or later for a lot of those richer countries as there is a huge divide between their lifestyle and moral values.
So the easiest solution for a lot of them is to put moral values aside and be egoistic and imho that's what leading to a lot of the shitty stuff that we see happening today all over the world.
The only way to keep living while exploiting people halfway across the world is telling yourself that those people are "worth less" and there you have the necessary first step for racism/fascism/populism to latch onto
The thing is, the AFD, apart from being Nazis, are also neoliberal. Only an idiot (who also likes Nazis) will vote for them over disliking neoliberalism.
The canadian conservative party is largely neoliberal. Neoliberalism is generally in favor of lower regulations, lower taxes and more private sector presence.