Mainstream politicians express alarm while lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt welcomes congratulations from Elon Musk
Mainstream politicians around Europe have expressed alarm after the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) swept to a historic state election victory in Germany, while nationalist figures cheered the result as a mandate for change.
While falling just short of an absolute majority, the AfD surged into first place in the Saxony-Anhalt state election on Sunday, exit polls showed, putting the far right within reach of power at the state level for the first time since the second world war.
People don’t like immigration, and the only parties that promise to do anything against it are the extreme right wing ones. That’s how they get their votes.
Until other parties wake up and realise that they should tackle the immigration problem, the fascist will always have that trick to get votes.
Please describe to me how immigration is a problem that needs to be dealt with rather than allowing for visa free movement between borders. And how immigration is anything but a means to control the average person and prevent them from seeking a better life elsewhere?
Sure, I’ll try!
There is nothing inherently wrong about borders. You’re probably very happy your house has a border. Wolf packs have borders. Borders are useful.
As I see it, borders are physical manifestations of a social construct. You know, like money, flags, medals, wedding gowns, etc etc. And just like all of these, borders have a social purpose for the tribe within. In their case it’s to distinguish between “us” and “them”. Why make that distinction? Because tribes must pool their resources to thrive. That includes material things like food and shelter, but also immaterial resources like labor, safety, clean water, you name it.
But sharing has two hard requirements: reciprocity and trust. Without either, you cannot pool your resources without risk of getting taken advantage of. Why invest in a common good that might not be there for you when YOU need it? That’s why reciprocity and trust are so fundamental to human relations! We built an entire society about signals of trust, about showing other people you are “us” and not “them”.
Long story short, tribes (“us”) guard their pooled resources from outsiders (“them”). That’s why Germans can’t collect their pension from Mongolian state funds. Nationalities, then, are a shorthand for calculating whether a person has contributed to a tribe’s resources and is therefore an “us”.
There’s a ton of valid(!) arguments to be made about which kinds of borders are fair, or which immigrants deserve our pooled resources. But that’s not my point here, I’m here to argue that visa are useful and serve a purpose (which is not bullying outsiders, but protecting INsiders)
But the CDU is also promising to tackle immigration, and has actually delivered on some of it during their government. They were halved this election.
The fascist can always jump to the next topic. Immigration isn’t even the original boogeyman, there’s always another “other”. You can’t beat them at their own game, they’ll always promise a more radical, more “effective” solution, meaning you’ll never “do enough”. The only thing you’ll do is legitimize their viewpoint.
You need to address why people are looking for a boogeyman. And that’s because many of them appear to be worse off than they were a decade ago. They’re angry at traditional parties because they messed up economically and standard of living is going down. Address that, and you take away the oxygen that fuels the fire. Immigration didn’t cause the standard of living to go down, promising you’ll end it legitimizes those who claim it does.
In Germany we can see that the people who don’t like immigrants are the ones that almost have no immigration.
So you see there is sth. that doesn’t make sense.
Also the far right blame alien people for the problems and claim dealing with immigrants solves that. However we know what the actual issue is. Rich companies and rich people.
But the common people only see shit is bad, probably immigrants. Because BILD newspaper said so.
Saschen-Anhalt has barely any immigrants and a population older than Jesus. The few immigrants there are, are trying to keep the old fucks alive. What are other parties supposed to do about that?
We do not have an “immigration problem”, and copying the far-right does nothing, as shown in multiple studies: https://cloud.karakeep.app/public/lists/gf3gklfyh1tw7ngqb0n2aonj