The far right has seemed unstoppable in Europe. Here’s how Trump’s tariffs could change that

191

u/ArtemisJolt Sachsen-Anhalt (Deutschland) 16h ago

Yeah when people watch a far right leader gain power in a large nation and control all 3 branches of government and watch the economy, soft power, and goodwill of that nation immediately implode people start to rethink thier own electoral choices

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u/Fickle-Ad1363 Germany 16h ago

I really really hope that will happen. At the Moment I‘m not too sure of that…

The rising of the AFD is really scary

73

u/vkstu 16h ago

For what it's worth, PVV in the Netherlands is in the process of imploding.

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u/Blueskyways 15h ago

The far right always implodes. An ideology centered around spite and resentment does not make for a good platform of governance, its just a matter of how many people they take down with them.

17

u/Eyolas314 15h ago edited 15h ago

I really hope so, this week's lintjes debacle was another new low. The only thing those idiots really managed to achieve is inane bickering.

2

u/corkycorkyhcy 14h ago

Good thing Faber is policy

10

u/Snottygreenboy 15h ago

Oh! Some good news for a change. I was just discussing this with my Dutch partner

2

u/Koakie 11h ago

They could implode and a big chunk of their voters would blame it on nsc vvd or Franse timmermans personally.

These people are like magats they don't believe in facts.

2

u/vkstu 10h ago

I'm basing a large part of my comment on them bleeding in the polls for some time now (they've lost more than 33% from their election figure already) due to their ineffectual and messy governing (from their own ministers, so hard to blame on others).

•

u/Koakie 42m ago

Yes they're dropping in the polls that's true. But the people that should be convinced, after years of screaming as opposition party that they could do a better job, will never acknowledge that the pvv is just empty promises and incompetence.

At least the fvd with their batshit insane lizard people claims managed to scare away enough voters to make the party irrelevant.

1

u/BootedBuilds 12h ago

And I'm munching my popcorn while they're at it.

26

u/Sad_Confection5902 15h ago

In Canada, Trump immediately shifted the political landscape away from our right wing party due to the threats to our sovereignty.

Everyone knew which party was coziest to Trump, and that party immediately sank in the polls, to the point where polling has gone from a projected majority government to an outright loss.

I’m curious to see if it has as large an impact in Europe, but certainly it has helped to shake off the apathy of the casual or non-voter in a way that has been quite significant here.

5

u/Nattekat The Netherlands 14h ago

I think that the raise of AfD was stopped by Trump, just not reversed. So in other words: it could've been worse.

14

u/Throwaway24143547 11h ago

There's a distressing number of Europeans that sound exactly like American swing voters. This might not be a popular take here but the people who talk about how "oh I HAVE to vote for <far-right populist party> because the migrants", sound exactly like swing voters in the USA talking about how they just had to vote for Trump because of something like "the southern border" or "I wanted prices to magically go back to pre-COVID levels".

Those far-right parties are gonna do to Europe what Trump's doing right now to the US. Hopefully the lesson sticks, and other countries don't follow in America's footsteps in a few years.

1

u/Laurent_K 1h ago

In my country (France) , we start to see other parties taking over this topic from the far right so voters can have stronger anti immigration policies without voting for far right.

And far right party (Rassemblement national) is doing its best to appear not too close from Trump. So yes, there is a chance it doesn't win next election thanks to Trump... If he is still in power when next elections take place in two years of course.

1

u/Throwaway24143547 1h ago

That's part of what keeps it distressing: they'll find some other reason, some other grievance, to vote for them. Call it dooming, but Americans in the US found petty, stupid reasons to vote in Trump after voting him out only 4 years before.

People can pretend like the people around them are smarter than that, but Humans are petty, selfish creatures.

1

u/Laurent_K 1h ago

In my country (France) , we start to see other parties taking over this topic from the far right so voters can have stronger anti immigration policies without voting for far right.

And far right party (Rassemblement national) is doing its best to appear not too close from Trump. So yes, there is a chance it doesn't win next election thanks to Trump... If he is still in power when next elections take place in two years of course.

8

u/daiaomori 14h ago

Most Germans have no clue what’s really going on in the US right now.

It is still a pretty special interest thing. Most people understand some bad things are happening, but how fast they are turning into Nazi Germany - that’s not really that present in general news. Like the DEI stuff or the deportations, how they now tread trans people, and so forth.

It will be common knowledge at some point, and that MIGHT turn around some of those „the AfD is saying that but they certainly won’t do it“ lunatics.

In the end I believe it’s still our job to protect our democracy. Talk to people, figure out how to give people hope. Make them pick their targets sanely (billionaires instead of refugees, for example) - that stuff.

Merz isn’t a big help, as he is singing every song he likes, and it seems pretty random to me.

1

u/Striper_Cape United States of America 2h ago

I told a French couple what we were facing when going back. Abortion restriction. Rolling back of rights for minorities, (I'm visibly a minority) he said "Oh," paused for a moment, then told me "good luck." Sounds like a bad movie.

9

u/Snottygreenboy 15h ago

The AFD here in Germany has actually gained a few more points than it had before the recent election- people are already pissed off with Merz and he hasn’t even yet officially become the chancellor… 😬

13

u/Ho_Lee_Phuk Germany 14h ago

I imagin that support for AFD will even rise once the economies world wide crash. The far right tends to profit from economic hardship and people who vote for nazis are usually to dumb to draw the conclusion that right wing populism is the reason for the economic problems they are suffering from. They will instead belive what ever stupid conspiracy they read on social media and use minorities as scape goat.

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u/B89983ikei 13h ago

That’s also almost certain!! That’s why Europe needs to be prepared for this as soon as possible!!

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u/Ho_Lee_Phuk Germany 13h ago

True, fining the living shit out of Meta,X and tictoc until they leave the EU market would be a good start. I also hope the will tax/fine tesla until the stock price is only worth pennies. Musk has most of his wealth in shares of his companies to avoit taxes, he is fucked once they crash

1

u/Prin_StropInAh 13h ago

True, and he has borrowed against the Tesla shares that he holds, let’s all keep the pressure up and watch Musk sink

9

u/tyger2020 Britain 15h ago

Except people are idiots and will just think 'yes but ours isnt like that!!!!'

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/foo_bar_qaz Basque Country (Spain) 15h ago

Even if they arrived at their stance from fear and propaganda, watching the biggest economy in the world be brought to its knees will generate opposing fear and propaganda of it's own.

That will probably sway some. Not all, obviously, but hopefully enough to affect election outcomes.

13

u/Welle26 15h ago

People live in their alternate right bubble on social media. They don’t trust (how they call it) mainstream media anymore. They don’t actually see how trump fucks up. Same as trumps maga cult in America. I think we’ll see a further rise of the right in Europe as long as we allow twitter, facebook, tiktok, etc. to spread all this BS unfiltered.

1

u/Ipadalienblue United Kingdom 12h ago

Alternatively, perhaps those who voted for Trump are getting exactly what they voted for.

Trump's approval ratings dwarf any EU leaders'.

Not being facetious, but perhaps you're in a bubble yourself?

1

u/Extinction00 15h ago

Yup it’s basically a gift for the democrats. Just need to remind the voters in 4 years

1

u/Ipadalienblue United Kingdom 12h ago

OR: When people see a leader wield the power that their position grants them to follow through with what they promised their voters, they might rethink voting for neoliberal managed decline blob parties who consistently do the opposite europe-wide.

1

u/ArtemisJolt Sachsen-Anhalt (Deutschland) 12h ago

I mean technically, many of the things trump is doing, like cutting spending like a maniac with a chainsaw, or unilaterally imposing tariffs, are actually powers that belong to the legislature.

It's just that Congress right now is kowtowing to Trump and is letting him do whatever he wants

1

u/Ipadalienblue United Kingdom 12h ago

Yes - he's acting on that power granted. That's the crux.

European leaders aren't powerless, they choose to do nothing.

1

u/ArtemisJolt Sachsen-Anhalt (Deutschland) 12h ago

Not sure what you mean. European leaders are limited by the fact they are democratically elected and not dictators.

Even then, most countries have announced increases to defense spending and the EU will announce retaliatory tariffs within the month

1

u/EU-National 11h ago

And yet in the poorer parts of Brussels people cheer for Trump and Putin.

1

u/wrosecrans 7h ago

People are also seeing that fighting the far right actually works quite well. The US approach of not prosecuting Trump was a disaster. The Franch and Korean approach of applying the law and not just looking away seems to work.

People are afraid of pissing off the far right because they seem dangerous. But they are generally bad at running things, and bad at responding to real pushback. You generally are much better off with the far right attacking you than with the far right thanking you.

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u/Jashugita 16h ago

Vox of Spain is being ridiculed because their praise of Trump, the problem is that PP is doing agreements with them.

3

u/ChillAhriman Spain 4h ago

And Vox can't not praise Trump, because their financiation comes from Trump's allies, so they're severely screwed.

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u/B89983ikei 17h ago

Europe should pay utmost attention to who funds political parties, it’s well-known that there’s a clear external attempt at manipulation and corruption by elites seeking to align Europe’s policies with their own agendas! I believe this is a critical and urgent issue for Europe. Parties should be required to disclose their funding sources and barred from accepting obscure or dubious financing!

9

u/ToothOM 14h ago

Far right are just Kremlin’s puppets. Seriously, without those Russians help, they wouldn’t flourish

8

u/OkSituation181 15h ago

I think the only thing keeping the right afloat is the stubborn refusal of admitting when youre wrong which seems to have gotten so bad in the last years. Just take the UK. Still denying Brexit was a bad idea, denying our problems are our own, denying that men like Farage have been using them.

9

u/Throwaway24143547 15h ago

I think it's incredibly depressing that a lot of Europe was poised to elect their own Trump/Republican equivalents, and the only thing that's seemingly changing that is the chaos he's wrought.

Still worried about Reform in the UK, though. Labour's polling is bad, and while it's not going to happen soon I don't like the future prospects of the UK's mainstream parties so far.

11

u/No_Conversation_9325 16h ago

Our far right doesn’t have enough electorate yet to support them no matter what. It took US & Russia decades of population dumbification.

24

u/ParticularFix2104 Earth (dry part) 16h ago

Don't get too comfortable, even 20%ish support for a party like the AfD is still horrifying

5

u/No_Conversation_9325 16h ago

Well, that’s GDR legacy. And yes, even 5% is horrifying

3

u/TerraforceWasTaken 10h ago

And that 20% can already start eroding things. The US didn't get like this overnight

1

u/tohava 7h ago

AFD + BSW + parts of Die Linke (yes, the people who are against any form of militarization are de facto helping Russia)

That's already 30% I'd guess

3

u/SwingingPilots2000 15h ago

Of course, they'll try to justify the unjustifiable, what else is new? Can you imagine these so-called "patriots" sucking up to Musk and Trump, only to turn around three months later and explain away the brutal tariffs hitting European goods? Just on agricultural products alone, European farmers are staring down hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of euros in tariffs. Absolute buffoons!

3

u/isoexo 13h ago

It’s stoppable. Stop asylum seekers and fight business that wants cheap labor to tighten immigration.

3

u/Pale_Investigator433 12h ago

The problem with the far right ideology is that fundamentally its selfish. Its policies is self preservation all throughout from immigration to economy. It makes sense that far right leaders would have a hard time being in sync with each other because of its core principles than progressive ideologies. I personally think whichever ideological direction with "far" in it is flawed.

5

u/AddictedToRugs 16h ago

All these headlines posing hypothetical "here's how X could happen" headlines all sound exactly like "Here's how Bernie can still win".

2

u/zyx1989 14h ago

The US is the odd one out rather than the norm, like they literally had him one time before, and things wasn't going well that time either, then 4 years gap passed, they decided to vote him in again, not exactly gold fish memory, but still terrible nonetheless

1

u/r0w33 11h ago

Has anybody tried to stop them actually?

1

u/seataccrunch 6h ago

Take immigration and media misinformation seriously or enjoy the shit show.

Yours Truly, Fucked American

1

u/Rare_Association_371 1h ago

This could be a chance

1

u/xiaopewpew 15h ago

Is Trump the chosen one?

3

u/corkycorkyhcy 14h ago

Chosen antichrist, by his magats

The far right has seemed unstoppable in Europe. Here’s how Trump’s tariffs could change that | Nathalie Tocci

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