Summary
Germans voted in a high-stakes election on February 23, with conservative Friedrich Merz poised to replace Chancellor Olaf Scholz amid a far-right surge.
The far-right, anti-immigration AfD is set for a record result, fueled by security concerns after attacks by asylum seekers.
The vote also unfolds amid tensions over US-Europe relations, as Trump signals a shift in NATO support.
If mainstream parties fail to counter far-right momentum now, analysts warn, the AfD may entirely dominate next time.
This is so depressing. I know that politics is cyclical, eras of progressive politics are always followed by periods of conservative regression. But, this is such a whiplash response, I don’t understand how so many people are being duped by this insanity around the world.
Modern propaganda techniques are such that millions of people believe in a reality that doesn’t exist.
Sadly, they’re simply brainwashed rubes
Worryingly, there’s a growing number of them thanks to all the “manosphere” and “trad” movements that exist to brainwash kids
Rich people figured out that if you buy a news outlet and just have them repeat a lie over and over and over and over it just becomes a fact that everyone knows.
From there you have your politicians run on fixing the problem you lied about existing and now everyone is convinced that not only is the problem real, but only the right wingers can fix it.
Bonus: when your chosen politicians win, you can have your media outlet lie about the problem being fixed to give people a warm fuzzy to reinforce voting this way.
People are being bombarded with low quality information and disinformation.
They get their news from people like Joe Rogan, tik tok, Facebook, twitter, and their other stupid friends.
While the “good” people are trying to share quality information (truth), which takes time and effort, the “bad” people just straight up lie. So they can flood all these channels with their lies, and people just eat it up.
What’s astonishing is that the governments are just letting all this happen. Just letting these tech companies peddle all these lies without any pushback.
Only Brazil seems to be actually doing something about Twitter and Musk, for example. Why haven’t other countries cracked down on Musk? It’s baffling…
I keep seeing this sentiment over and over and over: “I don’t understand how so many people are duped.” It’s bizarre, and seems to defy our common sense. So, maybe it’s time to consider other explanations, and there are some which are backed by scientific research. I’ve been flogging this article since it was published, because it’s the only one that I’ve seen so be far that talks about it:
What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán Understand About Your Brain
One key element here is that the mind hack needs an ‘in,’ like fear, to get started, which explains why it affects some kinds of people so much more than others.