Greetings, Dear Reader,
Is something far out of the mainstream if a majority of the people like it?
It’s a basic question, and still, liberals are perennially incapable of squaring the math on it.
OOPS, DEMOCRACY IS HAPPENING
Every story I can find about the chances of Germany’s AfD party in the lead up to state elections in Saxony characterizes the political movement as “far right” and/or fringe.
Of course, from the perspective of a writer in New York City or Washington, D.C., writing under mastheads like The Atlantic or Bloomberg or The New York Times, anything to the right of John Kasich is “far right.”
The AfD, which was once subject to overt state surveillance as a result of an “extremist” designation, is now slated to win control of a federal state in Germany. As a result, the sense of impending doom is striking deep into the hearts of liberal writers living literal continents away.
Check out this opening paragraph from The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker. For perspective, this surname-hyphenate was educated at Yale and got his PhD at Oxford, mmmmkay:
Imagine that it’s October 2026, and one of Germany’s 16 federal states has come under the control of a far-right government for the first time since the Nazi era. With an absolute majority in the state Parliament and one of its own installed as state premier, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, quickly begins implementing its agenda. The interior minister announces an emergency remigration program: abolishing asylum, revoking the residence permit of any foreigner convicted of a crime, pledging to review all naturalization decisions made during this century, and incarcerating those designated for deportation. The government stops classifying Ukrainians as war refugees and ends their social benefits. European Union flags disappear from public buildings. The mainstream press is shunned in favor of influencers aligned with the party’s ideology. The government authorizes vigilante groups to act as an auxiliary police force in regions with high crime rates.
I gotta be honest, I got to the kicker and almost had to take a cold shower. Honestly, it reads like an advertisement to build support for AfD.
It’s also an outright fever dream. For a guy who’s a self-styled expert on Europe – which honestly is about as masculine as being an expert on figure skating – you’d expect him to know that stuff like abolishing asylum, stripping immigration status, or reviewing naturalization going back to 2000 are not things a “Land” level government can do (imagine the difference between state and federal jurisdictions).
He is right about one thing, however; all of this is explicitly a part of AfD’s platform. And if they’re polling nearly ten points ahead of the next leading party, which is also aggressive on immigration and asylum claims, is it fair to characterize these views as “far right”?
Perhaps for an over-credentialed doofus working a laptop job from a condo outside DC or in a brownstone in New York City, where the consequences of loose immigration and crime policies basically only exist on Fox News, which is never watched.
But the election continents away underscores a growing problem for neoliberals everywhere: The stuff they hate is not actually fringe; it’s wildly popular.
Stuff like merit, earned wealth, policing that arrests and imprisons criminals, even mass deportations and finally especially that men cannot be women.
The subset of people who believe the opposite is increasingly cloistered, both geographically and intellectually. You either live deep in a city and have multiple useless degrees, or you are a sane person with normal views.
Every time they attempt to cast these things as abnormal, fringe or “far right,” they are simply telling on themselves.
MORE LINKS
ROOKE: Big Tech Broke Their Promise, Americans Haven’t Forgotten
When did it all go so wrong?
Oof. That’s rough.
What Do Trump’s 2024 Swing Voters Want From Him Now?
A good analysis from Reagan.
