Throwing your hat in with Trump is absolutely toxic worldwide, and yet MAGA just doesn't fucking get it.
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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The trump effect worldwide.
The Screw Trump effect worldwide
I just congratulated my Finnish friends and one of them explained to me that Perussuomalaiset (the party's name in Finnish) directly translates to "The Basic Finns"! I really hope the opposition is using that in English interviews.
Their official English party name used to be 'True Finns' but at some point someone probably figured out that sounds a bit elitist; Like everyone not supporting them is not a true Finn?
Somebody probably accused them of the "No true Finn" fallacy.
2 years ago, when I first heard about them in Helsinki, I genuinely thought they were a Sami party. But yeah, that is usually the underlying message of such names, like for example Forza Italia in Italy (which also meant that football journalists were directly turned into political megaphones during the games of the National team).
Apparently now the official English name is The Finns. Calling themselves Basic in English wasn't to their taste apparently.
I think also big news is how much the Left Alliance party grew as well this election
Under the Far Right government in Finland, homelessness increased.
Now, maybe Finland can get back to having real public options available for housing without asking if anyone 'deserves' to have a roof over their heads.
The Far Right, no matter the country, always succeed in turning everything good about civilization into shit exclusively for themselves. If we ever have another national election in the United States, I don't think the Far Right fascists will be able to win anything.
(and that, admittedly, is an incredibly hopeful view)
It's almost like everything all the time always gets worse under any type of far right governance.
And yet people keep falling for it.
Unburdened by any attachment to reality, they can paint a very appealing rhetorical picture.
Fascism did really well the last time around until Hitler got to do stuff, too.
I don't get it, why can't people around the world vote in left wing anti-establishment parties when the status quo gets frustrating?
The far right time and time again have proven to be ineffective at their job and people get tired of them. But they can appeal to emotions?
Are the radical left really that boring? Is the message "for the people" not as sexy as "kill those who don't look like us?"
The message "we could all share and the owner class might willingly transition to more circular/community-managed economies!" is not as sexy as "we'll get ~~y~~ours ~~for~~from you, 'cause we're the best and we know you deserve to feel special!"
people like the easy way out when both options sound plausible but one sounds like it probably has less steps and therefore might be easier to achieve (???)
who can really know where mental gymnastics are learned. surely they develop slowly over time, like any type of flexibility...
Hear me out.
Even left radicalism is kind of about - "Fuck those people" thinking. Instead of immigrants it's the rich.
I want to know why this doesn't seem as appealing as "I hate brown/muslim/black/even more than me poor people".
I think it's because of propoganda. The rich can pay for expensive ads and redirect anger. The facist target of the day can't do this.
"for the people" is hard and requires work to solve some very tough problems that were put in our system many many years ago, that requires people to work to better the lives of others without seeing immidiate betterment themselves.
"fuck those other people" is a very very easy solution to a problem I may or may not have just made up.
Trump has won again, despite how he acted last time.
He did weirdly less than he could have in his first term. Most Americans did not directly suffer the way they and the rest of the world are now.
It's also a two-party system, so it's not super easy just to vote out one ideology.
Yes due to harris and the Democrats abandoning their base to cater to trumps.
Trump's base used to be the democrat base. Blue collar workers getting screwed by corporations. Democrats are polling so low because their actions led to this group being overlooked.
Even being lied to feels good after you've been taken for granted / ignored. At least you feel seen.
I still somewhat struggle to explain to myself why he won.
I've considered it being a protest vote, not one with a clear goal or particular signal in mind, but just as a F you to whomever was in power, but that doesn't explain why people worship him.
I've considered it being a result of conspiracy theories and his ability to use those to his advantage by occasionally partial recognizing them and playing along with the story, but that doesn't explain why over half the country would vote for him.
I've considered it being a consequence of Moscow trying to destabilize the US by supporting a candidate that is easily bought or manipulated. Although there definitely has been some interference, believing it to be effective to an extent of swaying the elections seems almost like wishful thinking at this point.
In the end, I'm still not entirely sure what it is. Maybe you're right and it's really that simple.
Harris was the "more of the same" candidate. If you saw things getting better, that sounded good. If you're in pain, that's more pain.
There's a lot of America in pain.
those are a bunch of rationalizations. working americans have been pissed for decades and things have not improved. its why everything is going to go tits up for the rest of the decade.
they dont care about trump. they're pissed no one represents them anymore and life keeps getting harder. there is a reason cars are starting to be lit of fire.
There's also that Biden basically sabotaged the democrat campaign by stepping down only at the last minute, and then proceeding to pressure Kamala to not distance her campaign from the Biden campaign
It could be a bit of them all; his base isn't large enough on its own but, together with those who wanted to protest vote and those looking for relief from the economy and those who hated the idea of voting for a black woman, they may've all been enough to get him over the finish line.
maybe you should consider why. its not because people miss cheney or care about the border. but running candidates like 'nothing will change' and 'I cant think of anything different i'd do' might not be a good strategy.
You're forgetting trump promised to make it so that you'd never "have to" vote again!
My impression as an outsider (some, but limited, exposure to Finnish politics) is that the Finns have the right way of dealing with these far right, maybe. What they always do it seems like is to create a coalition government of the largest parties, including the far right. This keeps them from riding the underdog wave of support for years, and exposes their incompetence in real political issues (usually these parties only have one well-formulated stance, and that is anti immigration - that's the solution to every single other issue).
I'm welcome to criticism if my outsider perspective is misinformed. (-:
As a German, I can assure you that this strategy only works in Finland. Forming a coalition with Nazis brought Germany the Nazi dictatorship and World War II.
He's talking about when they're still small (e.g. 1928) Not forming a coalition when they've grown to a significant portion of the seats (1930 onwards).
In most countries, the established parties are so reactionary to the prospect of a far-right party growing that they normally fight to exclude such a party from even the tiniest bit of power. This drives the narrative of a corrupt undemocratic system full of people desperately clinging to power. Once that starts it's only a matter of time before enough people believe it, elect a dictator, and only then understand what undemocratic looks like.
Luckily, the far-right here in Finland is less extreme than some of their counterparts in Europe. Finns Party members aren't literal Nazis (or at least most of them aren't), and some media outlets, including Yle, usually refuse to label them as far-right at all. Personally, I'm of the opinion that in the context of the Nordics, being far-right doesn't necessarily mean you're full-blown Nazi and that's why I editorialized the title a bit.
Not a "full-blown Nazi", and not even "far-right" by the public service broadcasting, in the nordic countries also includes people who were nazi skinheads, wrote celebratory opinions about literal Nazis, photographed themselves with literal Nazis, joined Nazi parties started by literal Nazis, sings Nazi songs, are personal friends with well recognized Nazi music groups, as long as you deny it ever happened. Just to give some context.
Finns Party members aren’t literal Nazis (or at least most of them aren’t)
Just the one or two who call themselves nazis
Good point. Though I wonder how much is due to Hitler being chancellor and Goering the minister president of Prussia.
Their coalition partner was also a far right party. They were monarchist for the most part, but that still made them anti democratic. Hence the German democracy was dead very quickly. The other Finnish parties in the coalition were not even close to as radical and even the Finn Party never seriously tried to destroy democracy.
Here in the Netherlands the far right party became the biggest after the second largest party tried to win votes by saying they think their voters are right (it didn't, some of their voters moved to the far right party after they validated their points in the open). They are now part of a coalition and for the first time I hear public criticism of their own voters, because exactly as you point out their incompetence is showing. They made promises they can't keep for example. It's better they are not the outsider / underdog that can harness the people's dislike of the government.
I have to say i have heard far more "The kabinet is blocking wilders and thats why he can't do anything" rethoric then actual criticism from pvv voters on wilders.
I'm not saying they suddenly switched sides, most of him defend him like usual, but there is both people on tv who say they're disappointed in them as people I know personal. They are losing credibility since they are in the government.
In Germany there's a word for the strategy you're proposing: in der Regierung "entzaubern" - "demystifying" them in government.
As someone has said, the Nazis were lifted into a coalition government which was the last step before their takeover of the country. I agree that this was bad, but it's a bit simple to compare this to the current situation.
A better comparison is Austria. Austria did exactly what you proposed - the establishment conservatives went into coalition with the extremist right, and after one election, they were able to ditch them. Cool. But the effect of this was permanently legitimizing the right. In the last election the FPÖ, a party founded by actual old nazis, won a plurality of votes. It took a grand coalition of three parties to keep them out of government.
What else is there to do? In Germany and Austria, the right is much more extreme than in Finland. Germany is also a lynchpin in european politics, which the right wants to destroy. In Finland, even the right is anti-russia. In Germany, it's the conservatives who traditionally dominate. When they compete with the extremist right, they're not on the other side of the political spectrum, just a little to the center. In Finland, when the social democrats point out the mistakes of the right, they're more believable and persuasive, because they're actually markedly different from the party they're criticizing.
There is another way to combat the right. When the center holds, and is able to agree on certain principles, they can "quarantine" the right. If they don't, they'll be unable to compete with other democratic parties, and have to compete only with the right. If they do quarantine, they can ignore the right, while focusing on their actual bread-and-butter issues while avoiding being pulled into a bullshit spiral. This is the current strategy of the german democratic parties (CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, Linke). It remains to be seen if the strategy will survive the next four years. If it doesn't, I prophesy dark trouble for germany.
The Austrians did elect the FPO back. Did they forget about their incompetency?
I think something more is at play here. Maybe tiktok? Russian interference? Not sure.
I also think it may be because the root problem is not being solved. Late stage capitalism - housing crisis, unemployment and such.
The far right point to immigrants and blames them for it, but the establishment parties also do very little, too late, to solve the issues well either. Then the election cycle comes and people want a reset. A vicious cycle.
I feel like this calls for radical shift in how society operates, doesn't it (just openly balling)?
I am not saying communist revolution. But I also think we've spent too much time kissing rich asses in the name of "we are benefiting from this, keep doing it". Now that economies don't grow as fast anymore, the "trickle down" effect isn't working and people are getting poorer and angrier.
The rich don't care as long as they can make short term profit, so they keep supporting whoever will help them with that.
There needs to be a change. Or at least the greens, the left need to get some balls, strong leaders and implement some kind of FDResque or clement atleesque policies.
What we need is to give the rich incentives to be happy with what they have and have a stronger government approach to handling things. Avoiding bloodshed is important, don't want to end up like USSR. Maybe until we figure out unlimited energy we can let the rich be dicks but not let them be too much of dicks.
This was a weird rant...
In Sweden we've been quarantining the Nazis for a long time, but eventually the right wingers lost enough voters to them which made it impossible for them to win without some sort of cooperation.
At that point they started campaigning for the Nazis, saying how much they've grown and changed. This of course led to the right losing even more to the Nazis and gave the Nazis a strong bargaining position when they won the election together.
Not saying that the strategy is wrong, but it requires morally fit conservatives or voters.
I think the best line is via rule of law, but it has to be law passed when there isn't a threat from such a party. If it's in response to a particular group rising, then it's seen as an attack on that group and not defence of the country.
The far-right is a completely dead-on-arrival set of ideologies based in hatred, either for “others” or simply just not considering other people human beings and caring more about ones wallet and personal comfort than someone else’s well-being. They can go fuck themselves and do not deserve to be legitimized, and if that builds enough support to be a sizeable force then whatever country it is is filled with morons and, frankly, deserves whatever they get.
All governments are “coalitions” when no single party has a simple majority and frankly if you run a government and don’t even communicate with the other parties you should be run out office follwed by being run through a large, pointy object. Anyway, the idea of “including all the represetatives in a coalition” should be THE FUCKING BASELINE.
Here in Canada, the Conservatives time and again show how wildly incompetent and unwilling to behave and collaborate they are yet they still catch big numbers while having little to no policy except crying like babies every time the CBC ~~is mean to them~~ reports on them accurately. The left-wing and center parties made a coalition a few years back and the Conservatives called it cheating. They also talk about being “the official opposition” a lot but never really seem to worry about cooperation. Part of me wants to see them get a minority government and have to beg for votes from the very people they spewed hate towards for so long.
They lost support in several towns that are seeing hospital services cut back as part of the central government's savings drive.
🥳
Good. Austerity belongs in the trashcan of history
The Nordic model has returned!
Alright Finland! Wh000!