cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/72700824
This is a common problem for incumbent demagogues. In opposition, simple solutions are proposed for complex problems: tariffs as the remedy for industrial decline; expelling illegal immigrants as the answer to every social and economic grievance; trusting in the leader’s judgment as the answer to everything else.
In office, those mechanisms fail to deliver the promised benefits. Someone needs to be blamed. The categories of undesirable element grow. Media, universities, courts and opposition parties are called crooked or treasonous. But purges disrupt the smooth running of a country. They are bad for the economy. This is how the insecure leader goes through the gears of tyranny. A craving for control generates dissent, which is attacked as a menace to society, requiring more draconian law enforcement. When that provokes more determined opposition, the dissenters are denounced as extremists who jeopardise public safety.
Yes, and we must again say that the European far-right is highly aligned with Trump’s US, Russia, and China.
Probably a coincidence.
Alice Weidel, the head of Germany’s far-right AfD who lived in China for six years, has close ties to China. Not long ago she admitted to frequently met Wu Keng, who was China’s ambassador to Germany from 2019 to 2024. When the meeting became public, Weidel said that after Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, she wanted to get “an idea of the Chinese position”. These meetings were not included in her calendar and were supposed to remain secret. It is unclear whether or not they still take place.
Just last year ago, an aide of Germany’s far-right AfD politician Maximilian Krah was convicted of spying for China.
These are two examples. There are many more with extremist groups of both sides. As one report wrote not long ago, it is a Marriage of Convenience: How the European Far Right and Far Left Converged on China,