Absolutely, but at least in many countries people understand that – here people love to pretend that there is no corruption here at all and that we’re good, honest folk all of us.

Finland is surprisingly corrupt (it’s just not the sort of corruption where you bribe cops) and Finns are generally stupid and gullible enough to think we’re not corrupt

Oh yes it makes absolute sense, I just find it hilarious that reich-wingers will say “woke leftist commies are pro-Russia” like they think it’s a bad thing while simultaneously idolizing Russia and Putin. I’d hate to drag 1984 into this, but it’s just such a classic example of doublethink that it’d be amazing to behold if these fucks weren’t in power

Yeah the democratic socialist party here in Finland that I vote for (The Left Alliance) has had some of the most vocal opponents of Russia for years now, even before Russia’s invasion of Crimea way back when. Funnily (?) enough the right wing extremists currently in government say leftists are pro-Russian like they think it’s a bad thing, while at the same time being explicitly pro-Russian – some going as far as visiting “Hitler youth camps” organized by Russia some years ago and claiming they were doing super secret spy stuff when questioned about it earlier this year.

What really baffles me about some self-described leftists is how can anyone look at the shit Russians do on a daily basis and go “yes, this country seems nice and progressive and very anti-imperialist.”

And the whole time Russia has been saying it’s a dangerous escalation, and that sending weapons to Ukraine is tantamount to participating in the war.

Remember, if “the west” so much as sends letters of warm regard, let alone troops, to Ukraine, Russia will feel like that’s justification for starting WW III. They can naturally do whatever they want, because Russia.

The only other sources I could find for this with some quick searching were other rags like Express. It’s all based off some Russian Telegram channel, so the reliability is questionable at best

Huh, interesting (and more than a bit worrying) that it’s not happening just over here in Finland too. Crime rates have generally gone down for a while now, but there’s been a huge uptick in particularly brutal violent crimes perpetrated by under 15’s

Next in the news, Israel explains how Ireland is actually Hamas, which is why they had to use white phosphorus on UNIFIL troops

ban anyone that thinks differently.

Incredibly disingenuous of you to paint this as being about a simple difference of opinion, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a right-leaning person is completely unable to have a good faith discussion about anything. I’ve had conservative acquaintances say to my face that the world would be a better place if gender minorities like me didn’t exist; this isn’t about them fucking “thinking differently” you moron, they don’t even want me to fucking exist, and you have the nerve to whine about it

I’d be inclined to think that going from 30% to 20% is worse than “not entirely successful” (assuming AfD voters in general are at the very least somewhat sympathetic to fascist views, which really doesn’t seem like an unfair assumption)

Did they do it, though? Eg. the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency) and BKA (Federal Criminal Bureau, the federal investigative police) are somewhat notorious for having a bit of a neo-Nazi problem, and they’re not the only German federal or state entities with the same issue (see eg. this article about the BfV and BKA. Edit: PBS report about neo-Nazi infiltration in German security forces).

It’s not an uncommon view that denazification wasn’t entirely successful. Hell, they even have a word for the sort of rushed “washing clean” of Nazi officials that was done: Persilschein, “Persil ticket” (Persil is a detergent brand).

I’d argue that if denazification had really succeeded, the AfD and others like it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

I don’t disagree with that sentiment at all, I’m just not sure how to set this particular broken bone. How do you make ~20% of the population less fascist?

There is a difference between conservatism and being a threat to the democratic order.

I’m not sure I agree. More and more it’s started seeming like they’re generally just waiting for a moment to drop their masks; eg. here in Finland now that we have a fully right wing government, our “fiscally conservative” party started their term off by limiting the right to strike, and is now echoing extremist right wing talking points about eg. immigration, LGBT+ people, and the environment. They were OK with an extremist right wing minister leaving us out of Ukraine’s “Alliance for Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery” because the plan mentioned LGBT+ people, and they stood in the way of banning abusive LGBT+ “conversion therapy” even though they claimed to be against it back when they still had to be in a government with leftist parties (sorry, couldn’t find an English source for this but here is one in Finnish. For translation I’d suggest DeepL, it’s vastly superior to eg. Google). They are also blaming the opposition for “besmirching” Finland’s reputation abroad, meaning they don’t want anyone pointing out that we have literal neo-Nazis in the government and parliament.

Note that I’m not saying the AfD shouldn’t be banned, just that banning it won’t make the people who vote for it and run it any less, well, fascist.

There’s nothing that prevents AfD voters from going to other parties, there’s plenty, or to voice their concerns in a new party that can be a legitimate part of the democratic system. Changing parties isn’t like banning a religion or a creed or a race, a party is hardly more than just a banner, the power of which can change between and during elections, at any time, through a simple act of the mind. Banning the party will absolutely help.

And that’s the thing; because the people who support AfD won’t change just because their party gets banned, how likely do you think it is that they’ll realize they need to be a legitimate part of a democratic system instead of what they’ve been doing all along?

Banning the party isn’t going to help.

Like I say of Trump, the AfD isn’t the problem, they’re a symptom. Conservatism and conservatives themselves are the problem – the question is how should we deal with them, and I really don’t know the answer to that.

Edit: just to clarify, I’m not saying the AfD shouldn’t be banned, just that banning the party won’t change the people who vote for it and run it.

“The purpose of a system is what it does.”

Yeah it’s the same here, they and the younger gens have apparently gotten very polarized; the ones who are “good eggs” are really decent folks, and the shitty ones are really shitty.

So while the extremist reich wing party PS (Perussuomalaiset or “Finns Party”, because naturally only a nationalist wank is a real Finn) was their most popular party, as a proportion of their cohorts more young people voted for the Left Alliance than older ones did. Here’s a handy table from our 2023 parliamentary elections (source):

• KOK: National Coalition Party, fiscally conservative
• PS: Finns Party, extremist right wing
• SDP: Social Democrat, liberal / marginally left
• KESK: Centre Party, what it says on the tin
• VAS: Left Alliance, democratic socialists
• VIHR: Green League, liberal & green
• SFP: Swedish People’s Party, right wing
• KD: Christian Democrats, nearly as bad as PS
• LIIK: Movement Now, nominally center right but about as right wing as KOK

Actually based on that study the claim that gen Z is more conservative than older gens doesn’t seem to hold up. Seems like they’re about as conservative, but also more likely to vote Left

Hmm, I wonder if Gen Z’s politics are different over there compared to here, because at least in Finland the 2. most popular parties they voted for were a right wing extremist party and a “fiscally conservative” party that is essentially indistinguishable from the extremist one (the joke is that the way to tell them apart is that the “fiscal conservatives” wear more expensive suits.) Sure, many do also vote for eg. the Left Alliance who are democratic socialists, but on the whole the generation is more conservative than the older ones