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I agree. Major parties are increasingly at odds with voter sentiment, then everyone pretends to be surprised when voters turn to smaller parties. Migration is a massive issue in Europe following the 2015 Refugee Crisis. Very little has been done to solve the resulting major social issues. Instead, many parties are doubling down on policies which have been a complete failure.

Denmark is a really interesting case study. Their large leftwing party started losing votes on the migration issue, so they stole policies from the right and implemented them in a softer, more moderate manner. They proceeded to dominate polls for years. I don’t understand why leftwing parties across Europe don’t replicate that. Surely it is preferable to be in the driver’s seat to shape how migration is controlled, rather than being relegated to being a spectator for the next decade.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk. Democracy will prevail and Europeans will ultimately decide the fate of their nations.

It’s a global issue though. Capitalism is demanding cheap labor fodder, and sooner or later societies will crack. See how in the whole western world, which has a comparatively high living standard, fascism Is on the rise?

The thing is, the AFD, apart from being Nazis, are also neoliberal. Only an idiot (who also likes Nazis) will vote for them over disliking neoliberalism.

Instead, conservative parties everywhere are trying to tap into the fascism for extra votes.

That might be workable in the long run, but let's face it. AfD took advantage of racism and likely the ignorance in former Soviet region.

It's not like policy can change the mind of mad, emotional and uneducated creatures.

Sadly the denazification was overall a joke and not a success as many claim it to be. The trials held were just for show. Barely any people ended up paying for what they did. Most people that collaborated with the nazi party just signed a piece of paper saying they weren’t Nazis and they were good to go. No such thing as real denazification ever happened.

One other problem is how history is taught.

At one point, fascism was taught as "evil people marching with evil symbols, to do evil things, for the sake of evil". Essentially the nazis were reduced to Saturday morning cartoon villains, erasing the memories of how they manipulated the minds of the common people.

This gives an opportunity for modern nazis. And since most people don't know what kind of manipulation tactics they use, they can still use the same ones in new costume (see "great replacement", the "groomer" panic, etc.).

Social media misinformation is far from being the largest cause. There are so many people living in villages and islands that aren't educated, and fully believe the far right's fairy tales about how they're going to fix the system and restore things to how they used to be.

I agree about social media though, I think that the EU needs to give Meta, Google and Twitter an ultimatum: Fix your algorithms in order not to create echo chambers of misinformation otherwise you're gone from every EU country.

As an aside, since it's an area where I see a lot of misconceptions, AFAIK, algorithms aren't purposefully trying to promote alt right views. But rather alt right views are usually outrage driven and outrage drives consumption, which is what the algorithms are trying to maximize.

Though I completely agree that all the social media, search, AI, etc companies need to do far more to combat disinformation. Most of them seem to try to be "neutral" and assume good faith, but those are things that the alt right playbook actively tries to exploit. There's a very famous quote by Jean-Paul Sartre:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

I think a lot of tech companies (except Twitter -- that's gone full Nazi) are full of people trying to maximize profits by attempting to be as centrist as possible, trying not to piss off either "side". But they either don't understand how fascism spreads or don't care, so their actions are resulting in spreading harm.

...but Merkel opening the floodgates to mass migration

Please don't replicate right-wing talking points. She didn't open any gates - she just decided (contrary to all countries around us) to not suddenly shut our open borders when millions fled war and were seeking for refuge.

She basically did, what she always excelled at: sitting it out and doing nothing, then selling it as her political success. Active change was her constant enemy.

The concerns were raised but ignored by the media and in politics. It doesn't stop people from voting for right-wing parties if you just insult them as right-wing and never do anything about their concerns. At some point they just accept that mark and act accordingly.

I think one of the main problems is that there's no "home" for people leaning left. The SPD has long dropped the "S" from it's name, it's just another conservative party representing those who are already well-off, without any ideas or plans to improve life for those who are exploited in our current system. Die Linke is completely detached from reality and too busy with fighting between themselves to address the giant issues that they should have the answers for. Greens are a climate/environment party first and they're too elitist to pick up any of the angry people who (rightfully) feel like they've been cheated by the system.

So when you have a well organized, populist party on the far-right that provides (wrong) answers for those people, it's no wonder they flock to them. Of course, you'll always have those who are actual fascists and will always vote for a fascist party, but a strong left could easily draw a lot of the other voters away from the AfD.

But the far left are always clinging on the legacy of Marx and forgot how to adapt their ideology to modern world that only far right are evolving. Or they are trying idolise Mao/ Lenin which is not very saint as well.

Not that much in my experience, they rather cling to, I think, unrealistically high expectations on the human nature or culture, especially about the ability of people to work, share wealth and respect things purely based on philosophy without needing constrains such as requiring a job to live, police and hierarchy.

I'd add that, more than anything else, leftist fixation on older theory is more than just idolizing people who are not very "saintly."

I think, at its core, older leftist theory is still very geared toward an industrial society. It found purchase primarily among trade unions representing industrial workers, and in some ways, I don't think we have adequately "adapted" to a post-industrial world.

Don't get me wrong, the core tenets of labor participation, labor mobilization, and mass action will probably be relevant tools up and until mass automation occurs across the board. But we don't have the same working class base we did a century ago. I'd be interested in seeing a greater emphasis on incorporating, in addition to traditionally working class people in trades and "unskilled services," white collar workers that are nominally distinct from the former groups but are still nevertheless abused and exploited like everyone else.

Obviously, someone who makes $50k/year doing back breaking labor is objectively worse off and more exploited than someone making $100k/year in a computer science or similar field, but the computer science person is probably getting shit on too.

Unfortunately it seems to be a trend for the whole western world. There has been a steady shift to the right in politics in Europe and America for a couple of decades now. And I think it'll get a whole hell of a lot worse before it gets better. There are no quick fixes. There are no easy solutions. The left needs to get its act together and present a viable alternative.