4d ago

JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

www.theguardian.com JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

US vice-president meets with AfD leader Alice Weidel as Trump administration courts European populist parties

Vance met with Weidel just weeks before a German election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party appears poised to take second place on a wave of growing anti-establishment sentiment.

World News @lemmit.online

Lemmit.Online bot @lemmit.online

BOT

4d ago

JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-alice-weidel-meeting-germany-far-right

3 0

You're viewing a single thread.

16 comments

They're appealing to the same people who vote for them in the USA. It's the same playbook: pick a scapegoat (Jews, Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ) and then blame them for everything and promise that ~~exterminating~~ removing that group will make everything better.
Without understanding that most groups are made up of both good and bad, and to label everyone the same based on the actions of a few is wrong.
- Sure any group has both good and bad. Unfortunately migrant groups from Muslim countries are over represented in crime stats in Germany. So it’s very easy for these right wing groups to persuade people by scapegoating Muslims, since many people are a victim or know someone who is victim from a crime committed by a migrant. And last week a Muslim asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd. Right before the elections. AfD is going to gain a lot of seats.
  
  Apologies in advance if I misjudged your intention with pointing it out but:
  migrant groups from Muslim countries are over represented in crime stats in Germany
  Bolded the operative word. Cops (a group of people that are more conservative, anti-immigrant, and straight up racist than the population in general in pretty much all countries on earth) are the ones both CREATING and REPORTING the stats.
  The discrepancy in enforcement and reporting make it inevitable even BEFORE we get to the underlying factors that actually cause crime rather than the usual "criminals do crime because criminals are bad and criminals are bad because they do crime" circular reasoning.
  
  of course it's the underlying factors that actually cause crime. But many people don't look beyond the surface level statistics therefore right wing groups like AfD use these stats to tell half truths and manipulate people. And many people fall for it. Combine that with these recent traumatic events caused by migrants and people will vote with their emotions for AfD.
  However what people outside of Western Europe don't know is that the root cause of these issues is capitalism. After the war the Western European nations invited hundreds of thousands of labor migrants from Turkey and North Africa to rebuild the cities. Capitalists being capitalists they only wanted the cheapest of cheapest laborers. Therefore the vast majority of people that came over were rural subsistence farmers. Low educated or even uneducated and illiterate. On top of that they were religiously conservative. The capitalists and politicians didn't care since they all thought that these migrants would go back home after the job was done. So no efforts were made to integrate these people, however the vast majority stayed in Europe. But since they weren't very smart people and were left to their own devices they didn't learn the local language and culture very well. This wasn't a problem with the first gen, since they just did their jobs everyday and didn't cause trouble. But it caused major issues with the subsequent generations. Their children, lacking language skills and cultural assimilation, struggled in school and felt alienated. This cycle continued, leading to high poverty, unemployment, and thus crime among later generations, many of whom reject Western liberal society while embracing Islamic conservatism.
  I am pretty sure these problems with these migrants wouldn't have been this bad if they only hired educated urbanites as labor migrants and paid them better. Muslim or not wouldn't have mattered. If these European countries invited hundreds of thousands of uneducated illiterate conservative Christians over from for example the USA it would have caused the same problems.
  
  Holy shit. This right here.
  
  Are you from Germany? Do you know every cop? You surely see the irony of judging an entire group of people?
  
  You don't have to be from Germany or "know every cop" to know that cops trend more right wing and bigoted than people in general, including in Germany.
  
  And you don't have to know every migrant to know they have less access to social and economic support systems. Meaning they are more likely to engage in acts of desperation. Don't get me wrong a large percentage of the american police are class traitors with zero education in law specifically chosen for lower IQ. But you should travel the world and look at it from reality and not the backwards telescope of the USA.

16 comments