Changes in the media landscape. Up to the 1990s, mainstream media in Western democracies were dominated by intellectuals, who are typically against racism and fascism. This gradually changed as media became more commercialized and sensationalist, a change that rapidly accelerated with the advent of social media, which is completely flooded by hate speech.

Economic reasons are often proposed, but this explanation falls flat considering the lack of a significant economic downturn since the 1990s, and the fact that we have seen fascists massively gaining popularity even in societies that are among the most prosperous in human history. This is especially obvious in Germany, where in East Germany (where the fascist strongholds are) the economic situation has in fact dramatically improved since the 90s.

Wealth and power.

Unscrupulous rich people benefit from the far right, so it is to their advantage to amplify it in media and technology.

There is real and legitimate discontent and disillusionment with the political mainstream, and they're steering those people towards the far right by feeding the public lies that are plausible on the surface and provide an easy target for blame.
They're supported by opportunic charlatans who can get rich by being the mouthpiece.

Propaganda. The elite get people fighting a culture war instead of seeing what’s really happening: the continued funneling of wealth to the few.

Standard of living is going down, via cost of living crisis, not being able to pollute like we did in the past, and billionaires taking all the productivity increases. People don't understand why, they can't accept the situation, so they get angry, find an outgroup to blame it on, which the right says they'll fix by getting rid of the outgroup.

Inequality and decades of painting anything left as evil communism.

Plus liberals would rather hand the reins to fascists than socialists.

Fear is the fuel.

Scared people are selfish, and selfishness is the only common denominator in all right wing politics. They don't have great visions of how to run a society. All they want is to stop someone else from having "their" piece of the imaginary pie.

It takes a lot more positive outlook to have the trust to build a society where people take care of someone they don't know directly.

Billionaires.

Billionaires. They fund right-wring advocates, because tearing down establishment concepts like "rule of law", "industrial standards", "equality", and so forth is very useful to the wealthy.

Occupy Wallstreet.

People like to joke that it did nothing, but it terrified the corporate masters of the world. They have been trying to teach us uppity poors a lesson ever since.

• Rising costs / decline in incomes
• Failing infrastructure
• Decline in education
• Repression of history
• Brainwash through social media
• Nostalgia

People are dissatisfied with the economy and the far-right says, "This is happening because of immigrants," the left says, correctly, "This is happening because of billionaires," while liberals just say, "This isn't happening, everything is fine." The far right's narrative beats the liberal one because it at least acknowledges that people are struggling, even if the reasons and solutions it offers are totally wrong. Unless the economic conditions can be reversed, and the far-right are the only ones people see offering an alternative, the growth of the far-right is inevitable.

As for the left's (correct) narrative that the billionaires are the problem, it has the advantage of actually being true and making sense, but it has the disadvantage of threatening monied interests, which are going to try their best to subvert and silence it. Billionaires will generally prefer to promote the far-right because it doesn't threaten their interests.

However, the left's narrative is the only thing that can really counter the right's narrative. You can't keep insisting there's no problem as things get worse and worse and expect it to work. The left is weak right now and faces an uphill battle, but it's a battle where there's a possibility of winning, while the liberals are ultimately doomed.

The current system no longer works for an average citizen. Current and future generations can't expect a higher standard of living than our parents had while the environment gets destroyed all around us. This disillusionment with current ruling class leads people to support anti-establishment candidates which tend to be far right populists. It's still possible for socialists to provide a valid alternative but in many countries the left is too fragmented and/or too focused on the wrong issues.

Economic despair.

We all know something is deeply wrong with the world, but it's easier to see and blame brown people than to see all the ways that we are being squeezed by the Epstein class.

In a US context, but perhaps the dynamic is the same around the world, is that Republicans blame immigrants and the Democrats, defenders of the status quo, blame nobody.

This is a serious electoral handicap, when your side is prevented from effective world building, when you are not allowed to identify enemies.

Billionaire money. Oligarch money.

I think it's a combination of stupid people, misinformation, disinformation, and social media

Without wanting to be controversial….

Society tends to swing back and forth wildly, attempting to find communality. Gay people were openly oppressed, then accepted, then granted legal equality in marriage, then some adoption agency starts giving gay couples a boost up the waiting list - and somebody completely loses their head and the reverse process begins.

We went from housewife who knew her place (/s) to “believe all women” in less than 3 generations. Some people can’t cope with the change of pace or seeming over-correction.

Again, immigration: they should stay over there. We actually do need some medical staff and shop keepers. Wow, their food is nice. He was born and grew-up here and is one of us. I look like I’m the foreigner in my own high street. Send them all back.

If society goes too far, or too quickly, one way then there tends to be a knee jerk reaction back there other way.

Conservatism has always been popular, because a lot of people like the status quo. WHEREVER THAT MAY BE AT THAT MOMENT IN TIME. The fact that conservative values change over time is immaterial.

The world is complex. Humans aren't equipped to deal with that level of complexity. Also the amount of information we are bombarded with is far beyond what we have evolved to deal with.

The right offers a simple solution.

There is one group, "the other", that is the root cause of all your problems. Get rid of them and everything will be swanky again.

This plays on one of our earliest and most ingrained senses of survival. As a social tribal species, we are very good at noticing things that are "like us" and "normal". "Different" and "new" was a potential threat. It literally kept our species alive against far more powerful predators and competition from like species back we we huddled together against the dark night.

Unfortunately we're just wired that way. It takes knowledge, wisdom and a healthy dose of curiosity/wonder to overcome that. Why do you think one of the first goals of the right is to dismantle education?

It started with the War on Terror of the 2000s destabilizing the Middle East and leading to an influx of refugees into Europe. White supremacists naturally freaked out when they saw more than one brown person, so this started an anti-immigrant sentiment which only continued to build throughout the years. Couple that with funding from rich white supremacists and propaganda from foreign agents like Steve Bannon, and here we are.

"US tech giants allying with European far-right to strip back EU rules", Jan 14 2026

https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules

Same thing that happened to the US.

I see a lot of blame on “brainless idiots” or similar labels when discussing this, but I think that’s dismissive of issues many parties seems to be ignoring, or exacerbating, and that the alt-right is pouncing on.

Not everyone who voted Trump is an idiot, and doubling down on that thinking will make the issue worse.

Another is that the far-right parties tend to be “modern” and very social media savvy, whereas establishment centrist parties are out of touch, and campaign in archaic ways. And (from my impression on the outside) the more leftist European parties are prone to disunity and infighting. They don’t benefit from scandal and controversy like the far right does.

The west has been in the imperialist stage of capitalism for a bit more than a century. As was described back then, this is a parasitic, moribund stage of capitalism. It's parasitic in an obvious way, but what's most interesting is the moribund factor. Imperialism essentially becomes the dominant factor in a capitalist economy once it fully saturates the national economy, when monopoly bank and industrial capital begin consolidating into finance capital, and when these groups must expand outward, not just can.

The reason this is moribund is because it hollows out industrialization, seeking cheaper labor in the global south. It also seeks more specualtive than real returns, and sharpens the divide between rich and poor on an international scale, even if temporarily it reduces inequality in the national level (see FDR's New Deal, before imperialism began decaying and Reaganomics forced austerity to preserve superprofits). What's happening now is a sharp rightward turn in response to this system breaking down as the global south develops and gains independence from neocolonialism, giving them agency in how the world is run and tools at their disposal not purely linked to the west.

It's the protracted death of imperialism that is forcing many people into austerity in the west, which drives reaction. Everyone trying to blame it on foreigners and propaganda are missing the point, the actual material system the west runs on is dying away as has already been predicted before by analyzing the very mechanisms of capitalism.

Billionaires trying to distract people from their ever increasing wealth and the powerful people in positions of influence. Who owns the vast majority of media, at least in the global west?

It's been seen so many times through history if the status quo is challenged find a scape goat. Every possible example can be seen, different religions, different skin colour, different political beliefs, different gender, different abilities, different sexuality, etc. As soon as power/money is threatened a different focus of hatred is found.

not political

you should be. you need to be. because otherwise the assholes win.

Ever since Neoliberalism became dominat amongst mainstream "center" large parties in the West:

• Inequality has explode.
• Social Mobility has collapsed.
• The super-wealthy who are behind all of it because they paid the mainstream politicians to reduce their taxes, to have the State stop controlling, shapping or in any way participating in even the provision of life's essentials (most notably housing), to enact policies that support big asset owners all paid for with austerity for those who income mainly comes from their work and to remove any and all oversight over money making activities, have been heavilly funding political parties that blame the consequences for the many (especially those at the lowest end of the wealth ladder) of all that on foreigners ("immigrants", "foreign interference") as well as News companies to parrot such ideas.

I mean, the first two things could also have made the (non-center, non-mainstream) leftwing grow, but unlike the far-right the people who have most of the wealth aren't funding parties fighting for more equality or buying newspapers to have them spreading the idea that we should tax the rich more to pay for universal healthcare and high quality education for free or that the democratically elected state should have greater oversight over and participation in the provision of life's essentials such as housing, so the left only ever advances amongst the well-informed and politically aware, not amongst whose beliefs come tabloid headlines, privatelly owned "news" channels and loudmouth "influencers" who make money from ragebaiting and reinforcing those views.

There are a few little leftwing victories here and there (the recent win of Die Linke in Berlin's municipal elections, Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York and so on), but almost all of the money and pretty much all the propaganda that passes for News nowadays is pushing rightwings views so of which being pretty much Fascist views.

It's a two-pronged attack.

One is russia. They have "chaos campaigns" going back decades just to sow discord and cause disruption in Europe. There's no better discord and disruption than threatening the EU as a whole.

The second is big American businesses and billionaires, because they hate how the EU presents a unified front against their bullshit and actually forces them to do things that chip into the bottom line.

The mechanisms by which civilizations grow, stagnate, collapse and recover have fascinated people since at least the ancient Greek philosophers.

Civilizations initially grow because they make life better for the average citizen. Cooperation leads to more reliable food and more babies survive to make more babies.

After some time some stressors on the civilization lead to widespread conflict. Historically this have been linked mostly to famine and plagues. Economic instability can also lead to a civilizations segmentation and conflict. The "fall of civilizations" is historically the segmentation of large civilizations into smaller entities as people rally around a local leader who promises them the "right" things.

So what's happening right now - a shit ton of stressors.

Birth rates are negative in most industrialized nations. This indicates that on a widespread basis, globally people do not feel that they have the resources to raise kids.

Climate change is triggering serious fears of famine. This is why denying the obvious heat increases is so popular. "Oh no, it's not the hottest and dryest summer on record. Our crops are hunky doey."

Plagues - Well COVID happened and triggered a lot of widespread fear. That disease is still seen as a curse from the supernatural for most humans instead of a biological inevitability was made crystal clear.

Wars - stealing someone else's resources looks pretty good when you fear there is not enough resources to go around. "It's too hot in the U.S. to grow crops, let's invade Canada and steal Greenland!"

So humans are doing what they have always done when stressed. Look for someone who looks like a "strong leader" who can make things right in their world again.

Nobody said it and I'm sure it's not the only source, but Russia has funded at least Germany's main right wing party. I think I read about them funding others as well.

Plus they try to make their own sabotage look like left wing extremism. And they employ bot farms to spread hate online.

This has done a great job of destabilising basically every western country.

Honestly, i genuinely believe that social media algorithms are being manipulated by billionaires to push an agenda that saves them from tax or accountability.I am centre left and try to mould fb and insta feeds by specifically flagging content i dislike or dont agree with and it keeps coming back. Some of the insane 'stop the boats' shit i see here in the uk from creators and bots i have never heard of or interacted with in anyway is very, very suspicious.

Tech bros? Especially Peter Thiel. I thought this is common knowledge already.

That's a question for the ages for sure. I'm worried it's going to get quite a bit worse before it gets better.

As far as I can tell, there are multiple ongoing components to what's going on.

There is definitely some Russia-driven agitprop going on, with the apparent aim of weakening the West through division. But on its own I think it's not a sufficient explanation, for two reasons. The same research showed that Russia is also pushing left-aligned agitprop points to increase division. And Russia was not similarly involved in the 1930's, which nevertheless saw a somewhat similar trajectory.

But it's still a factor either way of course.

The main force, I think, is the collapse of capitalism. That capitalism is its own self-destruction mechanism has been observed for centuries; it's kind of one of the main takeaways from Das Kapital. With the ceaseless rise of wealth capture by the ruling classes, discontent rises correspondingly among the general population, and the beige centrist neoliberals that tend to occupy power seats in most democracies keep onboarding more and more far right talking points in an apparent effort to keep this discontent from getting an actual left wing government elected: drawing false equivalency between left and far right policies, forming coalitions with the far right to prevent even a mildly left wing party from forming a government, etc.

The latter seems particularly driven by the flow of donor money from the wealthy elites.

But it also looks like in many countries, the national media are disproportionately captured by said wealthy elite, who also increasingly push the same far right societal framing for the same core reason.

Historically speaking, this private capture of wealth and power does not stop on its own, and it goes to some pretty bad places before it gets better. It's bleak as hell, but we can take hope, I think, from another historical observation: it always gets better, eventually.

Till then, take care of each other, y'all.

Chuds noticing things getting worse, and their leader offering solutions and someone to blame. It's always been like that. Happened in Germany in the 1920s, happened in the US in the 2010s.

Now that it's accelerating, it's gonna be interesting to see which conclusions are drawn after their chosen ones have been in charge almost the entire time.

Anti-immigration sentiment and Islamophobia have surged in Western and Central Europe, especially when many of the establishment parties have made moves to increase immigration, i.e. the Boriswave in the UK, enacted by the centre-right party that wooed voters just months earlier by promising to "Get Brexit Done."

Can't really elaborate on the rise of National Rally in France and the AfD in Germany, but here in the UK we've had grooming gang scandals that have led to several national inquiries, numerous protests focused around the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, and three riots in the last two years which were sparked by violent crimes.

Big money interfering. Social media was just the latest iteration, billionaires have been buying news outlets since we had news outlets.

Life is getting shit for everyone, but it's a lot simpler and more accessible to blame a handful of brown people for everything. When a man in a tie says the same shit you've been saying down the pub, it's too easy for people to fall into lockstep with them.

Social media

Now I’m not political

In large part, this is fueling it. Think. In what way are you not political? Are you uninformed about political topics-- important topics, that are life or death for others? Or are you informed but choose not to do anything about them? Neither option sounds too good when put more clearly than the very vague "not political". You can claim to be apolitical because you can afford not to care about politics; whoever gets elected, your life doesn't appear to change much. But rest assured, it does, and sooner or later politics will care about you, whether you care about it or not.