The EU Elections: Sliding Towards Crazy

Stephen asked me today: "WTF is with those European elections?" and I found myself responding with a ranty novel. I'm going to keep it here for posterity.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vibe here in the UK is more-or-less "who cares, we left!" which is... not awesome, but you can't fix stupid. This is a theme for the rest of my response.

Ok so there's a few things going on and a couple pretty great YouTube videos that'll give you some more context, both from the same group.

The first one is from TLDR EU, talking about why some-crazy-how it's the younger generations that're all sliding to the right:

The second is from TLDR's "daily briefing" and recaps the actual result of the election, breaking down by the various geographical areas and inter-national political alliances. It's interesting to note that while the far-right made some big gains, the Green/Left did as well:

If you ask me (and well, you did ;-)) it's really not all that surprising. You've got 2-3 generations now voting in a climate of impossible housing prices, mass inflation, state-sanctioned genocide, and a world literally on fire. The message we've been fed for as long as we can remember has been a mix of "you're worrying about nothing" and "don't vote for ${CRAZY}, they'll ruin everything".

So after about 30 years of being fucked over by someone who insists that voting for ${CRAZY} would be bad, it's not unreasonable to think that perhaps the people fucking you over are insisting that ${CRAZY} is bad because they are bad... for the people fucking you over. And so that's how you get Meloni, and Wilders, and Le Pen, and Trump, and Poilievre. Don't worry, your time is coming.

Basically you've got hundreds of millions of people in pain and only two voices offering solutions (and more importantly, causes to point to). On the Left we point to capitalism as the cause since well, it's an ideology based on the extraction of wealth from people and the planet for the enrichment of the few. On the Right they point to immigrants 'cause that's always the favourite scapegoat for these people.

Unfortunately the Left has the media and the establishment working against it, since eroding/abolishing capitalism isn't popular with the people who own the media and are the establishment. They've been repeating for generations that green/socialist ideas "won't work" or are "dangerous" etc. That hasn't stopped us from proving that they actually do work, but somehow miraculously that proof never seems to circulate via those same channels. Go figure.

The Right on the other hand often owns it's own media/oil/weapons companies so they've got financing and media reach baked into their formula. They've also got a simpler and more appealing message:

You don't have to change. Drive your cars, eat your steaks, fly wherever you like. It's the immigrants and the "woke marxists" that're the problem. They're why you can't find a doctor, buy a home, or afford your energy bills.

It doesn't have to make sense. It just has to be more palpable than personal reflection.

So like everything else, it comes down to people. They're stupid, and there are too many of them too stupid even to see that the Right is peddling a lie. When the lie is revealed, as it always is, they'll all suffer collective amnesia about their complicity I'm sure.

The first video I sent has an interesting tidbit in it though: the vote share by the sexes. While young men have been decidedly sliding to the right in favour of xenophobia, the women have been sliding to the left to support socialists and tree huggers. It would seem that a political message lacking in nuance is only really effective for the majority male vote.

Regardless, the electoral system is likely to help out a lot here, with no wacky FPTP leading to false majorities. The right-wing parties will try to come together to push an agenda, but xenophobes aren't known for playing well with others. I'm hoping that the collaborative values of the Left will win out here for more long-term success.