Yeah exactly. And despite this, and despite the US using its post-WWII influence to keep us a fascist state, we have resisted and we have better worker protections, universal healthcare, unemployment assistance, and so on. And we have the guts to do something, unlike Americans.

The same France in which the far right candidate leads the polls for 2027's presidential elections?

As if there's a difference.

Maybe, but they’re less restrained due to the death of radical labor. There’s a reason social welfare in most of Europe develops to more or less its current state between 1945 and the 80s and just stops there.

That's largely because social democrats did what they set out to do and delivered on their promises, which left them questioning what was left to do. In essence, the social democrats are victims of their own success.

That's not to say European social democracies are some kind of utopia (nor that I personally think there is nothing left to improve), but they are still the strongest economies in the world. There is emphatically no economic reason that explains the recent surge in popularity of fascist parties.

Actually increases in standard of living have proportionally basically the same in all of Germany since then, but also that doesn’t make the housing crisis or insane energy prices sting any less.

That relative increase in HDI is more impactful when starting from a lower value. Sure, there is still a gap between West and East Germany, but it's much less than it used to be. The development of unemployment rates especially has been a dramatic improvement.

Housing prices and living costs are especially high in places like Munich, Frankfurt/Main and Hamburg... where the AfD is especially weak. The AfD is strongest in areas that are the most affordable.

Radical politics in general takes off due to a perception that the mainstream politics isn’t doing the job.

Exactly, a perception. And where does that perception come from? Before the 90s, media were dominated and curated by intellectuals. Nowadays, they are dominated by racist and fascist hate speech. And this obviously benefits racist and fascist parties.

Absolutely! The bigger problem is the "centrist" politicians are useless. Almost all politicians are wealthy class, not rocking the boat is in their interests. Most of the time they are part of the problem. So everywhere we end with the choice between parasites who'd rather do nothing and just profit off whatever corruption they can get away with, or parasites who equally profit from the system but are also nazis.

True change can only come from a bottom up movement, masses make demands so politics give in. NGOs, unions, student movements etc are the way to get our rights. We want rights, benefits, we need to ask for it properly, with strikes, protests, soup kitchens, activism. Worshiping power just makes us more miserable.

Education alone doesn't prevent people from being mislead by propaganda. Everyone is vulnerable to it, even i am. The key is to recognise it and be open enough to change your mind if you get new information. That's one of the parts that's sadly missing for a lot of people. Other parts are lacking media competency, because apparently a lot of people are unable to determine whether a Youtuber with a name like "truthwarrier88" is a trustworthy source comparable to DW or whatever. And then there is the issue of Russian propaganda and American social media platforms refusing to moderate their cesspools due to a twisted sense of "free speech". Well, and i guess that Covid thing also fried a few brains...

Propaganda works, it is highly effective. Scapegoating plays on human psychology very well. This will always work, there is no inoculation to protect society. You have to stop the behavior.

bernie sanders is not in any way a 'leftist'.

He's a liberal zionist for one. And also he has never said he wants to eternally end capitalism. He also works with AOCIA ...the same aoc who is ALSO a liberal zionist AND she takes money from Big Pharma companies to retell their lies.

the capitalistic system that we have created makes it so easy to become a racist or even an interbalized racist as I wass . Not only do those in power (billionaires and multi millionaires) fund smear campaigns against minorities and 2SLGBTQIA+ people but this system we have put in place makes it very easy for the average worker to unconciouusly become "anti-minority" or even 'anti-anyone who isnt super rich' because those who hold the most capital or have hhad the ability to obtain the most capital have become very good at painting themselves as saints when they are the cause of most of the world's iniquities and we have fallen for it all. Its a self-sustaining system that has to.be completely , permanently broken up

"In keeping with their system-sustaining function, the major news media present reality as a scatter of events and subjects that ostensibly bear little relation to each other or to a larger set of social relations. Consider a specic phenomenon like racism. Racism is presented as essentially a set of bad attitudes held by racists. There is little analysis of what makes it so functional for a class society. Instead, race and class are treated as mutually exclusive concepts in competition with each other. But those who have an understanding of class power know that as class contradictions deepen and come to the fore, racism becomes not less but more important as a factor in class conflict. In short, both race and class are likely to be crucial arenas of struggle at the very same time. Marxists further maintain that racism involves not just personal attitude but institutional structure and systemic power. They point out that racist organizations and sentiments are often propagated by well-nanced reactionary forces seeking to divide the working populace against itself, fracturing it into antagonistic ethnic enclaves. Marxists also point out that racism is used as a means of depressing wages by keeping a segment of the labor force vulnerable to super-exploitation. To see racism in the larger context of corporate society is to move from a liberal complaint to a radical analysis. Instead of thinking that racism is an irrational output of a basically rational and benign system, we should see it is a rational output of a basically irrational and unjust system. By “rational” I mean purposive and functional in sustaining the system that nurtures it." -Michael PArenti

"In all regions studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and an upturn in premature mortality. In parts of South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, key welfare metrics have still not recovered.  Where progress has occurred, significant improvements in human welfare began several centuries after the rise of capitalism. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, progress began in the 1880s, while in the periphery and semi-periphery it began in the mid-20th century, a period characterized by the rise of anti-colonial and socialist political movements that redistributed incomes and established public provisioning systems.". Capitalism and extreme poverty: A global analysis of real wages, human height, and mortality since the long 16th century  by Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel