Why would you not believe that one-fifth of people are fascist or racist? The percentages have been much higher than that at various times in the past. You don't cite any evidence for your view. The claim you're making seems to be "because this view is widely held, it cannot be racist." - ThreadSky

mattsteinglass.bsky.social • 8 days ago

Why would you not believe that one-fifth of people are fascist or racist? The percentages have been much higher than that at various times in the past. You don't cite any evidence for your view. The claim you're making seems to be "because this view is widely held, it cannot be racist."

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samwilkin.bsky.social•8 days ago

Well these things are impossible to quantify, because those are subjective terms. What I'm getting at in the essay is that there might be other reasons why people are voting AfD (not to mention economy etc.), and if we can identify them we can start to pull (most) people back to the mainstream.

mattsteinglass.bsky.social•8 days ago

I have had the experience of saying something I thought reasonable and getting buried because I didn't realize there was a vast literature on the subject that proved me wrong. I think this is similar. You can't pull AfD voters to the mainstream in the way I understand you to be suggesting.

mattsteinglass.bsky.social•8 days ago

The fact is that immigration is not one of Germany's most important concerns. Murders are terrible, but they are rare and a tiny proportion are committed by rejected asylum-seekers. Border controls and blocking new asylum-seekers will not stop violence by those already in the country.

mattsteinglass.bsky.social•8 days ago

The important question in terms of the AfD vote is whether voters consider the migration issue to be *salient*. If it is, the AfD's vote goes up. Discussing "problems of integration" (which in fact are modest and mostly go away gradually) makes the issue more salient and increases the AfD vote.

mattsteinglass.bsky.social•8 days ago

One reason you are getting a strong negative response is that the idea that political parties are "unwilling to discuss this" is the opposite of the truth. Parties in Europe have discussed almost nothing but "problems of multiculti" for 25 years. It has been useless and unnecessary.

mattsteinglass.bsky.social•8 days ago

All it has done is to create a salonfahig "problems of diversity" discourse that serves to sanitize what is, ultimately, just the natural human disposition towards racism and xenophobia. The AfD and such parties have ridden this wave, blaming all serious problems on migrants. It's the old story.

zaphodbeeblebr0x.bsky.social•7 days ago

I am so fed up of the worst people in society being constantly pandered to. It’s been all the political class have talked about for a decade

samwilkin.bsky.social•8 days ago

Firstly, thank you for engaging respectfully!

I think it's a bit of a privileged position to say that migration isn't a major issue for Germany. There are, clearly, a lot of people who do think it's an important issue and that the mainstream parties haven't done enough to address it...

sifrmoja.xyz•7 days ago

Yes, lots of people don't pay attention and vote for the lies. The rest are racists. Cool scoop, dork.

inanothercountry.bsky.social•7 days ago

There are other reasons, sure, but to buy into AfD (or other far-right movements around the world) you must accept migrants (or other minorities) as a scapegoat for your problems

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•8 days ago

Nonsense. It isn’t hard to come up with a narrow & rigorous definition of “racist” and then empirically test for it. You’ve just decided we mustn’t call racists “racist” and must try to meet them half way.

kwstzhaderbonch.bsky.social•7 days ago

"These things would be expensive and difficult to quantify" is not at all the same as "impossible". It's literally the raison d'être for entire fields of social science.

ericweinberger.bsky.social•8 days ago

Well, to offer one perspective: 49.8 percent of Americans voted for our far-right party. Are half of Americans fascist or racist?

tomvasseur.bsky.social•8 days ago

'Why not?' is exactly Matt's question.

We quite reasonably think citizens voting for a party means they generally support its program in broad lines. Why an exception for today's far-right parties?

E.g. would you doubt Harris voters to be (broadly) liberal or NSDAP voters in 1933 to be fascist?

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