If there’s one thing the right are good at it’s indoctrination. They co-opt spaces and then use them to infect people with their mindset.
And damn is it ever effective. Someone close to me is normally a leftist – she proudly supports her union (and unions in general), is strongly in favor of LGBT+ rights and environmental protection, mistrusts most political parties as they’re too much in bed with big business etc.
However, she also hangs out on 9GAG, which apparently has been pretty much taken over by the right. This has greatly affected her views on immigrants since she’s exposed to unchallenged right-wing drivel every day. It was “fun” when she told me how refugee facilities are hotbeds of violent crime and then it turned out that the unspecified statistics she was basing this on were mostly about violence against refugees.
(Not that those camps perfectly safe by themselves but not in the way right wingers make it sound like refugees and immigrants (who are conflated) are all violent anarchists who are above the law.)
Recently she just had to share this “joke” with me. The whole thing consisted of two police officers with Turkish names finding a generic German name exotic. That was it; I couldn’t find any punchline in there, just a “the immigrants are replacing us” message. I’m just writing for the day when I hear the word “Überfremdung” (“overforeigning”, a standard term of the far right) out of her mouth.
It goes on like that. Politically she’s convinced that the Greens are completely unviable as a party and the worst part of the current government – the FDP (our liberal party for rich people) gets no mention despite being diametrically opposed to most of her core views. Ricarda Lang (a Green politician) being fat is much more important and will never get old.
I have no idea how to counter this but I’m afraid that she’ll drift off into the hard right with time. She seems unwilling to accept that her main source of funnies is also chock full of right wing propaganda.
I dunno but northern European socialism is looking pretty ok to me lately.
They’re voting in anti-immgrant right wing politicians. Same with Germany, Spain, and France
If there’s one thing the right are good at it’s indoctrination. They co-opt spaces and then use them to infect people with their mindset.
And damn is it ever effective. Someone close to me is normally a leftist – she proudly supports her union (and unions in general), is strongly in favor of LGBT+ rights and environmental protection, mistrusts most political parties as they’re too much in bed with big business etc.
However, she also hangs out on 9GAG, which apparently has been pretty much taken over by the right. This has greatly affected her views on immigrants since she’s exposed to unchallenged right-wing drivel every day. It was “fun” when she told me how refugee facilities are hotbeds of violent crime and then it turned out that the unspecified statistics she was basing this on were mostly about violence against refugees.
(Not that those camps perfectly safe by themselves but not in the way right wingers make it sound like refugees and immigrants (who are conflated) are all violent anarchists who are above the law.)
Recently she just had to share this “joke” with me. The whole thing consisted of two police officers with Turkish names finding a generic German name exotic. That was it; I couldn’t find any punchline in there, just a “the immigrants are replacing us” message. I’m just writing for the day when I hear the word “Überfremdung” (“overforeigning”, a standard term of the far right) out of her mouth.
It goes on like that. Politically she’s convinced that the Greens are completely unviable as a party and the worst part of the current government – the FDP (our liberal party for rich people) gets no mention despite being diametrically opposed to most of her core views. Ricarda Lang (a Green politician) being fat is much more important and will never get old.
I have no idea how to counter this but I’m afraid that she’ll drift off into the hard right with time. She seems unwilling to accept that her main source of funnies is also chock full of right wing propaganda.