For real.

@drbjork This is especially important for center-right/center-left parties since they've been in basically unquestionable power for many many decades.

Yup!
During the EU election the German green party had some posters with a main slogan like "Your vote against right".
Like they had no own program but were only an alternative to the so called alternative for Germany.
Very irritating.
#noafd

@pettter
And now they can't deal with not being in power. I've been frustrated about this for years. Where are the political parties that talk about the society they WANT instead of pointing fingers at right wing extremists and saying "thirs is surely what you DON'T WANT".
@goatsarah

This happens when people only vote for major parties. Happens in all western countries, the major parties do not have to provide anything anymore because people been voting for the lesser evil all the time. At one point, one of the parties will become a dictator. That's where the US is standing now.

@argv_minus_one Occasionally they do, but since they are an actual threat to the existing order, they tend to either get infiltrated, subsumed and taken over, externally and internally countered in various material and propagandistic ways by capital and imperialist powers, or outright removed through physical force by same. @drbjork @goatsarah

@drbjork @pettter I think this is something about making themselves the smallest possible target for attack by the other mainstream parties.

@ratkins This, of course, never works. @drbjork @goatsarah

@InkySchwartz The people, united, will never be defeated. Hence why such an incredible amount of resources is used to ensure that this unity is as far away as possible. @argv_minus_one @drbjork @goatsarah

@pettter @argv_minus_one @drbjork For instance, I'm no fan of Spain's Podemos but you read their story and the dirty war waged on them (basicly through a far right judiciary and sell out mass media), man, you'll see it all. The party onced rocked the scene, so the establishment for a brief period worried, pulled the strings and dealt with them. Now they're on their way to irrelevance. They did their part with lots of mistakes but no way they'd've lost so much base just on their own.

Similar story with Syriza in Greece, but then with the EU central bank and various EU big state governments. They deliberately crashed the greek economy into the ground to 'teach them a lesson', presumably the lesson was 'don't you fucking dare elect a leftist government'. @argv_minus_one @drbjork @goatsarah

@kikebenlloch Wait a few years and you have honest-to-god Nazis doing marches and getting the third highest vote share in the parliament. @argv_minus_one @drbjork @goatsarah

@pettter @argv_minus_one @drbjork Exactly, I didn't bring up the example of Greece (now on their way to 6 work-day weeks) on purpose because my knwoledge of it is limited, but your description fits my recollections from the time, how the chessboard was properly shaken by the powers that be. You cannot beat them at their game, the amount of resources at their disposal is huge.

@pettter @argv_minus_one @drbjork I think so. It's a process with its steps. You don't get full nazi massacres on day one. But are we slowly having the post-WW2 welfare societies eroded towards rampant fascism? Well...