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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Considering the rise of Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark (sort-of a "nicer/cleaner" version of Sweden Democrats), and the very low quality level of the current Danish political debate, I'm not sure the Danish approach is doing much to defuse right-wing populism through letting people air their grievances. They can, but they just they do that in addition to voting for populist-right parties, not instead of. In any case it seems to be a much broader phenomenon than the political discourse norms of any one country. Right-populist politics, in the various local flavors offered by DF/SD/Trump/Szydło, are gaining across many countries despite quite a few differences in those countries.

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You need to understand the context here.

Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party) arose because of the established primarily left leaning political parties completely ignored and froze out the party to begin with.

The biggest political party, the Social Democrats (also likes to call itself the workers party) lost touch with it's voters when society in general went from production sectors to service sectors. A rising unrest about immigration manifested itself in a lot of voters who didn't benefit from the immigrants coming and taking jobs or just living of welfare that many danish voters felt they paid for (Denmark have extreme taxes)

And so while the political establishment tried to ignore them they slowly grew to become now the second biggest political party in Denmark. However now for other reasons than muslim immigration. The reason now is that DF is the only party that really takes the average joes concerns seriously no matter how primitive they might seem to many.

Today most parties are in line with DF as they have recognized that you can't just take in a lot of people and then expect them to become a natural part of society.

Denmark has one of the most honest debates about immigration and it speaks volume about the level of political corectness and control over the media in other countries that even though Denmark is one of the countries who take most immigrants and refugees, spend most money on immigration both domestically and internationally and has some of the most extensive rights for immigrants it still had to defend it's political line in the EU.

Denmark is fairly clear on what it's doing. There are many bad things I can say about my home country but I actually think that debate wise we have some of the most free and civilized debates especially considering the hot topics we often discuss.

I think right wing populists benefit a lot from the general feeling that the established parties and the media refuse to even admit that there might be a problem caused by mass immigration.

Contrary to _dilerium's answer, I think this, in at least Sweden, was a quite significant factor. But that must(?) have changed now. During the last wave of immigrants coming to Sweden, the whole range of parties, except for the Left Party, made a 180 degree turn and agreed with the Sweden Democrats narrative. Even the Social democrats are now saying that Sweden is under a social and economic collapse due to immigration which was lauded by the Swedish Democrats.

See for example [0] (Swedish) and links within.

http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/internationella-medier-sver...

I'm skeptical that's a significant factor, because right-populists seem to be gaining even in countries, like Denmark and the USA, which have a large portion of mainstream media and politicians hostile to mass immigration. In that case, immigration opponents can't claim that nobody takes their concerns seriously, or that you're not allowed to criticize mass immigration, because many mainstream outlets and figures are doing so. But the media support seems to if anything just help their cause: years of Fox News harshly criticizing illegal immigration from Mexico feeds well into Trump's strategy of doing the same thing, but with the rhetoric amped up a few notches.

> I'm skeptical that's a significant factor, because right-populists seem to be gaining even in countries, like Denmark and the USA, which have a large portion of mainstream media and politicians hostile to mass immigration.

The populist complaint against rightist politicians in the United States is that they claim to oppose illegal immigration, but that's actually just a scam to fool the rubes into voting for them. When push comes to shove, they quietly endorse the current (Democratic) administration's policies on the matter and make sure that efforts to block them always fail. Given that, the factors behind Trump's support aren't so different from the factors behind support for populists in Europe.

Right wing isn't gaining in Denmark. Not sure where you have that from.

DF is gaining because ordinary people are seeing their jobs being outsourced or underbid by eastern european citizens. In fact this is today the primary reason for why parties like DF gets more and more power. They are the only parties who actually takes peoples concern seriously. There is a much much bigger fraction of the western society who do not stand to benefit from technological progress, multicultural society and globalized workforce.

If anything what is happening right now is a national conservative trend where people who aren't benefitting will vote on the parties that are sceptic to progress.

I agree with that. Fears about globalization's effects on the working class / blue-collar middle class, which in Western Europe post-WW2 had a reasonably good and stable economic position, but is now becoming much more precarious, are a big economic driving force behind the right-populist parties. I think that's a much bigger effect than any worries about the media or political correctness.

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