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Comment by p10jkle | Hacker News Reader

It's also an incredibly effective way of getting fascists elected - who can then use their platform to gain legitimacy and support. I look at Europe and see fascist parties gaining seats in every country - except the UK, because in the UK FPTP will ensure they never get one. Even UKIP, never won a seat, despite being hugely influential populists.

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UKIP won a seat in the 2015 general election, and previously won one in a by-election. They were also extremely successful in achieving their goal of getting the UK to leave the EU - the conservative manifesto promise to hold a referendum was directly due to the threat from UKIP.

Disenfranchisement is a double-edged sword. Those parties prosper on self-victimization, and the best cure for that is to see them co-opted in actual government. Once voters realize they're just as bad as everyone else, the spell is broken. If you never let them in, they'll continue to fester outside, in the real world.

Yes. And to paraphrase Lee Drutman's take in Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: far-right parties in the EU tend to get about 10% of the vote. And in a way that's bad (they get seats in parliament!). But in another way, it's good: they can't claim to be "the voice of the masses" when only 1 in 10 people votes for them.

Winning seats proportional to a party's vote share grants them legitimacy and support exactly in proportion to the support they already have and that got them elected.

For actual decision-making power, they need a parliamentary majority, which by design requires the support of a majority of voters.

I hope the UK system isn't quite so rigged as to deny any seats even to a party that gets >50% of votes.

The existing parties in the United States have already shown to be vulnerable to entryism, so I'm not convinced this makes a difference.

I'd love to know by what distinction Suella Braverman or Mark François does not count as a fascist.

Many of those "fascist" parties (or right-wing populists / conservative nationalists / whatever you want to call them) are similar to US Republicans. The difference is that their support is 20% and not 50%, because proportional representation leaves room for other right-wing parties.

Lol no. The front national makes Republicans look like bleeding heart liberals in comparison. Talking about deporting actual citizens if they are brown or Muslim in Europe is common for those semi mainstream parties (in the FNs case, they came second in the past 2 elections). Even Republicans never talk about stripping citizenships of immigrants and focus on illegal immigrants (not because they love immigrants, but because they know that talking about stripping the citizenship of millions is lunacy in the US). Same for tons and tons of other policy points, like calling for closing mosques in France, the AfD in Germany, etc.

Again, Republicans are (and it's weird to say) literal model examples of diversity and minority inclusion if you compare them to the front national more or less 100% white christian party.

No, fringe fascist parties that scrape by with preferences are just rookies, and the GOP are the professionals. The GOP has way more subtle, systematic, and effective ways of making people’s lives worse. They’ll bang on about hot-button issues to get constituent support, but they mostly still know how to say the quiet part quiet. Rookie conservatives don’t.

Fringe? You realize the FN got 40% of the votes in presidential elections multiple times in France, and is more or less the main "opposition" party? And also controls tons of local governments? Talk about Americans exceptionalism lol, how is a party that is the main opposition and and that was founded by a literal neo Nazi (marine's dad) on a clear "make France white again" agenda better than "subtle GOP tactics"??!?

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