Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD | Hacker News Reader

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>Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945.

Literally just yesterday, Germany's public broadcaster released a 26-minute documentary. "The far right's rise: Is Germany at a breaking point?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOk01r2eoc0

The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.

The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2027_F...

And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.

It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.

"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.

Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

(Exercise for you: Try to get a passport from Liechtenstein, even if you work there permanently for a Liechtenstein company, its unlikely that you can even rent an appartment there!)

>Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?

Precisely. Why is it that people only clutch their pearls with horror when this principle is applied to the US?

I suspect because we don't regularly hear of masked armed thugs in Switzerland beating up, sometimes killing or throwing into concentration camps innocent people who were looking to immigrate.

Nothing wrong with making immigration laws strict, if that's what a country wants. That is totall fine.

But there is no justification to beat people up, kill them or throw them into concentration camps. Just tell them no in a professional manner and politely send them back to their own country (also, not some random contry they haver never been in).

ICE has killed US citizens too, they don’t limit themselves to immigrants

Yes you are absolutely correct.

How many Swiss citizens have they detained in concentration camps and deported to places they've never been and have no connections?

You haven't really the addressed the point of the US not being trusted.

Even if the EU becomes far right, far right governments don't work or trust each other. What you are saying is moot.

As an American, I don't necessarily want the US to be trusted. I want foreign governments to put pressure on us to stop developing omnicidal AI. The sooner the "rogue AI agents" conversation links up with the "USA is untrustworthy" conversation, the better.

As long as ASML is helping to supply OpenAI with AI chips, Europe still trusts the US too much. https://pauseai.info/amsterdam-protest-2025-december

I'm not as optimistic as you are, because a component of the rightward shift is the international collaboration of the respective movements' leaders. For example, US republicans closely worked together with Orbans party and Germanys AfD, exchanging strategies and such. This is also reflected across the media landscape in these countries - when new fabricated talking points pop up across US conservative spaces, it usually takes 2-4 weeks until the same talking points are repeated by many German right-wing media outlets.

Of course these alliances won't survive forever, as these movements have to continually expand their definitions of "out-groups" to keep their core "in-groups" satisfied, since they keep making their countries' issues worse by attempting fixes that are easy, simple, and wrong. But when a movement is built around the rejection of any uncomfortable history or research mixed with a huge dose of anti-intellectualism, it is fundamentally incapable of ever reflecting and learning beyond what the personal gain of their leaders.

Most of these alliances are held together by Russia though. When Putin falls, they all fall.

Why do you think so? The US funding won't suddenly stop, especially given how much the GOP hates the EU. Plenty of other rich people too.

Unless there are objectively good reasons to expect this we must stay vigilant, since if we gamble on infighting and it goes poorly, the consequences could become horrifying.

> The US funding won't suddenly stop

yup, but the utter majority of foreign funding that was found in the AfD and the other far-right parties' scandals came from Russia. The propaganda they spout comes straight from Russia. The bot farms amplifying their propaganda are mostly Russian.

Sure, the US MAGA network, the super riches (Musk, Thiel, ...) aren't to be underestimated. But they are breaking apart already and without a cohesive force connecting them, they will be much less powerful.

Sure, so far the funds came from Russia, but the US government has openly talked about increasing their funding.

I don't think that their propaganda is fully dependent on Russia. IMO their strategy was really easy to observe during/after the 2020 election: they do contentious things with barely any justification, then watch conservative social media spaces for explanations/justifications that users naturally share & amplify. From these options, they select ones advantageous to them, and then turn them into talking points. This machine doesn't need to get talking points from Russia! They just need a halfway charismatic leader to keep it going, especially due to my next point.

The bot farms are no longer needed thanks to AI! I guarantee you, they are already running plenty of bots themselves. And since these days most social media & news media companies are aligned with/owned by them, they can easily optimize their approach well enough to become dangerously effective.

I just don't see a reason to feel so safe about them breaking apart before major damage is done. Just look at how genuinely friendly Trump acts towards most highly authoritarian leaders, compared to the way he acts towards most other leaders. I assume they'll definitely break apart after e.g. the EU is broken up, because then the US will squeeze everyone else. But under Trump they're going to keep it up, as far as I can see.

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