Arrakis

And don't forget australia, japan and turkey. They all have right winged populists in charge. Only country that is currently going a good way is colombia. They have apparently finally agreed on a peace deal with the rebels.

Lethally Floral

Be vigilant. When I saw Brexit, I kind of pointed and laughed because I didn't think my country woul ever let it happen to us...especially not with the buffoon.

It happens so quickly because a) people don't think it can happen or b) people will vote for the person because they don't truly believe that they're evil.

holding my heart

The fear is now here more than ever. We also just "celebrated" the 1-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Paris. It just doesn't help. Nothing does.
It's like choosing between the pest, the cholera, and all the worst diseases

Lethally Floral

Right. I think one of our issues was the media. They normalized him. How is the French media holding up?

Arrakis

Over here in germany happenign the same. They also underestimate the populists. But they have growing support and our elections are next year some months after france. And if you look into ocial networks, news media comments etc here there's also so much hateful right winged stuff, racism, protectionism, mysogyny, etc.

holding my heart

The medias suck here.
There ls a big a strike for a news channel that's been going on for 5 weeks. Aint helping !

Lethally Floral

Man. It's terrible. But at least you guys have the person who wins the popular vote win. We don't. And that's why we're screwed.

Arrakis

Our system is complicated too. I think many countries have a classic majority election where the party with most votes gets to govern the country. In germany though a party needs at least 50 % of votes to reign alone as far as I know.
So even if our populist party gets the most votes (they might get 20-30% but surely not 50%) they won't reign bc the left and the conservative in such a case reign together in a coalition with some of the smaller parties like green or liberterian though with the little amount of seats in parliament they have not much of a say next to the two big parties, (the mostly act as vote percentage filler). Bc together lefts and conservative together with either green, socialist or libertarian will still have more votes than the right winged populists.

Though I'm kind of happy this will verly likely prevent the right winged from ruling I must say it's kind of unfair. Bc our system always makes sure that either one or both of the big establishment parties rule and unlike in america these two parties would never accept a right or left winged populist into their party so the populsits have to be in their own party. I mean the populist will still have seats in the parliament for sure but only as the opposition which limits their influence)

The only party that has more influence are the greens actually. They got to rule one of our states (state like california is a state) bc they got many votes and the conservatives decided to rule with them as their junior partner. But likely only bc the green state minister (similar to a governor in the US) in this state has strong ties with the establishment.

holding my heart

Yeah, something needs to be done over the US about the electoral college which is a fraud

Lethally Floral

Yep. I always laugh when people here get mad at the "two party" system without realizing there are issues with the multi-party parliamentary system as well.

holding my heart

POLITICS IS THE PROBLEM

Lethally Floral

Yes it is. And in the US it's even worse because we have two years of presidential election. Sheesh.

nashville fan

^ Thanks for telling us about German politics. Interesting.

holding my heart

Ugh all corruption and money

nashville fan

Yipes!