Any result that is not a Nawrocki win will be soon "problematic", the right already laid a lot of groundwork into convincing their voters that either they win - or election are stolen. They will pull the US trick.
That’s the next part of the strategy. If you accuse your opponent of something, then when you do it you’re just playing according to the new “rules of the game” you just arbitrarily defined.
You can't "prove" a negative, which is why this will never stop being a favorite tactic of the far right, that and their comfort with just constantly selling their supporters complete bullshit.
In a rational world the consequences would be that they lose all credibility and the trust of the people, and therefore have no chance of ever winning any public office again.
There should also be serious consequences if you receive funding from Russia. Political parties in Europe should be expected by law to declare the origins of all donations.
As an American, my perception was that Europe was way better inoculated against this kind of bullshit. Crazy to see a comment thread that could have easily been about our last few elections across the pond.
Everything thanks to internet spreads like wildfire.
Sometimes it helps, most of the time it harms, because people have the attention span of a horsefly and don’t care to learn History beyond 15sec tiktok videos.
Sure, but after the reset, we need to remember what happened when we let the sociopaths have whatever they whined for. Never again.
And conservatism (might as well call it sycophantism) can go away and die somewhere alone. It is a failed political point of view, and it always has been.
So bring down your hammer, sociopaths, and destroy as much as you can before we take our planet back. We will never forget how destructive and hateful you are.
For a very long time political scientists used to say that America was inoculated against this "very European" political disease.
This isn't new and it defined the 20th century for much of Europe. The US is just properly discovering it for the first time and reexporting it back across the pond.
If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.
David Frum, who was a speech writer for George W Bush, wrote that about Republicans in the US, but it's clearly a global concept, and also no longer a hypothetical situation as we're learning.
Unfortunatly there's no such thing as an inherently trustworthy institution or form of government. I mean, yeah, "Of course there isn't". But, my point is that all you have to do to predict where even a democratic government is going to fail its citizens is the state of the citizenry. If society is unhealthy, government is going to go govern unhealthily.
When it comes right down to it, the people only have themselves to blame. If collectively we buy into bullshit and put bullshit into office, it's disingenuous for even the opposition to play the innocent and cry foul and failure of trust.
My own country...perfect example. As essentially a "centrist", I'm WAY angrier at an impotent opposition than I am at the far-right. We weren't sold a bill of goods. We got precisely what we voted for. The only way anyone can act surprised at the last few months is if they're idiots.
If we're completely honest with ourselves, Trump was actually an unusually open book for a politician. Anyone with half a brain could have predicted that the current state of affairs was not only possible. It was highly likely. And the left failed miserably to do their job and provide a convincing balance for an electorate that was enamoured of an extreme.
Anyone on the left, and especially in whatever "centre" we might have, that sits back and blames the other side should shut the fuck up, take responsibility, and get to work bringing things back into balance among us the citizens if we ever hope to have anything trustworthy internally and respected internationally again.
Unfortunately, given the two party system, it's more likely than ever before that we will end up bouncing back and forth between an extremist right and some equally dangerous new "extremist" left.
I know that, so far, the left in the US has presented a more egalitarian front. But it would be folly to assume even that history can't find plenty of ways to devolve further itself into unhealthy governance. In order to restore the health of government, "we the people" have to recover first.
They immediately did this in Romania a couple of weeks ago lol. They lost (with a wider margin than what's happening in Poland now) and then they tried to appeal the results lol
A non-braindead electorate would punish this kind of rhetoric if it turns out to be baseless. But all over the world voters seem to have a moronic "if's there's smoke there's fire mindset"
Why are you making it about your country? You do know that there are democratic parties in European countries as well right? Social democrats, christian democrats, liberal democrats... Generally parties that are more in the centre of the poltical spectrum.
The person you responded to did. There is no reason to assume they would talking about a political party on another continent when talking about politics on the European subreddit.
Democrats is not a trademarked word. Its the word I use to describe #the ones that are opposing# farright parties which have typically not so democratic intentions for the future.
the democratic parties ruled most of europe in the last 30 years and pretty much sold out the middle class to neoliberalistic ideas. This resulted in a very small elitistic group and a very wide middleclass with next to no hope of owning a house or becoming wealthy. This is not the work of the farright, its caused by democratic parties. The farright just knows how to funnel the resulting anger into opportunistic goals for themselves.
I don't know what your problem is? We habe one pro EU democratic guy and the obligatoric farright guy. As always in the last few dozen elections in the last 20 years.
It’s only a win-win if the political establishment is arrogant enough to believe it doesn’t need to prove its legitimacy to those in the electorate being told the system is failing.
If people come of thier high horse and speak to those people aswell and be willing to make some intellectual concessions you dont get election denials, but the political class in the west in a lot of places would rather just throw away credibility then make reasonable concessions.
They tried this in Romania too, but the results were way too obvious here to try to pull off any of that shit. My thoughts are with my polish brothers and sisters tonight <3
That’s why they need to get into office and implement some real reforms that actually matter to people. Things that will help them. Don’t waste time on nonsense. Do so much good that it won’t matter what the Fascists say.
Yeah the problem is that reform hurts and it's easy to twist it as "see what those mean guys are doing to you".
But what really gets on my tits is when the party that ruined the economy, and still got the most seats in Parliament somehow, decide to go into opposition for the duration of the reform so they aren't the bad guy.
How did that work out for Biden? Good governance and actions to benefit the populace have no effect on a radicalised population that is inoculated from hearing any positive news about anyone who isn't a fascist.
I think the problem with what happened over here was that the positive economic improvements made during his administration were overshadowed by reports of his mental fitness, and it wasn’t helped by the media, or by our absolutely lazy ass voting populace who stayed home because “both sides are the same!” I’m honestly not sure how the Polish or Romanian media handle fascist politicians there.
Lots of contributors and it was close in the end, so it is absolutely possible that any one little thing could cause a significant change.
With that out of the way, it felt closer to the bits with Bush v Clinton. The economy wasn't really that bad relative to the prevailing circumstance, yet people still felt economic pain, so they voted for a change. Folks experiencing economic hardships (real or perceived) aren't won over by telling them that they are actually doing well.
Good governance and actions to benefit the populace have no effect on a radicalised population that is inoculated from hearing any positive news about anyone who isn't a fascist.
He already said it, you don't need to show up to prove it
Biden was better than expected, but ultimately is one of the worst democratic presidents. And being mentally and potientially pysically unwell while not informing the public or even setting up a successor is not ok.
He barely won in 2020 against Trump, this should have been a slame dunk easy win, a ham sandwich could have won, it was clear early on his messaging at best was mediocore.
Immigration was a weakness as he continued trump era policy (seperating families etc), but was attacked by right for being weak on boarder, if no one likes ur position and its morally wrong maybe change it.
Good governance and decent marketing should work, Biden is not a counter-example.
Those are nice but not enough. Biden utterly failed at his most important task: making sure that anyone in government who did even the tiniest illegal thing was prosecuted to the maximum possible extent. And quickly (as in, trials resolved before the election).
Because as long as there's no consequences and the people doing shit aren't punished, they will do it again and again until they succeed by whatever means necessary. I hope Romanian and Polish leaders understand that and will act accordingly.
Biden forgot to actually explain to everyone everything he accomplished. And he was a centrist who didn't really accomplish enough to get anyone actually excited for him/Dem party.
For sure, and I think if anyone can be the reformist doing the 'real work' needed to be done, it is Nicusor and hopefully a lot of the young people the voted for him. It is however right because besides the far-right you are also fighting the dinosaur political establishment in the PSD and some elements of the PNL which is are harmful and toxic forces in romanian society. This is coming from a person with leftist values. Our left is garbage and sadly we don't have a real progressive/left political force in Romania :(
In poland Zandberg has been getting more and more popular lately, so if he doesnt stop being active in what hes doing, he might get popular enough to balance out Mentzen (or Bosak) in the next election
Political parties need to wise up about how the far right weaponizes social media platforms (even more obscure ones) to recruit. They were miles ahead of democratic establishments in understanding how to utilize algorithms, and it's been depressing how slow democracies have been to respond. Cambridge Analytica was pioneering those techniques in the first Trump election almost a decade ago now.
Hearing that Kamala had blown a lot of her massive fundraising number on a "ground game" (door knocking, etc.) was infuriating. The Republicans ran circles around us because they're miles ahead in understanding how to spread disinformation and persuade people over social media.
If your political parties aren't understanding how potent a tool this is to persuade people to both veer to the right and to vote then there's going to be more shock losses in the future.
Sure, and voting for the far-right nazbol who wanted to outlaw political parties, praised our WW2 fascist leadership, and believes in divine communication with aliens would have entirely definitely would have made our democratic system better buddy.
The fault of the system was not cancelling the elections when they happened. It was allowing people like Georgescu and Simion to candidate in the first place.
convincing their voters that either they win - or election are stolen.
Christ. Are we really going down this path where the right just lie their asses off about fucking everything and a shit load of people just believe them.
yes. Unless lying in a political context is punished- And I mean actually punished, with fines (progressive, and big enough to dent in even the finances of the entire political party that stands behind the politician/candidate caught lying, and if they won't stop then hitting them with further, bigger, fines, big enough to bankrupt them and all their supporters, and if they just keep doing it anyway then with even further, even bigger fines, big enough to bankrupt even the billionaires supporting them) being stripped of the right to candidate in elections for X number of years, being stripped of the parliamentary immunity, (if the politician caught lying was a parliament/senate member) and potentially even prison if the lie was exceptionally egregious/they just kept repeating it through the fines etc. And not just with a slap on the wrist and moral condemnation from mainstream media like what happens today when rightoids and fascists spread 2137th lie this week. Then lying is OP, and there is no negative cost of doing it, and therefore no point in NOT doing it, because in the current age of online media, you can sell anything and everything to most people if you just keep repeating the lies often and loudly enough.
letting 20 oligarchs freely use their fortunes to pay off lackeys and use every piece of media apparatus they own/control to lie their asses off into political victories, to erode our hard fought for rights and privileges, to turn us into their serfs again: A thing that has been creeping up in basically every country in the western world since at least 2008, sounds infinitely more dystopian to me than bankrupting them for attempting to do so.
Walls and ramparts are only as protective as the guards that man them, and engineers that maintain them. Every system, every defense, every institution not properly upkept will be climbed over, eroded, dug-through, or otherwise bypassed and destroyed over time: democracy, human rights, labour rights, and social security networks, things millions of our ancestors bled and died for for us to enjoy, are no different.
100%. This is and has always been the end-game for right-wing politics. I can't think of a single nation with a sizeable conservative population that didn't eventually turn authoritarian as they gained and consolidated power. It is in the interest of every normal person around the planet to ban anything further than center-right politics.
There were times when most Western countries were solidly conservative and significantly more socially authoritarian, specifically towards women, LGBT folks, foreigners etc. And the right-wing parties were also often using populist and low-IQ arguments.
Yet the political consensus held, right-wingers would concede lost elections. They wouldn't brazenly try to act outside the law. They didn't sell out their countries to malign foreign interests.
I don't know what happened. I could name a few possible reasons, but nothing can ultimately explain this madness.
They believe it to justify their hate. The right is obsessed with hating minorities. Take your pick of whatever minority, but people who identify as lgbtq seem to be their favorite targets.
People are most readily convinced to what they want to believe in the first place, and the lie that they're the noble underdogs beset by sinners is more easily digested than the truth that they're in the wrong.
Not really,he's still at it . Keeps barking all over the internet the elected president is not legitimate. The guy is a form of scum other scum learn from
And THAT. Ladies and gentelment. Is exactly. Why I hated Trump since 2020 and why I spamed about him on my instagram stories. I don't care about a singleee of his economic polecies the fact that he refused to accept election results and didn't get his career destroyed is insane and a problem for all of us. People would say shit like "haha.. Americans are so dumb for having a Trump in their poletics"... I said since day 1.. Trump will echo into Europe. With Trumps sucess European idiots like him will atempt the same playbook. That is why an American president not accepting the results of an election was so insanly bad for all of the free world.
I got downvoted in European subs when I kept saying in 2020 that: like it or not the USA is the leader of the free world and if their democracy starts to faulter that will echo into Europe.
Trump is not Julius Caesar of the USA and it's allies. He is the people who came before him and enabled him. The Julius Caesar of the free world is still to come. Someone smarter then him and with an even bigger disregard for our institutions for his personal gain. But absolutly enabled by Dobald Trump and his voters.
Nah, as an American, we deserve to have this pointed out. We are the reason election denialism is so popular worldwide right now. We are aggressively spreading our cancer over the formerly free world, though luckily some nations have been able to fight it off.
In this very election, Poles living in the US and Canada voted for election denialism.
It's very much part of the story no matter how much you cry about people being civically literate.
Edit: Oh shit, there's an entire subreddit dedicated to crying about how unfair and mean the rest of the world is to the US, and this person posts on it! I promise we are not all as weak and simple as this person.
I will admit I'm laughing so hard at the posts on that sub that I am near tears. My favorite is the one about parental leave, and in the comments everyone admits the data is TECHNICALLY TRUE, but it hurts your precious little feelings so no one should be able to point it out.
And you're all shocked when other nations don't want to be as weak as your cult.
Last elections they did not have the mess in the High Court they made after that. Which opens a way for PiS party stooges to even try to invalid the elections. That is a nuclear option though, but for them it might be to be or not to be.
The only thing I heard is that if Nawrocki wins and they call the election invalid and make the Marshall of Sejm into the President instead - that's the stolen election.
Americas biggest export is really right wing talking points and mentalities. A friends sister suddenly started talking about chem trails last year. It have never ever been a real discussion about that in Sweden, and we used to make fun of American conspiracy theories about them in the 90s, but she is a lonely woman who spends all her time in American online spaces, so now she believe that the Swedish government is trying to control us through airplane toxins.
I wouldn't be so worried. This election is less about who you like more, but about who you hate more. If one of the candidates claims the election was stolen (and doesn't provide hard evidence), most people will just shrug because they don't like him anyway.
Ah, the strawman "we". Niether Hilary or Al ever lost or won in Poland. And in the actual past Polish elections - center or left in did not play the "rigged" card. Tbf right in Poland also did not until recently - after they saw it when Biden won in the US and Trump started an insurrection. Since then they prepare the ground in every election and tryt o push the stolen election narrations.
"US trick" lol, ok ... as if Trumpsters were smart enough to organize and communicate that effectively without Russia. It's more a "KGB trick" than anything else.
Fine? No. Will people scream election is stolen? Nope, last time the election result turned over night and Trzaskowski lost - it did not happen. Undermining trust in elections is a right-wing trick.
Late poll in. We may actually see what's gonna happen but I don't remember if we had a case in Poland that someone after calling elections rigged actually followed through with some actions.
Some voices from the right were suggesting something like in Romania can happen if Nawrocki will win.
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u/veevoir Europe Jun 01 '25
Any result that is not a Nawrocki win will be soon "problematic", the right already laid a lot of groundwork into convincing their voters that either they win - or election are stolen. They will pull the US trick.