Europe's Far-Right Now the Most Popular Party

In this episode, Malcolm Collins and Simone dive into the rise of far-right political parties in Europe, comparing current trends to historical contexts. They discuss the Economist article detailing how far-right factions have grown since 2010, eclipsing numbers seen during the 1930s-1950s. They dissect perceptions about these parties, societal reactions, and the shifting political landscape, using graphs and data to illustrate their points. The conversation also touches on American politics, media biases, and the broader implications of rising political polarization.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be going over an article in the Economist and a few other papers that looked at the rise of the far right in Europe now being the single largest political party faction in all of Europe.

Not only that, But it is higher now than it was at any point from the 1930s to the 1950s, i. e. during the rise of the actual Nazis by, and, and, and the fascists in Italy and all of that. Now, I will say here really fascinatingly that this is BS that the far right that they're talking about, like the far right, before we go too far into this, like the AFD in Germany, right, is a party that they're like, this is just like the Nazis and the right just keeps going further right.

And the head of it is a gay woman who is in a long term with [00:01:00] children, maybe not marriage, but long term with children interracial relationship with another woman and they live mostly in Switzerland, not in Germany. What? That is how Oh, that's so European. nationalist Racist and homophobic this party is.

Oh my gosh,

Simone Collins: I had no idea, that's crazy that she also doesn't live that much in Germany.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, not that dedicated to German identity. She's just like, hey, but like, well, I don't know. I mean, with

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: direction Germany's

Simone Collins: going and can you blame her? She's, it's kind of a testament to where they are right now.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, absolutely. So we're going to go over this graph. Actually, like, let's start with this graph . I find it really interesting. So first the question is, is who is the hard right gaining from? Like, who has been losing? When did the hard right start going up?

So the hard right really started going up in 2010.

Simone Collins: And we

Malcolm Collins: see this exponential rise [00:02:00] since then, especially in the past couple of years and it was no real losses in that period. Now, keep in mind, that's a long period. This is a period of 15 years.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it's quite a run. And with Trump advance, absolutely killing it.

I expect it to continue to rise. I think when we open like calls with people, I don't even know are like political now in Europe. They're like, Oh my God, I'm so envious of things in the U S right now. And I'm on this great thread with all my class at the GSB and they're all these, you know, corpos, this is the Stanford graduate school of business.

And they're like freaking out about this and like calling everyone like a Nazi and dehumanizing the other side as much as they can. And occasionally the right. We'll be like. Well, I really don't know if it's like helpful to like dehumanize your opponents, especially the people who are supporting the rallies in our major cities saying from the river to the sea, or, you know, when you guys didn't even hold a primary, the selection cycle, or when you guys literally controlled all of the media and every social [00:03:00] platform, or when you guys, whatever, whatever any of those things are like, I don't know, it's helpful.

But like they, no, no, they're like, and they're always so meek, the voices on the right. They're like, just maybe, could we

Speaker: Good morning, Philadelphia. With us today is

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Malcolm Collins.

Speaker: local business owner and a man with a harrowing story. That's right. A few days ago, three

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: Corpos sent me a chain of emails slagging off our boys, Elon and Trump.

Speaker: now, I want to be very clear about something. Um, Mr. Reynolds These pieces of garbage, they don't know who the hell they're dealing with. So these punks I don't know if they wanted money, or they wanted something more sexual. Anyway, I started .

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: Magging.

Speaker: Bah! Bah! I don't see so good, so I missed. Anyway, you guys all think I'm a hero. And I'll accept that responsibility. Now, were you concerned, though, that an innocent bystander may have Look, crime in this city is out of control.

Thank God

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: We've got two presidents with Trump and Elon absolutely killing [00:04:00] it.

Speaker: I don't think one would have done it. I'm gonna go out and buy some more. Okay. And I think you should, too. Don't be a victim. It's time to fight back. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: but it does give me heart. It does make me feel good because I know that these are, you know, Stanford business school, all these people run major companies. Some of them have a ton of money,

and that means that they're competent people and they still are so deluded that they can't even like play ball was like the actual ball they're playing ball was like an imaginary, the right is homophobic ball.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, it's like, okay, well, okay, you guys aren't even on, on the court now, right?

Like you guys are in some other zone, but , I wanted to talk about where we're rising from. So, since the 2010s, who are we eating right now? So, the conservative vote has gone down dramatically.

Simone Collins: Well, this is where I get a little confused, because if I look at this without having a lot of context I see basically a mirror rise in the hard right and a mirror fall and conservatives, is this not just the media or other players reframing conservative as hard right?

Because these days it seems like very moderate. [00:05:00] No,

Malcolm Collins: because it's not a mirror fall, which you also have as a drop in the social democrats.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Which is the center left party. So it's not just eating the conservatives. If you look at the major jumps, like the major jump that happened around, it's a bit hard to tell when that is, like, I want to say 2015 maybe or 2016 that happened at the expense of the social Democrats more than at the expense of the conservatives.

It's only the most recent jump that was mostly at the expense of the conservatives.

Simone Collins: But isn't it more broadly that anyone who is. Center right or moderately right is now being framed as crazy far rights and but what's really happening is the left is taking increasingly extreme stances forcing not

Malcolm Collins: exactly but we'll go over the data on both of this really what we're seeing is a hard right has become an anti authoritarian party.

And an anti establishment party. And the other side, like just fundamentally doesn't understand how authoritarian they've become in their impulses. Because, and they're like, what? We're [00:06:00] not authoritarian. We only do it to the inhumans, the dep