[mkesper]

Just one example: Elon Musk (at that time part of US government) tried to directly influence German elections by prominently featuring AfD (German right-wing extremists).

[youngtaff]

And appeared a UK far right rally to promote the idea that civil war was coming to the UK

[brightball]

But why would anyone listen? That's the real question. People can say anything they want but most people are going to ignore crazy.

[layer8]

Last February, JD Vance had a meeting with the AfD leader in Munich, after delivering a stupefying speech at the Munich Security Conference where he accused European nations of failing to defend free speech, calling out Germany in particular. He complained that the AfD was being ostracized and called for it to end. Marco Rubio followed up by calling the designation of the AfD as a right-wing extremist party as "tyranny in disguise."

Actions like these where US leadership is heavily distorting the facts make it much easier for the AfD to present themselves as a legitimate political movement allegedly being wrongfully suppressed by the “authoritarian” incumbents. The AfD currently scores 25% in representative nationwide polls, higher than any other political party in Germany. In some federate-state elections they scored over 30%, in one of them again higher than any other party. You can’t just ignore them as “crazy“.

[mkesper]

These people are extremely good at "social" media like Tiktok etc. And the algorithms massively reward rage content and the platforms do not remove fakes.

[tim333]

They are often not that crazy. These days "extreme right wing" is what people call a party that wants to send some immigrants back.

Same kind of thing that got Trump elected.