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TikTok pushed far-right AfD party on young voters in Germany

4 points by wumeow 2y ago

PaulHoule 2y ago
Is it "AfD did well on Tik Tok" or "center-left/right parties did terribly on Tik Tok?" I could write a lot about it, but here are a few points. (1) I see Biden and Obama running cringey ads asking for money on YouTube. Biden's performance is direct and sincere, I genuinely like him as a person, I think he's a good role model. But he's got more money than I do: if I send him the $5 he's asking for I will get $500 worth of spam from left-wing groups that want more. This isn't the road to political engagement. (2) The business of center-X parties is not political engagement but rather political disengagement. Wintrobe's book https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintrobe/dp/0521794498 https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintro... presents a model of a dictator that I think is enlightening to democratic politics. He considers a dictator who'd like to steal from his country and spend the spoils as much as he can but is constrained by the need to spend something to "buy off" the public and interest groups. Similarly in the US, a politician would like to deliver the maximum spoils to supportive interest groups without making big expensive promises for the general public. So you get Clinton's "Triangulation" and a general comfort with winning elections with a 50.2% margin and having gridlock because if you won 65% of the vote and controlled both chambers you'd have no excuse why you aren't delivering on popular promises. (3) Similarly there is Baudrillard's idea of "cooling" in which the whole political system and media exist to disengage people. Even elections themselves exist to blunt the threat of real change that might happen if people had to overthrow the system if they had any problem with it. Center-X parties have been in the business of "cooling out the mark" for a long time and have been very comfortable with failure and near-failure situations such as Germany's interminable plan to shut down nuclear power. They want you to be barely engaged enough to pull the lever for them, but they don't want you to be engaged enough to make anything difficult for them. Trouble is that AfD really wants you to be engaged and their whole strategy is organized around it.

4 points by wumeow 2y ago

Is it "AfD did well on Tik Tok" or "center-left/right parties did terribly on Tik Tok?" I could write a lot about it, but here are a few points. (1) I see Biden and Obama running cringey ads asking for money on YouTube. Biden's performance is direct and sincere, I genuinely like him as a person, I think he's a good role model. But he's got more money than I do: if I send him the $5 he's asking for I will get $500 worth of spam from left-wing groups that want more. This isn't the road to political engagement. (2) The business of center-X parties is not political engagement but rather political disengagement. Wintrobe's book https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintrobe/dp/0521794498 https://www.amazon.com/Political-Economy-Dictatorship-Wintro... presents a model of a dictator that I think is enlightening to democratic politics. He considers a dictator who'd like to steal from his country and spend the spoils as much as he can but is constrained by the need to spend something to "buy off" the public and interest groups. Similarly in the US, a politician would like to deliver the maximum spoils to supportive interest groups without making big expensive promises for the general public. So you get Clinton's "Triangulation" and a general comfort with winning elections with a 50.2% margin and having gridlock because if you won 65% of the vote and controlled both chambers you'd have no excuse why you aren't delivering on popular promises. (3) Similarly there is Baudrillard's idea of "cooling" in which the whole political system and media exist to disengage people. Even elections themselves exist to blunt the threat of real change that might happen if people had to overthrow the system if they had any problem with it. Center-X parties have been in the business of "cooling out the mark" for a long time and have been very comfortable with failure and near-failure situations such as Germany's interminable plan to shut down nuclear power. They want you to be barely engaged enough to pull the lever for them, but they don't want you to be engaged enough to make anything difficult for them. Trouble is that AfD really wants you to be engaged and their whole strategy is organized around it.