The world’s richest man is wielding his immense wealth, political influence, and control over global companies to promote authoritarian forces worldwide. What could go wrong?
LLMs tackle Bluesky feeds, disinformation takes a backseat, AfD’s ticket scandal unfolds, and Europe grapples with far-right normalisation.
What were the 5 posts in 2024 that people actually read? #1 will surprise you.
How important is nostalgia for the far right in the Netherlands? We read Versteegen (2024) to find out. Here is what we learned
Is “Europe” still an issue that can (positively) motivate voters? 3 authors say ‘yes’, but we are not fully convinced.
Studying the far-right vote in Europe, again This winter, I’m teaching a new iteration of my MA reading class on far-right voting in Europe. I have been doing this for a long time, and every now and then I feel the urge to summarise decades of research by stating the obvious: some people are simply…
Germany will hold an early election in February 2025. It looks like the AfD could increase their 2021 result by half.
Ten days or so ahead of the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, I had a chat with Berlin-based British Deutschlandversteher Deborah Cole. Some quotes made it into this excellent explainer piece in the Guardian. Looks like Germany failed the test. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/29/germany-state-elections-populists-afd-bsw
How it started: far right governments as an exception A decade or two ago, far right governments were a rarity in Europe. Of course, there were the Berlusconi governments of the 1990s and early 2000s that included the radical right Lega (then still the Lega Nord) and the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, i.e. the rebranded MSI.…
