All EU citizens (sorry UK) don’t forget to vote today.
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I already voted a week ago, so I’ll just sit here and wait for the results!
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Done 
Haven’t missed an election since I became 18, and don’t plan to miss one, well ever.
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Flips table on brexiteers. 
Wish I’d have moved onto Europe mainland when I was younger.
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Yay, our far-right ex nazi party lost 7% in comparison to our last election.
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I’m quite happy that we also didn’t follow this unfathomable decline towards the right that is the case in so much of the EU.
Our largest party here in Denmark was a leftwing party with a very green agenda and the second largest our Social Democratic Party.
Out of 15 parliamentarians only 3 are what you would call classically rightwing.
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I’m also very happy! Our left-wing party The Left Alliance landslided into second place, going up 11,8% from the last election, which is considered a sensational result. Their leader received 14% of all cast votes, setting a new record for personal votes in the European elections in Finland (nearly 250,000 votes!). They did far better than any polls predicted, going from 1 place in the parliament to 3. The winner was our biggest party, The National Coalition, which is moderately right-wing. They received 4 places in the parliament and around 25% of all votes. And our right-wing populists were the biggest losers, losing almost 8% of the vote and 1 spot in the parliament. The Greens also lost 6% of the vote but kept their 2 places.
Only 42% of all Finns voted, but the European elections have always been the least popular elections over here. We have never been over 50%, except for the very first elections in 1996.
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Woke up this morning with news about the Far-Right making gains in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany.
I’m glad they didn’t make gains where you live.
Did Europe learn nothing in the war?
It actually makes me feel sick to my stomach that things are sliding back that way 
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This is something that scares me a lot. I think we are facing a dark future before it gets better again. When did it become uncool to be nice?
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Here in Germany the right wing party gained almost 5% and stands at almost 16%. I wanted to puke when reading the news this morning. The only good news is that they remain relatively small in the area where I live, but still way to strong for my tastes.
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The rise of populism is very dangerous and scary. I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but I am a ‘glass half empty’ person.
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Sorry to launch into PoliSci mode but I think right-wing populism is dangerous and scary, but populism exists across ideologies (with some key similarities and differences between left-wing and right-wing populism generally) and it’s a mistake to just consider it to be broadly bad.
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It really depends on which definition of populism you subscribe to in the end. I would also say that the rise of populism both on the left and the right is something to be vary off.
But we are witnessing a rise in populistic factions across the political spectrum globally, which in turn historically leads to confrontations between those factions too often ending in bloodshed.
Populistic factions also often becomes a “bandwagon” situation where people follow blindly, often by idealising a demagogue - which in turn again historically has led to violent opposition.
(I had a very charismatic professor who taught this subject at university, besides Matt Smith doing the Giraffe I have never seen anyone flail that much with their arms, she was a delight 
)
The political opinions behind a populistic movement might be sound but the consequences of populistic politics historically are too often proven to end in conflict.
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I just read up about this and @flora_snow00 is right that left-wing populism is a thing - I can’t speak for @ItsR0b0tNinja but I have always associated the term with right-wing ideas and never thought “socialism” was populism.
It may be a UK/USA thing?
Edit: that article doesn’t even mention the UK!
And as an example of a populist policy from the USA Populist Party it says:
It advocated for government intervention in the economy, such as the government ownership of railroads.
Our railroads were nationalised by Labour but then privatised by the Tories, and Labour have said (although not sure if this is still true) that they’d nationalise them again. Labour are far from “extreme left wing”!! So I’d say that’s only seen as a far left wing idea by the USA. Then again we have free healthcare. We are very different.
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That’s generally something to keep in mind. Far left wing ideas in the US are often things that are normal elsewhere…
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Ok so diving in a little bit: there’s definitely a lot of scholarly debate and discussion about what exactly constitutes “populism,” and unfortunately I’m struggling to find my notes and papers from the relevant courses I’ve taken but if I find them may return with some more thoughts, but most definitions agree on it being more a style of politics rather than any particular ideology.
I may come back and try to summarize it later, but I really recommend reading “Populism and Myth” by María Casullo. It’s easy to find with a quick search and isn’t really a difficult read, and has a really compelling way of viewing populism that also gets into the ways in which left-wing and right-wing populist campaigns differ.
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A thing that always tickles me is when the term “liberal” is used to signify someone who is leftwing.
The political party “Venstre” (literally translated “Left”) here in Denmark uses the tagline “Denmark’s Liberal Party” and they are considered a right wing party.
Then again the largest party at the EU elections, “SF” - that stands for Socialistic Peoples Party and are only moderately left wing.
Politics are so different from nation to nation.
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Yes it certainly doesn’t help matters that the words have different meanings to different people.
It’s probably best to talk about things in terms of policies, that’s the clearest way really.
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In the context of what was said previously in the thread, I was specifically talking about Right-Wing Populism. And as @shauny pointed out, Populism is generally associated with the Right with my social circle. Very rarely is Left-Wing Populism talked about.
All forms of Populism is scary. It’s ‘empty’, exclusionary, and designed to massage the ego of its intended target. It leads very easily to cult like behaviour, that doesn’t allow for dissent.
I think that makes sense. Just woke up.
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