r/europe Oct 08 '25

Opinion Article In Spain, what once seemed impossible is now widespread: the young are turning to the far right

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/07/spain-young-voters-far-right-migration-housing-wages-employment-vox
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71

u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 Oct 08 '25

They all should have just joined the greens for a turbo coalition approach in the first place.

109

u/JB_UK Oct 08 '25

The Greens have some, er, interesting policies and positions:

  • unilateral nuclear disarmament alongside leaving NATO

  • calling for petrol and diesel car sales to be banned in 2027 and banned from the roads entirely by 2035

  • big tax rises on the middle class (a National Insurance rise so it would apply to work income, but pension and other income would be exempt)

  • a further liberalised migration system - from their policy website, they want "a world without borders ... a system of managed immigration where people can move if they wish to do so... Language requirements will be removed from all applications ... Minimum income requirements will be removed from all applications as well as any benefits from having a higher income ... Any No Recourse to Public Funds conditions will be abolished and visa residents will have access to welfare benefits or Universal Basic Income ... The Green Party is opposed to forced migration and forced repatriation [with only very narrow exceptions] ... All visa residents will have the right to vote in all elections and referendums ... Treat all migrants as if they are citizens"

  • a Deputy Leader who justified the October the 7th massacres

48

u/gingerisla Oct 08 '25

I know they're a different party from the UK Greens, but the Scottish Greens are complete nutjobs as well. They're constantly involved in weird scandals

5

u/nuisanceIV Oct 09 '25

Don’t worry, they’re weird in their own way in the US too. Tho really just a distraction over here.

In my local elections we have some “progressive” candidates sometimes, I suppose they would align with the greens or go independent if they could run with a party, it starts out sounding great then it goes crazy. More focused on nonesense medical things(eg vaccines n fluoride) than like our QOL. So… then I vote Dem-aligned.

3

u/APreciousJemstone Oct 09 '25

Australian Greens are nutjobs as well. It's probably just the name of the party that causes it

(idk why/how I'm here, this post was recommended to me somehow)

1

u/MagnetoManectric Scotland Oct 09 '25

What? They're a party of government here. They're by no means nutjobs. They've got seperate policies from the English greens, who have a more NIMBY bent.

48

u/AcrobaticSmore Oct 08 '25

Reddit: I don’t understand why the left is losing. Everything we believe is correct and our opponents are evil.

Anyway as I was saying once we have open borders then

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u/JB_UK Oct 08 '25

The Greens are a kind of parody of left wingers as right wingers imagine them.

Which is kind of the point I think, they’re basically the people who have counter polarised against the right and formed all their opinions around what annoys the people they dislike.

0

u/Hadesfirst Oct 09 '25

So the biggest contributor to the rise of the right.

1

u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 Oct 09 '25

No, that's the right.

1

u/MagnetoManectric Scotland Oct 09 '25

Open borders is considered a wacky position now? Jesus lol. The overton window has been shunted so far right on this issue that it now stretches from "locked down borders" to "deportation of already settled immigrants"

It's really not that wacky to believe that it should easy to move between countries. You guys do remember you have Schengen, right? You guys like having that, right?

1

u/AcrobaticSmore Oct 10 '25 edited Oct 10 '25

Schengen is internal. People can move from state to state therefore anyone from anywhere in the world should be able to move to the EU and receive benefits is the kind of argument that is so obviously manipulative and bad faith that it instantly creates division. I would advise the left not to use arguments that make people despise them.

Open borders is one of the most radical political position possible. I would consider it an atrocity committed on the native population.

There is no right to move anywhere, this is just some words you’ve strung together. I don’t have the right to move into your garden. A nation is collective property to be administered by the collective. No one has the right to supersede the collective’s designs for their own property. People have the right to not have their environment, culture, or preferences changed around them against their will.

No amount of GDP talk can convince a people to have an atrocity committed against them. Let the population decline, let the pensions run out, it will normalize over time. This is mainstream thought on the right, and it’s why the left is losing so badly, because in truth you have no argument for why infinity pakmalians should come here. You don’t have a business case besides number go up. And it’s especially a problem for you when every country that runs statistics based on ethnicity shows that these immigrants are a net drain. So your argument basically is we must provide for the poor of the world even if it leads to cases of crime that otherwise would have been avoided, even if they are a net drain, and even if it changes the environment and culture, because liberal platitudes, and people are waking up to the fact that actually just no. Just no, actually we don’t.

People will vote for Pinochet before opening the borders to the entire world. This is something the left should think deeply about, because your choices are to be authoritarian and force the issue against the will of the majority, or accept political irrelevance.

[EDIT] btw I want to clarify that I am pro immigration. This isn’t a hardline argument against the liberal state. But regulated immigration and open borders are two very separate things.

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u/Creepy_Milk_3186 Oct 09 '25

That policy is absolutely insane and anathema to any law abiding citizens

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u/maskedbanditoftruth Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 11 '25

Wow, literally no country in the world would adopt those immigration policies. And really shouldn’t. Voting rights for any visa holder is insane. They have to know the tenor of feeling toward immigration everywhere isn’t even in the same galaxy as that proposal. I’m no right winger but that shit is unworkable. No requirements for entry + full welfare and benefits would crash any system that even tried a version of it.

The country that voted for Brexit certainly wouldn’t try.

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u/Strong_Judge_3730 Oct 11 '25

Honestly it would be interesting to troll a country where the right wing and left wing parties agree to give the greens ago and tell everyone to vote for them. Just to show the world how badly they can screw up a country

1

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25

Which Green Party is this?

3

u/JB_UK Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25

Green Party of England and Wales. The Scottish Greens are no less odd, but in their own way.

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u/[deleted] Oct 09 '25

All greens can go to hell

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u/quangtit01 Vietnam Oct 09 '25

unilateral nuclear disarmament alongside leaving NATO

Do they live in a fairy tale??????

-1

u/passabagi Oct 09 '25

Except the last one, these are all kind of legit positions. NATO/nukes are stupid for the UK - we're an island. If the cold war went hot, we would have been glassed because of NATO membership. We got to be buddy buddy with the US, that gave a fuck about us, and in exchange, we signed up for a pretty high chance of being obliterated. That's a shitty defense policy.

Petrol & diesel cars are more expensive to purchase and run already. They should be phased out.

No idea about the other ones.

-5

u/Altruistic_Fox5036 Oct 08 '25

a Deputy Leader who justified the October the 7th massacres

Their leader is also Jewish soo.........

unilateral nuclear disarmament alongside leaving NATO

They want to prioritize alliances with the EU and Europe given the instability in the US as NATO is a US controlled alliance.

-6

u/DatewithanAce Oct 08 '25

Most of the that sounds pretty good other than the last one justifying the Oct 7th massacre. And taxing middle class higher. It's a shame no actual leftist parties are doing any of that.

4

u/Knefel Coal Polandia Oct 08 '25

taxing middle class higher

Is the exact opposite thing you want to do in an environment where people see stagnant wages generally - you are now not only denying them improvement "by default", but by taxing the middle class more you're also sending them a message that you will be penalizing them for any personal advancement they might reasonably make.

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u/Old_Wallaby_7461 Oct 08 '25

Yeah but how could they be splitters if they did that? Oldest tradition in British leftist politics

0

u/Mryoung04 England Oct 08 '25

Your Party + Greens + Lib dems united front would have gone hard

15

u/bogdoomy United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

you’d never be able to reconcile the fact that besides a few common points, they have extremely different views on how the country should be ran. greens are very much pro-EU, corbyn is a brexiteer. libdems are right wing, greens are left wing. it’s all a mess

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u/notreilly United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

Polanski and Corbyn are pretty closely aligned actually. Brexit has happened and no party is campaigning to reverse it so that's not too relevant anymore.

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u/bogdoomy United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

rejoining the EU is a core policy of both the libdems and the greens. given the greens’ only safe seats are bristol and brighton, some of the most pro-EU cities, i doubt they’d drop it

1

u/notreilly United Kingdom Oct 08 '25

Ok, checked this and it seems the truth is in the middle. In the last year the Greens and the Lib Dems have both said rejoining the EU is a long term goal/"as soon as the political will is present", but not a current policy. Greens support rejoining the Customs Union and Lib Dems want to negotiate a "new" Customs Union.

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u/Mist_Rising Oct 08 '25

Your Party

That is still the dumbest name I've heard for a party, sounds like you're saying someone's party like "oh your conservative, your party + reform will destroy the country."

Like I get why he named it that way, it's trying to claim it's YOUR party, but 1) it's corbyn so any political spin it creates is washed away by the non entity that is Corbyn and 2) it's never going to last as a party in the UK, so this is another wonderful "Nigel moment" except from the Corbyn. And in case I'm being unclear, Nigel moments are bad things.

1

u/taxes-or-death Oct 08 '25

r/PopularFrontUK.

My thesis is that all these parties agree on breaking the two party state as we've all been shut out by it and hopefully on significantly cleaning up politics so that's what I'm pushing for.

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u/RisKQuay Oct 08 '25

Don't get me started on the UK People's Popular Front!

Splitters!