EU now fears US interference in European elections

> I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.

No,the difference is not in mere political misalignments.

You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.

> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections.

The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.

This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms.

It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree?

Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies?

(This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.)

It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.

From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer.

From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse.

More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...

That definitely seemed to be the case in Australia, but where it's possibly started moving the other way is that a smaller, more conservative (I don't like these political terms, it's not exactly correct but it gets the point across, I think) party than the main conservative party, appears to have taken the main 'conservative party' crown.

There was a good couple of months of mainstream media even touting that they're a threat to the left/progressive/less-conservative party currently in power who won the last election in no uncertain terms (maybe possibly a landslide...?).

It's hard to get a real gauge on it, but there's a very vocal minority that has been emboldened by Trump's anti-immigration, easy answers, point at 'other' as the cause of all the problems plaguing society rhetoric and actions, such that the 'more conservative' are at least getting more airtime, which makes it seem as if they're a "growing base". I know some people who have started talking a bit more openly in this direction.

The only real way to judge is an actual election.