I was surprised by your claim that Wikipedia would categorize mild restrictions on immigration as an element of far-right politics, so I read that article to see it for myself. I didn't see anything about mild restrictions. Would you care to point out where you saw that?

People having different opinions other than globalists elites is destabilizing to their reign :))

They can’t fathom that their opinions are unpopular and probably wrong.

It's pretty obvious, media is called the 4th power.

Control the media, you control the information that a significant part of Europeans get. Elections aren't won by 50%, you only need to convince 4 or 5% of the population that the far right is great.

Schrödingers social network: It's somehow irrelevant but somehow "destablizies our democracy" ;)

It gives people who aren't aware of the bot accounts / thumb on the scale the perception that insane crackpot delusions are more popular than they are.

There is a reason Musk paid so much for Twitter. If this stuff had no effect he wouldn't have bought it.

The same way that social media has destabilized the USA.

By exposing people to a flood of misinformation and politically radicalizing content designed to maximize engagement via emotion (usually anger).

Remember when Elon Musk alleged that he was going to find a trillion dollars (a year) in waste fraud and abuse with DOGE? Did he ever issue a correction on that statement after catastrophically failing to do so? Do you think that kind of messaging might damage the trust in our institutions?

While there may be some feeds on Xitter that are basic algorithms, (1) it's not the only one (2) there may still be less mechanical algorithmic choices within following (what order, what mix, how much) (3) evidence to the contrary exists, are you freeing yourself of facts?

I haven't dug into whatever they open sourced about the algorithm to make definitive statements. Regardless, there are many pieces out there where you can learn about the evidence for direct manipulation.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-pr...

I hate to wade into this cesspool. How about some of the real obvious ones:

  * Crypto currency rug pulls (World Liberty Financial)
  * Donations linked with pardons (Binance)
  * Pardoning failed rebels of a coup that favored him (Capitol rioters)
  * Bringing baseless charges against political enemies and journalists (Comey, Letitia James, Don Lemon)
  * Musk (DOGE) killing government regulatory agencies that had investigations and cases against his companies

> de Gaulle would be considered insanely far right today

As much as it pains me to say this, because i myself consider de Gaulle to be a fascist in many regards, that's far from a majority opinion (disclaimer: i'm an anarchist).

I think de Gaulle was a classic right-wing authoritarian ruler. He had to take some social measures (which some may view as left-wing) because the workers at the end of WWII were very organized and had dozens of thousands of rifles, so such was the price of social peace.

He was right-wing because he was rather conservative, for private property/entrepreneurship and strongly anti-communist. Still, he had strong national planning for the economy, much State support for private industry (Elf, Areva, etc) and strong policing on the streets (see also, Service d'Action Civique for de Gaulle's fascist militias with long ties with historical nazism and secret services).

That being said, de Gaulle to my knowledge was not really known for racist fear-mongering or hate speech. The genocides he took part in (eg. against Algerian people) were very quiet and the official story line was that there was no story. That's in comparison with far-right people who already at the time, and still today, build an image of the ENEMY towards whom all hate and violence is necessary. See also Umberto Eco's Ur-fascism for characteristics of fascist regimes.

In that sense, and it really pains me to write this, but de Gaulle was much less far-right than today's Parti Socialiste, pretending to be left wing despite ruling with right-wing anti-social measures and inciting hatred towards french muslims and binationals.

They wrote "Bush was right wing" (unless it was edited), so what's your point in saying "Many aspects of Bush (assuming GW here) would be considered not in line with America's far-right today." ?

Bad assumptions are just another form of stupidity.

No one can assume good intent with such question, at best it's bait.

But then again people on this very forum will argue Sanders is a literal communist so we circle back to the sub 70iq problem

MAGA talks about free speech but doesn't believe in or practice it.

Believing in free speech is neither left nor right, it's on the freedom/authority axis which is perpendicular. Most people on the left never advocated to legalize libel, defamation, racist campaigns, although the minority that did still do today.

The "free-speechism" of the past you mention was about speaking truth to power, and this movement still exists on the left today, see for example support for Julian Assange, arrested journalists in France or Turkey, or outright murdered in Palestine.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter and promised free speech, he very soon actually banned accounts he disagreed with, especially leftists. Why free speech may be more and more perceived as right wing is because despite having outright criminal speech with criminal consequences (such as inciting violence against harmless individuals such as Mark Bray), billionaires have weaponized propaganda on a scale never seen before with their ownership of all the major media outlets and social media platforms, arguing it's a matter of free speech.

There’s no such thing as free speech and there never has been. To believe there is, is to fundamentally fail to understand what a society even is.