Be careful with joke parties. It may seem fun and may seem like they are obvious "good guys", but you really can't know. It's easy to hide behind irony. In Hungary, we had the Two-Tailed Dog party which essentially turned into the personal enrichment of the couple leading it, and political background deals and embezzlement of state funds. A lot of times, the regular old human affairs poison these joke parties too, as anywhere else, except they may have lots of naive people around them who are even easier to fool and exploit.

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tavavex 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Treating joke parties like one bloc with similar motivations is a mistake. The person behind Binface strikes me as intelligent, quick-witted and knowledgeable on modern issues. I have little doubt that he'd rule well had he actually been elected.

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bonoboTP 10 hours ago | parent [-]

If he was so, why is the spectacle needed? It's pandering to a certain preconceived notion that the bad thing about politicians is that they are that politician sort of people, wearing suits and doing politician things, instead of like the normal sort of guy who likes joking and is fun.

It's like if there is a Twitch streamer who shrieks and does stupid stunts to impress 6-10 year olds, I'd be skeptical when someone says that hey actually they are also really a intelligent scholar and whatnot. Then why do they have to go for the cheap effects?

If you have proper policy proposals, you don't need a ridiculous bin on your face.

And if it's really just protest voting, then my original comment stands. You may accidentally elect him for some role and you have no idea what he would actually do because nobody cared about that part, just the protest joke aspect.

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roer 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

He's said multiple times that the point is to celebrate democracy itself. I highly doubt his goal has ever been a political position of power.

This is the first time he's passed 5% of the vote and he was the only other candidate on the ballot. It seems quite clear cut that these are protest votes.

All that being said, purely off of vibes, I agree with the parent comment saying he would probably not misuse his power if he were to get it, which I think is already good enough in terms of "having no idea what he would actually do".

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tavavex 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You're just trying to equate humour to populism, but I'm not buying it. You're doing it so much that you inadvertently are giving his direct opposition - Nigel Farage, an actual extreme populist - a pass, just because he's wearing a suit and tie.

Your comparisons are distasteful and strike me as someone who doesn't really know the man, and just tosses out preconceived notions at him. His messaging doesn't have any undertones of "look how much I'm better and superior than the bureaucrats, I'm just like you guys!". Frankly I'd say he's less like the average person than an average politician. Neither is his humour cheap, nothing like shrieking for 6 year olds that you automatically accuse him of.

He presents himself this way because it's what he's good at. He's a highly educated comedy and satire writer. Also, he runs as a single candidate and probably doesn't really expect to win - but he does take the political system seriously and wants people to be engaged with it.

Humor has always been with us. I don't see what makes it so horrible. If a story can drive a point through it, why can't political messaging? Why is making pertinant jokes about the current situation worse than reading bullet points off a list regardless of the argument being made?

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bonoboTP 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not automatically horrible. But it's not a feature and it's suspicious. Hiding behind irony is very easy. It lets you puff platitudes and get cheap wins with the audience.

If you have real proposals, it will be interesting enough without the "ha-ha, I'm so quirky, I'm so random" costume.

	▲	LoganDark 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I've been paying attention to Count Binface for a couple months now and he seems incredibly genuine to me. He's not using the humor as a cheap shortcut. He's specifically doing the court jester thing, where he uses humor to get away with saying things that no one else would say. Sometimes these things are the most serious things in the room. "build at least one affordable house?" Is poking fun of the other candidates that would not do such a thing. Not one affordable house. If he went and said that directly, it would likely be defamation. But as a joke he gets the rally of the people while the other candidates are none the wiser. Yes the people want to hear this, yes they want both affordable housing and to see it recognized that other candidates have other ideas, but that doesn't mean they're being tricked.

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throwaway27448 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The real question: is this behavior any worse than the "super serious" parties? That just sounds like normal behavior.

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bonoboTP 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thing is, this is just another type of populism. The thought that if only we'd put normal people in charge, everything would be easy. All problems are simple, the elites just choose to press the big red button every day when the big green button is next to it but they refuse to press it because they are evil. If we could get a bunch or normal guys in who, like, read Reddit and stuff and follow memes and do gags and smoke weed and are just chill guys in general, they'd press the big green button every day and everything would go nicely.

	▲	throwaway27448 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Populism would imply catering to popular demands. This is just aesthetic bullshit—far closer to liberalism/maga than populism. The interesting part is that they don't even try to be taken seriously.

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swed420 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The real question: is this behavior any worse than the "super serious" parties?

Exactly. In a corrupt political system that each voter has little or no faith in, how do they signal this to others so that everyone knows they're not alone?

You can simply not vote, but then you're accused of being lazy, etc and the overall point is lost.

At least with a joke party, getting a sizeable portion of votes creates an undeniable spectacle to spark discussion.

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Lapra 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This whole debacle was kicked off by Farage accepting and not declaring a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire living in Thailand, with Farage having engaged in meetings with the Bank of England over cryptocurrencies, and specifically promoting the coin the crypto billionaire invested in. Really, I'm not sure you can get worse.

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rsynnott 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, you've got to imagine that even if Binface somehow won, he'd at least be a better MP than Farage. Like, it would not be hard. Turning up for work occasionally would do it.