@ChristiJunior @Rasterman The thing is, even if those parties do not win, receiving votes legitimizes the ideas in the minds of the public. Knowing they have higher numbers in and of itself would legitimize anything right wing, and any time a moderate party like AfD is called extreme right and receives 20%+ of the vote, those ideas (even if they're not actually espoused by AfD) become more legitimate and believable in the eyes of others.

Trump getting cheated out of his presidency in 2020 and being prevented from getting anything done in 2016-2020 paved the way for what he is able to do now, and the opposition to it has exhausted itself and become weak.

The truth is our side has been winning the culture wars for a while and the left has stopped advancing. They cannot muster even a tenth of the strength of will and show of power they could in 2020. They're still in institutions but those are getting less money, and the number of True Believers willing to do anything substantial is lower. Ironically, I think we've reached a point in the US where we need to be more concerned with maximally blackpilled *leftwingers* doing terrorist attacks and assassinations, rather than our side.

One thing that needs to be understood is that the left as a movement dies if they are not able to constantly devour themselves and "progress" further. Trump and Musk might only want to reset things to circa 1990 or 2010 respectively, but they'll find that it doesn't really work that way. If they successfully manage to undo some of the damage, and actually prevent the left from moving ever lefter, they kill it as a living religion that people actually believe in. And that leaves us with the ability to influence the culture in our own way. Already ideas that were unthinkable 5 years ago make their way into the mainstream, even if some nonsense remains normalized that we considered unthinkable 10-15 years ago.

The problem with Reagan is that while he managed to defeat the USSR, he actually advanced progressives in other ways. They simply pivoted from their previous direction, and became even worse than the marxists. If Trump manages to at least gut their power structures, and stop them from moving ever lefter, it will be different. They'll become a walking corpse, which is what they're looking like now. Even if the ones in charge are effectively just liberals.