Stop invoking the “turkeys voting for Christmas”-frame

“Alice Weidel, the leader of the neo Nazi AfD party in Germany, is a lesbian woman married to an immigrant woman of color with two adopted kids. She is proudly anti immigrant, anti LGBT and anti LGBT adoption and lives primarily in Switzerland. Rights for me, none for thee”, Wajahat Ali wrote on Bluesky.

If we are to understand how fascism works (and what we may do to stop it) we must stop invoking this “turkeys voting for Christmas”-frame. There is no point in emphasizing their hypocrisy or double standards. We need to understand that ideology does not serve perceived interests but constitutes them.

In other words: when people internalize a political world view they don’t do so in spite of their “actual” interests – they have an ideological stake in seeing this world view confirmed. It is never alien to, but an intrinsic part of what we call our “interests” to begin with.

This explains why individual members of marginalized social groups may also vote for (or even be actively involved in) parties that discriminate or criminalize them as members of these groups. There is no tension here because their interests simply do not align with those of marginalized people.

It also follows that there is no point in searching for the “true reasons” why people vote for fascists (i.e. the widespread idea that a vote for extreme right parties is merely an expression of discontent, disillusionment or anger and not of a genuinely racist/fascist world view).

People vote for fascist parties because they believe in what these parties claim to be true. It’s because they have become fascists themselves. You may insist that they cannot be “real” fascists because they are “actually” working class, women, LGBTQ or PoC. But it doesn’t work like that.

If we want to win people over to a different political position (and we must!) we should stop trying to explain to them why they are voting against their “actual” interest. Instead, the left should tell a story that people can identify with – and, thus, rearticulate what their interests are.

Mathijs van de Sande

(This comment was posted as a thread on Bluesky.)