I’m not up on EU politics all that much, so I hope someone more informed comes along and posts a better answer, but…
My distant view + guess for as to why it’s different is that they have more than one party. Partisanship is at its worse when there are only 2 of you, as demonstrated by the US system - it’s all finger pointing and “us vs them” that just polarized everything.
In the EU there are (at least?) 7ish “major” political parties, and while some are bigger than others, many actual hold seats and power unlike the US Green and Libertarian “parties” that are essentially meaningless.
As such, any “partisanship” seems at least less extreme. It’s a lot harder to crucify one bad guy when your time and attention is split between 6 “bad guys”. And different parties back different things, so even if 3 were anti-abortion, you’d have to split your slander and hate to three different groups with different OTHER ideas. So it gets a bit lost in sauce.
And on the other side, if you take a strong stance on one issue (such as this one), there are likely multiple parties on your side for that issue since there are unlikely to be 7 opinions, and even if they are, the similar ones can “tag team” a little bit since they’re more in line with each other than the opposing sides are.
If you’ve ever played video games, games with more than 2 teams play very differently than ones that are just one or the other. Dynamics are much more complicated and constantly evolving than they are in a simple “team a vs team b”.
As such, my understanding is that all of these extreme takes are severely diluted since there are more shades of gray and more nuance to the conversation and not just a constant “red vs blue”.
I’m not up on EU politics all that much, so I hope someone more informed comes along and posts a better answer, but…
My distant view + guess for as to why it’s different is that they have more than one party. Partisanship is at its worse when there are only 2 of you, as demonstrated by the US system - it’s all finger pointing and “us vs them” that just polarized everything.
In the EU there are (at least?) 7ish “major” political parties, and while some are bigger than others, many actual hold seats and power unlike the US Green and Libertarian “parties” that are essentially meaningless.
As such, any “partisanship” seems at least less extreme. It’s a lot harder to crucify one bad guy when your time and attention is split between 6 “bad guys”. And different parties back different things, so even if 3 were anti-abortion, you’d have to split your slander and hate to three different groups with different OTHER ideas. So it gets a bit lost in sauce.
And on the other side, if you take a strong stance on one issue (such as this one), there are likely multiple parties on your side for that issue since there are unlikely to be 7 opinions, and even if they are, the similar ones can “tag team” a little bit since they’re more in line with each other than the opposing sides are.
If you’ve ever played video games, games with more than 2 teams play very differently than ones that are just one or the other. Dynamics are much more complicated and constantly evolving than they are in a simple “team a vs team b”.
As such, my understanding is that all of these extreme takes are severely diluted since there are more shades of gray and more nuance to the conversation and not just a constant “red vs blue”.