Online campaigns like these have helped radicalize a broad swath of Germany’s youth, making extreme-right ideas that were once relegated to the margins of German political discourse increasingly mainstream. The Young Alternative, the AfD youth organization that put out the dance video, has been classified by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency as an extremist group since last year.
Jfc, this comment section is a cesspit. Looks like the fascist have come out of the woods today 🙄
It’s so easy not to be a gigantic far-right cunt. It’s so easy.
Makes no god damn sense.
We failed educating people.
Germany has a stellar education system. Former East Germany skews very conservative because of overcompensation from the days of the imperialist-with-communist-dressings-DDR. You see the greatest support for the AfD in Thuringia and Saxony.
Liberal governments failed people by assuming that their status quo policies weren’t alienating younger generations.
It’s being actively failed, it’s a tactic to make the lies more effective
We need to understand what causes them to be receptive to this kind of radicalisation. Understand the root cause and then mitigate the root cause.
Sorry to play devil’s advocate here, and I don’t mind if I get a million downvotes, but the causes are well-understood and have been for a while. It’s easy to dismiss AfD voters as a bunch of uneducated, disruptive rubes while failing to see how much employment in Eastern Germany is different from the one in the West. If you have a university degree, you’ll up and leave first chance you get because wages are so much higher in the West. Else, you’ll try to survive for decades on a string of one-year contract-low-skill-jobs somewhere out in the woods, as this is completely normalized in the East. The influence, even the very existence of labor unions and works committees is greatly diminished, too, compared to the West. Inflation and rent hikes hit just the same or worse, though. Towns and cities are getting depopulated big time, especially de-womanized. People in the East feel left behind by common-run big-city politicians, and AfD has been filling this gap very systematically and effectively.
How exactly does AfD fill this gap??
They are uneducated. If they were they wouldnt vote for a party only profitting the rich, as shown by all their voting patterns. Whenever something is proposed to help poorer people they vote against it. If rich people only profit they vote in favour. If you want to change something there are more than enough non fascist parties in germany to vote from.
If i had to guess, the right offers classic masculinity and certainty in the belief system. The world is good or bad, and it is easy to know which is which.
Meanwhile the left is basically everything but typically masculine, and makes little effort to appeal to men in its rethoric and demands (in fact, i personally believe the surface level hostility towards men is incredibly harmful to the cause and should be adjusted for less antagonistic language).
If i was a teenager today id probably feel very lost myself. Being a man is no longer “good”, men are oppressors and part of the partiarchy now, and previous male role models are dated without an alternative available. So where does that leave a confused adolescent?
I’m sure that’s a big part of it, but there’s also a massive cost of living crisis and a lot of straight up gaslighting in regards to immigration. I’m willing to bet if there was a left wing party that addressed a lot of those issues you wouldn’t see the same shift rightward.
I once called out quite specific misandrist statements, you could assume they might have disagreed with the evaluation. Instead, they straight up jumped to calling me a dangerous misogynist when my entire political and social stance is openly opposite. In the aftermath I read on their social media increasingly unhinged rants how only single rare exceptions of men are not perpetrators. Not surprised the left alienates large demographics, even their own allies.
The left has a lot of hostility in general. Towards men, towards centrists, towards white people, and towards the right.
As a centrist, it’s really disappointing to see, because at this time when the right has dropped the ball and sacrificed stability and moral soundness for power and populism, we need the left to be welcoming people with open arms, educating them, and encouraging voting in general.
Instead, there’s scorn and rejection, and denial of that scorn and rejection if it’s brought up - or even just doubling down on “they deserve it”.
And so, they feed their opposition, because they can’t take the time to find a common ground. Being seen to be “the right one” is more important to them - and they’ll “win” their way into a hole.
Is it the left’s fault the right are like an infested cricket hopping to its watery demise? No. But it’s their fault they rely on the easy lies of hate - that their position is morally superior, and so people who don’t agree are shit. Anything you’re accused of, just point at the whipping boy, and whip harder, because the right are so clearly wrong, you don’t have to inspect your own life.
Eventually, people will wake up. …or, one side will “win”, and try to suppress the views of the other, which will eventually pop up again anyways, because of the duality in the human mind. In either case, after a while, we’ll rinse and repeat.
Social media. Especially TikTok
This is just the seed. You also need fertile ground, which is what OP is talking about.
The shorts format itself is an issue. It reduces complex issues and possible solutions to a few seconds of content. That is how the young people want to consume content. But they only thing you can do is oversimplified bullshit I’m that amount of time.
I suggest to read this in depth analysis.
That still doesn’t make it the root cause. You should probably read up on what a root cause analysis is.
I am well aware what an RCA is. The issue here is that the “root causes” like immigration fear and “the economy” are mostly fabricated or blown up.
The AfD pushes propaganda to young people. And to cite from the RCA I linked you
Younger people in particular can be strongly influenced by manipulation strategies and disinformation. They can develop problematic views of the world and people that run counter to basic democratic values.
You just surfaced 2 more adjecent layers, keep digging. I don’t know why you say you understand RCA when you stop after 2 whys.
The kids are being fed endless lies and you say the liars aren’t at fault. Blaming the left instead exactly in the way the liars do. Like a fucking script.
Dude, a huge part of my job is doing RCA.
And I don’t stop after 2 why’s. I gave you a link to a good analysis you could read. Or just ignore it…
I am also active in german politics for 20 years, and I habe done youth work for 10 years. I have gathered my fair share of first hand knowledge…
And a budget (like kremlins troll facrory)
It’s the same thing it’s been for decades, people just assumed that white people in wealthy countries were immune to it.
It’s because they are fucking stupid, you know, just like America and everywhere around the world were people vote against their best interests.
It’s because the other political content that reaches them is boring, cringe or not existant. The other parties missed their chance and are thinking too much and trying to be too correct to catch up.
There may be a question for how to solve it, how to make other perspectives more attractive. And let’s be real, who will foot the bill.
There is absolutely no doubt about the cause. It’s the economy and good luck fixing that.
E.g. unemployment in “Sachsen” may be only 6.5%, but the average wage is 3000€ while the average for the republic over all is 4300€.
Here is a map about Rent, but don’t let that fool you, the average price isn’t actually below 5€, price in cities is 8.50€ You’ll have to scroll a bit.
And average rent increase (2nd source) went from 5 to 6 and from 7 to 8. Which of course means that the absolute change was the same and the relative change was not. It doesn’t matter if it’s a “market correction”. What people see is that their rent goes up, dis-proportionally so, while wages don’t.
And of course, the meme that they can’t articulate themselves is probably true. They don’t see “the economy”. They see the state of their cities, the living standards of their friends and family and then the government spending money on anything and everything else but them and their concerns. (climate, migrants, factories for companies in different federal states, weapons to fight foreign wars, etc.)
Truth
God damnit
The center cannot hold and the right is superficially more inviting to young men.
The far right is the logical conclusion to the centrist rhetoric of the last few decades. It’s underpinned by the same ideas, whereas leftist ideology is fundamentally different. That’s to say, far right ideology isn’t more inviting only to young men, but also to everyone else who has internalised capitalist ideology.
I can see that from an American perspective. But in Europe we’re also very familiar with socialist centrism. In fact, the word socialism no longer has any meaning here.
I’m European too, and our left wing parties have all started sliding towards the right. Which ones of them are actually proposing anything outside of the current neoliberal framework?
socialist centrism
Do… do you know what either of those words mean???
Yes but European parties don’t
Ya know, i keep telling everyone–there just isn’t enough extremism out there these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ kids just need something to believe in, why not their races supremacy over all others?
no ; its the socks.
If the EU’s indiscriminate immigration policies weren’t so lax, and didn’t create issues for the general public, such things wouldn’t happen. It’s not the young who failed to study history, it’s the institutions who failed to learn how to appease the population. It’s easily seeable, the far right is winning in all those places whose population wad most affected by the idiotic idea of “Let’s just let everyone in, but let’s not help them in any way, shape or form so that they need to resort to crime”. Many states saw a surge in criminality because of illegal immigrants, especially in Northern Europe. That’s why the far right is winning.
Which parties want more resources for integration? Are they winning?
Your explanation is worthless but thanks for the example of exactly the kind of social media content that lures children to the right. Let’s just hope they grow up and learn to see the difference between contrarianism and wisdom.
Maybe hating them and telling them they’re everything that’s wrong with the world wasn’t a great strategy after all.
Is that really what’s been happening? And is that a legitimate reason to attach yourself to far-right ideology?
Some people feel attacked when their privileges are pointed out. They’ll hear ‘white people* have it easier than people of colour in many situations’ and what they’ll understand is ‘you’re what’s wrong with the world because you’re white’. Seems to be a common enough misunderstanding.
*ethnicity is just an example here
I would also say that, often due to lack of exposure to other types of people, any change in privilege may be interpreted as a loss of status and power. The problem is when you started arbitrarily having a leg up, if you lack perspective, moving toward equality can feel like you’re being persecuted.
I’m not saying universally men or whatever don’t face any unique and unfair challenges. They do. But the magnitude is not proportional to the reaction in my opinion. It’s discouraging that for so many, they find no joy in marginalized groups gaining any ground if it wouldn’t also benefit them.
What is the solution here in your opinion?
Have you tried NOT hating children, and teaching them that they are everything which is wrong with the world?
Because I’d personally start there, before worrying about anything else.
You know how we can tell that your comment is nothing more than far-right propaganda? By how oblivious it is to any group outside of “young straight white men”.
Your cuddly, caring far-right routinely and deliberately tries to teach children that they’re “everything wrong with the world”, just not the white male ones. .
They try and bully trans kids into suicide. They gleefully hurl slurs at black kids and gay kids. They teach little girls that their value lies in being a servant with a low “body count”. They accuse them of ruining everything from video games to dating and relationships.
But it’s not bad when you do it huh?
Ok, we’re already not doing that, what’s next!
Have you tried tying a carrot to a stick and dangling it in front of their faces?
Clearly the youth don’t agree with you there.
You just repeated your comment above. What is your solution?
