Summary
Support for Germany’s far-right AfD is surging among young men, driven by concerns over immigration, conservative values, and distrust of mainstream politics.
A Pew study found 26% of German men view AfD positively, compared to 11% of women.
Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message. Some young supporters reject accusations of extremism, while others openly embrace far-right views.
Analysts warn that if mainstream parties ease their opposition to the AfD, it could become Germany’s dominant right-wing party.
Because they are stupid and easily influenced by propaganda.
Stupid ? All youngsters all around the world are stupid then.
It seems that every 80 years or so humanity has to learn a hard lesson over and over again.
Can we please talk about how there is no active real left wing in any country?
Like sure the right wins when there is no real opposition.
I keep feeling like I’ve failed miserably as a person for not doing more. And I have no idea what should I be doing.
There is nothing you can/could do. The endless war against intelligence and focus on just believing what some screaming asshole says on talk radio, combined with the dawn of the internet being weaponized to spread that brain rot, and here you go. Maybe if you can go back in time and murder Ronald Reagan before capitalism gets so out of hand that they can buy the government ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What about doing my own content? Podcasts, screaming asshole youtubes and whatnot? I can’t speak very well, much less write, but I can… do something
I gotta say, watching them destroy the world is not making me a fan of young men.
Fucking Hans, you gullible bitch, showing your face around here again… You think you’re gonna be a superman?
I’m gonna go with
- Angry without a culprit
- Reduced critical thought
Both of those.
I want to add a third thing to this list:
- Feeling left behind by mainstream political parties.
The parties in power surely pay lip service to the issues that concern the young but very rarely do they actually do anything about it.
I think there are obviously a lot of reasons this is happening, we all know it’s not so simple a thing to explain.
But I think it can mostly just be boiled down to general discontent—there is a feeling all over the world that is vague and seemingly in everyone. It’s disenfranchisement. It’s a system that doesn’t prioritize us or even consider us. We serve the system, and the exploitation for the benefit of the global system has become so acute that it’s hitting everyone.
But people just cannot conceive of big problems like this. It always has to be something specific, so their more personal fears and biases are being exploited by the most advanced conditioning and manipulation system ever created.
We are mico-conditioned. We are exploited in new and exciting and previously unthinkable ways. We are so minutely controlled that we aren’t even in control of our own feelings most of the time. We have our moods changed for companies to profit or to weaken us to whatever it is their product “fixes.”
We can dig down into so much minutiae about the different things, but that’s like dividing Infinity over and over and over ad Infinitum. But we need to stop subdividing and sub-subdividing because that only serves to divide us—which is exactly the tactic used to exploit our vague anger. We need to instead zoom way out and see that this system is taking us down with the world it’s destroying. We all feel it, we all feel the system breaking down. But that uneasiness is given a face and a name in immigrants, or whatever is helpful.
FUD: increase fear, uncertainty, and doubt by spreading misinformation propaganda and undermining independent, fact based journalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
It’s the same tactic far right conservatives used against popular public progressive movements like the enlightenment, the hippies, corporate monopolies like IBM and Microsoft against open source, etc to divide the working class against themselves.
There was a time that I thought the world hated nazis. I realize now it was only hitler the world didn’t like. It turns out they actually love Nazis.
I was thinking about this the other day, and came to some conclusions. This is a copy-paste of a comment I made in another thread:
I don’t know much about the history of anti-Semitism in Europe (so anyone feel free to correct me or add more info), but what I’ve been thinking is that the cause/origin of anti-Semitism is no different from the anti-immigrant panic from today. They both come down to people from a “foreign” or at least different culture coming into a society and getting jobs or opening business. It just so happens that now those foreign people are more diverse, whereas before (centuries ago in Europe) they were mostly Jewish.
This tells me we have learned nothing from our past except for the most surface level details. We learned that anti-Semitism is bad and beat people over the head with it, but we never properly addressed the roots of it, and so now the same thing is repeating but for different groups of people. It’s the same sort of thing as when it is said that “people nowadays are more open minded”, when the reality is simply that they were taught to be okay (or not) with certain things; but the bigoted though process has not really gone away.
The Jew hate originally stemmed from the fact that they could loan money and charge interest, which Christians found to be a sin (usury). Well, somebody has to handle banking or the economy crashes. Made them perfect scapegoats.
“I must be suffering because the Jews stole my money!”
Then it gets worse. Jews had strict rules about cleanliness, you can find many of them in the Bible. Guess who did and didn’t get hit with plague rats. Guess who got the blame.
Funny that this somehow was obvious for me since childhood. One of the perks of being autistic is that reading the same mainstream narrative texts you understand them differently.
The world loves those enforcing rules, because they have to be strong for that, and the world loves those breaking rules, because if today they are making a challenge, tomorrow they might become even stronger. Humans follow strength. So a new challenger of existing order is loved, a yesterday’s challenger who is still not a triumphant is hated.
Also the world wants to use those with integrity, but hang out with those without integrity. The former are reliable, and with the latter you can make any deal.
No conclusion other than a dagger is good for the one holding it and evil for the one lacking it when needed.
The world loves those enforcing rules, because they have to be strong for that, and the world loves those breaking rules, because if today they are making a challenge, tomorrow they might become even stronger. Humans follow strength. So a new challenger of existing order is loved, a yesterday’s challenger who is still not a triumphant is hated.
In my experience, a good microcosm example of that is sports; specifically MMA. Just have to pay attention to how quickly the narrative and majority opinion changes based on who has most recently won their fights. You also often see subconscious racism (or at least I like to think it’s subconscious) affect people’s opinions of fighters.
The world hates losers.
That is what I used to think too. Turns out the world loves losers. It was only hitler they didn’t like.
He was an imminent threat to comfortable and familiar ways of life of the rich. Had he not been a threat to them and their interests, we would not have gone to war with him.
Likewise anyone else on the current world stage who is obnoxious, outrageous, egregious or other adjectives of that ilk.
Sure, he was also a threat to the comfort and happiness of people other than the rich, and hey, the fact that fascism is legitimately terrible is an excellent propaganda point, but that only made it easier to recruit those less well-off to go fight the battles of the rich.
And then there’s that a significant part of the reason people outside of Germany hated him is because he was foreign. Nothing more, nothing less. Pick any country, and if he’d been one of their own instead, the haters would have liked him just fine and would have been “Roman saluting” just like the Germans did.
(Yes, I know he was an Austrian accepted by Germans. Call that the exception that proves the rule. Countries further away couldn’t care less. He was still foreign to them.)
A meant people who are unsuccessful, not social losers. But I see your point…
Yup. Seeing it first hand with a shorts addict relative right now. It‘s just doomscrolling all the way to the 4th Reich for many of them. It‘s sadly not surprising but all the more horrifying to see how utterly unequipped we are to deal the pace of „social“ media and how easy it is to spread far right ideology with lies and memes. I think a ban of TikTok and Xitter is inevitable at this point. They‘re too far gone.
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You aren’t being funny here. You are making a sexist claim and that isn’t funny.
You aren’t being funny here.
Good thing I specifically said I wasn’t trying to be funny then. I suppose you’re right though. There’s absolutely nothing to be learnt from 11% of women versus 26% of men supporting nazis. It’s a mystery. Martian shit.
Women are antivaxx at much higher rates. Women are much more likely to accept “alternative/fake medicine” than men. Women are more likely to ascribe to beliefs in astrology than men. Would any of this mean that women are less capable of rational thought or might there be something else going on for why these appeal more to women than men? Were I to take sexist logic to heart the conclusion would be that women are dumber than men yet that’s simply not true. This there is likely a different reason why these forms of bullshit appeal to women. I would suggest that it is because these forms of woo are targeted at women much like fascism inherently targets men as their audience.
Fascism relies on traditional gender roles and that has less appeal to women who would lose rights and power compared to men who would theoretically gain power. It’s less “there’s something wrong with the men” and more that fascism itself is designed to appeal to men.
It helps nothing and no one to engage in misogyny or misandry.
It also helps nothing and no one to “both sides” this conversation every time it starts. Astrology and homeopathy doesn’t even begin to fucking compare with nazism. Also, why do you call out astrology but not christianity? One is a dumb little thing involving sky magic that is mostly harmless and the other is also a dumb thing involving sky magic but the followers of that dumb thing are actually very dangerous and harmful to a lot of people that have to grow up with them. Haven’t met too many female priests in my life either.
Fascism relies on traditional gender roles and that has less appeal to women who would lose rights and power compared to men who would theoretically gain power. It’s less “there’s something wrong with the men” and more that fascism itself is designed to appeal to men.
Oh, is it? So what you’re telling me is that fascism appeals to men more than women because men don’t give as much of a shit about other people’s rights? Fascinating. Totally means there’s nothing wrong with men that needs addressing or changing. Sure.
Edit: in fact this whole fucking conversation is stupid considering that the stats are there at the top of the post for all to see. There is clearly a fucking problem. And the way to fix that problem is to actually address it instead of comparing it to astrology and calling it a day.
Edit 2: the moderators here in this community are actually fucking pathetic. Actually cannot see a good reason they removed my most recent comment too now. And I’m realising that this place is actually kinda worse than Reddit in this regard because it even removes the comment from your own profile. And these fucking moderators don’t notify you or give you an actual concrete reason with whichever word or phrase broke the fucking rules. Dodgy as fuck. They’re actually just out to control the conversation.
Which is very Reddit of them. It’s easy to forget that a lot of people here are ex Reddit moderators that pissed the users there off so much that no one was willing to join them in solidarity with the API debacle. Guess I’ve found my first Lemmy community to block.
My point is your sexist response is no more justified than thinking there’s something wrong with women because they are more likely to buy into things directed at women than things directed at men.
You then proceed to double down on that sexist position and then insult all Christians for no reason?
Your sexist views expresssed here are clouding your thinking.
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Like always, the 1% keep parasitising the wealth of a country till the inhabitants stop living in comfort. When populists capitalise on this, the answer is… Tik tok makes young men racist, not poverty and uneducation… Anything to avoid wealth re-distribution. *slow clap
Hopefully some enlightenment will come and the eyes will turn to the real responsibility for this situation, and then the guillotines.
I think the point is not “this is all TikTok’s fault”, the point is things like TikTok makes it a lot easier to spread misinformation. People have shorter attention spans nowadays, and they prefer to spend their time consuming short form content such as the kind found on TikTok. The problem with this is that it takes a lot more effort to correct wrong information and educate people than it takes to spread misinformation. For example, it’s much easier to clip something a politician says out of context and to make a 5 or 10 second clip for people to watch, than to convince people to watch a 5 minute interview or read an article for context.
And even though I don’t use TikTok, I still kind of insert my self in here; I don’t have the mental fortitude or patience to read every single article I come across, so I often read diagonally, check the summary, or (more rarely) just stick with the title.
Well, this being the BBC their take is NEVER (ever, ever) going to be that the empoverishment due to a social, political and economic structure than massively benefits the Owner class whilst empoverishing the rest and uses propaganda to distract the masses and to make sure any redistributive ideologies are un- or at least under-reported, is the one to blame for those most hit amongst the “plebes” are going to rebel and latch one to the only “non”-mainstream ideologies that do get reported about - the Far Right.
This is because in their own country and, to some level internationally, the BBC’s function is to be a cog in exactly that propaganda machine.
The last thing you’ll ever going to see is the news media who portrays “two sides coverage” (I.e. all subjects getting reduced to a dispute between the two main parties) as “fair” “journalism” covering any subject as a problem of how mainstream politics benefits the well-entrenced Owner class, especially the news media from a country were the Owner class is mainly made up of the same families as a century ago. At best, they’ll cover the near-mainstream “blame outsiders” movements (such as the Far Right), never those pointing out how much of the blame rest on well off local elites
till
I don’t know what a cash-drawer or ploughing has to do with this discussion. Honestly, that’s when I resumed scrolling, and I’m sorry.
I hope you’re from Quebec
Germany isn’t doing that bad though. This is happening all over, regardless of how comfortable the country’s white boys are. Of course, not capitalists will stop it, because they hope to profit from the divide.
I’m not aware of a country that’s swinging right where living standards are rising. They’re all either stalled out or falling in spite of narrative and expectation. Sure, Germany isn’t bad compared to some others, but plenty of Germans recognize that the standard of living they’re used to is starting to diminish. Unfortunately, instead of recognizing the real causes here, that angst is being channeled into “yes, but what if we tried out fascism again?”
The thing that’s wild to me as a USian is that we’ve had the fruits of reactionary conservatism (starting on the path with Reaganism) on full display since the oughts, and other countries seem to see our shambling fucking mess and go “well, yes, but the rich people told us it’ll be different for us.” No, it fucking won’t.
Many families in Germany face a precarious future, and your dismissal of the concerns of young people will definitely not make them more reasonable when it comes to the election. There are enormous financial challenges for a lot of Germans, and unlike in the U.S., White people are just as much affected as all the others.
These challenges were also there before social media, never said Germany is doing great either. Social media definitely played a part in changing consciousness, but in stead of class consciousness, we got right wing grifting, which happens to be the most profitable for social media companies.
This mirrors what’s happening with men of the same age in the US.
Not surprising, given the same people are pushing the same rhetoric all over the world.
Not all over though. China isn’t electing Sieg Heil, and neither is the Sahel
Welcome to web 4.0, where the vocal minority monopolizes all of our feeds
Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message.
Lies are easier to spread than the truth, and often more easily accepted too. Social media is fucked because of the near total lack of moderation - or desire to enact such.
After all, the ultra-wealthy often have little objection to being the useful pets of fascists, so long as they get to keep slightly more of their money*.
*until the fascists decide they want it even more than the scawwy LIBERALS did
near total lack of moderation
Disagree. Social media is built to favor creating and then selling huge name influencers to your users, and because you cannot become a large influencer/streamer/w/e without essentially being uncritical about the world, or being critical in a way that swings completely to 1 side of the aisle. This is in itself a form of moderation that only ever allows some critical voices to succeed, but only if their critique furthers the divide among the working class.
This is true. Last time TikTok got popular in Germany was in 1930 and we all know how that ended.
Because they’re Nazis.
Because they’re Nazis.
But why do people become Nazis?
People are not born Nazis.
Understanding why people become Nazis helps prevent people from becoming Nazis, even if you think there’s no hope for the fucks who’ve already dived into the ideology.
I think it’s largely about a lack of opportunity for, especially but not exclusively, blue collar workers1 and a perceived loss of status. There seems to be a lot of young men across the West and elsewhere who are struggling to build a career in the modern economy and being rejected by women (in part due to their anger) when, to them, it feels like just a generation or two ago, they would have been handed a middle class life and been the breadwinner for a family already.
Nevermind that a generation or two ago, that status came at the expense of others. To them, it feels like lost status. So, they’re easily manipulated by the far right saying, “It’s not you. It’s [insert scapegoat: women, immigrants, whatever]. We’ll give you a sense of purpose.”
1 I only say blue collar because of the shift in rich countries from manufacturing to services, whether high paid or low paid. But whole white collar professions have disappeared just due to computers.
People become Nazis when they feel lost, powerless, and their lives meaningless. They reach for it in a desperate attempt to be part of something important, powerful, and meaningful.
But it’s empty and nihilistic, so it doesn’t work out.
We as a society haven’t figured out how to deal with modernity. All our problems are of our own making. We’ve destroyed religion (the original provider of meaning and belonging) and left a void in its place. That’s all the desire for Nazism is: a desire to fill that void (and a scapegoat for why it exists in the first place).
Of course you and I can see that the scapegoat is wrong and totally absurd. But that’s not important to them. There’s no easier way to feel powerful than to topple a hated enemy.
Fascism is literally an ideology driven by a spiteful vibe. Parade your disdain for the identity of somebody else long enough, they will embrace the worst aspects to oppose you and mythesize these aspects into virtues.
So it’s our disdain of them that causes them to be disdainful?
It is a lack of understanding and communication, most certainly. That goes both ways of course.
I mean, fair, but a lot of the “why” with these guys boils down to “The world acts like all men are terrible, sex-crazed jerks who are violent, angry, and unable to control their emotions while claiming they’re actually stoic and that makes me feel bad about myself.”
Then, their solution is to double down on all those things because they’re upset about being unfairly accused.
Look, if your response to people assuming you’re a shitty person is to just… become an even shittier person to prove it, I think it says there was something deeply wrong with you before you doubled down.
I’ve heard the same shit about men my whole life and not fucking once did it make me go “God damn, I should just be a pile of shit then!” No, every time it inspired me to self-reflect and try to change my behaviors for the better.
So I reiterate, if your response is to double down, something was wrong with you before the turn to Nazism.
Like I don’t know why else talking about “rape culture” resulted in young men chanting “Your body, my choice!” at women other than being born and raised as a piece of shit.
That reaction of doubling-down in response to sexism and the (sometimes impolitely stated, but most often true) accusations of masculine malfeasance in broader society is, itself, mostly created by social circumstances - how we socialize young men. Again, they are not born like that, they are not born as people who will become more sexist if accused of sexism or shown sexism in broader society, inherently; they are damaged into creatures which react like that. We must understand where this happens, how this happens - in the very many ways that it does happen - and how to counter it when removing the circumstances is not an immediate option.
they are not born as people who will become more sexist if accused of sexism or shown sexism in broader society, inherently; they are damaged into creatures which react like that.
You conveniently defined away a possibility there, didn’t you. There is preciously little understanding in fifth or sixth wave or whatever is it now feminist circles about how their rhetoric affects young guys, that there even needs to be a conversation about “all men” speaks volumes. Paint with a broad brush and you paint yourself as an adversary of people who, at a young age, approach the topic completely neutrally.
“Hi I’m new here” – “You are the problem” – “Fine, I’ll go somewhere else”. That kind of thing happens all the time and it’s not something anyone gets conditioned into.
You might not like to hear this but the media is far from innocent of building the image of young, struggling men being prone to violence and not being trustworthy while it also still fuels the imagery of the older, tough as nails ‘hero’ they wish to become but are not allowed to.
A certain gender controls the media by a vast, vast majority. That gender is not women.
So you’re essentially blaming men for blaming men.
I do. This is about a lack of properly traditioning masculinity.
If men can’t teach men how to be men, I think men are out of luck.
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