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.
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.
I wonder why it always seems to be men that are so helpless at forming their own opinions on things that they fall in line for social media grifters (while probably calling themselves ‘alphas’). I mean, 11% of women isn’t a small amount either but 26% of men is more than double that and just over a quarter of the total amount.
Not even trying to be funny here but it’s looking more and more like the stereotypes of women being emotional and irrational and men being all level headed and wise and shit are completely fucking backwards. It seems to men that need to be babied and pampered and taken care of it told what to do. And be told what special little boys they are every 5 minutes or else they’ll punch a wall and vote for nazis. While women in general are doing a hell of a lot better at keeping their heads in the face of endless social media propaganda.
Clearly society has been doing something wrong as far as raising men goes.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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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Because they are fascists on the left there against free speech it increases fascism everywhere. When you make speech illegal it causes those groups to grow.
What speech is being made illegal, exactly?
They’re referring to hate speech.
They’re not technically wrong, it is censorship and illegal speech to outlaw hate speech. But it takes malicious selfishness and a lack of empathy to actually take issue with it imo.
Lack of selfishness & empathy? How about your lack of self-awareness & forethought? These groups are growing because that is what censoring speech does. It causes people to see those groups as victimized & gives them legitimacy in their eyes.
So according to you this would all be better if hate speech wasn’t banned?
And yet America has the worst fascist problem and has the least restricted speech?
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