Recent voter surveys say between 14% and 22% of under-30s would vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany party in the upcoming European elections. But who are these potential voters?
At an Alternative for Germany (AfD) European election campaign in Berlin, two of the far-right party’s candidates, Dr Alexander Sell and Mary Khan-Holoch, discussed national pride and how the AfD hopes to make Germans proud of being German again.
The crowd was largely made up of pensioners. However, there were also quite a few young people in the mix.
Khan-Holoch herself is 30 years old, and she did not hesitate in her answer to the question of what makes the AfD so attractive to first-time and young voters.
“Germans feel afraid of becoming strangers in their own country,” Khan-Holoch told Euronews.
We’re going to get fascism back purely because the neoliberal idea of fucking over everyone for the greater glory of the wealthy, while strip-mining brown people for every bit of value apparently has consequences.
Imagine how nice the world would be if we could have convinced the wealthy to make do with less?
If they only had a multi-party democracy in Germany, then there would be a progressive party which could attract a huge swath of votes. Instead they are stuck with only a center-right and a far-right party.
Every election the center-right says the progressives must vote for them to keep the far-right out of government, so there is never a chance for the true left to get representation!
If they had multiple parties the will of the people would be heard and a utopian society would soon emerge.
In fact, there is no American-style majority voting system in Germany - as long as the elected party receives more than 5% of the vote in the federal election, it is represented in our parliament! …Nonetheless, Germany is struggling with exactly the same problem of right-wing / neo-fascist populism as basically every nation in the Western world at the moment…
For more reading on Germany’s political power / party dynamics, please have a look here!
Yes, I know this. My comment was a sarcastic broadside at all the people who think progressive causes are widely popular and only suppressed by neoliberals working in cahoots with fascists.
The Dutch system does have fractional representation and multi-party coalition governments, and still the far-right is on the rise.
This is a complex situation, not simply fixed with a magic bullet of voting reform.
Third parties in the US will never be a reality without election reform. That in turn will have to be preceded by high voter turnout to push state legislatures more progressive.
AIPAC is dumping a boatload of foreign money on American elections aimed almost exclusively at eliminating progressives from both state and federal offices. Where is Hillary’s gang and their hand wringing about foreign interference?
Ideologies with easy answers thrive in times of fear and uncertainty. We’ve seen it before, we’ve seen where it leads.
“More than half of young people feel severely mentally stressed. A quarter of young people feel very lonely,” Prof Dr Joachim Bauer, a psychotherapist and brain researcher, told Euronews, adding that he observed this every day in his practice, especially with young people who are depressed and lonely due to their intense use of social media and video games.
Dr Bauer pointed out that the AfD tries to give the impression that if societies reduce immigration or flaunt their national pride again, all problems would be solved.
Seems to be the situation here. Neoliberal hyped capitalism is a gateway drug to fascism because at some point the stress needs an outlet and minorities and “golden age myth” style trad values are just sugar for “solving” political problems.
One dynamic I’m curious about here is the whole thing about new migrants not learning German well enough.
On one hand I wonder if this is just Germans (and perhaps many other European nations) not knowing what immigration looks like, compared to other nations like the US, India and maybe England and other English colonies.
On the other hand, I wonder if there’s some tension between what makes sense for migrants and what makes sense for Europeans who natively speak a language that is ultimately globally niche, such as German. Why would a migrant care about being fluent in German when they probably feel like they have to know English and/or French (or some other more global language) to be employable in the long run?
Concerning the language issue, it does not matter that a language is “globally niche”.
If people want to migrate to a specific country long term, the spoken language has to be learned to become a member of society and prevent the forming of parallel societies.
If people want to migrate to a specific country long term, the spoken language has to be learned to become a member of society and prevent the forming of parallel societies.
Two points:
- There’s learning a language to a basic level to be functional in every day activity and then there’s learning it well/fluently. Reality is that first generation migrants rarely learn the native language well and it isn’t until the second/third generations that the native language becomes a first language amongst the migrants’ families.
- Given the above, your hard statement about “parallel societies” being inevitable without sufficient language education is false over a long enough time period (~25yrs), as children of migrants will inevitably learn their country’s language and culture … because that’s how children and language and culture work.
All up, presuming that you’re German, it feels like you and your culture might not know how immigration works. Which I say not just to be argumentative but because the one thing that is likely to prevent the above is an entrenched anti-immigration culture that forces the migrants to feel alienated and form more insular cultures rather than integrate with an accepting culture.
Reality is that migration seems to have worked plenty well in many other places. Europe may just be bad at this. And while there may be something to the issue of “protecting the culture” … I’m just not convinced the finer details of any culture are worth protecting at the expense of being shit to others and conservative about how things have to be.
Whilst I agree with some of your points, the notion that Europe “may be bad at migration” and being “shit” to others whilst protecting their culture comes of as uninformed at best and holier than thou preachy at worst.
No one is under the illusion that a migrant has to speak perfectly. But they should be competent enough to function in order to integrate into the society.
I have plenty of experience in my social circle where this is not the case. Those people rely on friends and family when it comes to simple tasks such as doctor appointments.
the notion that Europe “may be bad at migration” and being “shit” to others whilst protecting their culture comes of as uninformed at best and holier than thou preachy at worst.
So Europeans and/or Germans can’t be bad at something?
But they should be competent enough to function in order to integrate into the society.
For refugees, this seems like a hard ask.
… Those people rely on friends and family when it comes to simple tasks as doctor appointments.
Maybe then it’s fine? This sort of thing is perfectly common for first generation migrants. And in the age of decent AI translation, I’m really not sure stringency on this makes too much sense anymore.
Now you are just misinterpreting my points and starting to sound silly.
Refugees and migrants are two different groups. Migrants are long term residents. Refugees are not.
The fact that it is common does not mean it is a good practice.
IF there was decent AI translation, the whole issue would not be existant, would it?
I am quite happy to be able to discuss with you in a foreign language, without the help of AI. It means I am independent, which is a kind of freedom that, to me, belongs to feeling human.
Ich lebe in Amerika. Ich lerne Deutsche sprechen, aber das kostet Geld. Vielleicht wollen die Migranten Deutsche lernen, haben aber nicht das Geld dafür?
Sorry if the above is poorly worded; I’m still new to the language. My point is that there are lots of reasons that someone might not know a language well, including a lack of money, or a lack of time from needing to work full time to support one’s migrant family on a low wage.
Mexican immigrants to the US are wonderful, but their culture is very different from non-Hispanic US culture. I don’t expect them to learn English. They work like 60 hours per week to support their families. Like the person you’re replying to has said, though, their children learn English and integrate into, but also uniquely contribute to, US culture. Rather than expecting the first-generation immigrants to learn English, I’ve learned Spanish specifically to speak with them. It’s not like there are many more immigrants to Germany than there are immigrants to the US–even discounting the fact that the US has always been a country of immigrants, Hispanic and Latino/a/e Americans (the majority of which are Mexican Americans) are expected to exceed 50% of all Americans within a couple of decades. In some states, they are already the majority.
Diversity is a good thing, and we shouldn’t require immigrants to become like us culturally or linguistically before accepting them.
Does not matter what they think about the german language. Daily life is much harder without it and if you move to a new country, you simply must learn their language.
idk, probably the same people who were easily influenced to become Nazis
Yeah this surely has nothing to do with it.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In fact, Khan-Holoch believes former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy of opening the borders in 2015 to allow refugees from Syria to enter amid a backdrop of war is what entices the young voters.
Much of the speeches made by Khan-Holoch and Sell debate the historical shame of being German, relating back to the dark Nazi chapter in World War II.
The party’s insistence on family values often translates to fervent backing of traditional gender roles and opposition to what they call “sexualism”, which their critics say is discriminatory towards the LGBTQ+ community and impedes basic human rights.
“What I hear from young people repeatedly when I am at schools is this whole LGBTQ+ community, that you are no longer allowed to criticise things without being immediately labelled as a right-wing extremist.”
Dr Bauer pointed out that the AfD tries to give the impression that if societies reduce immigration or flaunt their national pride again, all problems would be solved.
Yet, an increasingly online world promoting extreme language and replete with hate speech and violence still has to be addressed, as it remains one of the main reasons for the rise in support from younger people for populist parties such as the AfD.
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