Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote in the European elections, with particular support in the east
Paul Friedrich, 16, could not wait to cast his first ballot and had no doubt which German party had earned his support in the watershed European elections.
“Correct, I voted AfD,” he said proudly in the bustle of the commuter railway station in Brandenburg an der Havel, an hour from central Berlin.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland made particularly stunning gains on Sunday among young voters. For the first time in a national poll, 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their ballots – a reform that had been strongly backed by left-leaning parties.
After overwhelmingly supporting the Greens five years ago, Germans under 25 gave the AfD 16% of their vote – an 11-point rise – helping place the party second behind the opposition CDU-CSU conservatives and well ahead of the Social Democrats of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
The AfD tapped deep wells of support in the former communist east, winning in every state including Brandenburg, where it claimed 27.5% of the vote.
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And his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.
And his concerns echo those of many teenagers and twentysomethings in town: fears of war spreading in Europe, inflation, economic decline, “unchecked” immigration and, above all, violent crime, which they say is rampant when they use public transport or hang out in public spaces at night.
The AfD will not solve a single one of these problems. Idiots.
If anything, AfD is going to accelerate all those problems.
Neither do the current governments, hence the rise of far right everywhere (not just Germany).
Left-wing policies would help solve many of these issues, but politicians would rather win the next election, than take a risk and stand for true change - especially if it goes against our billionaire/corporate overlords.
Crime is a result of desperation and lack of economic opportunities.
Chronic addictions are a result of untreated/untreatable trauma.
Homelessness arises from poverty and precarious economic conditions, and can trigger both of the prior two.
And yet, these people are voting for the parties that would seek to implement and perpetuate poverty, precariousness, trauma and economic inequality.
…the fuq?
What’s really important is this: Crime is not on the rise in Germany. The fear is entirely manufactured. The fear is real and explains the results but the fear itself is manufactured.
This is common strategy to the right – they try to convince everyone that there’s violent criminals everywhere that no one’s taking care of.
The only rampant crime in Brandenburg is the food
So, are you suggesting people just keep voting the way they do, and nothing changes? I mean, we’re dealing with the same shit in California. The Left literally does not want to do shit about the homeless crisis. The Right wants forced intervention… and of course, we can’t have that, so we’re going in circles. Nothing is getting done with Democrats in power, they literally believe the homeless issue is okay.
The Right wants forced intervention
Forced intervention has a near-100% failure rate. All it does is waste taxpayer’s money while making the wealthy (the owners of these “rehabilitation sites”) even wealthier.
It is quite literally another implementation of “trickle-up economics”, explicitly designed to make the rich richer by punishing the poor for their poverty and parasitizing off the incomes of hard-working working-class Americans.
And since forced intervention is no different than forced incarceration without any sort of a trial, I would argue that it is materially worse than doing nothing at all.
Hmm. What is the difference between forced intervention and whatever Portugal did when it decriminalized hard drugs?
What is the difference between forced intervention and whatever Portugal did when it decriminalized hard drugs?
Portugal treats it as a mental illness health issue, and provides counselling. Only large non-personal amounts are treated as distribution, and therefore, criminal.
Only mental heath professionals can assign intervention, and typically only in cases where the user is a viable threat to themselves or others (imminent danger of harm through violence). This means that the vast majority of users are not coerced at all - they enter into counselling willingly, and with an intent to come clean.
The reason why things have backslid in the last little while has been due to funding cuts, and nothing else. Which is the same as any public service – funding determines effectiveness.
I see. Thank you!
The AfD has openly stated that the worse for Germany, the better for them. This is standard fascism. Make things worse while blaming it on a minority as a scapegoat. Then implement something against that minority and the general population conveniently making your crownies richer, then blame this minority or another one for things getting even worse.
Fascists need the doublethink of being the superior while at a constant threat of annihilation by an inferior enemy.
They’re right and the centrists are doing absolutely nothing to make things better.
Liberals are the ones making the slide towards fascism possible and then use it as an excuse to force people to vote for them instead of leftists.
I agree that the California liberal establishment is not tackling the serious issues we have here, particularly with housing, but what kind of “forced intervention” are you hoping for from Republicans?
Force those that are homeless, who clearly have mental issues, to live in an adult care facility where they can :
A) Get treatment for drugs/alcohol
B) Get treatment for mental issues.
Have them go through a process to get better, if it doesn’t help, they don’t leave.
This is what needs to be done in order to get most of these people off the streets. But, it’s considered “cruel” and “unusual” by Democrats, so, nothing gets done. We’ll never break the homeless issue problem in California with Democrats/Liberals in leadership, that’s a fact.
Are you suggesting that republicans want to spend taxpayer money on mental treatment of homeless people? Are you really that fucking dense??
Senate Bill 43 was pass last year that allowed for increasing the criteria for involuntary detention including the reasons you mentioned. Instead of adult care facilities, they expnded and made conservatorship eaiser. Some counties have delayed its implementation because of cost issues.
Indefinite detention is unconstitutional, expensive, and doesn’t make sense for treatment. Most people just need occasional detention to get their meds right and not constant supervision.
I’m glad to hear you say that. Intend to see the Republican view be more generally carceral. I think your ideas are fine, and in fact there’s a lot of basically that happening around the state. Ever since the pandemic, California has been converting hotels (along with some new construction) to ‘transitional’ housing. Part of this program is working with counselors and DHHS to help people with some of their underlying needs. I think this is pretty good, but needs a lot more funding, especially for the supportive services.
Unfortunately, homelessness is a huge and growing issue both inside and outside of California. There are a lot of systemic issues that contribute to the cycle of addiction and childhood trauma which I believe are at the heart of most of it. Add in poor job prospects and high cost of living (especially housing), and we have a ton of work to do to reverse this trend.
Jesus Christ people, increasing funding for the police has never been proven to deter crime. It is the result of an economic failure. The parents have failed these kids.
Reactionary policies are always a bad attempt at solving the problem and it’s hard for many folks to see that, much less deeply understand it enough to guide their decisions. People see something they don’t and they want it gone, not to study it to banish it.
It’s part of the appeal for right wing parties. Authoritarians use force to squash the problem and it feels good to see toxic equivalency meted out to those who hurt us. The goal isn’t to stop crime from happening, it’s to cause crime to know what it is up against and that will stop most petty crime. But organized crime will rise up and become a second government to those who wanted strength over study, brawn over brains.
Let them live in their cage. They made it, let them enjoy the fruits of their labor.
I feel like I shall kill myself before world goes a mess with war…
Please don’t, you mean something to someone.
Being concerned about “unchecked immigration” in Brandenburg an der Havel of all places. This town has lost more than a quarter of its population since 1990. It has no immigration problem but an emigration problem.
I’m honestly baffled by how immigration in Germany is supposed to be a problem. We have a horribly low birth rate. Our retirement security is basically gone because there won’t be enough working people. Retirement homes, hospitals, kindergartens, all these places suffer from a lack of personnel. These jobs are notoriously stressful, have horrible working conditions, and underpay extremely.
The free market has obviously failed to solve this problem. Even with unions and tariffs: An increase of 1€ per hour does a good living not make. Neither are bonuses a long term solution. And even if you made these jobs attractive af: we will still not have enough people choosing them anytime soon. And even if we did, it’s simply still not enough people in the workforce to secure pension for the elderly and generations to come.
And let’s be very real for a second here. Skilled immigration from third countries (i.e. not EU, not talking about third world here) isn’t an easy ride. These high paying job offers of privileged jobs like IT or science are not going away but they are also rather rare. It’s a niche thing compared to the waves of immigration of, well, low paying and often low skilled jobs.
And while I can “understand” if an asshole wants to cut the former, why would you want to cut the latter? Jesus, no one is stealing your job because I doubt you want to work cleaning toilets at McDonald’s. If you want to go wipe asses in retirement homes you’ll find a job stat no matter whether the Ukrainian, Romanian or Syrian girls apply too.
We are literally insanely exploitative of immigrants. We either have a brain drain from countries that immensely need them, or cause them to have a demographic crisis of their own by buffering our birth rates with their people, or we simply give them jobs that pay so little that they hardly survive. All that while doing shit for their integration into society. But they still pay taxes and buy products in the supermarket and ride the tram and everything. We get all the positives and they get all the negatives. Why would you even want to get rid of that if you’re a cunt?
This is the case in essentially every developed nation. Immigration is not just beneficial, but necessary for the wheels of capitalism to churn. Not sure what people think is going to happen when those who pick fruit for cash under the table or those who man the Taco Bell drive-thru at 2 am are deported, but I’m guessing their plan doesn’t involve applying for those jobs themselves.
And how much of that violent crime is committed by rightwingers and politically motivated?
Just let the babies have what they want, and they’ll stop committing violent, -motivated crimes! It’s obvious we should be voting for the far right! /s
Okay Germany, you had two strikes. Let’s keep it there.
As a german, pls keep harris on standby.
Removed by mod
This kid is going to feel so embarrassed looking back at this after a few years… He’s only 16.
Okay setting aside the politics, fear mongering, and whatnot. Is there any verifiable truth to this?
The fear mongering around crime is happening in the US too, which is verifiably untrue.
It’s true, to an extent, but not because migrants bad. You can look at this, but the short of it is that the stats you see in the news are like that mostly because they’re counting illegal immigration and illegal stay as crimes in their stats, which as you can probably guess is pretty flawed. You remove that and the numbers look… still bad but a lot more realistic. Then you realize that migrants are more likely to be poor young men (aka the demographic most likely to commit crime). As the article explains, Syrians for example are actually underrepresented in crime stats, because they tend to be complete family units (most Syrians in Germany were allowed to bring their families over) so the demographics are more representative of a normal society.
Thank you that was an interesting read. I have always been amused by the ridiculousness of branding immigrants as criminals for immigranting illegally there for making them ineligible for immigration because they are criminals.
It sort of seem like the secret take away is that the much of the perceived crime is being created because of immigration, but not by immigrants. These attacks on immigrants would be unreported. So not in the statics but still perceived by the public. Very catch 22.
Also it is “amazing” how when men feel they are need and useful to there society, family unit, etc. They tend to be much better, productive members of society. But when you tell them that they are useless and unneeded. They quickly become the useless people they are told they are. (I am sure this is woman thing too, I feel it worse for men idk)
Germany doesn’t report crime as clearly as the Danish do but the countries share a lot of similarities.
https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigration-in-denmark
What? Where do you live? I live in near a big city in California, crime is out of control There’s no consequences for many street level crimes now, especially retail theft. I have personally seen people run into stores, grab stuff and run…while employees are just hiding, scared. They call the cops, who won’t come because they’re backed up with more “severe” crime in the city… so, it continues, and continues. Who’s to blame? The cops, who are already stretched thin? The homeless, because hey, they need to eat too! I mean, it’s nuts…I feel like I live in a third world country sometimes…
First never said I lived in America.
Second - The crime rate at its lowest level since 1961.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/people-think-crime-rate-up-actually-down-rcna129585
I’m glad that crime is down, overall, but it effects people differently depending where they live. I live in California, and drive for a living…traveling to Northern and Southern California often… while some violent crime is down, things like car break-ins, retail theft, petty burglary, and hate crimes have not really changed. Again, people will only react to what they have personally experienced. I was in San Francisco last week… it’s still a shit show. Homeless using drugs, crazy people walking around threatening everyone, theft… nothing has changed.
Despite a slight trend upward. The crime rate is at historic lows in California. Crime being out of control is exactly what the fear mongers want you to think. They say it, you see a few news reports on it. Then you are more prone to believe it when you seem crime in your area. Yes there is a trend up in crime San Francisco, but are you seeing new crime or the same crime in new areas. It seems very likely that much of this crime already existed in the area. Unfortunately do to rising housing costs, and gentrification. People have been pushed out and are spilling on to the streets.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
Weak bait.
A4Chan
What is the gender divide on those votes?
That apparently differs a lot for age groups. Seems like in younger cohorts it’s more evenly distributed, but overall it’s the males that are overrepresented
