- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23060161
Summary
A survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that most young Germans (ages 16-30) feel disillusioned with politics, citing distrust, lack of influence, and insufficient avenues for engagement beyond voting.
Only 8% believe politicians take their concerns seriously, and fewer than 1 in 5 feel they can enact change.
Despite this, 61% still see democracy as the best system.
The findings come as Germany faces potential elections after its coalition collapse, with experts urging politicians to better involve youth on key issues like peace, education, and inflation.
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I don’t think the situation is likely to be much different for adults, as German mainstream politics unfortunately hardly represents the interests of the population anymore, but increasingly only those of the economic elite.
CDU politician Friedrich Merz, the candidate for chancellor of the largest popular party and, unfortunately, presumably the next German chancellor, is just one example of many: The man was head of the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany until 2020 and has always been a keen business lobbyist throughout his whole career (source).
Both the top candidates and the minor functionaries of many other parties have similar “affiliations” that can hardly be described as anything else than open corruption. The fact that the press continuously uses the trivializing PR term lobbyism in this context should not fool anyone anymore.
However, as there are hardly any credible alternatives, people still have to vote for these established parties - or worse still: they vote for the opportunistic demagogues of the AfD, who pursue the same neoliberal economic policy but hide this fact behind xenophobic and of course absolutely fictitious bogus, just like the MAGA people in the USA.
So I guess it’s not too surprising that many Germans have lost faith in politics - I’m pretty sure that this is true for most age groups.
Elections have devolved into a popularity contest about who gets to scam you for the next couple years.
Just from my personal experience, all of German politics is corrupt from bottom to top and back.
Municipal politics in my small rural community consists of a bunch of people performing the nifty magic trick of transforming a barren field they happen to own into lucrative building plots through the magic of zoning legislation. Some of them even openly admit to only running for council in order to do that.
The connections with businesses run so deep that some of the people running for office are the same business owners profiting from it. It’s only nepotism if there is a middle man, I guess.
On topics that aren’t profiting them personally, those people will resort to a level of petty bickering along party lines that would make Kindergarten age children sink into the ground in embarrassment. Any idealists who try actually serving the population rather than their own (or their party leadership’s) self interest will be put in their place and/or or bullied out by the established (party) hierarchies.
New political groups pretty much only arise from bizarre, yet well funded NIMBY organisations, of course funded by local business owners to further their (business) interests.
Yes, the “Klüngel” has a very long tradition in Germany - from carnival clubs in Cologne and Düsseldorf, to beer tent friendships or fraternities in Munich and elsewhere, to the Rotary and Lions Clubs in pretty much every German city. But I still agree that things have gotten much worse in recent years.
It’s a crying shame, especially as many voters either still let themselfs be fooled by the pretended bickering of the parties or can’t do much on their own to actually change anything. They don’t see, don’t want to see or just watch helplessly as the majority of at least the top politicians pursue the same goals despite their apparent differences: Unscrupulous self-enrichment and favoritism at the expense of the citizens and even future generations.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, because german politics do VERY much for people of the age 60 and above, but VERY little for people under the age 40.
This seems to be the issue across Europe, or at least in a great part of Europe. The huge break in fertility didn’t happen in a vacuum. Articles keep saying it’s porn or women’s rights, but I’m pretty sure that’s not it. Women can work and we all can crank and still have families.
It happened because governments stopped caring about the youth and lining their pockets and the old constituents’ pockets, as they got used to the baby boom and thought they could take advantage of the youth forever. The entire social security system is predicated on leeching from the current youth rather than saving up for the future.
Being young in Europe sucks. I’m with the Germans on this. I feel so unsupported and paying for everyone, even if i could afford kids, i wouldn’t have them anyway. A sharp break in fertility is the only form of protest that governments will listen to in order to stop ignoring, lying to or just outright taking from the youth. Not only that, even those poor sods that still have kids, for some reason, face an absolute disgrace of a childcare and school system. Underpaid teachers and a general lack of facilities makes you wonder where does the youth money go.
Immigration is all fine and dandy, but everyone knows Immigration will not fix the issues caused by neglecting the youth. The issue is systemic. Once immigrants are integrated, their kids will also not have kids. One way or the other, the system is coming down.
even if i could afford kids, i wouldn’t have them anyway.
This and also the fact that the world doesn’t feel very “liveable” (is that even a real word?) anymore. Climate change, wars, social inequality. I wouldn’t want to throw a kid of mine in such a meat grinder.
insufficient avenues for engagement beyond voting.
Funny what banning protests does to a country.
What exactly are you referring too?
Ah OK. But This is in no way The cause of young Germans not believing, that they are being herd. That’s caused because politicians don’t care about the younger generation at all. No one gives a fuck, since we aren’t the group that wins elections.
I think there’s many factors at play. If I had to cast my vote in Germany I would certainly struggle to find a party I felt represented me, and one gets the unmistakable feeling that German politicians are a bunch of old farts who are pulling in the same direction. So I completely see your point, and I agree with it. I think there has been a failure on multiple fronts.
The only positive thing I see is that now that the Wagenknecht psychos have finally split from die Linke, maybe it can slowly begin to establish itself as a party that is not half overrun by Russlandverstehere and ostalgic authoritarians. A real alternative to the SPD is sorely needed.
Less than 1% of rallies have been banned. This rumor/perception does not seem to be true.
Good to know you will only occasionally be arrested for wearing a scarf.
You made a statement that isn’t justified by data and now you move goalposts? Seems like you don’t want facts to get into the way of your opinions. Fine by me.
I believe the right to peaceful protest is fundamental for a healthy democracy. If your right to express yourself is stripped away from you if you disagree with the ruling elites, it never existed in the first place.
That’s a goalpost I’m not willing to move.
As I pointed out, there simply has not been the kind of right stripping you are talking about. Individual rallies have been banned, yes. As have in other contexts. As is rightfully possible. And this does not have anything to do with it being against “ruling elites” or something like that. Your statement re “banning protests” isn’t backed up by hard data. So what’s it going to be? Will you trust the data or a conspiracy stemming from your gut feeling?
There was a general ban in Berlin for like a month that had to be overturned by a court.
Since then practically all demonstrations with relation to Palestine have faced police violence, often randomly attacking and arresting people, beating up people in custody, denying medical care to people they have strangled or beaten unconcious. Organizers are targeted on trumped up charges to have their homes raided multiple times and the police regularly shows up at their door threatening them, that they are watching them closely.
Meanwhile Jewish people and organizations who are critical of Israels conduct are deplatformed, defamed and called antisemitic by government officials supposedly “combating antisemitism”.
There was a general ban in Berlin for like a month that had to be overturned by a court.
Do you have a source for me on this? I didn’t find anything about a general(!) ban in the last 15 months. Individual rallies have been forbidden, not least due to the blatant antisemitism displayed e.g. in Neukölln shortly after the attack by Hamas, or, as approved by court, due to security concerns on special days such as the so called “nakba day”. As stated above, overall, less than 1% of rallies have been banned. I’d be surprised if only 1% of the rallies in that time frame were connected Palestinians.
Since then practically all demonstrations with relation to Palestine have faced police violence, often randomly attacking and arresting people, beating up people in custody, denying medical care to people they have strangled or beaten unconcious. Organizers are targeted on trumped up charges to have their homes raided multiple times and the police regularly shows up at their door threatening them, that they are watching them closely.
Which is a different point than made initially here (banning protests). We already spoke about the aftermath of some of these protests, remember? So I’ll repeat here: there is more to this than the black and white image you try to paint here.
Oh, please, my friend. Articles from 2023? There has been so much discussion, so much debate, lawsuits and political action on the topic of the Pro-Palestina/Pro-Hamas demonstrations in 2024, which you seem to have missed. So maybe try to do some reading before jumping into a thread, which is totally not about Gaza to push some strange agenda?
“some strange agenda”, lol.
