German teenagers and young adults find themselves increasingly unsatisfied and likely to vote for the far right, according to a survey. Fears about prosperity are highlighted as a possible cause.
Young people are more likely to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) than previously, a study on Tuesday showed.
Authors of the “Youth in Germany 2024” study said that under-30s were increasingly disgruntled with their social and economic situation, and that fears about future prosperity were driving a shift to the right.
The AfD’s signature issue is a hard-line anti-immigration stance, and the data showed that migration was among young people’s main concerns.
…
The online study, conducted in January and February, found that young people were becoming increasingly dissatisfied, especially with their social and economic situation, compared with previous years.
After the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors said economic and political worries for example due to inflation, high rents, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East or the division of society had taken center stage.
Young people were especially worried about:
- inflation (65%),
- expensive housing (54%),
- poverty in old age (48%),
- the division of society (49%)
Aaah yes, that classical list of things that a fiscally right party would solve … </sarcasm>
Absolutely agree, but the reason why they turn to AFD is because they literally have no trust in any of the classical parties. I think it is more of a longing for an underdog or almost a poker move - just bet everything on that (unfortunately rather racist) card because maybe they’d change something. It’s already going down the drain if we continue the way we have continued for the past decades, so let’s try something very new. Maybe we will have luck in this Russian roulette.
Now, this is stupid af. I would never in my mind consider AFD as an actual option. But for a lot of people it feels like this is the only Fuck You they can give the current government (I am including the CDU/CSU in this definition of “government” too).
Basically all other parties are moderate-middle at this point. They have some small differences but none of them actually fight for the working class, for underprivileged people, and basically all young people know they are or will be underprivileged. Yes we have a left party called Die Linke, but they have been notoriously busy with themselves and a split because a big chunk of the party was circling around Sahra Wagenknecht who was very controversial and shared some far right ideals. Maybe they will get a grip of themselves and become “vote-able” again in the future. But honestly, I’m not sure they are really left either.
When you basically vote for capitalism, either way, just in different shades, it feels like your vote does not matter. Desparte people turn to desperate and stupid measures.
For real, we don’t have an actual, valid socialist party. I honestly wonder why. Most young people are so fed up with how things go. Yes we don’t want to work anymore. Why should we? To get fired at random when a company goal isn’t met? After we studied engineering for 8 years to get minimum wage +1€? To be part of a company that produces the 35th version of a shit emoji cushion, well knowing that we create a bullshit product that just unnecessarily wastes resources? So we can partake in killing the planet? So that we, after we have been fired for no reason, have to fight to collect unemployment for a short period of time, before we are being forced into a bullshit job under threats? So that we work full time until we are 70+ to hardly collect any retirement? When we have kids, we are supposed to not see them but give them to childcare asap to reenter the workforce. For all that bullshit. So I honestly wonder why there isn’t a real socialist alternative to the classical parties. I have a very big feeling that a lot of young people would gladly jump over.
Engineer in Germany earning minimum wage?
I think that “division of society” may be a euphemism for non-ethnically-homogenous society and friction resulting from that. I’ve seen similar uses before.
I am seeing a division of society, and it’s due to the likes of AFD + members of CSU & CDU pushing populist bullshit. People that fell for that likely also see a division of society, but they’re blaming “wokeism” for it.
I don’t think it refers to ethnic homogeny.
You did leave off the last one, flows of immigration. Still, that’s only 1 out of 5.
I don’t see the flow as a problem. But if you do see the flow as a problem I can see reasons a right leaning government would be the way you’d vote.
I also see why “cheap brown Labour” is a reason to allow immigration. So that one swings both ways enough I didn’t include it.
But if you do see the flow as a problem I can see reasons a right leaning government would be the way you’d vote.
I’ve actually seen a study that suggested, at least at that time, attitude to immigration was the sole predictor of AfD support. The stuff that factors in on this side of the Atlantic like being old, poor, rural and/or uneducated had no real correlation. It kind of makes me think it’s a fundamentally different phenomenon going on over there.
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Are German history classes shit? Do they not know what happened the last time a right winger got into power after inflation?
The history classes are alright.
The education system is abysmal.
It’s different this time, they don’t use swastikas. /s
I really don’t think these are their actual reasons. I wish they were, but I’m in that backed of people and let me tell you, plain racism is the main reason. The other reasons are just straw man arguments for now as it still is kinda shunned to be openly racist here, for now at least…
Same thing in Canada… How did Trudeau manage to affect Germany so much???
A common sense Conservative government will restore common sense policies to Germany, New Zealand and every other place in the world. And also will bring Tupac back.
- Pierre Poilievre, on being in charge of Canada.
Everyone knows Tupac is fighting fascists in the jungles of South America, fake news.
Yes… I love how people say PP will fix housing when he himself is a landlord and rents 2 houses… When asked about it (mildy because the press wouldn’t dare ask a direct question) he actually said he was “helping Canadians by providing house at affordable rent”
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It’s not like the left cares, either.
They care More. Don’t both-sides on social programmes.
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Actually the pessimism turned me left. How can one be pessimistic about the future and turn to those who will make it even worse? Stupidity or self harming behaviour?
Guess they buy into the simplistic views shouted by the far right.
People are not good at critically evaluating options and don’t have the time or attention to do so. Not a knock on young people, pretty much everyone in 2024 has divided attention 24/7.
So we turn to heuristics, ways to short-circuit decision making. Like looking at what arguments experts make, how often we hear arguments, who is the most confident, etc. Those are easily exploited by right-wing populists.
My observation:
They position themselves similar to classic revolutionaries - they claim to be the counterpoint to the “establishment” or to the “out-of-touch elites.”
That’s pretty tempting for people who don’t like the direction the world is heading in. Most don’t see or don’t want to see that the AfD is chock full of the exact people who rule them from the top down, police their opinions and take away their personal liberties.
What’s tragic is that, historically, a left wing group would normally find itself in the position the AfD is holding now. Yet here we are, after 50 years of slowly shifting rightwards until the social contract began breaking, with a party that offers a harsh jump further right as the revolutionary cure.
They’re either very selfishly shortsighted or dangerously sarcastic.
They are not very smart
If you go with the worst POV on far-right, it’s the same promises that lead men to war: after the war you’ll have money and will be able to marry
In a world where money is hard to come by, and society and culture are deconstructed (and nothing is built to replace it), there is no much else they hold dear. So “war” is all that’s left
It’s been this way forever
Another contender would be accelerationism. I’ve seen a lot of that online.
This is a growing problem across the world. Blaming the youth for being led to the far right is not going to help. Fear is an easy thing to exploit. Blame the people and systems that brought us and those young people to where things stand. Blame the far right for exploiting vulnerable people with false promises of returning back to some 100 year old fantasy of nationalistic power and prosperity. Blame capitalism, neoliberalism and death cult conservatism, brought upon by their elders.
Yeah, vote for the people who will make everything worse, that’ll really cure that pessimision.
Well how could that ever go wrong
Can someone explain how voting for fascists would make it in any way shape or form better? Cause I don’t see it.
The fascist play social media like a fiddle.
Vienna is right next door where %60 of people live in public housing, and it apparently works well because in Vienna, public housing isn’t kist for the poor.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-04/vienna-s-social-housing-and-low-rent-strategy/102639674
Vienna is certainly a great example for public housing done right, but I don’t see how it’s relevant to the post. As far as I’m aware, Austria’s problem with right wing populism is even worse than in Germany.
The public housing here was done right, but was not continued for a long time and does not exist in its glory anymore, unfortunately. Now a part of new developments needs to be cheap, which is good I guess…
In the wise words of Ordinary Things:
people turn to angry politics and alternative narratives when rotting institutions refuse to show them a future worth believing in. Yes, there are crazy, evil people in this world, but they only get a foothold when the sensible ones stop giving a shit.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down
Ordinary Things
May I see this study?
“Seymour! The Reichstag is on fire!”
With a bit of digging, I turned up this: https://simon-schnetzer.com/trendstudie-jugend-in-deutschland-2024/
Kinda unprofessional for them not to link it in the actual article.
Am I misunderstanding something or is this Simon Schnetzer like a German version of those motivational speakers trying to get you to buy their book on YouTube? I can’t find anything about the guy’s affiliations or qualifications but tons of stuff about where and when he is speaking and his chosen monikers like “futurist.”
Yep, a self appointed “youth expert” which you can book a keynote for and supposedly learn how to engage gen Y, Z and alpha in your workforce.
So kinda like a discount Aldi version of Simon Sinek.
I don’t know, could be. I don’t speak German so I kind of just gave up once I found the link.
What about Die Linke? You’d expect they would reap gains if the conventional parties are losing ground, but they’re not mentioned.
Die linke Split into two Parties where one is useless and the other … Well… we’ll see. Problem is that the far right is just Very good at making TikTok content atm.
Oh, I didn’t know. Not surprising, I guess. That’s what the hard left seems to do.
I know I am throwing stones in glass houses because I am saying this as a person from the US, but wow Germany is a really scary country, it seems like the culture is always extremely primed to radicalize its young men into serious violence around an obsession with masculine and machine strength/purity.
The US is a scarier country in most respects, and certainly has the same issue, but Germany is a much older culture and these brainworms seem to have ingrained deeper into their cultural mindset in some ways.
Are leftist movements growing to a similar degree among young people in Germany?
There is currently a massive movement against the far-right in Germany
Revently a meeting was leaked, where the AfD went just mask-out-the-window and openly talked about deportation (They call it “Remigration”) of German Citicens who are the children of immigrants.
After that the vague threats to society have become tangible for a lot of people. Now an ever increasing ammount of the general public is turning against the AfD, who is further slipping into fascism as a reaction, prompting usuql fascist infighting and splitting.
Unlike in the US our judicial system is not quite as bad, but, with all things German, burocratic processes are quite slow. Also a lot of parties dont want to cooperate with the AfD in any regard, even the center-right (CDU) is having issues.
From the outside it looks bleaker then it is in reality, but the danger is still very real
I compared these numbers to the general population (Source: https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ )
Support for the far right AfD is about 5 percentage points lower than among the general population (12% vs 17%)
For the conservative CDU/CSU it is 10 pp lower (20% vs 30%)
For the Social Democrats it is 3 pp lower (12% vs 15%)
For the liberal FDP it is 4 pp higher (8% vs 4%)
For the Greens it is about 4 pp higher (18% vs 14%)
For the Wagenknecht alliance, a weird mix of far right and far left, it is about the same (5%)
Unfortunately this article doesn’t mention the socialist left, which for the general population sits at around 3%
So, to conclude (and from my own experience) youths in Germany don’t deviate that much from the general population in terms of their political views. They tend to be less conservative and xenophobic. Most of them are somewhere in the center, having slightly more liberal tendencies than the general population.
Far right parties in Europe:
Polls for AFD in Germany are currently about twice that.
That’s irrelevant, the idea that modern day Germany is uniquely fertile ground for far right parties is easily disproven
That may very well be, but I don’t see how your link is relevant either.
It proves exactly what I just wrote?
I must have higher standards for what constitutes proof than you have.
It’s not that I disagree with your point or agree with the post you were replying to. I just don’t see how your image supports or refutes any of it.
You don’t see how other countries having similar or more popular far right parties is proof that Germany is not uniquely far right?
That’s literally every far right person. They sure as fuck are never optimistic besides maybe selfishly. I imagine this has been true forever.
This is kind of what happened in Argentina, and parties response to it just made everything worse.
Dude had a cool chainsaw. That was all the argentinian normal population needed. :)
*idiotic young germans…
But in the same time, the far right clowns are at a five year low. Cause the correctiv scandal and even more, the Russian and China corruption connection it will lower in time. And the protests where really good.
