Yeah, sure, though the shifts from the last European election really aren’t that massive. Greens overperformed last time, AfD underperformed last time. Small parties gained a lot. And the current coalition is hugely unpopular.
I’m just getting kind of sick how much attention this AfD minority is getting. Everybody losing their minds, Conservatives shifting more to the right to get their votes, which of course doesn’t work anyway. Same with Wagenknecht. Oh wow, a new party getting that many votes - quelle surprise, she got to shit loads of airtime in every fucking political talk show nonstop.
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She’s a dick
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Not necessarily the worst decision. If the right wins this election, he will be hoping they fail this audition to please the French voters for the Presidential election in 2027.
Also while not as huge as the right, didn’t the centre left made big strides too?
Same in France. About 25% 18-30 voted far right. Didn’t they watch the D-Day Commemorations last week ?
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Agreed although the worry here is the trend and not the absolute numbers which remain reasonably low.
Despite the recent scandals and its overall toxicity, AfD has actually improved its position, similarly to other far-right parties thoughtout Europe. And as you say the fact that many of their voters are young makes it all the more troubling.
I feel as though this article linked by @Bekloppt was very illuminating as to why that might be the case.
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The irony is that the young are voting for the far right to sort out housing and healthcare systems, but how well have the right taken care of these 2 issues in the UK for the last 14 years?
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Probably not. Did you watch that kind of thing in your twenties?
I thought this graph from Karl Lauterbach is telling. Essentially, pointing out that support for the far right is coming from the economically disadvantaged:
https://twitter.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/1799934231704936605
This is always the message from the far-right. “Your problems are because immigrants (or whoever the ‘other’ is) are taking your resources”.
It’s similar to the whole Brexit thing. Maybe it is finally dawning on people that their problems lie elsewhere?
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The youth vote in Germany was disappointing overall, but it’s still only 17% who voted AfD, so it’s not like the majority has gone full Hitlerjugend. More left/green vote got split by a gazillion smaller parties - but that creates results and narratives that play right into the hands of the AfD.
Looking at some of the numbers in East Germany though - again, not surprising but fucking hell…AfD at 50% or close to that in many regions.
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Absolutely true, this. Whenever the number of people who experience hardship in their daily lives grows, because of economical problems, the far right will grow (because they’ll identify and target easy scapegoats for everyone to hate). It was the same in Italy in 1922, in Germany in 1933, and nowadays in the US as well. The growing crowd of MAGA fools around Trump are a by-product of the 2008 crisis. In the EU, growing economical problems are taking their toll, and it’s the poorest in society paying the biggest price. So, no suprise there.
You don’t want a rise of the far right? Do more for the people with lesser revenues, or for regions hit by unemployment and general economic problems (ie. some regions of the former Eastern Germany). Ignore them though, and allow their numbers to grow, and everything will be possible, including a full-on dictatorship.
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The last part about East Germany - not that simple. I seriously wonder if there’s a single region on earth that has seen more goverment money being spent on per capita in the last 30+ yrs than East Germany.
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I’m not sure they were even televised then , and if so certainly not live wall to wall coverage. At that time too WWII was still a fairly fresh memory and we didn’t need too much reminding of the horrors of Nazism. I wonder if those kids who voted yesterday for the far right even know of that party’s roots in collaboration with the Nazis in France.
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And indeed, the unemployment was steadily sinking since 2005 until 2019, and the start of the Covid shite. But since then, it has risen, both in Eastern and Western Germany.
May that be a reason, or what other reasons can you see for the rise of the far right?
As well as the steps you mention, it also helps if the government don’t legitimise the far right’s propaganda and the media don’t amplify it.
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Which in itself is a problem. Easier for the right to unite themselves behind one party, or at least a smaller group of parties, because in reality they have no ideology. Its just hate.
Meanwhile the left/green parties split down a million different lines because they’re all so wedded to their exact ideology they fail to rally around unifying middle ground!
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Especially if even ‘establishment media’ seem to be mostly unable to look beyond the biggest dicks in a graph and do some simple addition. I’ve already heard yesterday that ‘the (German) youth is Conservative/right wing’ - it might be more so then they in their bubbles assumed, but it’s really not in the majority.
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Hiding in plain sight
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There a significant chunk of the youth of today who have come to think that fascistic arguments are pretty compelling. They are immune from being shamed by accusations of being like Nazis because the label means nothing to them and they don’t think there is anything shameful in advocating for these faschy politics.
I’d write a whole thesis about how they learned all this shit by growing up on the internet, but it would be mostly incoherent and I’d come across as a pathetic old man complaining about kids and technology, but I think that is essentially what’s happened…coming into contact with the culture of “offensive” speech as bantz, experimenting with it and it accidentally becoming their personality.
With all of that said, I will also accept the caveats @Cologne-Liverpool is making that their size may be overblown in some election coverage. I think lots of people are so in a bubble to think that “fascism cannot happen hear/now” that they ignore the obvious until they see evidence of it in election results, and then possibly over interpret those results simply as a reflection of being surprised to see anything like that.
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There are a couple of factors as well. Firstly, this idea that somehow extremists are different this time. “It’s not as if we are putting people in gas chambers”. OK, that is frankly a low bar but it took 9 years from the Nazis seizing power to Wannsee.
The other thing is the idea put around that “all politicians are the same”. It’s a pervasive meme that is constantly put out by people who should really know better, but it is the gateway drug to those who don’t want to play by the rules.
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