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 ...
Young people were especially worried about:
Aaah yes, that classical list of things that a fiscally right party would solve ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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
I'm super left, almost anarchistic, radically left, after decades of seeing things get worse. But at times you go so far left that you disagree with other liberals, and their first response is "you're a Maga conservative" just cause I didn't agree with their elitist, college liberalism ideas that are all talk and ineffective.
The way so many young liberals are becoming way more rude, aggressive. Elitist, and so hard headed that they won't budge even an inch right or left on an issue is a huge turn off to most people. If someone to their right even so much as disagrees in a polite way, they get called names and insulted, instead of educated. No wonder so many young people just jump to the far right when they see how so many young liberals behave.
I'm for sure gonna get dowvoted and called a conservative for calling out these young of privileged, college liberals who look down on everyone
Nah man, I agree. Many liberals (especially young) have this mindset of punishing people for "wrongthinking" instead of educating and getting them on their side, that shit only further radicalizes moderate people into the polar opposite of what you want. I've had this discussion with people before and it seems a lot of people either have a hard time telling the difference between unwitting ignorance from acts of bad faith or they just don't care at all and think anyone even a bit right from them needs to be in a shallow grave. I feel like this aggressive behavior is part of the problem of why so many people are getting "redpilled" into the far-right.
After living in left and right states for many years, there is a stupid amount of common ground over stuff like solar, right to repair, rent control and housing, railway infrastructure, healthcare costs, quality careers and compensation, education costs and more.
We might see something like solar for different reasons (climate change vs. energy independence), but there's ways of rephrasing a solution to have it both ways.
The only thing that really seems to get in the way are petty online disagreements that then snowball into stuff like accusing people of shitting in litterboxes, hypothesising that gender diverse people started an international war or accusing people of genocide because their underwear was just revealed to be made in a super repressive country. That's the noise that prevents us from getting shit like bullet trains in or healthcare costs drawn down.
People are so touchy about being judged, so ready to be insulted. It all works in favour of the authoritarians.
Sure, we need to talk out the terms and agree on things, but that only works when people have open minds and critical thinking. In the meantime the epic struggle is between those who work, and those who own.
All the quibbles about left and right, about borders and morality, about identity, is distraction from solving the problems of fundamental disparity.
Basically, living in a kleptocracy sucks. Owners vs workers, authoritarians vs egalitarians: these are the real battles.
There's no way you call yourself "super left" or "radical left" and identify with the term "liberal".. Liberalism is the polar opposite of "radical left"
Jesus. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Is there a news letter or website that gives out the proper terms and most widely accepted labels, 2024 edition? I've been around long enough to see all these labels cycle through the mainstream lexicon. They mean something new every few years.
But of course that's what you wanna single out, the fact that I use different labels than you, therefore I couldn't possibly be anything like you right? It's like you people WANT division, tribalism and segregation. You actively seek out things to get upset and in a fight about, which is exactly what they want.
elitist, college liberalism ideas
liberals are becoming way more rude, aggressive. Elitist,
young privileged, college liberals who look down on everyone
That smells an awful lot like ring wing indoctrination 101:
.
You wrote two and a half paragraphs that are essentially just liberal bashing. My experience is that liberals are the people who don't judge you for personal choices, who reach out a hand even if you're worlds apart.
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.
That's literally every far right person. They sure as fuck are never optimistic besides maybe selfishly. I imagine this has been true forever.
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.
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.
This is kind of what happened in Argentina, and parties response to it just made everything worse.
*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.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/