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Who is driving Germany's far-right poll surge?

• jdthedisciple 3y ago
  Why is it that whenever the far-right seems to experience a surge, nobody ever asks "hmm what could the establishment be doing wrong that causes this" but rather everyone jumps to "hmm what could be the conspiracy behind this"?
  • theparanoid 3y ago
    The article is a nicely illustrated analysis of the issues (migration policy) driving the increase.
    • anovikov 3y ago
      What's wrong about migration policy? I am probably a fairly far-right person, or at least on the extreme right as far as programmers go, but what can be changed in migration policy to which will improve things without completely undermining the future of Europe? We have experienced demographic change. Our birth rates do not, and never will, provide for support of our population numbers. We need immigration or we will live through "Japanisation" - with almost none of our cultures being as tight and homogenous from the beginning to do it as nicely as Japanese. The need for mass immigration - not only of qualified employees, but simply of "bodies" in numbers - is a fact. No amount of far-right wordplay can change that.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago
        [flagged]
      • jdthedisciple 3y ago
        > Our birth rates do not, and never will, provide for support of our population numbers How about stop propagandizing against the family unit and children in the name of climate protection and freedom for starters? (This is obv directed at the German Political Landscape (minus AfD), not you personally)
        • anovikov 3y ago
          It can't and won't help them. Unless you physically deprive women of rights and let them be married off against their will and others control their fertility, as it was in the "good old days" when the birth rate was sufficient. It never worked in any country. Even in those with, to say the least, highly questionable human rights record and complete control of government over mass media: see China. Or with those with ample resources and willingness to spend them towards this goal: see Sweden. Women are not having lots of children not because some evil forces are telling them not to, but simply because they can. They never wanted to procreate in "sufficient" numbers, they just didn't have a choice then. If we go as far as to deprive them of that choice, we will completely cancel everything we know as a civilised society - and also fail, because a huge emigration wave will ensue, and if we try to ban emigration, we will quickly fail into economic, technological and cultural irrelevance. It's a choice between being Japan (controlled, predictable dieoff, slow but certain death), being Iran (nice population growth but...), and being America. To me it sounds like a no-brainer which one of the evils to choose.
          • jdthedisciple 3y ago
            The happiest women are married women. The happiest among them are those with children. Don't take my word for it, just look it up yourself, too tired to pull up the dozens of studies for you. Clearly women want to have children. Nobody needs to force them to. But rather, society is (indirectly) forcing them NOT to have them. No need to deny human nature. Your caricature of a society that has children is complete and utter fantasy which has no bearing on real life. It is a product of aforementioned propaganda.
            • 3y ago
      • no_time 3y ago
        I'd rather have my country die out naturally and peacefully than to have anything a "multicultural" society has to offer.
        • meowface 3y ago
          True. Who would ever want to live in the US, with their abysmal GDP and lack of innovation. The US is a prime example that people of multiple cultures or ethnicities can't even be in the same city, let alone the same corporation or government.
          • locopati 3y ago
            Have you been to NYC? Take your racism elsewhere.
            • porkbeer 3y ago
              Nyc is hardly representative of america, thank god. And plenty of racisim and inability to adapt by a few cultures endemic to the area. Take your accusations of racism elsewhere.
            • meowface 3y ago
              I think you misunderstood my post.
          • no_time 3y ago
            >True. Who would ever want to live in the US, with their abysmal GDP and lack of innovation. Not me for sure. If your utmost measure of value in life is GDP, then I feel like we won't understand each other. Worst part is I can't escape this mindset here, thanks to US billionaires generously bankrolling "NGO's","think tanks" and "independent news outlets"
          • Ekaros 3y ago
            It is pretty clear that immigration ruined Americas. Just look at the outcome for them, it is absolutely horrid.
          • 3y ago
      • veavo 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • meowface 3y ago
          And if that immigrant is more merited than the unemployed native? (Meritocracy for me, not for thee.)
          • jdthedisciple 3y ago
            To your typical immigration-advocates, this very argument would never hold up in the context of unequal employment chances between men and women. Classic leftist hypocrisy.
            • meowface 3y ago
              Classic "well someone else who holds the position you espoused probably believes [X] (because I say so) therefore you're a hypocrite".
        • Zardoz84 3y ago
          perhaps the real problem really is those who are paying depressed wages to desperate people.
      • stormfather 3y ago
        > Our birth rates do not, and never will, provide for support of our population numbers. Extinction. What a strange thing to resign oneself to.
      • locopati 3y ago
        Why is change bad? Strong institutions enable rights, yes? For all people, yes?
      • fit2rule 3y ago
        [dead]
      • wsc981 3y ago
        > I am probably a fairly far-right person, or at least on the extreme right as far as programmers go In what way are you far right though? Based on what I read here (pro mass-immigration regardless of skill, against the family unit) I would classify you as far left.
        • jemmyw 3y ago
          Perhaps they favour small government and low regulations and taxes? The problem with left/right is that there are several axes of policy you can be on. Old school left can be socially conservative which is why a lot of left leaning people seemed to veer right. Free market + socially liberal folk that were previously right are now seen to be more central as the political gravity moves around.
        • anovikov 3y ago
          I support gun rights (but also abortion rights), support criminalisation of homelessness, and support border walls/some other "hard" ways of regulating migration (simply put, illegal immigration should be punished severely enough to make people even from the most rundown places too scared to try). I don't think "asylum seekers" should exist (and government should be hard - "one bullet each" hard - with those trying to sneak in), unless it is in the interest of the country to invite them (e.g. Ukrainian refugees). "Choose your refugee" policy. I think it makes me pretty much right. And no i am not at all against family unit. I only accept the objective fact that sustaining population through natural procreation is no longer possible in any halfway advanced society and that measures should be taken to do it otherwise. Anything that gives a chance of doing it through natural procreation will go way beyond acceptable for any Western political entity, no matter far left or far right. A simple proof to that is that it doesn't happen in any rich country anymore - except Israel because of a large chunk of their people bent on religion a lot more than any other free country could accept. Most people who criticise immigration, housing or other policies in the view of demography, usually have their perception confined to one particular country and come to logical conclusion: "things are bad and getting worse and politicians seem to be moving them even further into wrong direction". If they looked at the world at whole they'd stop blaming their politicians, because same shit happens everywhere - and it is in fact mildest in Western, rich, Protestant, liberal countries.
      • schroeding 3y ago
        For some people I know, the thought of more (mass) migration is negative because they think it will aggravate existing problems in other areas like a low wages (especially in low skill labour due to increased competition) or the FUBAR housing market in some cities (again, due to increased competition on an already strained market). For the last part they're definitely right, IMO, and german politics must find a way to solve the housing problem in big cities. The government must find a way to break the "migrants take away part of your cake" narrative, and this is only possible by increasing the size of the cake. In this case, we need to aggressively build (and incentivize to build) more housing. We're doing the opposite at the moment, if the german construction industry is to be believed, which is very very bad. Building a house became insanly expensive in the last 20 years, especially in the areas where it is needed most. Redistribution by moving senior tenants in big cities to suburban or rural areas will not solve the shortage, neither will "just go to rural east germany, there's enough housing". We have to solve these problems and prevent the formation of zero-sum games where migrants are seen as (external) competitors, stat - it'll be an existential social question and a threat to the country (and the long-term perspective of migrants) if we do not, IMO.
        • mytailorisrich 3y ago
          A big issue with immigration in Europe is not about economics but about identity, society, and culture. This is caused by too many people coming in from vastly different cultures. And so there is nothing wrong with being in favour of vastly reduced immigration numbers. Your take is to accept high immigration numbers as an unavoidable fact and therefore to only look at how to deal with them, and still only in terms of economics.
          • lordnacho 3y ago
            This is the elephant in the room. I have two overlapping observations. - The big one is Islam. Islam seems to be the only religion in modern times that is actually religious. The only religion that can muster up people to actually get really angry about defending it. It's also the only religion the locals are actually scared of in any meaningful way. - Color. If you have a bunch of local-looking kids meeting up at the mall, nobody thinks anything of it. Get a bunch of brown kids, and people get scared. Walk around as a typical Polish person, nobody will think anything of it. Walk around while brown and people are alerted to the presence of someone who needs to explain themselves. This isn't always mean-spirited and aggressive, but if you're not white you will constantly be asked by curious people how on earth you ended up walking around Copenhagen. "Where are you really from?". Put these together and many people constantly see that there's a pernicious foreign influence on their society. They feel it's visible, even though probably a lot of the brown folks aren't even religious.
      • friend_and_foe 3y ago
        Nothing, but that doesn't stop people from not liking it. Turns out, when women have the option to turn off their reproductive capacity, people opt for "hmmm nows not a good time I think I'll do it later" often enough that the population goes extinct. It's never a good time to have kids. That's why evolution ensured we don't have a choice, made us irrationally horny and ensured that it happened by accident. But people still see the drastic change within a single generation and don't like it. And you can't blame them, if you started settling white people in some African country by the million a year you can very much expect the same from the people who already live there. They'd call it colonialism. And they'd be right, and if they were facing a fertility rate crisis like the west is they'd be screwing themselves over, but you still wouldn't be able to convince them that they have to do it.
        • throwaway290 3y ago
          People have many kids when their life is unstable. That's why improving quality of life across the world is how it balances out?
          • friend_and_foe 3y ago
            I don't know that the cause of reduced fertility is prosperity. It might even be the other way around: as population growth decreases people have more because less people to split the wealth with. Our father's dug the gold from the ground and only had 1 child between them. It's probably a bit of both, when you're prosperous you have more to lose by feeding hungry babies. But it most certainly doesn't balance out. Either a population grows or it shrinks, when a population grows it can produce more but there are more to feed, when it shrinks it ages, at first you have prosperity from that but eventually you wind up poor and old.
        • pseudo0 3y ago
          > Turns out, when women have the option to turn off their reproductive capacity, people opt for "hmmm nows not a good time I think I'll do it later" often enough that the population goes extinct. Or we have a society and an economic system designed to push women into the workforce and makes having children an expensive luxury good? That is a policy decision that can be changed. If it were economically beneficial for a woman to have two to four kids instead of grinding 40-50 hour weeks in the office, a lot of women would reevaluate their choices. And it's much better for us to figure out a sustainable solution now than to wait a generation or two for the world to have a general fertility crisis. Right now it is localized to first-world countries, so we have some time to figure out a solution before things get really dire.
      • hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
        The crux of the matter is from where these "bodies" will arrive. There are relatively few problems with immigrants from Vietnam or Ukraine. They don't feel entitled and work hard. There are others, however, who just create problems. That's all.
      • rtz121 3y ago
        Kinda weird to consider yourself "far-right" and be in favor of mass replacement migration in the same sentence.
        • throwaway290 3y ago
          Left/right is too simplistic, I am fairly left on many issues but I think making it so that people don't need to migrate is better than allowing unlimited migration which is not a good long term solution...
        • pandaman 3y ago
          This is not weird at all if you ever tried to argue with the Left, making blatantly obvious false statements is their way to bait you into arguing semantics and accept the main narrative. E.g. in this case many went after the semantics of the "far-right" and not on the main claim of "birth rates can never recover".
          • rtz121 3y ago
            I interacted with that guy in another comment and well... You are probably right, even though you are getting downvoted.
      • kozzz 3y ago
        [flagged]
  • bennyhana 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • jdthedisciple 3y ago
      This whole "right-left-shift" paradigm is nonsense. If the base moves so far left that their original position is now considered far-right, then you still have a relative right-shift. Howcome nobody ever questions said extreme left-shift of the base?
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • yungporko 3y ago
        because left is "correct" and right is evil
        • jdthedisciple 3y ago
          Right, sums up the political discourse of our time.
    • living_room_pc 3y ago
      Be nice. I think he is commenting on the obvious fact that politicians do not like to blame themselves for the problems they create. It looks bad and is bad for polls.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    People only care about German politics because they wonder if the population is going to turn the ovens back on Theyre really never going to live that one up But Germany’s far right immigration policy demands would be pretty left in the US, not far left, just left
    • veavo 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • yieldcrv 3y ago
        Only reason German politics blog is even front page news on this site But okay, what is European consensus?
      • rtz121 3y ago
        Actually yes, in Germany that is pretty much the talking point. Recently a prominent AfD politician spoke out against inclusion of disabled children in normal school classes. The media reaction was pretty much "just like in 1939!!!". It is probably THE reason why there has never been a successful far-right political party in Germany (until now) after '45, while there have been in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, etc.
        • veavo 3y ago
          Here in Spain we eliminated special classes for disabled children and put them in the normal classes. The obvious result: everybody is worse off. Disabled children are not properly accommodated and the performance of the rest of children suffers because of everything going slower. And all the responsibility of dealing with the situation falls on the teachers, who aren't adequately equipped. No need to be a nazi or anything to see why that's a bad idea. Of course, the left destroying public education is nothing new. Anyway, back to your comment: we were talking about the perception of Germany from outside Germany.
          • rtz121 3y ago
  • prairiedogg 3y ago
    No one said anything about a conspiracy. From TFA: "In addition to a base of far-right wing support, which makes up 15 percent of the population, the AfD is attracting a protest vote that takes it to slightly more than 20 percent support. This is driven by dissatisfaction with migration policy and a general fear of societal crisis."
  • LightBug1 3y ago
    Past history is (though not necessarily) a guide to the future. If you're not cognizant of money flows, think tanks, and dark influence patterns continuously whirling and flowing around us, then ... congratulations, I guess. That must be a lovely place to be.
    • jdthedisciple 3y ago
      > money flows, think tanks, and dark influence patterns continuously whirling and flowing around us Name me one example for such that drives right-wing thought, and I'll name you 10 that pull the opposite way. This is ridiculous, all key power positions, NGOs, and think-thanks are overwhelmingly left-biased.
    • stormfather 3y ago
      If we think it's impossible that the people that disagree with us have legitimate, organic grievances then we're never going to solve whatever the underlying issues are.
      • LightBug1 3y ago
        I agree with that. I'm not sure what it has to do with my comment though.
  • rjzzleep 3y ago
    I can't believe these things I'm reading. Who is driving the AfD? The SPD, CDU, Greens and FDP are. Decades of policies against the interests of their own citizens lead people to try to choose something different. As you said this is 100% establishment policy driven. People tend to forget that one of the SPD members and former board member of the German Bundesbank wrote a book falsely interpreting data that was pretty racist and became a best seller. And judging from what I have seen it is by far not an outlier case. Or the fact that the leader of the CSU appealed to the population to report people that suspicious languages in public like Arabic along with countless other extremely racist statements and policies. The current Green foreign minister of Germany proudly talked about her Grandfather fighting in 1945 at the atlantic council[1]. Germany is as racist as it gets. That's why it has record emigration amongst the most educated population. Germany is one of the least attractive places for expats[2]. For people that like to respond, but Germany took "X" many immigrants. It's a policy that a) wouldn't have been necessary had Europe pushed against interventionism rather than support it, b) has created extremely unsafe environments even for previous Muslim immigrants, and c) was even advised against by the German Islamic council or whatever it's official name is in english as something unreconcilable in society at that pace. As a result of the incompetence of leadership in the Healthcare sector for example and their outdated tech, they were forced to slip those millions of people into a special status that actually allows for bigger payouts for doctors when treating those people rather than a German retiree that has worked for 40 years(I know this first hand, because I spent time in both policy making and trying to modernize that broken system). Because most people don't know what happens behind the scenes their hatred is not directed towards the incompetent policy makers, but just plainly towards the recipients of the broken system, something that is by the way, entirely human. It's just sad that the AfD has no coherent strategy of their own. They have no concept beyond keep the old nuclear power plants running; i.e. no concept to fund and develop nuclear energy. They support interventionism while at the same time being anti immigrant. Something other populist leaders like Le Pen have opposed for at least a decade given the strong correlation between the two. It's also sad that while Germany's election system allows for a plurality of opinions in the parliament, 90% of them are basically an economic uniparty. Something which in theory could have been orders of magnitude better than in the US. [1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/transcripts/annalena-baerbock-on-a-transatlantic-green-deal-and-german-strategies-in-facing-russia-and-china/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/transcripts/annalena-ba... [2] https://www.exberliner.com/english-news-berlin/germany-slips-down-expat-ranking-unfriendly-complicated/ https://www.exberliner.com/english-news-berlin/germany-slips...
  • znpy 3y ago
    > nobody ever asks "hmm what could the establishment be doing wrong that causes this" Because nobody likes accountability for themselves or for their favourite political establishment. And because fixing mistakes involves admitting them first, and that’s not something “the establishment” is ever keen on doing.
• paganel 3y ago
  It looks like there's a blatant contradiction between statement B: > AfD supporters see Germany’s migration policy as a catastrophe an statement A (made just before B): > There has not been a general shift to the right Used to have some respect for Tooze, I actually quoted one of his books in here twice or thrice, but people like him should get their heads out of the proverbial sand and look at facts straight in the face. If it quacks like a duck ("migration policy as a catastrophe") and whacks like a duck it most certainly is a duck.
  • zoky 3y ago
    What contradiction? One statement refers to the entire population and the other refers to the subset of the population who are AfD supporters. There’s no problem with both statements being true.
  • tinco 3y ago
    I guess for some people it's easy to become a duck. As someone with a passionate hatred for ducks, I want it to be said there has to be compassion for those who are tempted to become ducks in an effort to protect their environment. If there's no way to voice your concern for western and democratic values without being labeled a duck, should they just not quack at all?
    • Zpalmtree 3y ago
      People are voting AfD because they are pro environment?
    • vitalurk 3y ago
      Hey can you elaborate please?
      • tinco 3y ago
        Well I'm not German so I can't really speak about what the AfD is about, and I'm sure there's a lot of actual Nazis voting for them. What is a topic however that is taboo because of association with Nazis is the influx of people with non-western ideals and values from Morocco and Turkey. Things like women rights, democratic ideals such as freedom of speech are under pressure as a significant portion of the population does not hold them. This problem is exacerbated when freedom of religion laws makes it so that subsequent generations are also educated with anti-western values. Mainstream political parties won't burn themselves on these issues, and the alternative political parties are often caught with Nazi's at their dinner tables.
• riedel 3y ago
  We rather have an anti-democratic and populist surge in Germany (the article also confirms that there is no particular shift in opinion to the far right). The interesting thing is that we will probably get another party on the far left next year (founded by Wagenknecht, a prominent member of the parliament for The Left party. It is probably only delayed to next year due to some party funding rules for new parties in connection with the upcoming election.). People want more simple solutions and are fed up with complexities (like all over the world). The other parties particularly as part of the governing coalition only offer more confusion and no clear vision where to go with a lot of internal fights.
  • mnd999 3y ago
    Simple solutions don’t work though. If they did we’d have done them already.
    • sofixa 3y ago
      That's a great lesson learned from strategy games (Democracy, Paradox series, Civilisation, etc.). At the country scale, nothing is simple, and therefore anyone claiming otherwise is either dumb and shouldn't be anywhere near power, or lying and thus shouldn't be anywhere near power.
  • peter_retief 3y ago
    How can it be anti-democratic and populist at the same time?
    • hnhg 3y ago
      You might want to read up about the Nazi party. That should give you a good enough answer.
      • nvm0n2 3y ago
        The Nazis were just anti-democratic full stop. They only went the political party route after Hitler ended up in jail for trying to bypass it the first time, they were doing things like beating up their opponents and they abolished it the moment he got into power.
• aszantu 3y ago
  When I didn't have a job, I'd content for resources with refugees and migrants. There were some days, where I'd be the only white female on a room full of dark skinned ppl. I got high anxiety back then, this didn't help the situation. In the mall, after 17 o clock the refugee/migrant youth would group together and hang out. That didn't feel safe either In my town when you got money from the bank mashine you'd get robbed by the local eastern European gang. Many post deliverers didn't speak any german. I'm left wing but I understand why ppl want things to change. When I told someone that I don't feel safe and they proceeded to call me right wing and nazi. Also got cancelled by my friends when I said that someone fleeing their country wouldn't throw away their passports, it's right wing propaganda. The few refugees I knew where always kind and friendly. But the kids couldn't even draw a square correctly. I buy in a Syrian supermarket and a Turkish shop and I vote left wing. All the propaganda tries to paint it black/white. That's the issue...
  • throwff 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • churchill 3y ago
      Care to elaborate? I'm thinking Israeli/Palestinian, or something?
  • bombolo 3y ago
    > In the mall, after 17 o clock the refugee/migrant youth would group together and hang out. That didn't feel safe either Basically that's because there are no squares or other spaces where they CAN hang out. I had a similar experience in sweden. In the end they are just meeting their friends. It feels weird I think because whites don't really meet their friends like that. At most they go into a cafè/bar, but you need money for that. And in sweden cafè are really expensive, and pubs… well require you to drink alcohol, so there really aren't many around migrant areas.
    • aszantu 3y ago
      Yes, in the 90ies they closed all the gathering places for kids in general, there's nowhere to go for them. So they hang out at the train station or do drugs at the cemetery. In places where kids could hang out there were kickers or you could paint or work with clay. That's all gone, so now lots of them do crime or dumb things when hanging out.
• Red_Tarsius 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • crop_rotation 3y ago
    I am not sure why your comment is flagged. Anyone familiar with the history of postwar Europe will recognise some important points that you mention. Others might disagree with your opinion, but I feel it deserves to be read and discussed. It certainly should not disappear.
  • mathverse 3y ago
    Czech Republic has around 100k vietnamese and about 500k ukrainians which for a pop of 10m is significant numbers. Both of these nationalities have different cultural background and values and yet there's no problem with respecting rule of law and natural order in the country. Live and let live.
    • Zpalmtree 3y ago
      Neither of these countries are majority Muslim?
    • throwff 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • hyperdunc 3y ago
      Not all cultures have the same personality. Some combinations are more compatible than others.
• mathverse 3y ago
  Go to any bigger Eastern European city and these places are thriving. There's basically no crime, you can get shitfaced beyond recognition and nothing will ever happen to you even if you are a woman. As a middle class german you must see the decay in german cities with everything becoming too expensive, out of order and decaying in front of your eyes while you are being told you live in one of the richest places on Earth.
  • Moldoteck 3y ago
    Lol, you've never visited Romania it seems)
    • mathverse 3y ago
      Idk what you are talking about but Iasi,Cluj,Bucharest are thriving despite Romania being one of the poorest members of the EU.
      • Moldoteck 3y ago
        Yeaaaah, totally, thriving... Like today and yesterday half of the cluj smelled like sh* bc they stole eu money for development of trash recycling and processing bc there's a trash landfill nearby the city, or when public central park is fully blocked for several days yearly due to a private event. Or Bucharest, most congested capital/city in Eu, with annual problems of hot water supply and annual problems related to trash burning by roma ppl Or iasi where organised crime by (some) roma ppl is pretty harsh. Also I can't imagine how safely a girl can feel walking alone in the night in any of these cities (maybe except cluj, but even here there are a lot of dangerous regions). I would hardly call these cities thriving, compared to say Vienna, Budapest, Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich, Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, etc... I even remember a recent news that a drugged guy that was 'checked by police' several times, they found drugs but didn't want to test him for drugs, killed a bunch of ppl with his car. Or the case where a lot of ppl burned alive in a club bc of the way it was designed and till today nobody's imprisoned, or when a bridge collapsed right before a school bus(bc they've stolen the money), there wasn't tragedy, but it could have been, and still, nobody in prison. Totally thriving county!
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• dm270 3y ago
  It's not just migration. Many Germans I know are just not happy with the government. And have not been for a while. People feel like their lives are worse, they can't afford apartments or houses and feel like their wealth is slowly melting away. They pay more and more taxes but feel the service they get in return is worse and worse. Cities are not kept clean, infrastructure from small too large is breaking apart. On the other hand an expensive cluster fuck of a public broadcasting system is kept alive where recent scandals made it look like they are dishonest and try to teach moral lessons instead of neutrally informing the people. Health care got worse, many doctors just not taking new patients and people having to wait for specialist appointments for months. People that earn more are also desperate, because they usually live in larger cities where they cannot afford apartments or houses anymore. Also retirement gets worse and worse every year. Why should someone work 45+ years in a low wage job only to then the same money as someone who always worked? All this shines a particularly bad light on the fact that no politician takes the blame anymore. There are scandals, people do a bad job...and then they end up leading the commission in Europe or some other large state agency (looking at you vdL and Nahles). They do not face any consequences anymore. The people have the subconscious feeling that many things go wrong in Germany and the country needs bigger and radical changes but that those changes will not spawn within the current players. Or shorter: whoever they vote for, it's always the same stupid faces and swamp. And last but not least I'd say that for years and years voters for the right wing party have been called fascists and Nazis by the (mentioned above) public media , even if they were just conservatives. They were (maybe rightfully?) judged by who their peers are in those parties. But this made many people being afraid to vote for those parties. Now they "had enough" and don't care about public opinion. In my family there are some examples of definitely not racist people that will vote far right... And I stopped judging them but started listening to them. And I think all of them are brought back by implementing the right policies.
  • crop_rotation 3y ago
    What do you think are the right policies here?
    • dm270 3y ago
• crop_rotation 3y ago
  I recently read some books on history of Postwar Europe, and they contains a lot of things which were counter to what I had previously assumed. * Postwar European countries were almost all homogeneous, as non majority ethnicities were driven out either during the war (Germany) or during the immediate post war period (Poland, Czechslovakia). * Before Europe became prosperous, it very not welcoming of other ethnicities, even Europeans of other countries. * Apart from America, we have not seen evolution of prosperous countries which are both democratic and heterogeneous, and America faces it's own problems due to the same. Europe was not used to these, but the same thing seem to be playing out there. * A lot of liberal European policies came into existence only after the prosperity. A slight dip in prosperity can easily turn things very ugly. Given all this, the rise of far right in Europe doesn't feel surprising.
  • mytailorisrich 3y ago
    There were waves of migration within Europe before WWII, that sometimes created some tension but by and large it only took a generation to assimilate them because in general (1) they made efforts to assimilate and (2) cultures were close enough that it wasn't too difficult. An example is Italian migrants to France (and other European countries) in the late 19th and early 20th century. What has happened since and is still happening, is a combination of continuously very large numbers of migrants and lack of assimilation.
  • sofixa 3y ago
    > Postwar European countries were almost all homogeneous Where are you getting this from? From Spain through France to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, with Belgium as the cherry on top, many countries in Europe had ethnic and religious minorities, sometimes quite significant ones, or flat out multiple main ethnic and religious groups (Belgium or Yugoslavia that had 4 main ethnic groups from 3 religions). Even Germany had two religious groups (Catholic and Protestant). Also it's exactly after WW2 that immigration from the colonies to France ramped up, both of pieds noirs (French people from the colonies getting expelled from the now independent countries) and not, with the associated building boom of new cities around Paris to have somewhat to house all the people. Unless you're using "homogenous" as a racist dog whistle for skin colour, as if it matters, it's simply untrue.
• bdg 3y ago
  I have to say I feel like there's a lot of comments in this thread that are just totally detached from reality. I moved from Toronto to Berlin in 2017 and a lot of comments in here about living in fear of Muslims is just ... I don't know what part of Germany you are living in, and I visited a lot of it. I went to Karnival in Köln, and small beer festivals in the Bavarian countryside, I talk to locals in every city I go to. I do however distinctly remember that when I lived in Toronto my social media feed was absolutely polluted with hype about how refugees are taking over Europe and the migrants are everywhere and there are countless no-go zones and endless rapes and the end of Europe was imminent. Then I moved here, and literally not even once have I seen or felt any of that. I have however seen the far-right media endlessly look for bad events and a way to pin it on migrants. I have seen AfD marketing to tell people they will somehow "fix things" by replacing burkas with burgundy wine. I've also seen that the neo-Nazis try to overthrow the government (Reuß) and carry out domestic terrorist acts (Hanau for example), the constant planning for "Tage X" and stealing weapons from the army, and the arm of the government charged with constitutional protection constantly needing to stop Nazi activity or investigate problems with the AfD or the military or other important authorities.
  • haizhung 3y ago
    Totally agree, the (current) top comments are pretty wild.
  • naiv 3y ago
    You moved here after 2015 so you are missing a comparison and don't know how great life was before the first big wave. This is the new reality we live in and these controls are now happening every Friday and Saturday night: https://www.breakinglatest.news/news/police-checks-against-knife-violence-in-bielefeld-bochum-dusseldorf-and-cologne-news/ https://www.breakinglatest.news/news/police-checks-against-k... We don't even bother anymore enjoying the city on a weekend.
  • hackandthink 3y ago
    Agree, lot of whining about immigration here. Immigration works for Germany and mostly the Biodeutschen (1) and the immigrants get along well. However, there is also a racist milieu and even right-wing terrorists that politics and the police tolerate too much. Immigrants become scapegoats in a (self-inflicted) difficult economic situation. (1) satirical name for ethnic Germans (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodeutsch https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodeutsch)
• account-5 3y ago
  So having perused the comments here, most of which seem to suggest EU in decline/decay, can I assume there might be some benefit to Brexit?
  • sambapa 3y ago
    It's like saying "If I stop going to the AA meetings, I won't be an alcoholic"
  • dontupvoteme 3y ago
    The british would have had to play it correctly (thus far they have not)
    • account-5 3y ago
      Yeah the British are certainly not benefitting from Brexit, that I can see.
  • nvm0n2 3y ago
    It's obviously true, but you will be karma-whacked on this forum for criticising the EU. It's full of people who think the EU is the solution to every problem, and never the cause.
    • account-5 3y ago
      To be fair I've taken a few karma hits for even asking this question. I think Brexit has been a shambles personally but certainly from the context of this thread you could think getting out was a good thing. What can you do?
• throwawafd 3y ago
  Throwaway, for very obvious reasons. -- This is frankly very concerning. As an EU-foreigner, with a non-German name, living in Germany for 13 years now, this is for example one of the main reasons I'm not buying a house or making bigger investments here, not because I don't like it but because there are certain risks associated with being non-German which German people won't ever understand. It wasn't easy before, but Afd leading will be an existential risk despite the naive attempts to rationalize it. I've discussed this development with some acquaintances who believe the Afd will be their salvation and suddenly fix the country but most of the rhetoric turns around getting rid of foreigners and feeling safer - as the article illustrates. They tell me "Don't worry" or "but you're almost German! You speak German, you're one of the good _ones_ yada yada", well tough luck, I don't look German and that's what they might not want to admit is an issue. Why this matters? Take all the online/offline posts from that party and its supporters and run them through a classifier (an LLM if you're so inclined) and you'll see a few bad trends pop up, especially in the narrative they are pushing and who this is catering to. Very violent videos, images made with stable diffusion aimed to cater to and mislead a very specific demographic, crafted with an industrial & methodical approach. Topics like "light" nazism support become "salonfähig" again, meaning it is acceptable in group discussions... Now imagine a party like that, supported by the full weight of the military, police, financial sector. The classifier the Afd and their supporters will use to separate foreigner from non-foreigner will be much, much simpler though and will in essence give anyone a license and justification to chase the foreigners, because they won so they must be right, right? There are not that many foreigners in Germany, it's just that they might be younger, thus more visible and any actions towards them will be visible: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Population/Migration-Integration/Tables/foreigner-place-of-birth.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula..., take those numbers and calculate some correlations like "how much 1 single non EU foreigner (let's be clear, those are who they call foreigners) contributes to the rise in the polls" and you'll see what I mean. It is also no surprise also, that the "east" is siding with the far-right here, and many supporters/commenters/believers, when not German, have a couple of things in common. In this context, voting far-right doesn't strike me as complaining about the current government but rather looking for scapegoats, someone else to make accountable for the common failures. The country was never really "safe" in the sense that you could do whatever and be risk-free, it's an illusion biased by the fact that looking back is always better (that image with plan and the red dots should illustrate my point), people who claim that "it was safer in the past" were quite certainly living a sheltered and utopic life and are more and more confronted and aware of the workings of the real world. There were always bandits, thugs, thieves, troublemakers. Perhaps the real issues are an aging population & the economical downturn/contractions we're currently experiencing aka: "the beer gets more expensive"-index to which there isn't really a concrete solution from none of the parties or that nobody really wants to address. Germany is an amazing country, which is no surprise why many people want to live here compared to other countries in the EU or in the world. The future will show if a far-right party will make it better. Whatever happens and whoever leads, I think we now have the tools to keep anyone forever accountable for their words and actions which will directly contribute to our common future. No more 'we didn't know'. My main hope here is that this doesn't escalate into something extremely ugly, either way, I won't hang around to find out if things materialize. Jetzt geht's um die Wurst!
• nforgerit 3y ago
  Germany's main problems are 1) Overly excessive bureaucracy combined with not enough civil servants. 2) A housing market that's essentially not a market anymore. 3) Several problems with governmental services that have been under-invested and not well managed in the past, e.g. schooling. Sure, there's crime. There's also slightly higher crime-rates in cohorts of refugees/immigrants compared to the average but not compared to cohorts of of "German young men". We see a lot of far right propaganda tho along with the delusion of "the mainstream opinion shifted to the left". That's an old fascist trick.
  • candiodari 3y ago
    The real issue is that the far right is taking up the traditional points of the left. And I don't think it really needs to be explained by the CSU/CDU steadily loses voters in the 20th century. 1) limit immigration (so as to provide better wages, better working conditions for the workers already here). For the left it's not about race, it's about managing the availability of labor for the local market to improve living conditions. Even limiting emigration is on the table. 2) "common sense" policies influenced by the opinion of the "unwashed masses" or whatever you want to call them 3) protection of jobs and unions over things like "the economy". Bad (livable and even "livable") jobs for all takes priority over trade (so borders largely closed). This also means limiting the scope of EU membership. 4) very high policy priority for things that directly influence the life of common people. Things like medical care (and training new medical personnel), schooling and housing having absolute priority over "the economy", or over Ukraine or Climate change The left does not work like this anymore, and hasn't for a decade or two at least, because this is not what they attract young people with. And that was fine, when the economy was doing well and the left could pretend they were providing jobs for all while giving priority to climate change, when they weren't really accomplishing anything, and it was really China getting lots of things to build itself up. This is what they call the generational conflict. A LOT of traditional leftist voters are worried about their life, finances, pension, medical care, ..., and don't care about climate change, Ukraine, essentially any international problem. There was no conflict as long as both could be reasonably provided that was fine. But that only applies as long as the medical care, schooling, housing, ... situation doesn't seriously deteriorate. And it has. So they run to the only party that agrees with them, at least in rhetoric. Maybe someone ought to create more extreme leftists parties, from a real leftist party to even an outright communist one, that would also get these voters in. A party that would build housing, right in the middle of cities, with ZERO care what it would do to housing values or bank balance sheets. That would make employees essentially unfireable. That would kill imports and exports (or heavily tax them) to support more personnel in schools. Etc. Left/right is an oversimplification, and because people are unwilling to compromise at all (You aren't allowed to be leftist and anti-immigration. You can't be leftist and anti-EU. So if you get frustrated enough you find your natural allies for that: racists. Not because you're a racist, but out of shear frustration)
• churchill 3y ago
  Why is this flagged and how can I vouch for it? I'm not German (Nigerian) but the leftist trend of unrestricted immigration will eventually push the European right and center so far away that we might see several strongman leaders across the continent in the next 20 years. No matter how bad Africans and Syrians have it, you can't fail to admit that mixing people from incompatible cultures will lead to friction, and when that friction isn't addressed, eventually, extremism. Or, have you asked yourself why it's often young African and Middle-eastern migrants raping and tearing up European cities at the slightest provocation? Yes, I say that as an African. If European progressives don't take a hard stance on immigration and immigrant crime, I believe we might see a Hitler in Europe again, promising to bring order (like they always do). Even in South Africa, millions of the locals (Xhosa, Zulus, Khoisan, etc.) still want to expel or murder the Boers who have lived there for centuries now. So, if you have millions of migrants in Europe, living off welfare, making society unsafe, and forcing their religion on others, better don't act surprised when the locals start fighting back by voting in law-and-order politicians to clean the mess.
  • TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    > If European progressives don't take a hard stance on immigration and immigrant crime, I believe we might see a Hitler in Europe again, promising to bring order (like they always do). I am Eastern European and I have exactly same opinion about this issue. The leftist governments are pushing their heads into the sand, labeling people who wants to tackle immigration or pointing at problem which unrestricted immigration does as xenophobes or nazis or even trying to go one step further and attempt to ban parties like AfD who are pointing at the issue, even though they don't have coherent plan. And at the same time progressive parties are surprised that AfD is polling at 22% in Germany.
• dontupvoteme 3y ago
  AfD is not strictly far-right. Many are but some are simply fed up with the existing situation.
• amai 3y ago
  This doesn’t mention the biggest elephant in the room: East Germany! East Germany is the stronghold for AfD because the median income and wealth are still far behind West Germany. East Germans are fare less likely to support higher costs for fighting climate change. That is also why the Green party is so weak in East Germany. The Green Party should ask themselves why they are so weak in East Germany and explain their politics better there. Also they should make sure that the costs in the fight against climate change are not making the poor people in East Germany even poorer. Unfortunately they do the opposite and the „Klimageld“ for the lower class is not going to be implemented despite being promised: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/klimageld-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/klimageld-100.... But people in East Germany are not stupid. They know exactly when they are left behind and will vote for AfD until their problems are noticed and taken care of by the German government.
• nvm0n2 3y ago
  For those who are curious, the AfD make their manifesto available in English (a perfectly fluent translation): https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-04-12_afd-grundsatzprogramm-englisch_web.pdf https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-04-12_afd... The chapters are: 1. Democracy and core values 2. Europe and the Euro 3. National security and Justice 4. Foreign and security policy 5. Labour and social policy 6. Families and children 7. Culture, language and identity 8. Schools, universities and research 9. Immigration, integration and asylum 10. Economy, digitalisation and consumer protection 11. Finances and taxes 12. German energy policy 13. Nature and environmental protection, agriculture, forestry 14. Infrastructure, housing and transport
• throwaway837401 3y ago
  I'd like to add a German perspective here. I was born in Germany in 1987. When I went to a middle class-y school in the late 90s and early 2000s, there already were big groups of migrants with a background in muslim countries. When going home alone, there was a constant fear of being targeted. A friend of mine got it bad, went home alone from school, ended up in the hostpital. I was spat on and had to come to school through a wooded area and backdoor for a few weeks because I pushed back and called them names. Fear of violence and sometimes violence itself was an everyday reality. This is a shared experience of many of my adult-life friends. Today, there are areas of big German cities where ambulances refuse to go like Duisburg-Marxloh where the state has essentially given up. My elderly mother was subject of a gesture by a young muslim man suggesting that her head will be cut off when she was in Dortmund. In the city next to my home village, 2 people were shot by muslim youth last year and this year. Something like that was totally unheard of. Trash on the street and other reckless behavior has increased significantly. Gang violence is on the rise. The son of a friend of mine experienced a knife attack. In elementary school. Another friend of mine became a teacher, and young muslim migrants at his school took one of their fellow students, hold him down while another one landed a kick on his knee, completely destroying it. Public open air baths have become hunting grounds for testosterone driven primates. And it's not just violence by itself, it's open disdain for the state and the native population by significant parts especially of young muslim men. This is way, way, way beyond isolated incidents. Almost all of these problems are completely nonexistent with Asian or other migrant groups. OF COURSE not all muslim immigrants are that way. I had multiple personal friends or coworkers from Turkey or Syria. Good, kind folks. Often hard working. My company even pleaded with the government to keep them from deporting one of the Syrians back to wherever. He was learning the language fast and was a good guy. But of course they didn't care. And that's while know migrant street thugs and gang bosses who are on the state's deportation list roam freely. I suspect it's because the "good guy" has an official address registered with the authorities and tries to follow the rules, easy prey for lazy public servants. It gets even worse: you can't complain about all of this loudly, especially the first part, without getting painted into a corner as a neo-nazi and racist. And while all of this is going on, the public debate, led by state media and career politicians, tries to downplay or ignore the issue. For example, they tried to blame the public baths thing on hot weather. Or write feelgood articles about the local zoo. Or debate about stuff that's completely detached from the needs and worries of the everyday people on the street, like gender-neutrality in munitions procurement for the army. And I haven't even started talking about economical issues like energy prices. I don't have any sympathy for the AfD or other right-wing idiots. But career politicians will need to touch base with the common German again very quickly, or things will get out of hand.