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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

Summary

Support for Germany’s far-right AfD is surging among young men, driven by concerns over immigration, conservative values, and distrust of mainstream politics.

A Pew study found 26% of German men view AfD positively, compared to 11% of women.

Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message. Some young supporters reject accusations of extremism, while others openly embrace far-right views.

Analysts warn that if mainstream parties ease their opposition to the AfD, it could become Germany’s dominant right-wing party.

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[-] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Because they are stupid and easily influenced by propaganda.

[-] demizerone@lemmy.world 21 points 11 hours ago

It seems that every 80 years or so humanity has to learn a hard lesson over and over again.

[-] msage@programming.dev 28 points 11 hours ago

Can we please talk about how there is no active real left wing in any country?

Like sure the right wins when there is no real opposition.

I keep feeling like I've failed miserably as a person for not doing more. And I have no idea what should I be doing.

[-] PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 10 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

There is nothing you can/could do. The endless war against intelligence and focus on just believing what some screaming asshole says on talk radio, combined with the dawn of the internet being weaponized to spread that brain rot, and here you go. Maybe if you can go back in time and murder Ronald Reagan before capitalism gets so out of hand that they can buy the government ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[-] msage@programming.dev 2 points 8 hours ago

What about doing my own content? Podcasts, screaming asshole youtubes and whatnot? I can't speak very well, much less write, but I can... do something

[-] Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

I gotta say, watching them destroy the world is not making me a fan of young men.

[-] Snapz@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

Fucking Hans, you gullible bitch, showing your face around here again... You think you're gonna be a superman?

https://youtu.be/vGAqYNFQdZ4

[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

FUD: increase fear, uncertainty, and doubt by spreading misinformation propaganda and undermining independent, fact based journalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

It's the same tactic far right conservatives used against popular public progressive movements like the enlightenment, the hippies, corporate monopolies like IBM and Microsoft against open source, etc to divide the working class against themselves.

[-] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

This is true. Last time TikTok got popular in Germany was in 1930 and we all know how that ended.

[-] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 45 points 1 day ago

Yup. Seeing it first hand with a shorts addict relative right now. It‘s just doomscrolling all the way to the 4th Reich for many of them. It‘s sadly not surprising but all the more horrifying to see how utterly unequipped we are to deal the pace of „social“ media and how easy it is to spread far right ideology with lies and memes. I think a ban of TikTok and Xitter is inevitable at this point. They‘re too far gone.

[-] Viri4thus@feddit.org 61 points 1 day ago

Like always, the 1% keep parasitising the wealth of a country till the inhabitants stop living in comfort. When populists capitalise on this, the answer is... Tik tok makes young men racist, not poverty and uneducation... Anything to avoid wealth re-distribution. *slow clap

Hopefully some enlightenment will come and the eyes will turn to the real responsibility for this situation, and then the guillotines.

[-] The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I think the point is not "this is all TikTok's fault", the point is things like TikTok makes it a lot easier to spread misinformation. People have shorter attention spans nowadays, and they prefer to spend their time consuming short form content such as the kind found on TikTok. The problem with this is that it takes a lot more effort to correct wrong information and educate people than it takes to spread misinformation. For example, it's much easier to clip something a politician says out of context and to make a 5 or 10 second clip for people to watch, than to convince people to watch a 5 minute interview or read an article for context.

And even though I don't use TikTok, I still kind of insert my self in here; I don't have the mental fortitude or patience to read every single article I come across, so I often read diagonally, check the summary, or (more rarely) just stick with the title.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 18 hours ago

Well, this being the BBC their take is NEVER (ever, ever) going to be that the empoverishment due to a social, political and economic structure than massively benefits the Owner class whilst empoverishing the rest and uses propaganda to distract the masses and to make sure any redistributive ideologies are un- or at least under-reported, is the one to blame for those most hit amongst the "plebes" are going to rebel and latch one to the only "non"-mainstream ideologies that do get reported about - the Far Right.

This is because in their own country and, to some level internationally, the BBC's function is to be a cog in exactly that propaganda machine.

The last thing you'll ever going to see is the news media who portrays "two sides coverage" (I.e. all subjects getting reduced to a dispute between the two main parties) as "fair" "journalism" covering any subject as a problem of how mainstream politics benefits the well-entrenced Owner class, especially the news media from a country were the Owner class is mainly made up of the same families as a century ago. At best, they'll cover the near-mainstream "blame outsiders" movements (such as the Far Right), never those pointing out how much of the blame rest on well off local elites

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[-] halfpipe@sopuli.xyz 62 points 1 day ago

This mirrors what’s happening with men of the same age in the US.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 39 points 1 day ago

Not surprising, given the same people are pushing the same rhetoric all over the world.

[-] volodya_ilich@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago

Not all over though. China isn't electing Sieg Heil, and neither is the Sahel

[-] halfpipe@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

Welcome to web 4.0, where the vocal minority monopolizes all of our feeds

[-] PugJesus@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago

Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message.

Lies are easier to spread than the truth, and often more easily accepted too. Social media is fucked because of the near total lack of moderation - or desire to enact such.

After all, the ultra-wealthy often have little objection to being the useful pets of fascists, so long as they get to keep slightly more of their money*.

*until the fascists decide they want it even more than the scawwy LIBERALS did

[-] PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee 2 points 10 hours ago

near total lack of moderation

Disagree. Social media is built to favor creating and then selling huge name influencers to your users, and because you cannot become a large influencer/streamer/w/e without essentially being uncritical about the world, or being critical in a way that swings completely to 1 side of the aisle. This is in itself a form of moderation that only ever allows some critical voices to succeed, but only if their critique furthers the divide among the working class.

[-] PugJesus@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago

Because they’re Nazis.

But why do people become Nazis?

People are not born Nazis.

Understanding why people become Nazis helps prevent people from becoming Nazis, even if you think there's no hope for the fucks who've already dived into the ideology.

[-] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago

People become Nazis when they feel lost, powerless, and their lives meaningless. They reach for it in a desperate attempt to be part of something important, powerful, and meaningful.

But it’s empty and nihilistic, so it doesn’t work out.

We as a society haven’t figured out how to deal with modernity. All our problems are of our own making. We’ve destroyed religion (the original provider of meaning and belonging) and left a void in its place. That’s all the desire for Nazism is: a desire to fill that void (and a scapegoat for why it exists in the first place).

Of course you and I can see that the scapegoat is wrong and totally absurd. But that’s not important to them. There’s no easier way to feel powerful than to topple a hated enemy.

[-] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 10 points 23 hours ago

I think it’s largely about a lack of opportunity for, especially but not exclusively, blue collar workers^1^ and a perceived loss of status. There seems to be a lot of young men across the West and elsewhere who are struggling to build a career in the modern economy and being rejected by women (in part due to their anger) when, to them, it feels like just a generation or two ago, they would have been handed a middle class life and been the breadwinner for a family already.

Nevermind that a generation or two ago, that status came at the expense of others. To them, it feels like lost status. So, they’re easily manipulated by the far right saying, “It’s not you. It’s [insert scapegoat: women, immigrants, whatever]. We’ll give you a sense of purpose.”

^1^ I only say blue collar because of the shift in rich countries from manufacturing to services, whether high paid or low paid. But whole white collar professions have disappeared just due to computers.

[-] krebssteven@infosec.pub 8 points 1 day ago

Fascism is literally an ideology driven by a spiteful vibe. Parade your disdain for the identity of somebody else long enough, they will embrace the worst aspects to oppose you and mythesize these aspects into virtues.

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[-] SnotFlickerman 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean, fair, but a lot of the "why" with these guys boils down to "The world acts like all men are terrible, sex-crazed jerks who are violent, angry, and unable to control their emotions while claiming they're actually stoic and that makes me feel bad about myself."

Then, their solution is to double down on all those things because they're upset about being unfairly accused.

Look, if your response to people assuming you're a shitty person is to just... become an even shittier person to prove it, I think it says there was something deeply wrong with you before you doubled down.

I've heard the same shit about men my whole life and not fucking once did it make me go "God damn, I should just be a pile of shit then!" No, every time it inspired me to self-reflect and try to change my behaviors for the better.

So I reiterate, if your response is to double down, something was wrong with you before the turn to Nazism.

Like I don't know why else talking about "rape culture" resulted in young men chanting "Your body, my choice!" at women other than being born and raised as a piece of shit.

[-] PugJesus@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago

That reaction of doubling-down in response to sexism and the (sometimes impolitely stated, but most often true) accusations of masculine malfeasance in broader society is, itself, mostly created by social circumstances - how we socialize young men. Again, they are not born like that, they are not born as people who will become more sexist if accused of sexism or shown sexism in broader society, inherently; they are damaged into creatures which react like that. We must understand where this happens, how this happens - in the very many ways that it does happen - and how to counter it when removing the circumstances is not an immediate option.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

they are not born as people who will become more sexist if accused of sexism or shown sexism in broader society, inherently; they are damaged into creatures which react like that.

You conveniently defined away a possibility there, didn't you. There is preciously little understanding in fifth or sixth wave or whatever is it now feminist circles about how their rhetoric affects young guys, that there even needs to be a conversation about "all men" speaks volumes. Paint with a broad brush and you paint yourself as an adversary of people who, at a young age, approach the topic completely neutrally.

"Hi I'm new here" -- "You are the problem" -- "Fine, I'll go somewhere else". That kind of thing happens all the time and it's not something anyone gets conditioned into.

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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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