How Germany’s far right won over young voters

https://www.dw.com/en/afd-how-germanys-far-right-won-over-young-voters/a-69324954

by JackRogers3

27 comments

  1. The AfD has strategically targeted young people like no other German party — and this has paid off. Through targeted campaigns on social media — mainly TikTok and Instagram — the AfD has managed to strike a chord with young people: the messages are emotional and easy to understand.

    The controversial AfD top candidate Maximilian Krah regularly takes to TikTok with simple and direct messages. Here is one notorious example:

    “One in three young men in Germany has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them?” Krah asks and continues with advice: “Don’t watch porn, don’t vote green, go outside into the fresh air. Be confident. And above all don’t believe you need to be nice and soft. Real men stand on the far right. Real men are patriots. That’s the way to find a girlfriend!”

    Maximilian Krah stands out on TikTok with his staid suits and pocket square, but he combines crisp punchlines and humor and has been hugely successful.

    But Krah is more than just a TikTok political influencer. The AfD’s lead candidate for the EU vote is suspected of taking money from Russian propaganda channels and employing a Chinese spy. Shortly before the election, he told an Italian newspaper that members of the German SS during the Second World War were not all bad. The SS was an organization that was responsible like no other for the industrial mass murder of European Jews during the National Socialist era from 1933 to 1945. Outrage at Krah’s revisionism came from all over Europe and even from other far-right parties.

    The AfD party leadership then banned Krah from making campaign appearances. But young voters were either not interested in the scandals or didn’t even notice them.

    Personal conclusion: the far-right uses basic marketing techniques in order to create some sort of familiarity with the voter. The content of each message doesn’t really matter, but it has to be simple, funny and engaging.

  2. TikTok is owned by a Chinese company -> China’s government likes the AfD -> TikTok’s algorithm pushes AfD content -> the youth forget everything they have learned in their history lessons in school -> they like the AfD

  3. I mean, they surely won (in terms of growth) not only because of tiktok influence, but tiktok played it’s role – and not just as platform for their speech, but also because of content what they see – I regularly see tiktoks with arab young men singing about jobcenter and talking about money they get and while most of people in comments of those videos genuinely laugh, I do believe that they will influence many people to make some choices

    And regarding scandals – ss being not that bad, russian money etc – people do not care enough and it’s a problem of major parties. It’s same as Wilders in Netherlands – he says that he will ban islam and close border for all refugees – and people do not care enough about some arabic or somali people suffering somewhere there, while they have enough problems right here (and I can’t blame them for it). I see a big growth amongst all young people in radicalisation of everything – 5 years ago right-winged guy would say “don’t let refugees in europe”, now everyone says “blow up their boats, use soldiers to not let them via turkey borders and deport everyone we have now”. And what is a reason for that? “Stupid” people or stupid majoring parties that don’t solve anything?

  5. And when they then don’t get a girlfriend, then their anger will carry them forth.

  7. How would it not? Just look at what Far Left is doing with beloved franchises in entertainment. What, are we supposed to honor those stunning and brave moments?

    Not to mention other issues plaguing young people. Which are easily pinned on the Far Left or Liberals.

  8. They had a perfect online campaign displaying interviews with migrants in the street where they were asked, ‘How is life here in Germany?’ They often replied that they enjoy social aid, thanked the job center, and said they don’t even know the capital of Germany and are unwilling ever to find a job. Such videos are meant to show that Germany is full of uneducated migrants wasting taxpayers’ money.

  9. Luckily most of the older voters did it in form of a protest (which still is stupid) , but many regions also had they local politicians elected and there the AfD did not really play a big role…

  10. Far-right parties everyone are known for their edgy shit, who is more edgy than a bunch of rabbits out of highschool?

  11. All of these articles are completely missing what is actually happening. Does it help that their candidates are not shying away from new media like Tiktok? 100%. But that’s most certainly not the root cause of why they’re widely popular.

    The youth is starting to get disenfranchised by mainly the left/green and centre parties that now heavily lean left. They’re starting to get fed up with it.

    This might be subjective but I work with many economics students around age 20. Most of them have been **very** open with voting for the AFD even tho they don’t agree with their economic views **at all** – both men and woman. Why? Because there’s a very left leaning ideology being shoven down their throats by a very vocal minority and they’re sick of it. Want to write your thesis? Guess what, you now have to gender or your thesis will not be accepted. Want to fight it? Now you have to sue. Restrooms at the uni? They’re now (partly) unisex. Used the wrong pronoun with someone you don’t even know? That someone is throwing a fit and calling you worse names than the no-no-mustache man.

    Add that to all the disregard political parties treat the youth with (unfair retirement plans, etc.) and you get some **very easy** votes for a party like the AFD. The established parties have played minority-bingo for so long they have forgotten that they need to take care of their base first – otherwise they’ll lose it.

  12. Perfectly justified that the Germans are against immigration. They once let an Austrian immigrant in and 75 million people died.

  13. I’m surprised that so many media outlets and politicians are solely blaming it on right social media campaigns but missing out on the point that the youth is already starting to experience and first hand seeing the results of Germany’s failed immigration policy on a daily basis at school and/or public life. So you can either carry on blaming right wing campaigns, spoiler alert this will not do or fix anything for anyone, or finally start addressing the issue.

  14. If the targeted appeal from the right to the youth are so effective, why haven’t the left done the same and succeeded? The so called “Labour”- parties in my view haven’t been so kind to the everyman worker, but incredibly generous to people either unable to work due to illnesses or people that outright refuses to work.

  15. All of the “Bio Germans” working with my SO voted for AFD. Some are 18 and some are 60. Yes, the rest are immigrants and “Pass Germans” who arent real Germans.

  17. They didn’t have to try hard. The left made a huge mess.

  18. If you wonder why anti immigrant parties won with young people and in the lower education and income groups (which is highly linked) you could also ask yourself the question the other way around: why does a person above 30 who likely has an above average income and lives in a nicer area with fewer of those immigrants not care about problematic immigration so much?

    If you have a degree and live in a neighberhood that gets a refugee center you can just move. Doesnt work so well if you are 16 and suddenly your school has >50% immigrants.

  19. Lots of people here blaming all this on the far left or the left despite the country having only been ruled by center right and center left parties in the last couple decades. Unless you seriously think that the neoliberals currently running the SPD count as social democrats, the only way the left could have caused the problem is failing to win elections.

  22. Why are you people saying that the right is wrong?
    There is no right and wrong, only ideas that fit you own narrative. If the mass of people want something and they vote for it then they get it, that’s basic democracy

  23. I don’t like the age where social media is new and people still have to find out how to deal with manipulation via algorithms and fake news. I feel like so many people have voted based off what they have seen on social media instead of what they have experienced themselves

  24. If this keeps up, there’s not gonna be any right-wing, there’s gonna be FIGHT-wing!!!

  26. “Anyone in contact with young people knows what it’s about. They are more affected by the general rise in prices. Green climate protection seems unaffordable to them.

    And they experience daily on the front lines what irregular migration means. The young men who arrive alone are primarily changing the living environment of young people. In the park, in the club, on the street, on the bus, at the train station, in the schoolyard. They experience that their fear of the violent tendencies of young men from the Maghreb and the Middle East is not taken seriously or is discredited as racism. They no longer dare to go to the police because they fear the revenge of the perpetrators, who in turn know exactly that they have little to fear.

    The dogmas of wokeness and open borders clash with this reality of life. So, they realign themselves and vote for the party that does not dismiss their concerns as bad and wrong from the outset. Few will be so foolish as to believe that the AfD solves the problem. But voting for a party that tries to convince them that they themselves are the problem is not something young people are willing to do.”

    Boris palmer wrote the above and i can 100% get behind it, im pretty sure that online presence is one thing but the whole political situation in germany these days is the main problem for young people.

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