That’s the German word Union btw (meaning the Union of the CDU and the CSU, the big Christian party and their Bavarian off-shoot).
Not a labor party… just felt like I should clarify that
Centre right wing, but they would never use the term right wing but instead conservative. Its Merkel's party that isn't so much against asylum seekers, but fights to the death right now on trying to reverse the new cannabis legalization for example. They are the typical old people are afraid of the future but not completely lost party.
You mean the party that was totally fine with the cannabis legalization while trying to form a coalition but now that the AfD gets more votes than them they just repeat everything they say?
Only 12% SPD is crazy low. They royally screwed up with their main voter base over the last few years. They should really think about where they put their political focus.
That is apparently not the voters primary concern, as they flocked to AfD and CDU. The parties with the highest amount of embezzler, personal enrichers and fraudsters.
While they (and everyone else) definitely should concern themselves with the former. Gini-coefficient rises in wealth, more and more unsolidarity. But hey, why should the workers have their own interests in mind, when they can be steered to vote and work for the ones of others.
While being true that the SPD lost contact to their historical voter base the party has long moved on to focus more on a very broad social democratic policy. With limited success as can be seen for 20 years now. Its ironic that it wasnt the CDU but actually the SPD that introduced the Agenda 2010 back then, which can be regarded a backstab of their traditional voters as it meant a clear backstep of social securities.
Most of the working class voters have long turned conservative though. The "opponent" to blame are no longer greedy companies but foreigners that utilize the social welfare the SPD still tries to stand for. The biggest shift of working class voters was actually from the CDU to the AfD.
That's becoming the story all over Europe and the US. Center-left (Democrats) started to focus too much on post-material issues (identity politics, immigration, climate) and forgot economic issues. Far-right parties just took the torch and ran with it...especially on immigration which does affect directly the working class (in both salaries and housing/rent prices). Good job guys!
Edit: added (in both salaries and housing/rent prices). To explain that, for many working class folks, they see immigration affecting negatively housing/rent prices and salaries. Thus, voting for the far-right would benefit them economically, even though some of the far-right other economic policies seem to be more economically conservative.
Post-material issues is a very good way to put it. These are issues that concern people with enough of either income, job security, or both that paying bills is not their biggest issue. As workers have gotten richer this has become a bigger concern. But workers generally don't have the same opinions that socialist intellectuals have. So the soc-dems appeal to leftist knowledge workers in the government sector (think teachers). The downtrodden don't care about identity politics, and most workers prefer the right-wing's take on identity politics. It's not looking great for the soc-dems in their traditional strongholds.
Not sure if you know, but postmaterialism is a real concept, not just a term the comment above invented. And you actually describe it very closely to the definitions.
A lot of words are like that. most people don't know the definition of most words we often just learn them intuitively. Language is super interesting because I didn't know it was a proper term but I would have also guessed the same thing.
>Center-left (Democrats) started to focus too much on post-material issues (identity politics, immigration, climate)
The funny thing is that this really isn't too much the case with SPD, those topics are more associated with the Greens in Germany.
I think the issues lie deeper. Social programs like unemployment don't really give you working class voters, because - well - they work for their money. They just want to earn enough to live comfortably. So things like a good wage and cheap housing would be core focus points, as well as job security. I guess the politics there weren't great enough?
Also the right does a great job all over the west to focus on cultural topics that don't benefit any working class person, but align with a more traditional understanding of certain values...
> Social programs like unemployment don't really give you working class voters
There also isn't any old school class solidarity anymore. I found that currently working people often oppose strong support for the unemployed because they see it as lazy people leeching of their hard earned tax euros. People on unemployment still largely vote leftwing, but you can't win an election with a coalition of the economically inactive.
If people were actually pretending to read the parties programs they would realize that most right wing parties want to implement policies that absolutely fuck over anyone but the richest ten percent.
Genuinely curios, if you have the time to spend, does any party in Germany right now, advocate any policy that would directly and immediately benefit existing workers, and not in a roundabout way like: renewables will create new markets with new jobs, or if climate change comes we are all fucked so everybody needs to make sacrifices right now, its not corporate greed but inflation due to war/pandemic/etc so no price controls, the debt brake is good we need more austerity not less, etc...
You know, something that would increase the buying power of regular people, something that would make it easier to live for regular people, with their regular habits and needs and ways of living?
The left forgot to be the left. Growing up the left was the working class, it was basic kitchen table issues, it was healthcare, jobs and education and now it feels like so much of the left has been captured by elitists and the university ivory tower class that severed the connection to its traditional blue collar base.
> That's becoming the story all over Europe and the US
I mean the writings were on the wall 20 years ago (at least) for anything with half a brain cell.
In the U.S. Democrats have in the last 4 years only gained grounds in one Demographic: The College Educated. And lost ground in non-college educated, nonwhite, and the young.
So yeah these post-material issues are all luxury beliefs they appear to be apparently primarily from their college educations.
And even though Climate in particular is relatively popular across the board I think the focus on some of these is alienating to those that did not have the college experience where these things were pushed and they do not relate to that context.
Based on the Gallup poll that has pretty much stayed constant since 1999
https://news.gallup.com/poll/609776/democrats-lose-ground-black-hispanic-adults.aspx#:~:text=The%2027%25%20of%20U.S.%20adults,new%20lows%20in%20Gallup's%20trend.
No surprise with that leadership. Scholz is on his way to become the worst German chancellor in recent history. Zero Charisma and zero leadership skills. And when he actually says something, he always acts like a arrogant prick.
I don’t know what they’ll say in Germany. In Italy, representatives of left-wing parties, faced with results like these, usually say that it is the voters who are wrong, and that is why they will lose more and more votes.
In Germany, they say that they just have to explain better why their take is the only reasonable one.
I'm not sure if they don't get that they are implying with this that anybody who disagrees is an idiot....
It is a global phenomenon. Working class people want less immigration, particularly from Islamic countries, and consider climate change a lower priority than Social democrats typically do.
Well the SPD selling point became "We are not the CDU" And "We are the ne racist" So of course the SPD falls off. Why should someone be bothered to vote a party with almost no identiy.
That's what you get when you destroy the worker class with higher taxes just to give financial presents to illigal migrants who never paid a single euro for anything here.
12% are 12 too much.
People would be surprised how many of those have a migrant background. The majority of those where I work are pro afd, even the ones without german citizenship.
I used to work in a German workplace that had a lot of Hungarian workers doing minimum wage work. They were mostly rabidly anti ~~Muslim~~ immigrant, at least the ones that spoke enough German to have a coherent conversation with. I was also an immigrant\*, so I was often having immigrants tell me -an immigrant- in broken German how awful it was that so many immigrants were overrunning Germany. Fun times.
\*I should say that I am white and I speak German, so I was never the target of their complaining. They figured I shared their beliefs.
I can explain this mentality if you like.
Germany is seen as a place of financial opportunity and high development from a cultural, technological, and administrative standpoint. If you come from Eastern Europe you have had quite enough of shit that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, people who are antisocial in the sense of always wanting to rip you off and who seem to have zero sense of responsibility toward their society and fellow citizens, and of a general sense of having to fight against your society to achieve success, rather than work with it to better your life.
If you get to Germany and see the same problems, the same asshole mentality you’ve seen ruin your country, and you see it held by non-Germans, it sure seems easy to figure out what’s wrong. The Germany of timely trains, of thanking your boss and shaking his hand after your shift, of achieving as long as you stuck to the rules - that’s all been replaced by entitled migrants who don’t integrate, don’t work, and don’t respect the country you’ve lionized as being better than the one you came from.
That is the mentality summed up. Can’t say it’s wholly correct, but can’t say it’s wholly incorrect either.
Sounds about right.
If I moved across the world to Japan because I heard the Japanese are hardworking and organised and I like sushi, and when I arrived it was filled with fat Americans, McDonald’s and pizza hut I’d want the immigrants out too.
I had the same experience. I was once in an argument with a man who was furious at Merkel for “destroying her country and letting in all the Syrians”. The guy was a newly arrived Syrian refugee.
You do know that not all syrians think the same right. Like there are ex-muslims/liberals/non-muslims who don’t want germany to turn into what they escaped from.
it's mostly about security. an immigrant doesn't care about more immigrants coming in if they are hardworking and follow the laws and culture of the place they emigrate to. most just want to get rid of those who don't do that. and security impacts lower class since they don't live in gated neighborhoods, they have to take public transport where immigrants mostly pickpocket and assault.
Immigration is not a binary issue and no mainstream party has a full stop as part of their platform. The [AfD is proposing a Japanese model](https://www.afd.de/wahlprogramm-asyl-einwanderung/), which ironically Germany is already taking steps towards with [Hubertus Heil's points-system](https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/2024/05/chancenkarte-feg.html), albeit much more primitive for now.
My point is that immigrants or people with an immigrant background can't be expected to be OK with the current migration policy & its effects just because they're migrants themselves. There's a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, skill-levels, attachments to the host country out there and they're not all necessarily compatible with one another.
It's interesting to see how, quite often, the very people who advocate for minorities' rights, also assume that only a certain political spectrum is legitimately available to said minorities and everything else is considered weird, unnatural, nonsensical. I'd go as far as calling it patronising. 2c
In Italy we have the far right and the immigration is worse than ever, because immigration is useful to the corporates, which is the one that the right protects. They can't give a rat ass for the working people.
Especially because suppose they find the magical silver bullet to "fix" immigration within constitutional and EU limits, why would people still vote for them after? They have no interest whatsoever in tackling what they proclaim to be an existential national problem.
Yeah, pretty sure there were some leaked text messages of far right politicians and they basically embraced more immigration cause it will get them more voters. They put on a big show and people are being fooled.
Exactly this. Let's be honest here, migration is a thing and should be fixed. And the problem isn't really refugees, it's people from safe countries that come in as refugees (algeria and morocco). The EU seriously needs a legal basis to deal with that, because they seriously fuck things up here. But doing that will most likely kill the support for the right, because that's basically their only selling point.
It's not even that. Most of the problems people observe with immigrant communities stem from second or third generation immigrants. As in, they're natural born citizens, they're in the eyes of the law Germans, etc. You can't legally kick your own citizens out of the country. But that's what the voters believe is going to happen.
These communities are lashing out and gravitating to their roots because they have been disenfranchised since their families came here.
These problems stem from decades of mismanagement and integration. Yeah, ofcourse when you shove economic migrants into rundown neighborhoods and strangle their economic opportunities, you start creating segregated communities. If you were to hypothetically close the borders entirely, how does that solve any of the problems they associate with immigration? It doesn't.
In Spain, the discourse is very much oriented towards irregular immigration, especially from countries with a Muslim culture. European citizens are not considered immigrants.
I think it also depends on numbers: in the UK, for example, anti-migrant discourse is centred more around immigration from Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc), as that's where some of the most visible migrant communities come from, while in Germany it's more focussed on the Near and Middle East (Turkey, Syria), and in Italy on North Africa.
It's not just that they're not causing problems. They'll learn the language, they'll marry a local, they'll integrate into the society.
Unlike the majority of the middle eastern immigrants who will seclude themselves in their neighbourhoods, they'll not even try to integrate into the current society.
that's the thing exactly, that's what people don't want.
noone minds a person of a different colour as long as they abide by the societal norms in place. acting like you're still in Syria or wherever else you came from and DEMANDING people start following YOUR rules... what the actual fuck
Or at least they aren't so obvious about it nor causing a feeling of immediate personal danger.
A normal citizen might not notice a shop used for money laundering or selling items without the proper certifications, but he will certainly be aware of the group of young men robbing people at the train station and raping women.
To be fair I'd much rather get rid of the second one. I don't care if the shop on the corner is laundering money but I would care if my family wouldn't feel safe outside.
In the Netherlands yes. The mentality is they work hard and don't commit crimes because their parents actually tries to raise them as decent human beings.
In my own experience this is often a stereotype which is quite correct.
They’re not talking about European immigrants (with the exception of Serbia because of history). They’re mainly talking about immigrants from Middle East and Africa.
The general line is anti low skill immigrant workers who tend to be from the Middle East and North Africa. There will sometimes be anti-immigration attitudes to European nations (for example in the UK, Polish immigrants).
The effect of mass low skill immigration is complex. Some may argue that it lowers wages but research finds it hard to conclude that either way ([here](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/#)). What is known is that mass low skill immigration hasn’t helped with GDP per capita ([here](https://www.oecd.org/migration/OECD%20Migration%20Policy%20Debates%20Numero%202.pdf)). What is also known that non-Western immigrants tend to cost more in terms of unemployment benefits etc ([Germany claims up to 45% of people on unemployment are non-German citizens](https://m.focus.de/politik/deutschland/schwarzer-kanal/die-focus-kolumne-von-jan-fleischhauer-wir-belohnen-die-falschen_id_194852496.html)) ([Denmark finds that non-Danish and non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of benefits](https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-turned-against-immigration?ppccampaignID=&ppcadID=&ppcgclID=&utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA-bmsBhAGEiwAoaQNmpfKrk8c1dQLkpEmBn6EOb1lXPwMx4XqNsHyDKci8UJirgdhMcMhxxoCIwkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)). A lot of the anti-immigration attitude towards MENA is fuelled by a view that they are coming there for the benefits and an easy life whilst making things harder for local people.
In addition to this is the aspects like changing demographics. For example in the two largest UK cities, White British people make up only 36.8% of the population in London and 42.9% in Birmingham. It’s hard to get data like this for other nations as they tend to not record ethnicity (Germany and Italy do not). There’s a sense of unease about the intangible things like cultural changes related to this.
>Do they talk about all immigrants, or specifically to immigrants from the Middle East, Ukraine, Serbia, other EU members states?
99% have a problem with MENA, the cultural difference between a person from Ukraine, and germany is far smaller then germany and syria.
I've always thought this. Right Wing economics wants higher immigration. We all agree immigration is a problem, and most people across European countries are sick of their parties ignoring immigration. But despite all those parties being broadly capitalist/neolib in some variety, I don't get how the protest vote is.. going further right wing. Like, the ideologies that prioritise private profits over workers' needs, you think THEY'RE gonna be the ones to have your back?
Same thing happened in the UK 10 years ago. Nationalist parties got popular, but focused their energy into Brexit. Lo and behold the Right Wingers just got filthy rich, immigration continued, and the working population are even worse off.
I understand many left wing parties are not outwardly anti-immigration, but that's the direction we need to go. The right will never actually curtail immigration, it goes against their base economic goals.
The newly formed German party BSW (Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht, named after the party leader) has exactly this platform - anti-immigration and socialism - and got 5,8% in this election, respectable for a new party. Unfortunately, Sarah Wagenknecht is a russophile and still believes that the Ukraine war can be talked out, so there's that.
Number one issue for most europeans is immigration as long as the right wing parties Are the only ones taking it seriously then they will gain a massive voter base Even if their program is shit
It’s not immigration per se. It is about unskilled people with drastically uneuropean values. It’s all fun and games except when you’re so poor that your forced to live in working class neighbourhoods.
Centrist politicians must make Germany and Europe a more attractive destination for high skilled students and workers. And accept that the generosity with others has reached its limit, no matter how dreadful the situation in their home countries is.
The problem is, at least in my country, that people pay a lot of taxes on their not extremely high wages to pay for an ever-growing number of people who can't or won't contribute and get less and less in return each year. That alone doesn't make us very attractive to highly-skilled people, because they can earn more elsewhere.
As long as you define „Take it seriously“ as „Promise to solve the issue and make sure no brown people can get in anymore without ANY feasible plan on how to actually go about it“ then yes, they’re „taking it seriously“.
People should stop listening to empty promises, but they just keep making the same mistakes.
What do you mean? Conservatives in the UK and Italy have followed through on their promises.
https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/brexit-net-migration-rishi-sunak-uk-immigration/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/24/italy-immigration-right-wing-meloni-migrant-crisis/
Oh wait, nvm, they've just made it much worse for everyone.
Most "working class" people I've had a chance to talk to just wanted something different, no matter the consequences. I live in a fairly well-functioning community, but some of my friends live in eastern Germany in rather poor neighborhoods. I've seen the shit they are dealing with and it does not surprise me one bit that the AFD scored up to 40% there. It's not just all Nazis or victim mentality. I fully expected those election results.
They always say what people want to hear... today this, tomorow that...
best example: farmer protests -> They want to cut all subsidies, but are protesting with the farmers together against the tiny lowering of the Diesel subsidies.
Immigration is their #1 issue, which, to be fair, does impact the working class. The left could win back a lot of this vote by moderating their position on immigration.
> The left could win back a lot of this vote by moderating their position on immigration.
They are actually kinda doing that, moderate anti-immigration laws aren't what the AfD-voters want though. They want everyone kicked out from the groups they don't like, even if they have only german nationality. It's something that can't be done without completely abolishing our constitution and the far-right politicians absolutely know that
Nope. Look at their program:
1. Demokratie und Grundwerte
2. Europa und EURO
3. Innere Sicherheit und Justiz
4. Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik
5. Arbeitsmarkt und Sozialpolitik
6. Familien und Kinder
7. Kultur, Sprache und Identität
https://www.afd.de/grundsatzprogramm/
So their no.1 issue is to change the voting law to get rid of public financing of parties and to be able to criminally prosecute local non-afd leaders.
Their no. 2 issue is dismantling the Euro and the EU.
No. 3 is removing the guard rails for what policemen are allowed to do.
You may think no.4 is about immigration, but no, it's about dismantling NATO and sucking up to Putin.
No, getting rid of the immigrants is hidden at no. 7 under Culture, language and identity.
Let me try to explain: "but the greEeEeEeEens" something along these lines.
You could show their voters the program but they just don't care.
I don't understand it either.
People are fed up with identity policy and bad behavior of immigrants and their children.
There needs to be a drastic change in terms of immigration and family policy or else there is a coalition between CDU/CSU and AfD upcoming.
I am not supporting the AfD btw. What I am saying is that closing the eyes in front of the immigration problem and calling everyone a nazi who criticizes immigrants lead to this.
RemindMe! 90 days
I know you’re describing Germany, but you could have just as well been talking about the US, or many other nations in the west. The same sentiments are everywhere.
The pendulum is swinging. 1990-2005 was fairly conservative, then 1-2 decades liberal/left wing policies followed and now the pendulum swings back to the right.
Liberal sure, but the pendulum hasn't swung to the left wing in decades or even in a century in some places in Europe, lmao. Idnk why people think that, for example in Germany, the Soci Dem party is still anything like it was pre-1900 or even pre 1917.
People use the word "liberal" erroneously.
"Liberal" by itself means very little in today's political climate. You need to specify if you mean economically liberal, which is traditionally a right-wing thing, or socially liberal, which is traditionally the left's domain.
Economic and social policy sets are disconnected from one another.
Europe has been socially liberal for a long, long, *long* time now. There was a brief social conservative backlash after the liberal era starting in '68, but that backlash ended decades ago.
I think the reason people say that they're voting wrong is that the parties on the right tend to have policies, other than the immigration/woke/green stuff, that would be against the interests of low income people. They're often very much in support of lower taxes for high earners, lower government services and spending, anti-union, anti-reproductive health, anti-social welfare, etc.
People get sucked in by the very emotive and exciting, but less tangible, anti-immigrant stuff but seem to not pay attention to the stuff that would have more concrete effects in the short to mid-term.
Exactly, it's probably the left who is to blame for losing the support of its natural voters, who feel abandoned. But thinking that the far right is going to defend your rights as a working class person... Pfff
Left is definitely to blame for abandoning their traditional voters. It's pretty traditional leftist position that migrant workers are undermining wages for working class people which is only benefiting the elites that get to pay them pennies.
There's a trade union leader here (UK) who has done very well over the last couple of years in speaking in favour of striking workers not just in his union but in many others and in general about putting the class war the socio-economic elite are waging front and centre in his televised interviews. Every now and then someone will pop up to present his pro-Brexit stance as being some kind of 'gotacha' as to how he's wrong or not left wing enough and I can't help but marvel at how stupid that is. What you've outlined is precisely why someone like him would be in favour of Brexit, it's old school left putting your workers first.
In Sweden this is how
Blue-collar workers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/JdJw6Is.png
White-collar workers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/EAjaEOD.png
Business owners and farmers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/4TzVsaQ.png
It would be interesting to see these statistics for other countries as well
if is that easy, the "you're voting wrong" team just need to made their good politics for those people AND also do the very emotive and exciting stuff that people seems to care too.
This is exactly how my peer group feels and these are young fathers in their thirties with above average incomes. They see reality is very different from what left or center parties tell them. You still pay huge taxes while in the past you would also get first world services and infrastructure in return. Now everything that it's supposed to pay for is shit, from the justice system to infrastructure and roads.
Crime is up, data shows most of it is migrants, above 60% of people receiving welfare are migrants in Germany. At the same time you pay boatloads of money for childcare or healthcare which quality sucks and is given for free to illegals as well. You feel like you are an idiot when you are working hard to support your family, like you are being taken advantage of.
And what do supposed worker parties that represent working people campaign for? Woke bullshit and more migration.
Assimilation is impossible with mass immigration.
Flip the script for a moment.
If 10,000 young, liberal Europeans mass emigrated to and formed a racial ghetto in Saudi Arabia, would we suddenly start believing that women are inferior, and that homosexuals should be put to death, and abortion should be banned?.
Ask this to the average young, liberal European, and he will say no, his beliefs are sacrosanct.
It's yet more bigotry of low expectations. Its the notion that those poor, benighted 3rd worlders only think what they think because they haven't had a white person to educate them otherwise.
The problem is that while far right populists are great at talking to the working class and sounding like they can solve all their problems, it’s all bluff. Their “solutions” are either ineffective, impossible or straight up nonexistent, but people get caught up in the charisma of conmen who feel no shame telling straight up lies. It ends up becoming about what *feels* right, not what will actually improve people’s lives. Just look at the UK. People with real, serious problems were fed the lie that Brexit would solve their problems, came to feel strongly about it, and ended up voting for a fatamorgana that the conmen proposing had no actual plan to implement and which has been making everything worse since.
The only solution is for parties with actual policies to get their act together and actually make people’s lives better. Unfortunately, the only lesson the mainstream parties seem to be taking from the rise of the far right is to copy their empty rethoric for cheap points. (Hi, Danish Social Democrats) Why improve conditions for the working class when you can get their votes just by banging on some about inconsequential scapegoat issue? Who cares if all the factories are moving away, public services are in the toilet and you’ll never get to retire - we banned niqabs!
He also got caught in a corruption scandal where he very likely took Chinese money and met with Chinese security agents. These people are literally a danger to our current way of life and idiots keep voting them in because they fall for populism.
Not just populism, online bots and propaganda are doing a number on people who don't bother to fact check and simply share those lies between themselves.
We needed to start banning fake news yesterday. It's too late now.
I really can't argue with your reasoning, if someone was defending SS soldiers I'd end up doing the same thing as you, people shouldn't be defending SS Soldiers.
That also applies to me, my grandfather fought in the Second World War.
He said to my father: If you see something like this ever happening again, do something! Be loud and not quiet. If you stay quiet, you'll end up in a mess like the one I experienced.
(My grandfather distributed the newspaper of the "Zentrumspartei" until it became too dangerous and he was threatened in the pub because of it)
Yeah, it's all shadow debates. They create problems that don't exist and want to sell you the solution to them. Then these people say that the AfD is the only one talking about these problems.
Exactly and also: they talk also about real exisiting problems but make them bigger as they actually are. In my opinion its tactical so that they stop making them big as soon as they are on power. So they have a "cost-free" win for their own and can see: look now things are better.
Dude, I once also agreed with your point of view once and was understanding because I too know where they're coming from. I live in one of the biggest voter bases. My parents are AfD hardcore voters. Yes, the problems don't originate in disinformation campaigns, but have way deeper roots. Roots that can be summarised with: Poverty (Who would've guessed, it's always the same). But guess what? They're not innocent unknowing people who just need the right empathy and understanding to guide them to a better decision. Nope, they're lost beyond saving and indeed stupid. Not necessarily stupid because they fall for obvious disinformation and encupsulate themselves in their own worlds and let themselves be played with like lego toys. But stupid, because they're, even with many years of live experience, still that naive that they fall for populists promising them solutions while it's obvious and a lesson learned by anyone, that almost nobody will give those solutions to you. They're always empty promises basically because ...shits complicated yo. So I'm now with anyone who just blocks them and calls them what they are: stupid nazis. Of course this won't solve shit and doesn't get anyone to overthink his standing, but the other way around is hopeless as well. This fight is over. The only way out is to apparently repeat history as always, and fall and hurt one self.
I mean redditors are a profoundly irrelevant voting bloc and aren't representative of anything.
That's why I don't give a fuck if I'm downvoted by them.
Yeah, no matter how you twist or turn it: AfD is not a workers' party. Never has been and never will be. Besides the whole "foreigners out" thing, their program is entirely based on neoliberalism: They want to set a flatline income tax at about 25% - which would amount to a massive tax hike for most low to medium incomes. They want to all but gut the welfare state. Workplace accident insurance, mandatory by law and entirely paid for by your employer, is supposed to become privatized, made optional and turned into an employee's responsibility - so each high-risk profession actually needing one is almost certain to be deemed uninsurable.
So, even if you are willing to ignore them being openly fascist at this point, planning an authoritarian power grab that would make some dictatorships blush, voting for them whilst not being a member of the top-10% will never be in your financial interest period. But hey, as long as there's someone treated more miserably...
I don't think they call the AfD voters stupid for having different opinions, but the AfD has been very clear about wanting to destroy most worker's protection which makes this kinda insane. LGBT+ topics or gender quotas won't impact their life nearly as much as actual worker's rights.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not moving on my pro lgbt+ stances, I want to live freely in my country and have the same rights as everyone else, no matter who I love. But topics like immigration and energy policies are absolutely valid points to talk about. But it couldn't be more clear that the AfD is not going to solve any of those problems, and the CDU is the party that put us in the current position.
So let's vote for a party that has been in power for the last 20 years and literally made it their thing to ignore problems.
CDU was in power for decades and they didn't do shit at all....
So no. People don't vote when problems are ignored, people vote when anything even slightly upsets them because they're highly inflexible and opposed to any change while completely ignoring that some change is invitable.
AfD is making empty promises and anyone with two brain cells should notice it (easy example: they had two ads up one campaigned for being self sufficent, the other promised to use gas power plants over green energy .. which one is it? Germany doesn't own gas fields, so the moment you increase power generation through gas you push germany into a higher dependency from different nations) It's just blatant bullshit spouting.
Sad but True. The CDU/CSU fucked up big time for the past decades. But people are too ignorant to understand that the currently leading parties are not responsible for everything happening. Tough times have always lead to people being radicalized by extermist parties who use the opportunity to spread their ideologies. I am not even a fan of the social and green parties, but the current missjudgment of facts in Germany is insane.
It's a lot of lies and narrative pushing too.
I remember a twitter post going through the channels of a CSU memeber bitching how our money right now is going to weird projects like cycling trails in peru and development aid in china and a few more examples.
What that asshat didn't say is that those were all things that were decided on when his party was still in power for one and on top that ht simply lied about the development aid for china (which where development loans in truth) and the cycling pathways were part of a global responsibility by not just germany but all developed nations towards developing nations.. but none of the people spouting that stuff cared to research any of it, they read it, called it shit and moved on....
People vote for populists because they like to imagine the problems are as easy to solve as those say.
edit: I absolutely love the irony of many responses to this comment reading exactly like a typical populist rhetoric. Yes, we know you guys think all the problems boil down to your singular pet peeve and you like to believe anybody who repeats those simplistic narratives. Even better if they promise that the solution has always been easy and right in front of everybody. Yes, we know all that about you guys, you don't need to prove my point.
Denmark crushed their populist pro Russian right wing party by having the Social Democrats be tough on immigration and law and order.
It went from 21.1% in 2015 to 2.1% in 2022.
Mannheim stabbings took place 10 days ago, and nobody can't comment otherwise they'd be labeled in one way or the other, and people still wonder why AfD gets so many votes?!?!?
PS: don't get me wrong, I would never support a far-right party, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand why some people do it...
I'm also not aware of a single Muslim anti-islamist rally or protest, it's sad that there never seems to be a large outcry from Germany's Muslim population after Islamist terror, instead, there is a rally against the right a few days after.
I'm not an AfD-apologist, but it's pretty clear to me that people interpret this as hostility against the wrong group which radicalizes them further.
This is it. It's not that left-wing parties don't want to tackle immigration (they do), it's that we've created this atmosphere where saying anything negative about migration is akin to being racist. And I say 'we' because I consider myself left-wing too (both in my voting behaviour and my beliefs).
We have this this thing going where not only do we think we're correct in our ideologies (obviously, as does everyone) but that we're also morally and ethically superior to the other side because of our views and opinions. We don't just disagree with anti-migration sentiments, they're morally reprehensible to us.
I can only imagine how desperate people must be when they keep seeing their problems (real or perceived) exacerbated by migration policies, and whenever they try to address those problems they are labeled a racist.
And in their desperation they turn to populism.
Apparently people have not figured this out yet: it's about immigration. stop immigration tomorrow and the AfD can disband itself the week after. You can all beat about the bush and talk about "uneducated voters", "populist campaigns", "propaganda" or "lower class burdened by weakening economy" but last but not least you all need to realize that voters just don't like people of vastly different and incompatible cultures to immigrate here...
Edit: Just because some might misunderstand certain points about my comment:
1. Of course we need immigration. But we need a target search practice for low and high skilled immigrants from all over the world and not just open the door for everybody (Look at the US or New Zealand for good examples).
2. You can all call me racist for saying „incompatible culture“ but it is a fact that a certain religion propagates things that clash with western values (in regards to women’s rights, democratic practices, tolerance for different sexual orientations or individual freedoms). You all know it’s true ;)
I always wondered how does the left reconcile it's extreme unpopularity with the proletariat with its image of being a political movement looking out for the interests of the proletariat.
Uh oh, time to call anyone complaining about immigration a racist Nazi, that’s definitely worked to stop the growth of far-right parties over the past 10 years!
Edit: People didn’t get the point. Had politicians listened to people concerned about the insane migration intake and acted instead of disregarding them as racist nazis etc etc for 10+ years, we wouldn’t be having to contend with actual neo-nazis.
Seems to be a world wide trend. They have told us who to blame and promised to punish them, without doing so. All while destroying the social fabric under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
"Neoliberal" parties are failing to solve the same problems across the Western world such as low wage growth, very high house prices, low birth rates, immigration and more. So people in response will vote for an alternative to the current establishment, this is why right wing populist parties gain support. But the problem is these right wing populist parties don't know how to solve any of these problems themselves when they actually come into power and major issues never get solved.
To put it figuratively the left no longer represents the vulnerable working class guy but rather the soy latte drinking hipster who is busy virtue signaling.
A dude driving a forklift has nothing to do with the modern left wing parties. He may be looking favorably towards LGBT emancipation but this is not his primary concern.
So this trend is going to continue as long as the left will ignore their natural voter base.
The trans forklift driver doesn't give a shit for the correct pronouns if they can't pay their bills after a 40+ hour week. That's where the left all over the world, failed the working class heroes.
they don‘t ignore them though. if you look at the actual day to day politics and not the ragebaiting shitstain that is online discourse you will notice pretty quickly that the people *actually doing worker-friendly politics* in the parliaments are still left-wingers. people simply don‘t give enough of a fuck to check what politicians actually do on a day-to-day basis. they just listen to the loudest guy that can provoke as much outrage as possible. and that‘s why I‘ll happily call anyone voting for AfD & Co. an idiot. because it shows me that they didn‘t even care enough to form an opinion on things in a reasonable manner.
I’m not saying that you are wrong but the above results seem to directly contradict your theory.
Roughly 1 in 5 Germans is an idiot? But wasn’t an idiot 10 years ago when AfD had a fringe following? I don’t think idiocy is the key here. Something else is a factor
A lot of voters are either unwilling or uncaring to do real, deep dive research on the parties they support. If so, yes - such voters are idiots. They take their right to vote lightly and that’s stupid.
Let me give you an example using Polish farmers.
Over the last months, Polish farmers have been vehemently protesting the European Green Deal. To the point of going on nationwide strikes and blocking borders.
And then the majority of them voted on PiS today - the very same party who agreed to and signed on the Green Deal.
Supporting people who back policies you absolutely hate is… *not a sign of exceptional cognitive ability* xD.
if we let not business or humanitarian, but institutional defenders to present us (as republicans, centrists and ecologicals), we would forgot about the facists, but when leaders are corrupt and ineffective - you can't expect anything else, except separation on different camps (divided by the intelligence for real and also which century you prefer).
The fate of all left parties who forget their base. Happened in UK, US, now Germany. Turns out gender fluidity and intersectionality are not the main concerns of the working class. Who knew.
But they will not change. Denial of reality is the halmark of the ideologue (left or right).
I thought the idea of democracy was to allow people to have their own opinions, to make their voices be heard and be hold equal to others. Maybe I’m wrong.
That’s the German word Union btw (meaning the Union of the CDU and the CSU, the big Christian party and their Bavarian off-shoot). Not a labor party… just felt like I should clarify that
So is it right-wing?
It's Germanies big traditional conservative party. It leaned more centrist under Merkel, but shifted to the right since.
Centre right wing, but they would never use the term right wing but instead conservative. Its Merkel's party that isn't so much against asylum seekers, but fights to the death right now on trying to reverse the new cannabis legalization for example. They are the typical old people are afraid of the future but not completely lost party.
You mean the party that was totally fine with the cannabis legalization while trying to form a coalition but now that the AfD gets more votes than them they just repeat everything they say?
They're incredibly opportunistic but mostly stick with what's popular with old people. And business. The latter pays the bills.
i think they are completely lost. a party that portrays Stillstand better than all the others
On the conservative end of center Mostly they're just corrupt
Only 12% SPD is crazy low. They royally screwed up with their main voter base over the last few years. They should really think about where they put their political focus.
first of all, they need a chancelor, who gets his fckn mouth open.
Their poster for this vote was „The strongest voices for Europe!“. I wish I was joking.
Was chuckling every time I saw that too
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you can't open your mouth if you need to pretend to not remember anything.
Actually the Dutch prime minister is quite good at that
so is the german chancellor. (not opening his mouth, so he doesn't show that he actually remembers.
The Dutch prime minister is even able to open his mouth and not remember at the same time
I'd take one, who didn't allow banks to steal billions of tax money.
That is apparently not the voters primary concern, as they flocked to AfD and CDU. The parties with the highest amount of embezzler, personal enrichers and fraudsters.
They only care about immigration and gas prices
While they (and everyone else) definitely should concern themselves with the former. Gini-coefficient rises in wealth, more and more unsolidarity. But hey, why should the workers have their own interests in mind, when they can be steered to vote and work for the ones of others.
More lecturing about what the working class *should* want and not about *what it actually wants*! That will surely solve everything!!!! /s
*is not a criminal in a position to disguise his very own crimes
While being true that the SPD lost contact to their historical voter base the party has long moved on to focus more on a very broad social democratic policy. With limited success as can be seen for 20 years now. Its ironic that it wasnt the CDU but actually the SPD that introduced the Agenda 2010 back then, which can be regarded a backstab of their traditional voters as it meant a clear backstep of social securities. Most of the working class voters have long turned conservative though. The "opponent" to blame are no longer greedy companies but foreigners that utilize the social welfare the SPD still tries to stand for. The biggest shift of working class voters was actually from the CDU to the AfD.
That's becoming the story all over Europe and the US. Center-left (Democrats) started to focus too much on post-material issues (identity politics, immigration, climate) and forgot economic issues. Far-right parties just took the torch and ran with it...especially on immigration which does affect directly the working class (in both salaries and housing/rent prices). Good job guys! Edit: added (in both salaries and housing/rent prices). To explain that, for many working class folks, they see immigration affecting negatively housing/rent prices and salaries. Thus, voting for the far-right would benefit them economically, even though some of the far-right other economic policies seem to be more economically conservative.
Post-material issues is a very good way to put it. These are issues that concern people with enough of either income, job security, or both that paying bills is not their biggest issue. As workers have gotten richer this has become a bigger concern. But workers generally don't have the same opinions that socialist intellectuals have. So the soc-dems appeal to leftist knowledge workers in the government sector (think teachers). The downtrodden don't care about identity politics, and most workers prefer the right-wing's take on identity politics. It's not looking great for the soc-dems in their traditional strongholds.
Not sure if you know, but postmaterialism is a real concept, not just a term the comment above invented. And you actually describe it very closely to the definitions.
A lot of words are like that. most people don't know the definition of most words we often just learn them intuitively. Language is super interesting because I didn't know it was a proper term but I would have also guessed the same thing.
>Center-left (Democrats) started to focus too much on post-material issues (identity politics, immigration, climate) The funny thing is that this really isn't too much the case with SPD, those topics are more associated with the Greens in Germany. I think the issues lie deeper. Social programs like unemployment don't really give you working class voters, because - well - they work for their money. They just want to earn enough to live comfortably. So things like a good wage and cheap housing would be core focus points, as well as job security. I guess the politics there weren't great enough? Also the right does a great job all over the west to focus on cultural topics that don't benefit any working class person, but align with a more traditional understanding of certain values...
> Social programs like unemployment don't really give you working class voters There also isn't any old school class solidarity anymore. I found that currently working people often oppose strong support for the unemployed because they see it as lazy people leeching of their hard earned tax euros. People on unemployment still largely vote leftwing, but you can't win an election with a coalition of the economically inactive.
If people were actually pretending to read the parties programs they would realize that most right wing parties want to implement policies that absolutely fuck over anyone but the richest ten percent.
Genuinely curios, if you have the time to spend, does any party in Germany right now, advocate any policy that would directly and immediately benefit existing workers, and not in a roundabout way like: renewables will create new markets with new jobs, or if climate change comes we are all fucked so everybody needs to make sacrifices right now, its not corporate greed but inflation due to war/pandemic/etc so no price controls, the debt brake is good we need more austerity not less, etc... You know, something that would increase the buying power of regular people, something that would make it easier to live for regular people, with their regular habits and needs and ways of living?
The left forgot to be the left. Growing up the left was the working class, it was basic kitchen table issues, it was healthcare, jobs and education and now it feels like so much of the left has been captured by elitists and the university ivory tower class that severed the connection to its traditional blue collar base.
> That's becoming the story all over Europe and the US I mean the writings were on the wall 20 years ago (at least) for anything with half a brain cell.
In the U.S. Democrats have in the last 4 years only gained grounds in one Demographic: The College Educated. And lost ground in non-college educated, nonwhite, and the young. So yeah these post-material issues are all luxury beliefs they appear to be apparently primarily from their college educations. And even though Climate in particular is relatively popular across the board I think the focus on some of these is alienating to those that did not have the college experience where these things were pushed and they do not relate to that context.
The democrats have gained in one enormous demographic that everyone forgets about. Women.
Based on the Gallup poll that has pretty much stayed constant since 1999 https://news.gallup.com/poll/609776/democrats-lose-ground-black-hispanic-adults.aspx#:~:text=The%2027%25%20of%20U.S.%20adults,new%20lows%20in%20Gallup's%20trend.
Sounds like something the greedy companies and billionaires want tbh.
No surprise with that leadership. Scholz is on his way to become the worst German chancellor in recent history. Zero Charisma and zero leadership skills. And when he actually says something, he always acts like a arrogant prick.
I don’t know what they’ll say in Germany. In Italy, representatives of left-wing parties, faced with results like these, usually say that it is the voters who are wrong, and that is why they will lose more and more votes.
In Germany, they say that they just have to explain better why their take is the only reasonable one. I'm not sure if they don't get that they are implying with this that anybody who disagrees is an idiot....
It is a global phenomenon. Working class people want less immigration, particularly from Islamic countries, and consider climate change a lower priority than Social democrats typically do.
it's not just in Germany....I think social-democrats in whole EU are going down faster than a bag of bricks
Well the SPD selling point became "We are not the CDU" And "We are the ne racist" So of course the SPD falls off. Why should someone be bothered to vote a party with almost no identiy.
The same is true for the CDU, yet they sort of manage. Seriously what is their policy platform besides „we are not the Ampel“?
>over the last few years you spelt *decades* weird
That's what you get when you destroy the worker class with higher taxes just to give financial presents to illigal migrants who never paid a single euro for anything here. 12% are 12 too much.
People would be surprised how many of those have a migrant background. The majority of those where I work are pro afd, even the ones without german citizenship.
I used to work in a German workplace that had a lot of Hungarian workers doing minimum wage work. They were mostly rabidly anti ~~Muslim~~ immigrant, at least the ones that spoke enough German to have a coherent conversation with. I was also an immigrant\*, so I was often having immigrants tell me -an immigrant- in broken German how awful it was that so many immigrants were overrunning Germany. Fun times. \*I should say that I am white and I speak German, so I was never the target of their complaining. They figured I shared their beliefs.
I can explain this mentality if you like. Germany is seen as a place of financial opportunity and high development from a cultural, technological, and administrative standpoint. If you come from Eastern Europe you have had quite enough of shit that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, people who are antisocial in the sense of always wanting to rip you off and who seem to have zero sense of responsibility toward their society and fellow citizens, and of a general sense of having to fight against your society to achieve success, rather than work with it to better your life. If you get to Germany and see the same problems, the same asshole mentality you’ve seen ruin your country, and you see it held by non-Germans, it sure seems easy to figure out what’s wrong. The Germany of timely trains, of thanking your boss and shaking his hand after your shift, of achieving as long as you stuck to the rules - that’s all been replaced by entitled migrants who don’t integrate, don’t work, and don’t respect the country you’ve lionized as being better than the one you came from. That is the mentality summed up. Can’t say it’s wholly correct, but can’t say it’s wholly incorrect either.
Can confirm for the Turkish minority which the majority of voted for AfD also. Same people vote for Erdogan in Turkish elections.
Sounds about right. If I moved across the world to Japan because I heard the Japanese are hardworking and organised and I like sushi, and when I arrived it was filled with fat Americans, McDonald’s and pizza hut I’d want the immigrants out too.
I'll cosign this. Every single sentence.
I had the same experience. I was once in an argument with a man who was furious at Merkel for “destroying her country and letting in all the Syrians”. The guy was a newly arrived Syrian refugee.
You do know that not all syrians think the same right. Like there are ex-muslims/liberals/non-muslims who don’t want germany to turn into what they escaped from.
it's mostly about security. an immigrant doesn't care about more immigrants coming in if they are hardworking and follow the laws and culture of the place they emigrate to. most just want to get rid of those who don't do that. and security impacts lower class since they don't live in gated neighborhoods, they have to take public transport where immigrants mostly pickpocket and assault.
They want to close the door behind them.
Immigration is not a binary issue and no mainstream party has a full stop as part of their platform. The [AfD is proposing a Japanese model](https://www.afd.de/wahlprogramm-asyl-einwanderung/), which ironically Germany is already taking steps towards with [Hubertus Heil's points-system](https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/pressemitteilungen/DE/2024/05/chancenkarte-feg.html), albeit much more primitive for now. My point is that immigrants or people with an immigrant background can't be expected to be OK with the current migration policy & its effects just because they're migrants themselves. There's a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, motivations, skill-levels, attachments to the host country out there and they're not all necessarily compatible with one another. It's interesting to see how, quite often, the very people who advocate for minorities' rights, also assume that only a certain political spectrum is legitimately available to said minorities and everything else is considered weird, unnatural, nonsensical. I'd go as far as calling it patronising. 2c
In Italy we have the far right and the immigration is worse than ever, because immigration is useful to the corporates, which is the one that the right protects. They can't give a rat ass for the working people.
Especially because suppose they find the magical silver bullet to "fix" immigration within constitutional and EU limits, why would people still vote for them after? They have no interest whatsoever in tackling what they proclaim to be an existential national problem.
Yeah, pretty sure there were some leaked text messages of far right politicians and they basically embraced more immigration cause it will get them more voters. They put on a big show and people are being fooled.
Exactly this. Let's be honest here, migration is a thing and should be fixed. And the problem isn't really refugees, it's people from safe countries that come in as refugees (algeria and morocco). The EU seriously needs a legal basis to deal with that, because they seriously fuck things up here. But doing that will most likely kill the support for the right, because that's basically their only selling point.
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It's not even that. Most of the problems people observe with immigrant communities stem from second or third generation immigrants. As in, they're natural born citizens, they're in the eyes of the law Germans, etc. You can't legally kick your own citizens out of the country. But that's what the voters believe is going to happen. These communities are lashing out and gravitating to their roots because they have been disenfranchised since their families came here. These problems stem from decades of mismanagement and integration. Yeah, ofcourse when you shove economic migrants into rundown neighborhoods and strangle their economic opportunities, you start creating segregated communities. If you were to hypothetically close the borders entirely, how does that solve any of the problems they associate with immigration? It doesn't.
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In Spain, the discourse is very much oriented towards irregular immigration, especially from countries with a Muslim culture. European citizens are not considered immigrants.
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In Germany it’s the same. For example, noone cares about asian or pan-european immigration, since they cause no problems and aren’t seen as invasive.
I think it also depends on numbers: in the UK, for example, anti-migrant discourse is centred more around immigration from Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc), as that's where some of the most visible migrant communities come from, while in Germany it's more focussed on the Near and Middle East (Turkey, Syria), and in Italy on North Africa.
Could it be that they aren't seen as invasive because they aren't causing problems?
It's not just that they're not causing problems. They'll learn the language, they'll marry a local, they'll integrate into the society. Unlike the majority of the middle eastern immigrants who will seclude themselves in their neighbourhoods, they'll not even try to integrate into the current society.
imagine being second or third generation imigrant and not knowing the language of the country your parents or grandparents imigrated to.
that's the thing exactly, that's what people don't want. noone minds a person of a different colour as long as they abide by the societal norms in place. acting like you're still in Syria or wherever else you came from and DEMANDING people start following YOUR rules... what the actual fuck
Or at least they aren't so obvious about it nor causing a feeling of immediate personal danger. A normal citizen might not notice a shop used for money laundering or selling items without the proper certifications, but he will certainly be aware of the group of young men robbing people at the train station and raping women.
To be fair I'd much rather get rid of the second one. I don't care if the shop on the corner is laundering money but I would care if my family wouldn't feel safe outside.
In the Netherlands yes. The mentality is they work hard and don't commit crimes because their parents actually tries to raise them as decent human beings. In my own experience this is often a stereotype which is quite correct.
I think most European countries refer to the Muslim migrants mainly. As we've seen very similar issues in most countries.
What is affecting my region are the immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan. They are fueling the growth of the shipyards sector with modern slavery.
They’re not talking about European immigrants (with the exception of Serbia because of history). They’re mainly talking about immigrants from Middle East and Africa.
The general line is anti low skill immigrant workers who tend to be from the Middle East and North Africa. There will sometimes be anti-immigration attitudes to European nations (for example in the UK, Polish immigrants). The effect of mass low skill immigration is complex. Some may argue that it lowers wages but research finds it hard to conclude that either way ([here](https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/#)). What is known is that mass low skill immigration hasn’t helped with GDP per capita ([here](https://www.oecd.org/migration/OECD%20Migration%20Policy%20Debates%20Numero%202.pdf)). What is also known that non-Western immigrants tend to cost more in terms of unemployment benefits etc ([Germany claims up to 45% of people on unemployment are non-German citizens](https://m.focus.de/politik/deutschland/schwarzer-kanal/die-focus-kolumne-von-jan-fleischhauer-wir-belohnen-die-falschen_id_194852496.html)) ([Denmark finds that non-Danish and non-Western immigrants are most likely to remain lifelong recipients of benefits](https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-turned-against-immigration?ppccampaignID=&ppcadID=&ppcgclID=&utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA-bmsBhAGEiwAoaQNmpfKrk8c1dQLkpEmBn6EOb1lXPwMx4XqNsHyDKci8UJirgdhMcMhxxoCIwkQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)). A lot of the anti-immigration attitude towards MENA is fuelled by a view that they are coming there for the benefits and an easy life whilst making things harder for local people. In addition to this is the aspects like changing demographics. For example in the two largest UK cities, White British people make up only 36.8% of the population in London and 42.9% in Birmingham. It’s hard to get data like this for other nations as they tend to not record ethnicity (Germany and Italy do not). There’s a sense of unease about the intangible things like cultural changes related to this.
>Do they talk about all immigrants, or specifically to immigrants from the Middle East, Ukraine, Serbia, other EU members states? 99% have a problem with MENA, the cultural difference between a person from Ukraine, and germany is far smaller then germany and syria.
I suspect their concern is Muslim immigration due it's supposed incompatibility with European values.
I've always thought this. Right Wing economics wants higher immigration. We all agree immigration is a problem, and most people across European countries are sick of their parties ignoring immigration. But despite all those parties being broadly capitalist/neolib in some variety, I don't get how the protest vote is.. going further right wing. Like, the ideologies that prioritise private profits over workers' needs, you think THEY'RE gonna be the ones to have your back? Same thing happened in the UK 10 years ago. Nationalist parties got popular, but focused their energy into Brexit. Lo and behold the Right Wingers just got filthy rich, immigration continued, and the working population are even worse off. I understand many left wing parties are not outwardly anti-immigration, but that's the direction we need to go. The right will never actually curtail immigration, it goes against their base economic goals.
But left wing parties won't touch immigration. Brits would 100% get behind a left wing party who committed to controlling mass immigration.
The newly formed German party BSW (Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht, named after the party leader) has exactly this platform - anti-immigration and socialism - and got 5,8% in this election, respectable for a new party. Unfortunately, Sarah Wagenknecht is a russophile and still believes that the Ukraine war can be talked out, so there's that.
Number one issue for most europeans is immigration as long as the right wing parties Are the only ones taking it seriously then they will gain a massive voter base Even if their program is shit
People are just fucking desperate for their concerns on immigration to be listened to at this point.
It’s not immigration per se. It is about unskilled people with drastically uneuropean values. It’s all fun and games except when you’re so poor that your forced to live in working class neighbourhoods.
Centrist politicians must make Germany and Europe a more attractive destination for high skilled students and workers. And accept that the generosity with others has reached its limit, no matter how dreadful the situation in their home countries is.
The problem is, at least in my country, that people pay a lot of taxes on their not extremely high wages to pay for an ever-growing number of people who can't or won't contribute and get less and less in return each year. That alone doesn't make us very attractive to highly-skilled people, because they can earn more elsewhere.
Pretend to take it seriously. They wouldn’t stop it as the economical model and demographic development kinda hang on it. At least most of it.
They aren’t taking it seriously. They just say they are to get votes.
As long as you define „Take it seriously“ as „Promise to solve the issue and make sure no brown people can get in anymore without ANY feasible plan on how to actually go about it“ then yes, they’re „taking it seriously“. People should stop listening to empty promises, but they just keep making the same mistakes.
What do you mean? Conservatives in the UK and Italy have followed through on their promises. https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/brexit-net-migration-rishi-sunak-uk-immigration/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/24/italy-immigration-right-wing-meloni-migrant-crisis/ Oh wait, nvm, they've just made it much worse for everyone.
Most "working class" people I've had a chance to talk to just wanted something different, no matter the consequences. I live in a fairly well-functioning community, but some of my friends live in eastern Germany in rather poor neighborhoods. I've seen the shit they are dealing with and it does not surprise me one bit that the AFD scored up to 40% there. It's not just all Nazis or victim mentality. I fully expected those election results.
Working class voting for a party that wants to cut taxes for the rich and roll back workers rights... Make it make sense.
But they said they will fix everything...
They always say what people want to hear... today this, tomorow that... best example: farmer protests -> They want to cut all subsidies, but are protesting with the farmers together against the tiny lowering of the Diesel subsidies.
While cutting deals with russian oligarchs to boot.
Immigration is their #1 issue, which, to be fair, does impact the working class. The left could win back a lot of this vote by moderating their position on immigration.
> The left could win back a lot of this vote by moderating their position on immigration. They are actually kinda doing that, moderate anti-immigration laws aren't what the AfD-voters want though. They want everyone kicked out from the groups they don't like, even if they have only german nationality. It's something that can't be done without completely abolishing our constitution and the far-right politicians absolutely know that
Nope. Look at their program: 1. Demokratie und Grundwerte 2. Europa und EURO 3. Innere Sicherheit und Justiz 4. Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik 5. Arbeitsmarkt und Sozialpolitik 6. Familien und Kinder 7. Kultur, Sprache und Identität https://www.afd.de/grundsatzprogramm/ So their no.1 issue is to change the voting law to get rid of public financing of parties and to be able to criminally prosecute local non-afd leaders. Their no. 2 issue is dismantling the Euro and the EU. No. 3 is removing the guard rails for what policemen are allowed to do. You may think no.4 is about immigration, but no, it's about dismantling NATO and sucking up to Putin. No, getting rid of the immigrants is hidden at no. 7 under Culture, language and identity.
I'm talking about the voters since that is the topic of the thread. Polling data shows they care about immigration most.
Let me try to explain: "but the greEeEeEeEens" something along these lines. You could show their voters the program but they just don't care. I don't understand it either.
"34 Prozent der wählenden Arbeiter verzichten gerne auf ihren Kündigungsschutz."
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Weil die noch richtig arbeiten, nicht so wie die Jugend von heute! s\/
People are fed up with identity policy and bad behavior of immigrants and their children. There needs to be a drastic change in terms of immigration and family policy or else there is a coalition between CDU/CSU and AfD upcoming. I am not supporting the AfD btw. What I am saying is that closing the eyes in front of the immigration problem and calling everyone a nazi who criticizes immigrants lead to this. RemindMe! 90 days
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Don't forget - the sentiment is also: "it's those boomers voting". In reality: the biggest groups voting for AfD are the young ones.
Not the joung ones but the middle aged ones. The AfD is strongest in the 35 to 44 years bracket.
16-24 years also massively voted for the afd.
The strongest Party for 16-24 is the CDU and AfD
Exactly. I don't think young people are voting afd for freedom of speech.
I know you’re describing Germany, but you could have just as well been talking about the US, or many other nations in the west. The same sentiments are everywhere.
The pendulum is swinging. 1990-2005 was fairly conservative, then 1-2 decades liberal/left wing policies followed and now the pendulum swings back to the right.
Liberal sure, but the pendulum hasn't swung to the left wing in decades or even in a century in some places in Europe, lmao. Idnk why people think that, for example in Germany, the Soci Dem party is still anything like it was pre-1900 or even pre 1917.
People use the word "liberal" erroneously. "Liberal" by itself means very little in today's political climate. You need to specify if you mean economically liberal, which is traditionally a right-wing thing, or socially liberal, which is traditionally the left's domain. Economic and social policy sets are disconnected from one another. Europe has been socially liberal for a long, long, *long* time now. There was a brief social conservative backlash after the liberal era starting in '68, but that backlash ended decades ago.
I think the reason people say that they're voting wrong is that the parties on the right tend to have policies, other than the immigration/woke/green stuff, that would be against the interests of low income people. They're often very much in support of lower taxes for high earners, lower government services and spending, anti-union, anti-reproductive health, anti-social welfare, etc. People get sucked in by the very emotive and exciting, but less tangible, anti-immigrant stuff but seem to not pay attention to the stuff that would have more concrete effects in the short to mid-term.
Exactly, it's probably the left who is to blame for losing the support of its natural voters, who feel abandoned. But thinking that the far right is going to defend your rights as a working class person... Pfff
Left is definitely to blame for abandoning their traditional voters. It's pretty traditional leftist position that migrant workers are undermining wages for working class people which is only benefiting the elites that get to pay them pennies.
There's a trade union leader here (UK) who has done very well over the last couple of years in speaking in favour of striking workers not just in his union but in many others and in general about putting the class war the socio-economic elite are waging front and centre in his televised interviews. Every now and then someone will pop up to present his pro-Brexit stance as being some kind of 'gotacha' as to how he's wrong or not left wing enough and I can't help but marvel at how stupid that is. What you've outlined is precisely why someone like him would be in favour of Brexit, it's old school left putting your workers first.
It’s an absolute travesty that the left has so thoroughly lost the working class.
In Sweden this is how Blue-collar workers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/JdJw6Is.png White-collar workers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/EAjaEOD.png Business owners and farmers have voted: https://i.imgur.com/4TzVsaQ.png It would be interesting to see these statistics for other countries as well
if is that easy, the "you're voting wrong" team just need to made their good politics for those people AND also do the very emotive and exciting stuff that people seems to care too.
So mainstream parties need to get a handle on immigration then people won't feel the need to vote AFD.
Yes, Social Democrats in Denmark did this and gained votes.
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This is exactly how my peer group feels and these are young fathers in their thirties with above average incomes. They see reality is very different from what left or center parties tell them. You still pay huge taxes while in the past you would also get first world services and infrastructure in return. Now everything that it's supposed to pay for is shit, from the justice system to infrastructure and roads. Crime is up, data shows most of it is migrants, above 60% of people receiving welfare are migrants in Germany. At the same time you pay boatloads of money for childcare or healthcare which quality sucks and is given for free to illegals as well. You feel like you are an idiot when you are working hard to support your family, like you are being taken advantage of. And what do supposed worker parties that represent working people campaign for? Woke bullshit and more migration.
this is 100% it. things get worse and still government takes more and more of your paycheck
Assimilation is impossible with mass immigration. Flip the script for a moment. If 10,000 young, liberal Europeans mass emigrated to and formed a racial ghetto in Saudi Arabia, would we suddenly start believing that women are inferior, and that homosexuals should be put to death, and abortion should be banned?. Ask this to the average young, liberal European, and he will say no, his beliefs are sacrosanct. It's yet more bigotry of low expectations. Its the notion that those poor, benighted 3rd worlders only think what they think because they haven't had a white person to educate them otherwise.
The problem is that while far right populists are great at talking to the working class and sounding like they can solve all their problems, it’s all bluff. Their “solutions” are either ineffective, impossible or straight up nonexistent, but people get caught up in the charisma of conmen who feel no shame telling straight up lies. It ends up becoming about what *feels* right, not what will actually improve people’s lives. Just look at the UK. People with real, serious problems were fed the lie that Brexit would solve their problems, came to feel strongly about it, and ended up voting for a fatamorgana that the conmen proposing had no actual plan to implement and which has been making everything worse since. The only solution is for parties with actual policies to get their act together and actually make people’s lives better. Unfortunately, the only lesson the mainstream parties seem to be taking from the rise of the far right is to copy their empty rethoric for cheap points. (Hi, Danish Social Democrats) Why improve conditions for the working class when you can get their votes just by banging on some about inconsequential scapegoat issue? Who cares if all the factories are moving away, public services are in the toilet and you’ll never get to retire - we banned niqabs!
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He also got caught in a corruption scandal where he very likely took Chinese money and met with Chinese security agents. These people are literally a danger to our current way of life and idiots keep voting them in because they fall for populism.
Not just populism, online bots and propaganda are doing a number on people who don't bother to fact check and simply share those lies between themselves. We needed to start banning fake news yesterday. It's too late now.
I really can't argue with your reasoning, if someone was defending SS soldiers I'd end up doing the same thing as you, people shouldn't be defending SS Soldiers.
Welcome to the far-right movement. It's only a few stops from here.
That also applies to me, my grandfather fought in the Second World War. He said to my father: If you see something like this ever happening again, do something! Be loud and not quiet. If you stay quiet, you'll end up in a mess like the one I experienced. (My grandfather distributed the newspaper of the "Zentrumspartei" until it became too dangerous and he was threatened in the pub because of it)
Yeah, it's all shadow debates. They create problems that don't exist and want to sell you the solution to them. Then these people say that the AfD is the only one talking about these problems.
Exactly and also: they talk also about real exisiting problems but make them bigger as they actually are. In my opinion its tactical so that they stop making them big as soon as they are on power. So they have a "cost-free" win for their own and can see: look now things are better.
Same thing is happening outside of Europe in Canada and America
Dude, I once also agreed with your point of view once and was understanding because I too know where they're coming from. I live in one of the biggest voter bases. My parents are AfD hardcore voters. Yes, the problems don't originate in disinformation campaigns, but have way deeper roots. Roots that can be summarised with: Poverty (Who would've guessed, it's always the same). But guess what? They're not innocent unknowing people who just need the right empathy and understanding to guide them to a better decision. Nope, they're lost beyond saving and indeed stupid. Not necessarily stupid because they fall for obvious disinformation and encupsulate themselves in their own worlds and let themselves be played with like lego toys. But stupid, because they're, even with many years of live experience, still that naive that they fall for populists promising them solutions while it's obvious and a lesson learned by anyone, that almost nobody will give those solutions to you. They're always empty promises basically because ...shits complicated yo. So I'm now with anyone who just blocks them and calls them what they are: stupid nazis. Of course this won't solve shit and doesn't get anyone to overthink his standing, but the other way around is hopeless as well. This fight is over. The only way out is to apparently repeat history as always, and fall and hurt one self.
I mean redditors are a profoundly irrelevant voting bloc and aren't representative of anything. That's why I don't give a fuck if I'm downvoted by them.
I think someone famous once said, the academics love the working class in theory, but hate them in person.
Yes, but as a voter you kinda need to know to what you are subscribing to or you'll end up on r/LeopardsAteMyFace
Yeah, no matter how you twist or turn it: AfD is not a workers' party. Never has been and never will be. Besides the whole "foreigners out" thing, their program is entirely based on neoliberalism: They want to set a flatline income tax at about 25% - which would amount to a massive tax hike for most low to medium incomes. They want to all but gut the welfare state. Workplace accident insurance, mandatory by law and entirely paid for by your employer, is supposed to become privatized, made optional and turned into an employee's responsibility - so each high-risk profession actually needing one is almost certain to be deemed uninsurable. So, even if you are willing to ignore them being openly fascist at this point, planning an authoritarian power grab that would make some dictatorships blush, voting for them whilst not being a member of the top-10% will never be in your financial interest period. But hey, as long as there's someone treated more miserably...
I don't think they call the AfD voters stupid for having different opinions, but the AfD has been very clear about wanting to destroy most worker's protection which makes this kinda insane. LGBT+ topics or gender quotas won't impact their life nearly as much as actual worker's rights. Don't get me wrong, I'm not moving on my pro lgbt+ stances, I want to live freely in my country and have the same rights as everyone else, no matter who I love. But topics like immigration and energy policies are absolutely valid points to talk about. But it couldn't be more clear that the AfD is not going to solve any of those problems, and the CDU is the party that put us in the current position.
That's what you get for ignoring problems. People get desperate and it shows in their votes.
So let's vote for a party that has been in power for the last 20 years and literally made it their thing to ignore problems. CDU was in power for decades and they didn't do shit at all.... So no. People don't vote when problems are ignored, people vote when anything even slightly upsets them because they're highly inflexible and opposed to any change while completely ignoring that some change is invitable. AfD is making empty promises and anyone with two brain cells should notice it (easy example: they had two ads up one campaigned for being self sufficent, the other promised to use gas power plants over green energy .. which one is it? Germany doesn't own gas fields, so the moment you increase power generation through gas you push germany into a higher dependency from different nations) It's just blatant bullshit spouting.
Sad but True. The CDU/CSU fucked up big time for the past decades. But people are too ignorant to understand that the currently leading parties are not responsible for everything happening. Tough times have always lead to people being radicalized by extermist parties who use the opportunity to spread their ideologies. I am not even a fan of the social and green parties, but the current missjudgment of facts in Germany is insane.
It's a lot of lies and narrative pushing too. I remember a twitter post going through the channels of a CSU memeber bitching how our money right now is going to weird projects like cycling trails in peru and development aid in china and a few more examples. What that asshat didn't say is that those were all things that were decided on when his party was still in power for one and on top that ht simply lied about the development aid for china (which where development loans in truth) and the cycling pathways were part of a global responsibility by not just germany but all developed nations towards developing nations.. but none of the people spouting that stuff cared to research any of it, they read it, called it shit and moved on....
People vote for populists because they like to imagine the problems are as easy to solve as those say. edit: I absolutely love the irony of many responses to this comment reading exactly like a typical populist rhetoric. Yes, we know you guys think all the problems boil down to your singular pet peeve and you like to believe anybody who repeats those simplistic narratives. Even better if they promise that the solution has always been easy and right in front of everybody. Yes, we know all that about you guys, you don't need to prove my point.
> People vote for populists That's pretty much it. This is as old as humanity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleon
Denmark crushed their populist pro Russian right wing party by having the Social Democrats be tough on immigration and law and order. It went from 21.1% in 2015 to 2.1% in 2022.
Mannheim stabbings took place 10 days ago, and nobody can't comment otherwise they'd be labeled in one way or the other, and people still wonder why AfD gets so many votes?!?!? PS: don't get me wrong, I would never support a far-right party, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand why some people do it...
I'm also not aware of a single Muslim anti-islamist rally or protest, it's sad that there never seems to be a large outcry from Germany's Muslim population after Islamist terror, instead, there is a rally against the right a few days after. I'm not an AfD-apologist, but it's pretty clear to me that people interpret this as hostility against the wrong group which radicalizes them further.
I think it’s forbidden for muslims to be against Muslims.
One of the many issues with the religion.
I got AfD Google ads on a web page with a still from the video showing the attacker. They utilized that to the maximum.
This is it. It's not that left-wing parties don't want to tackle immigration (they do), it's that we've created this atmosphere where saying anything negative about migration is akin to being racist. And I say 'we' because I consider myself left-wing too (both in my voting behaviour and my beliefs). We have this this thing going where not only do we think we're correct in our ideologies (obviously, as does everyone) but that we're also morally and ethically superior to the other side because of our views and opinions. We don't just disagree with anti-migration sentiments, they're morally reprehensible to us. I can only imagine how desperate people must be when they keep seeing their problems (real or perceived) exacerbated by migration policies, and whenever they try to address those problems they are labeled a racist. And in their desperation they turn to populism.
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Apparently people have not figured this out yet: it's about immigration. stop immigration tomorrow and the AfD can disband itself the week after. You can all beat about the bush and talk about "uneducated voters", "populist campaigns", "propaganda" or "lower class burdened by weakening economy" but last but not least you all need to realize that voters just don't like people of vastly different and incompatible cultures to immigrate here... Edit: Just because some might misunderstand certain points about my comment: 1. Of course we need immigration. But we need a target search practice for low and high skilled immigrants from all over the world and not just open the door for everybody (Look at the US or New Zealand for good examples). 2. You can all call me racist for saying „incompatible culture“ but it is a fact that a certain religion propagates things that clash with western values (in regards to women’s rights, democratic practices, tolerance for different sexual orientations or individual freedoms). You all know it’s true ;)
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Hmmm what could this mean? It seems like ignoring a certain issue led to this.
I always wondered how does the left reconcile it's extreme unpopularity with the proletariat with its image of being a political movement looking out for the interests of the proletariat.
The left would be insanely popular if they were anti-migration and started heavily focusing on almost ONLY economic issues.
As expected. Left political parties screwed up long time ago and had enough time to make people vote them again with good politics.
This is what happens when you tell people they're stupid and racist for articulating legitimate concerns.
Uh oh, time to call anyone complaining about immigration a racist Nazi, that’s definitely worked to stop the growth of far-right parties over the past 10 years! Edit: People didn’t get the point. Had politicians listened to people concerned about the insane migration intake and acted instead of disregarding them as racist nazis etc etc for 10+ years, we wouldn’t be having to contend with actual neo-nazis.
Look, surely if I explain to people that they are backwards racist morons they will vote for me. What do you mean, "no?"
I am so fucking happy that here in Finland our rightwing populist party got absolutely demolished in the election.
Do you by chance need immigrants from Germany?
Just fyi we have a racist right-wing government in power for the next 3 years that's destroying welfare, healthcare and education.
Seems to be a world wide trend. They have told us who to blame and promised to punish them, without doing so. All while destroying the social fabric under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
And people love it. They will die from starvation with national pride
Seems that is what people voted for.
"Neoliberal" parties are failing to solve the same problems across the Western world such as low wage growth, very high house prices, low birth rates, immigration and more. So people in response will vote for an alternative to the current establishment, this is why right wing populist parties gain support. But the problem is these right wing populist parties don't know how to solve any of these problems themselves when they actually come into power and major issues never get solved.
That’s truly future r/leopardsatemyface material
This is what happens when patronising voices accuse anyone concerned about immigration as being an Evil Racist.
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To put it figuratively the left no longer represents the vulnerable working class guy but rather the soy latte drinking hipster who is busy virtue signaling. A dude driving a forklift has nothing to do with the modern left wing parties. He may be looking favorably towards LGBT emancipation but this is not his primary concern. So this trend is going to continue as long as the left will ignore their natural voter base.
The trans forklift driver doesn't give a shit for the correct pronouns if they can't pay their bills after a 40+ hour week. That's where the left all over the world, failed the working class heroes.
they don‘t ignore them though. if you look at the actual day to day politics and not the ragebaiting shitstain that is online discourse you will notice pretty quickly that the people *actually doing worker-friendly politics* in the parliaments are still left-wingers. people simply don‘t give enough of a fuck to check what politicians actually do on a day-to-day basis. they just listen to the loudest guy that can provoke as much outrage as possible. and that‘s why I‘ll happily call anyone voting for AfD & Co. an idiot. because it shows me that they didn‘t even care enough to form an opinion on things in a reasonable manner.
Well, it looks like the worker-friendly policies the left is advocating for are not the ones real workers are demanding the most.
I’m not saying that you are wrong but the above results seem to directly contradict your theory. Roughly 1 in 5 Germans is an idiot? But wasn’t an idiot 10 years ago when AfD had a fringe following? I don’t think idiocy is the key here. Something else is a factor
It's easier to call people idiots than to explain why their favorite party is losing votes
A lot of voters are either unwilling or uncaring to do real, deep dive research on the parties they support. If so, yes - such voters are idiots. They take their right to vote lightly and that’s stupid. Let me give you an example using Polish farmers. Over the last months, Polish farmers have been vehemently protesting the European Green Deal. To the point of going on nationwide strikes and blocking borders. And then the majority of them voted on PiS today - the very same party who agreed to and signed on the Green Deal. Supporting people who back policies you absolutely hate is… *not a sign of exceptional cognitive ability* xD.
Unpopular opinion but the left wing made people vote right wing
Certain parts of the left wing, yes. Those who forgot to fight for worker and consumer rights.
They should have been much more stricter on immigration. That is the main topic driving AfD votes.
That's not unpopular opinion by any means.
Symptoms of: Pandemic, inflation, failed immigration and Russian interference.
Give me an anti-migration left-wing party that isn't Pro-Russia and I give you my life 😫
if we let not business or humanitarian, but institutional defenders to present us (as republicans, centrists and ecologicals), we would forgot about the facists, but when leaders are corrupt and ineffective - you can't expect anything else, except separation on different camps (divided by the intelligence for real and also which century you prefer).
I don't know what FDP means in german, but in french it means "fils de p\*te" (son of a b\*tch) lol
How is everybody so surprised?
The fate of all left parties who forget their base. Happened in UK, US, now Germany. Turns out gender fluidity and intersectionality are not the main concerns of the working class. Who knew. But they will not change. Denial of reality is the halmark of the ideologue (left or right).
I thought the idea of democracy was to allow people to have their own opinions, to make their voices be heard and be hold equal to others. Maybe I’m wrong.