Summary
Support for Germany’s far-right AfD is surging among young men, driven by concerns over immigration, conservative values, and distrust of mainstream politics.
A Pew study found 26% of German men view AfD positively, compared to 11% of women.
Social media, particularly TikTok, has helped spread its message. Some young supporters reject accusations of extremism, while others openly embrace far-right views.
Analysts warn that if mainstream parties ease their opposition to the AfD, it could become Germany’s dominant right-wing party.
I was thinking about this the other day, and came to some conclusions. This is a copy-paste of a comment I made in another thread:
I don’t know much about the history of anti-Semitism in Europe (so anyone feel free to correct me or add more info), but what I’ve been thinking is that the cause/origin of anti-Semitism is no different from the anti-immigrant panic from today. They both come down to people from a “foreign” or at least different culture coming into a society and getting jobs or opening business. It just so happens that now those foreign people are more diverse, whereas before (centuries ago in Europe) they were mostly Jewish.
This tells me we have learned nothing from our past except for the most surface level details. We learned that anti-Semitism is bad and beat people over the head with it, but we never properly addressed the roots of it, and so now the same thing is repeating but for different groups of people. It’s the same sort of thing as when it is said that “people nowadays are more open minded”, when the reality is simply that they were taught to be okay (or not) with certain things; but the bigoted though process has not really gone away.
The Jew hate originally stemmed from the fact that they could loan money and charge interest, which Christians found to be a sin (usury). Well, somebody has to handle banking or the economy crashes. Made them perfect scapegoats.
“I must be suffering because the Jews stole my money!”
Then it gets worse. Jews had strict rules about cleanliness, you can find many of them in the Bible. Guess who did and didn’t get hit with plague rats. Guess who got the blame.