Presentation from the 39C3 about the “Adenauer SRP+”, a bus that was modified with the goal to make the lives of the far-right more difficult.
Presentation from the 39C3 about the “Adenauer SRP+”, a bus that was modified with the goal to make the lives of the far-right more difficult.
I didn’t. I argued against simplistic explanations. I said it was a contributing factor in AfD’s success, not the sole factor.
If you think intelligence is enough to make you immune to a constant barrage of online misinformation, you are mistaken. You are downplaying the effectiveness of AfD (and foreign state) propaganda. No one is immune to propaganda.
(Bit of a tangent, but I don’t think it’s entirely a coincidence that AfD’s turn and electoral success in 2014/15 roughly coincides with France’s Front National receiving a big loan from a half Russian bank and the Russian annexation of Crimea.)
Simplistic.
Plenty of AfD voters are anti-system. A fuck you to the traditional system parties. The racism certainly doesn’t seem to put them off, we’re talking about often non-urban voters who were born in a very racially homogenous country, but they’re not all full blown nazis. Not making excuses, not saying it’s any less dangerous, but they’re not all nazis.
You’re probably going to disagree with me, but at this point I should point out that I have lived in Dresden, interacted with east Germans including those who vote AfD, and have studied the European far-right academically.
While we’re at it, I’m highly sceptical of banning a party like AfD.
Something similar happened with Vlaams Blok in Belgium. Many of the same people formed a new party called Vlaams Belang which became even more succesful, in large part because they were able to capitalise on the whole debacle and harp on about how censorship, their claimed victimhood, and perpetuate the typically fascist selective populist ‘we are the people’ spiel.
Then again, the alternative is letting them get into power, which usually results in a lot of people dying.
Or you let them into power, but in a coalition government, as happened in the Netherlands. But that also doesn’t seem to work either, because they then blame the deep state, judges, elites for hindering them when they were in power. At which point you’re back to square one.
The rise of the far right has complex causes, and it’s important to not overly simplify their rise. You need to understand the enemy if you want to stand a better change of defeating it.
Although I understand and agree with most of what you’re saying you’re making large assumptions about what I’m saying. Intelligence does not make you immune to propaganda, that’s not something I said or even brought up. What I was saying/implying is that east Germans are smart enough to understand what the policies AfD proposes mean and that the AfD proposes Nazi level policies (aka things I don’t think should be suggestable by any party at any time without a well educated and we’ll functioning democracy removing them from ever having power again either socially or systemically) such as reimmigration which you completely moved past. And if someone understands a nazi policy and votes for a nazi party to enact their Nazi policies, regardless of if they specifically agree with any given policy, that makes them a Nazi. Republicans voted for Trump, Trump promised to get rid of immigrants no matter what, he’s now doing that through several horribly inhuman and illegal methods, and every republican is responsible for that inhumanity and racism. They become racists when the actions they take directly support not just closeted racists, not just barely racists, not just mostly harmless racists, but full blown loud and clear and dangerous racists like the Republican party.
I’m not trying to simplify the problem for funsies, I’m trying to make it very clear that the party is evil and that all people should be able to make that judgement call. I understand desperation, I understand propaganda, I understand poverty, at least to the extent at which these things can make you do evil things but the point stands that they’re evil. My only issue with your messaging is you read like you’re playing defense for the AfD. The solution to the AfD party is simple, elect a party that is interested in and capable of addressing the problems of the common man, of the worker, and the AfD - besides the psyops element - will shrivel up.
As long as the CDU worsens the country for the average German. As long as the SPD improves the country slowly and avoiding the big ticket items, AfD will thrive. To me this is the simplistic truth of history. Things decline in the hands of the moderates or conservatives until they become so bad that people become desperate.
In your comment above you said “That completely downplays the intelligence of east Germans”.
But as I’m arguing it doesn’t matter how smart they are if the propaganda is good enough. Even otherwise intelligent Germans aren’t immune to propaganda which cloaks AfD’s true nature. This is plenty of AfD voters. They have fallen for AfD propaganda which appeals to emotion, then suggests traditional media are lying, exagerating, or demonizing them. They have been convinced migration is the biggest issue facing the country, they think AfD is simply a right wing anti-migration party.
If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you’ll know the strategy well enough. They ‘hide their power level’ to quote Stormfront and they also cloak their nazism in humour and irony, allowing it to enter the mainstream.
For example, do non-political people even blink anymore when you mention ‘cultural Marxism’? And yet that’s a neo-Nazi term, derived from the Nazi term Kulturbolschewismus. IRC Hitler literally discusses it in Mein Kampf. But if you mention that, you’re inevitably exagerating, it means something else, you’re accused of crying wolf, or of trying to censor people.
A drowning man will grasp at a straw.
AfD propaganda has convinced otherwise normal Germans that only Afd is willing to adress the real problems the country faces. Because people are often desperate, because people are emotional, because they have been convinced to no longer trust traditional media, they are willing to take a gamble and ignore all the warnings.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”, they think. “It can’t be worse than this.” But it can always get worse. Much much worse.