- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
But why do people become Nazis?
People are not born Nazis.
Understanding why people become Nazis helps prevent people from becoming Nazis, even if you think there’s no hope for the fucks who’ve already dived into the ideology.
People become Nazis when they feel lost, powerless, and their lives meaningless. They reach for it in a desperate attempt to be part of something important, powerful, and meaningful.
But it’s empty and nihilistic, so it doesn’t work out.
We as a society haven’t figured out how to deal with modernity. All our problems are of our own making. We’ve destroyed religion (the original provider of meaning and belonging) and left a void in its place. That’s all the desire for Nazism is: a desire to fill that void (and a scapegoat for why it exists in the first place).
Of course you and I can see that the scapegoat is wrong and totally absurd. But that’s not important to them. There’s no easier way to feel powerful than to topple a hated enemy.
I think it’s largely about a lack of opportunity for, especially but not exclusively, blue collar workers1 and a perceived loss of status. There seems to be a lot of young men across the West and elsewhere who are struggling to build a career in the modern economy and being rejected by women (in part due to their anger) when, to them, it feels like just a generation or two ago, they would have been handed a middle class life and been the breadwinner for a family already.
Nevermind that a generation or two ago, that status came at the expense of others. To them, it feels like lost status. So, they’re easily manipulated by the far right saying, “It’s not you. It’s [insert scapegoat: women, immigrants, whatever]. We’ll give you a sense of purpose.”
1 I only say blue collar because of the shift in rich countries from manufacturing to services, whether high paid or low paid. But whole white collar professions have disappeared just due to computers.
Fascism is literally an ideology driven by a spiteful vibe. Parade your disdain for the identity of somebody else long enough, they will embrace the worst aspects to oppose you and mythesize these aspects into virtues.
So it’s our disdain of them that causes them to be disdainful?
It is a lack of understanding and communication, most certainly. That goes both ways of course.
I mean, fair, but a lot of the “why” with these guys boils down to “The world acts like all men are terrible, sex-crazed jerks who are violent, angry, and unable to control their emotions while claiming they’re actually stoic and that makes me feel bad about myself.”
Then, their solution is to double down on all those things because they’re upset about being unfairly accused.
Look, if your response to people assuming you’re a shitty person is to just… become an even shittier person to prove it, I think it says there was something deeply wrong with you before you doubled down.
I’ve heard the same shit about men my whole life and not fucking once did it make me go “God damn, I should just be a pile of shit then!” No, every time it inspired me to self-reflect and try to change my behaviors for the better.
So I reiterate, if your response is to double down, something was wrong with you before the turn to Nazism.
Like I don’t know why else talking about “rape culture” resulted in young men chanting “Your body, my choice!” at women other than being born and raised as a piece of shit.
That reaction of doubling-down in response to sexism and the (sometimes impolitely stated, but most often true) accusations of masculine malfeasance in broader society is, itself, mostly created by social circumstances - how we socialize young men. Again, they are not born like that, they are not born as people who will become more sexist if accused of sexism or shown sexism in broader society, inherently; they are damaged into creatures which react like that. We must understand where this happens, how this happens - in the very many ways that it does happen - and how to counter it when removing the circumstances is not an immediate option.
You conveniently defined away a possibility there, didn’t you. There is preciously little understanding in fifth or sixth wave or whatever is it now feminist circles about how their rhetoric affects young guys, that there even needs to be a conversation about “all men” speaks volumes. Paint with a broad brush and you paint yourself as an adversary of people who, at a young age, approach the topic completely neutrally.
“Hi I’m new here” – “You are the problem” – “Fine, I’ll go somewhere else”. That kind of thing happens all the time and it’s not something anyone gets conditioned into.
You might not like to hear this but the media is far from innocent of building the image of young, struggling men being prone to violence and not being trustworthy while it also still fuels the imagery of the older, tough as nails ‘hero’ they wish to become but are not allowed to.
A certain gender controls the media by a vast, vast majority. That gender is not women.
So you’re essentially blaming men for blaming men.
I do. This is about a lack of properly traditioning masculinity.
If men can’t teach men how to be men, I think men are out of luck.
Not having to fight an uphill battle against a small, but vocal minority of women pushing young men into the false comfort of adversarial relations (and its gurus) would help a lot. Don’t actively do damage, is all I’m asking from the female side here. Men didn’t invent, say, the ick trend. I can roll my eyes at it, thirty years younger me didn’t have that luxury, and getting young boys to ignore it is more involved than just saying “they’re stupid, self-absorbed and immature”. Shit can do psychological damage, self-image issues, that need healing. The gist is men by and large aren’t built for psychological warfare and lots of women have no idea what kind of strays they’re firing.
I see. It’s women’s fault that the men who control the media can’t teach other men how to be men.
Finally, the conspiracy all comes together.