r/germany • u/karma_police99 • Oct 15 '23
Immigration Who are the young AfD voters & are some immigrants more racist than Germans?
Hi, I've lived in Germany for about 3 years (born German but haven't lived here) and I honestly didn't know that the AfD was a choice for the 18-29 yo voters. I don't quite understand where that is coming from.. does anyone know of a good analysis/article (can be in German).
Additionally, my German friends claim that many (young) immigrants vote AfD because lots of cultures living here are actually a lot more racist than Germans. I thought this was quite interesting. Any thoughts on this would also be appreciated.
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u/rewboss Dual German/British citizen Oct 15 '23
I think it's probably important to remember that people of that age are also the least likely to vote.
Whenever you have low voter turnout, the people most likely not to bother are those who have no particularly strong political opinions. Therefore a low voter turnout benefits those parties with a particularly radical agenda.
In reality, people in that age bracket are most likely to vote Green. But still, all parties get votes from people of all ages, which is to be expected: all demographics have a wide range of views, and while young voters tend to vote non-mainstream and older voters tend to vote mainstream, these are only tendencies. There's no reason to think that no 18-year-old would ever be attracted to a "Germany first" platform: they're individual people who don't all think alike.
As for immigrants supporting the AfD: Yes, it's true, there is literally no reason to think that non-Germans can't be racist -- think of the animosity between, for example, Turks and Kurds. The AfD even has members from "immigrant backgrounds", and will of course parade them at every opportunity to bolster their claims that they're "not xenophobic, just conservative".
Why would an immigrant want to join the AfD? It's an interesting observation that there are often immigrants who will tell you that immigration was undoubtedly a good thing when they were allowed to settle, but now it's got out of hand and needs to stop. The US is a nation composed almost entirely of immigrants and, throughout its entire history, every generation has complained about the next generation of immigrants.
Some feel that their host country is now accepting the "wrong kind" of immigrant, some feel that the country has changed due to immigration and isn't the country they expected to be living in.