There's distinction between legality, reality and morality. Most of the time no one uses full formal legal terms in normal conversation.
I don't support AfD, I'm not German either - i just agree with parent poster's observation that for some reason left extremism(and I'm talking actual eco-terrorism for example) is more widely 'accepted' in public space when talking to Germans. Meanwhile mentioning even slightly Right ideas gets you lynched, and any form of discussions stops.
And from small sample size of Germans i know, this is the reason that did push quite few of those people towards AfD.
Frankly AfD is a perfect marker of your own policy making - are more people pushed towards it? you probably are doing something severely wrong as a policymaker.
I believe the far right starts winning when it attracts not just the types it naturally attracts all the time but more mid field folks as well. People who you don't get to your side by saying they're facists or other accusatory statements.
I've heard plenty of times from such people that they've felt the government/establishment parties have made my bordering country less safe for women, gay people, etc and now numbers are also starting to show that.
Pair that with those parties targeting those votes more and more and bringing in some more gays and women into the party and labels of mysoginist or homofobic that you used don't work to attack the far right anymore
I've found gay people voting for the supposedly homofobic far right because they start to see their main talking points as a long term existential matter.
Prisons that have a huge share of non nationals and are overfilled so prison strikes and shutdowns happen aren't helping either.
The economical picture for non-eu migration has been abysmal too.
The list goes on and on.
Even in france le pen who's father had some well known extreme views about gays she draws a lot of votes among gay men. Especially in Paris.
>At that point you seriously, seriously fucked up.
I think we've realistically introduced a source of political hubris for generations to come and created a scenario where if we're not being too optimistic about the perfect path being taken there will be sharp edges whichever way you go.
The same happened here in the past with our flemish/wallonian sectarianism that should've never been started and inflamed. In fact over many decades migration seems to be the only thing that managed to overtake it.
Acknowledge issues and start doing stuff these parties have been calling for for the past 2 decades to stop influx and you legitimize their ideas and admit fault in some ways.
Don't do anything, continue the status quo claiming everything smells of roses and you just build up more sectarian bullshit.
Ideally you slow migration down without too much noise about it imo. For example you adjust treaties so that people rejected in other european countries can be sent back and actually follow trough and employ european political power to actually facilitate this sending back and discourages staying in a way that was possible in the past. You start limiting family reunion schemes depending on the country, etc
Additionally you invest hard in integration and not in the weird paternalistic shit that i hear about from germany now.
If I remember wel here in Belgium in 2005 or so well over 70% had big concerns about migration and had it in their top 3 issues. That was 2 decades ago well before the big influxes. Not losing many of them was easier than getting them back that's for sure but there's plenty more still on that edge. I'd also say we're doing way worse than Germany on these fronts and additionally a far greater share of german migration is actually refugees i believe.
The only reason we haven't had an afd equivalent governing yet is how fractured our political landscape is when compared and the flemish/wallonian split.
My guess for the future btw is that none of this will happen here and instead social trust will get worse and it will also be used as an excuse/force pushing to build down social security more regardless of who wins (like in denmark i believe).
If we were to categorize AfD voters and supporters into two groups:
1. people that support some of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, anti-environmentalism, etc., i.e. authoritarianism for their group
2. people that have been pushed by extreme leftism because they can no longer discuss alternative points of view (but do not strictly belong to group 1)
majority in 2, due to worsening economic situation over the years and total disappointment in current options with no other option to break this impasse than to throw hand grenade into the mix.
exactly one person in first group - a genuine belief in efficiency of authoritarian system from someone on spectrum.
I also love how you neatly divided whole political spectrum into two, and bundled a lot of options into 'bad' category. Another example of political tribalism. while option "2" is clearly 'misguided' one.
For example anti-environmentalism can be seen from 'does not like Greens', through 'i think we should reevaluate our energy policy for feasibility of moving to renewables/nuclear and do a slow transition while persevering our beautiful nature' to 'we should only burn coal and gas forever'.
Same thing with xenophobia - it can be pure nationalism, or being anti illegal immigration while supporting legal one, or even just idea that government has responsibility for their own citizens first and foremost. Which one do you have in mind?
Where you draw the barriers between those arbitrary labels?
is there even anything i could say that would change your mind, or are you looking for validation of your views only?
Let's remove "anti green" and "anti immigration" (but not pure xenophobia) out of group 1, since you seem to protest those two as the most ambiguous (I do agree that those areas may be too blurry).
I also think you misinterpreted "authoritarianism for their group", or I expressed it poorly. I don't mean "support of authoritarian governments", but rather "give more power to their group over others, or favor keeping such a status quo", in the context of race, sexuality, gender, culture, etc.
Yes, group 2 may be protest voters, and their rationale is that the best protest against some leftist policies and monologue is to vote the right - not blank, not abstention, and not some void middle-ground. Of course!
But these people are not complete idiots that forgot what the AfD obviously stands for. Thus, I cannot reasonably believe that they ALL fall under NONE of the categories of 1.
My most generous concession would be 20%, but realistically I would say there is maybe at most 5% that is purely protest and not at least one of: racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynist.
Simply put: If someone claims they are not racist, and not homophobic, and not misogynist, yet they still vote for AfD, then they are more likely to be some of that, or are okay with the current status of discriminations, and not some naive idiot.
What you could say to change my mind, is how someone votes/supports AfD purely based on e.g. strengthened immigration policies for purely economical reasons, or "do not like greens", or "just wants nuclear". I don't understand how someone could be so oblivious to the other standpoints, but maybe this is just my personal bias?
> Or the literal communist party, Die Linke. Why are they never referred to as the extreme left.
It's definitely not true that people never refer to Die Linke as extreme left. In fact, all kinds of people - including prominent politicians from e.g. the CDU - refer to Die Linke as extreme left.
This is not commenting on whether that is a correct moniker or not, I'm just pointing out that your dichotomy is nonsensical because the thing that you suggest to not be happening absolutely is happening.
Feel free to read the chapter „Linksextremismus“. It talks about various violent Antifa groups and other cases. Keep in mind that the definition of „extreme left“ refers to organizations that want to replace the basic democratic system with communism or anarchy (according to the German constitutional court).
It does not necessarily include „political craziness“ that we may disagree with. The point of these legal descriptions of organizations is not to be used as a political weapon for parties you don’t like. You have to do some significantly malicious stuff to be considered as such.
> It talks about various violent Antifa groups and other cases.
As the time of writing, six different extreme left groups are tolerated within Die Linke and are also financed by their members. All of these groups are currently being watched by the government secret service.
The AFD is extreme right in its entirely. It's a political party that wants to deport foreigners, remove the german citizenship from people with a migrational background, and it plans to destroy the democratic political parties - which means toppling democracy. They say so clearly and openly, also calling the other parties "Altparteien".
While the party started with a different background, by now voters and members do know about these majority positions and thus support them.
The greens are not filled with communists. They would feel very unwelcome there, given the capitalist move the party did in the 90s.
Die Linke is also not a communist party. It supports capitalism, but targets a social capitalism, like the CDU did in the 50s and the SPD did until the 80s. There are communist parties in Germany, like the MLPD, but they do not get many votes. Background here is that in a divided Germany the communists were not popular in West germany, also most of them got killed by the Nazis before, and on top of that West Germany banned the main communist party already 1956.
Also, rightwing politicians do call "Die Linke" (incorrectly) extreme left, and accordingly the CDU/CSU has a mandate to never cooperate with them.
> Die Linke is also not a communist party. It supports capitalism, but targets a social capitalism, like the CDU did in the 50s and the SPD did until the 80s.
This is untrue and you will only have to go so far to read their party program to find out it isn't.
1 second google search -> https://www.die-linke.de/partei/programm/ -> Marx's manifesto is cited among the first paragraphs -> the literal first sentence in point 3's second paragraph -> "Our goal of democratic socialism in the 21st century is a society free of domination in which all people can live in dignity." They mention the process of transforming capitalism to state mandated socialism and control of all companies by a democratic process. A democratic socialism is not a social capitalism, they don't support capitalism in any way or form, and they want to actively move away from it, which they also say among the first sentences on this very page.
It took me all of 5 seconds to achieve this enlightenment. You should try it sometimes.
The crux of it is that they are not anti-democratic.
German law tries to protect against anti-democratic groups and categorizes them as extremists (including left wing extremists) if they a threatening democracy.
In practice that means that group is then surveilled. If there is evidence that the group tries to overthrow democracy, they are banned.
Die Linke is in many ways _more_ democratic than other groups and parties as they support direct democracy and workplace democracy.
It's a little bit harder. The problem is that the SPD will also talk about democratic socialism and does indeed just mean social capitalism with that. And depending on who you talk with at the left, there is still the idea to use the power of capitalism, just to remove the negative aspects with various means.
But indeed, the program now does distance itself from social capitalism specifically and gives further reasoning to why. I wasn't aware they spell it out so clearly now. We can still argue about how much capitalism would be left when following their program - like when the means of production are owned differently, but used similarly - but I have to give you a point there. My comment as written was not correct.