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The AfD is flirting with Nazi history – but moral outrage alone won’t stop the far right
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Surely you can't believe the current economic situation in Germany is worse than in the 1990s - especially in East Germany?
The reasons people vote for racist parties is well-understood, and it has nothing to do with "economic" issues. The big difference between the 1990s and today is that the media are nowadays flooded with racist propaganda, whereas back then the media landscape was still dominated by public media and intellectuals. People are not any more racist than they were back then, but people didn't usually vote according to racist beliefs (aside from a handful of NPD voters) since public debate was dominated by non-racist issues. So it is precisely the opposite - economic issues have become less important to voters.
The way to defeat this surge of fascism is to start adequately regulating (social) media, for example by banning astroturfing and medical misinformation and holding those who host such content accountable.
Your analysis focuses on the "worse off" part of the inequality equation. You are seeing "worse off" people voting far right and you're arguing for removing that option for them.
You are ignoring the "better off" part of the inequality equation. The reason why the discourse is flooded with right wing shit is not because the "worse off" people are racists. It's because the "better off" people want them to be racists.
See, it doesn't matter whether today's economy is better than in the 1990s. What matters is that today's "better off" people have way more political power than in the 1990s. Which they use by exercising their free speech by flooding the discourse with right wing shit. Which is also why your "banning" approach just won't work: they will just shit on you stronger and you'll lose the next election.
The economic strategy to actually tackle fascism is not to make the worse off less worse off. As you argue, they are less worse off now than before. But that's looking it from the wrong side. The point is to cut down the much much better off so they no longer can translate their economic power to political power.
Focus on Sauron, not on the Haradrim. Saruman, not the Dunlendings.
The funding still is. That the public broadcasters aren't intellectual is up to them, the politicians who control them and the voters who vote for them.
That the public media supported Youtube and didn't create a free alternative is up to them and the politicians. It could be incompetence but to me it is malice.
The AfD is a product of weaponized neglect. The fight against their facism is used to bind all resources which helps to establish another fascism, run by the established elite.
The "funding" comes from advertisement on social media, which is the dominant way people, especially those most likely to fall victim to propaganda, consume news. Sure, public media still exist, but they are far less relevant.
This isn't about "alternatives," it's about a failure to adequately regulate. Imagine if Der Spiegel posts an anonymous article - without verifying the identity of the author - alleging that Jews are coming to enslave your children. Yet this situation is exactly what social media are currently like, and the kind of content that spreads on there like a cancer.
It's tempting to find the good in other people, and if they vote for obvious racists, there must be something to it other than racism. And while people are not innately evil, the vast majority can be easily manipulated by the forces of evil weaponizing people's lowest instincts. It is those forces that should be tackled at the root, instead of letting them run rampant and ineffectively trying to quench the fires they start.
https://www.influencer-marketing.de/the-state-of-german-influencer-marketing-report-2025/
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/finanzen/ertrag-rundfunkbeitrag-100.html
Looks to me like influencer receive €1 billion while the public broadcasters receive €8 billion.
Many influencer also oppose the fascists.
The public broadcasters have the resources but they waste them. I can't believe in so much incompetence. The elite wants the popularity of the AfD, without them gaining an absolute majority.
You're missing the point, and not comparing apples to apples (influencers are only a small segment of the ad market; public broadcasters do much more than report news).
Yes, those €8 billion could be spent more effectively from the perspective of tackling fascism by stooping down to their level and flooding the waves with propaganda against fascism. This is not the situation we should want.
As long as public media remain committed to (trying to) reporting in a balanced way - as they should! - it can never compete with fascist propaganda that is not afraid to willfully lie. It is the fascist propaganda that must be tackled at its root.
They are:
The quoted number above should be their share.
Must be spent! By law that's why they are collected. Not spending them on political education is the first step towards propaganda.
That's not the best way to handle it. Truthful education would have prevented the current situation.
Balanced is already giving an equal share to lies. They have to tell how it is. If people trust them then lies lose their power.
How? An extremely tiny minority of the population has any semblance of education, it's not realistic to expect to be able to educate the masses up to the standard required to steel oneself against an endless barrage of malicious propaganda.
No, "balanced" means calling out lies for being lies - but the truth is still nuanced. You can't hope to compete with simple propaganda slogans and oneliners through nuance and thoughtfulness.
When public broadcasters are trusted they can tell what is bad and people will believe them. That trust is lost in big parts.
If people suffer and are isolated, they want easy answers. We created the circumstances where people don't have time for nuances. Public broadcasters can't and shouldn't placate society forever. Propaganda wouldn't be an issue if the broadcasters had prepared society for what is coming.
...due to a barrage of malicious propaganda.
The standard of living in Germany is close to the highest it's ever been.
The betrayal came first.
If you measure size of TV screens. Sport clubs are losing members, bridges are fragile, trains unpunctual, pensions are not secure, teachers cannot teach the same level of knowledge, nature will change soon. People want answers and the estsblishment doesn't deliver.