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.
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.
Men control women doing tiktoks? Even if a shady cabal of men sits at tiktok HQ algorithmically pushing ick content (why?), you need women to produce it in the first place.
Nah, that stuff is produced by women, for a female audience, it’s empathy bait, you can tell by the comments. Young boys then catch it as a stray, “WTF is this what are these standards how can I live up to them”.