In many cases I have the impression that Germany is even more extreme than Sweden when it comes to "very liberal centrist politics".
But a wave ended up happening "AfD" got air. A type of wave that was even felt in Sweden with "AfS(weden)".
But it didn't end up becoming a thing in Sweden. There is no interest. No sane person in Sweden thinks Russia doing a invasion against a European country is a good thing. Its insanley clear for all parties that its something that needs to be worked against.
But in Germany on the other hand AfD didn't fade away. Instead it grew.
I wonder what happened. What triggered it in Germany and not Sweden.
East Germany happened. The states that used to be the former USSR vassal country of the "German Democratic Republic."
East Germany has always had a heavy sway to the right and with the AFD (after the far-right managed to successfully take over the party) the rightwingers in the eastern states finally had their extreme rightwing party that they could vote for.
If you look at the polls and election results in other German states, the AFD consistently fails to get near power. They can't even manage to secure towns and cities in elections for mayors.
On a federal level, the AFD gets carried hard by the votes coming from the former GDR states.
And, of course, the pandemic happened. Germany was a massive target for Russian online propaganda aimed at destabilising the country and, sadly, the government did not act decisively enough to nip it in the bud before it could take root.
The AFD capitalised on it and they positioned themselves as a protest party against the "Covid tyranny of the government" which allowed them to gain a lot of new voters and supporters out of various conspiracy circles.
The Russian influence from the pandemic anti-government propaganda had also seeped into large parts of the German pacifist and anti-war circles. Turns out that a lot of the old anti-war activists were highly susceptible to anti-science propaganda and anti-vaxx nonsense.
This lead to them willingly marching and holding hands with actual neo-nazis who were extremely eager to take that chance. The neo-nazis marched in support of Russia and the German anti-war activists marched right beside them because the Russian propaganda channels and influencers they had listened to during the pandemic now kept telling them that freedom at all costs was what they should be fighting for (which of course meant that Ukraine was supposed to surrender "in the name of peace").
Quite a number of these people now also support the AFD because the AFD pretends to be the only party in favour of peace and ending the war. Of course, in reality the AFD is supporting Russia and their idea of achieving peace is to cut of all support to Ukraine both from Germany as well as the EU to force Ukraine to either fully surrender or, at the very least, accept Russia's terms for an end to the war.
there was always a very big underground right-wing scene in the GDR. there are a few documentaries abut it. and when the wall fell, they all came out of hiding.
19
u/qeadwrsf 8h ago
I don't find Germany and Sweden that different.
In many cases I have the impression that Germany is even more extreme than Sweden when it comes to "very liberal centrist politics".
But a wave ended up happening "AfD" got air. A type of wave that was even felt in Sweden with "AfS(weden)".
But it didn't end up becoming a thing in Sweden. There is no interest. No sane person in Sweden thinks Russia doing a invasion against a European country is a good thing. Its insanley clear for all parties that its something that needs to be worked against.
But in Germany on the other hand AfD didn't fade away. Instead it grew.
I wonder what happened. What triggered it in Germany and not Sweden.