#AfD Supporters

[tmarshconnors]

Stop Using "Nazi" Out of Context!

Today's polarised political climate, it’s become all too common to see accusations being thrown around with little regard for their actual meaning. One of the most alarming trends is the misuse of the word "Nazi" to discredit or silence opposing viewpoints. In Germany, this is particularly evident when discussing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Many supporters of the AfD are often labeled as Nazis, but this oversimplification is not only unfair but also dangerous.

As someone living in the UK who supports the Alternative for Germany (AfD), I find it frustrating that political discourse so often descends into name-calling and false associations. Simply supporting a political party like AfD, which focuses on issues like national sovereignty, immigration control, and Euroscepticism. Nobody with these values should ever be called “Nazi”

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a right-wing political party that advocates for stricter immigration controls, preservation of national identity, and skepticism towards the European Union. It appeals to those who feel that traditional political parties have ignored their concerns—especially about issues like immigration, national sovereignty, and economic policy.

Seriously what I ask you what has that got to do with being a Nazi?!?! Oh I know. I shall tell you NOTHING!

Us AfD supporters come from diverse backgrounds. Some are disillusioned former voters of centrist parties who feel that their views are no longer represented by the political mainstream. Others are concerned about the cultural and economic impacts of mass migration. Still, others are simply advocates of a more limited government and national pride.

None of these positions automatically equate to Nazism. In fact, they represent opinions that are shared by many people across Europe and the world, regardless of their political alignment.

Why "Nazi" is a Dangerous Label?

I don’t know why you wouldn’t know why it’s dangerous but for the less educated out of The term "Nazi" refers to members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), led by Adolf Hitler, responsible for one of the darkest chapters in human history the Holocaust and World War II. To casually throw around such a loaded term diminishes the horrors that actual Nazis inflicted and distorts historical memory. It also shuts down meaningful discussion.

Labeling AfD supporters as Nazis is a form of intellectual laziness. It avoids engaging with the real issues they care about and reduces complex political debates to crude name-calling. This tactic not only alienates people who might be open to dialogue, but it also entrenches divisions and fuels resentment.

Moreover, calling someone a Nazi is an accusation with serious implications. In Germany, Nazism is not just a political slur it carries legal weight. The country has strict laws against Nazi symbols, speech, and activities, which makes the label even more inflammatory. If every right-wing or nationalist stance is equated with Nazism, it dilutes the power of these laws and makes it harder to identify actual neo-Nazis who do pose a threat.

A REAL THREAT!

It’s vital to differentiate between political disagreement and extremism. Not every conservative or nationalist is an extremist. AfD supporters, like those of any political party, have a range of motivations and beliefs.

Many are simply frustrated with the status quo and seek change through democratic means. They participate in elections, engage in policy debates, and advocate for their vision of Germany’s future—just as supporters of other parties do. Political disagreement isn’t extremism. Far from it.

I genuinely can’t believe I have to explain this but the problem with labelling AfD supporters as Nazis is that it dismisses their legitimate concerns out of hand. Immigration, national identity, and economic sovereignty are valid topics for debate, and dismissing them as fascist talking points only serves to deepen the divide between different segments of society.

You MUST understand the political landscape of 21st-century Germany is not the same as it was in the 1930s. Comparing today’s AfD to the NSDAP of Hitler's era is misleading and historically inaccurate. While the AfD may take controversial positions, it operates within the framework of a democratic society. It faces scrutiny from the media, opposition from other political parties, and judgment from the electorate. Its rise is a reflection of the electorate’s discontent, not a return to fascism.

By placing It all together all right-wing movements under the Nazi label, we ignore the nuances and complexities of modern politics. People who support AfD aren’t advocating for a fascist dictatorship—they’re expressing their views on how Germany should be governed in a rapidly changing world.

What we need more of in today’s political discourse is open dialogue and a willingness to understand different perspectives. Disagreeing with AfD policies is entirely valid, but dismissing its supporters as Nazis is not a productive at all!

Try engaging in meaningful conversations about the concerns that drive people to support AfD can lead to better understanding and potentially even compromise.

It’s crucial to recognise that the misuse of the term "Nazi" ultimately harms the democratic process. When we reduce our opponents to caricatures, we lose the opportunity to engage in healthy, constructive debate. This is happening all over the western world. If we can’t have simple constructive conversations all the men and woman who fought for our freedom etc would of been for NOTHING!

Supporting the Alternative for Germany does not make someone a Nazi. It’s that simple!

[tardis--dreams]

We get a new colleague in December and i looked him up and he's so heavily und unconcealed right winged i feel nauseous. I mean he's Extremely right-winged. Climate change denier, corona denier, racist, anti gender equality, anti queer, everything. And i didn't try to dig up dirt or anything. It's literally the first thing you find if you just google his name

[doomdoomofdoom]

Side ramble but the notes are full of people complaining that this is left wing ideology, actually, but

it's not.

You're just American.

[philemonsdarling]

can somebody please explain why a trans person would support a far-right party that is openly transphobic? it just doesn't make sense to me

[baekuras]

During work we got a radio going upstairs and I swear every time I hear them mention how x,y or z-person of the german (and others sadly) government fully endorse and want to help Israel I wanna hit someone

"We fully trust that Israel will stay within humanitarian laws during these attacks" bitch they already broke em? We are way past "uwu but poor Israel has to defend itself" being churned out over and over and OVER again

I am sorry but if "defend yourself" is equal to mass murdering thousands of innocent people deliberately-either quickly via bombs or slowly by letting them die from thirst or hunger or festering wounds etc....then I got a new defense in court prepared for whatever may come

Aside from the fact that if we treat a whole nation as terrorists because of one group we'd have to nuke a whole lot of places so Hamas hiding, or not, or yes actually, but no we know fully where they are-whatever the better 'truth' is right now is still insane

[doomdoomofdoom]

huh.

Olaf jetzt Dönerpreisbremse

[lisztig]

Hello any German following me (or stumbling across this post somehow), if you're in Hessen or Bavaria remember to go and vote today if you haven't already!

[alaturkanews]

German far right surges in polls, alarming mainstream parties

Prominent figures in Germany’s political mainstream are raising the alarm after a new poll showed support for the country’s leading far-right party at a record high. The latest release from the DeutschlandTrend survey, which is conducted monthly by infratest dimap for public broadcaster ARD, clocks voter support for Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) at 18%, putting it on…

[elbiotipo]

The thing about comparing various political candidates to Hitler is not only that you look like an idiot, but Hitler is dead. The original Nazis are dead or pushing over 90 years old. While we can argue about how successful desnazification was, Nazi Germany was crushed and defeated. Almost a century ago.

Fascism still exists as an idea. Neo-nazism exists as an idea. Fascism is dangerously on the rise today. But these aren't dead nazis rising from the tomb, with the possible exception of the AFD (and even that is arguable). They are the result of modern, current dynamics that are happening right now. Why do you think we see things that for Hitler would be heresy, like Slavic neonazis or white supremacists supporting Israel? Because they are not ghost nazis marching from the 1940s, they're new currents of fascist and ideological allies that have been born from the current conditions of today.

In Argentina, we see the agrarian landowner conservatives allying with the libertarian movement which has found ways to revindicate the murderous military dictatorships to the youth. In the United States, we see the neoconservatives who support the military-complex with the alt-right, the evangelical Dominionists, and a current of white supremacism that has it's roots in the KKK rather than Hitler. And so with other countries. Every country has it's own roots of fascism and it's own horrible expressions, but actual nazis or rather neo-nazis, while present everywhere, aren't the dominant enemy right now.

(in fact, the current expansion of white supremacism is, at is root, almost completely Usamerican in ideological origin, as the US exports it's products and culture, it also exports it's ideological extremists)

To understand and combat fascism one has to understand how it manifests in different periods and places, and how the whole spectrum of the right, while broadly allied in the defense of the current capitalist/imperialist system, has many different currents on it that require different approaches.

[tanadrin]

It is also common to hear criticism of Israel described as antisemitic, a fact that has resulted in the paradox of the German state actively suppressing those Jewish voices that do not conform to their expectations. A state-owned cultural center, Oyoun, faces defunding by the Berlin Senate for hosting an evening of “mourning and hope” put together by Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East, a Jewish organization. On November 9, the city of Frankfurt on Main forbade a planned rally called “Never again fascism – remembering Kristallnacht, fighting anti-Semitism,” apparently due to the organizer’s past support for Palestine. The police continue to selectively enforce bans on such phrases as  “stop genocide,” “free Palestine,” and “stop the war,” often with no prior announcement. A sanctioned protest in Berlin on November 10, organized by a coalition of Jewish and Israeli groups, resulted in several arrests due to the sudden mid-protest banning of some of these phrases. They included the arrest of a Jewish-Israeli woman who held a sign that read: “As a Jew and Israeli: Stop the Genocide in Gaza.” The war in Gaza comes at a moment when every major political party in Germany is lurching rightward on the issue of migration, embracing xenophobic and Islamophobic policies once reserved for the marginalized far right. “Germany cannot accept any more refugees,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Merkel, said. “We have enough antisemitic men in this country.” Scholz, a Social Democrat, appeared on the cover of Der Spiegel in a determined portrait framed by the quote: “We must finally deport on a grand scale.” The specter of antisemitism has proved opportune for mainstream parties, which are threatened by a surge in popularity for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, whose platform is proudly anti-immigrant. ... Just as reports of attacks on mosques have risen since October 7, recent incidents of antisemitic crimes have produced fear among Jews in Germany. Stars of David have been painted outside Jewish homes; a synagogue in Berlin was firebombed, albeit with no injuries or property damage. These are not isolated events; the number of antisemitic incidents in 2021 was the highest since authorities began tracking them. Yet politicians’ focus on Muslims and migrants as their source runs contrary to the facts. According to the federal police, the “vast majority” of antisemitic crimes – more than 80 percent — are committed by the far right.

[setmeatopthepyre]

okay so the LAFD is struggling with budget cuts and Buck has been baking his broken little heart out

you know what that means

🫓 buck's brokenhearted bakesale 🫓

🍞 putting the loaf in L(o)AFD 🍞

🥖 pain is french for bread and also what Buck feels when the 217 roll by to show support 🥖

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

German zoomers support AfD.

[mariacallous]

BERLIN — For the first time since the Nazi era, a far-right party in Germany has won the largest piece of the electoral pie in a state election.

Mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders are expressing alarm following Sunday’s elections, in which the anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic and pro-Russia Alternative for Germany party came out on top in the state of Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote.

The 11-year-old party also earned second place to the traditional conservative Christian Democratic Union party in the neighboring state of Saxony. Both states are in the former East Germany.

“No one can brush this off as a ‘protest’ vote anymore,” Charlotte Knobloch, head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, said in a statement late Sunday.

“Exactly 85 years after the start of World War II, Germany is in danger of becoming a different country again: more unstable, colder and poorer, less secure, less worth living in,” said Knobloch, a former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany who herself survived the Holocaust in hiding.

The election came just over a week since a Syrian refugee was arrested after a deadly stabbing spree at a festival in the city of Solingen, and only days after Germany resumed its program of deporting refugees convicted of crimes. The knife attack, in which three people were killed, reignited popular anxiety about social unrest connected with the more than 1 million refugees admitted to Germany since 2015.

AfD stresses isolationism, takes an anti-EU and pro-Russian stance, and is accused of fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment. Some of its most extreme representatives have also belittled the Holocaust, saying that Germany has paid enough penance for the sins of an older generation.

Mass protests against the party took place earlier this year following revelations that the party had held a secret meeting at a lakeside villa to discuss plans to deport foreigners, including those who had become German citizens. Prominent neo-Nazis attended the meeting, according to the news organization that broke the story, inducing painful echoes of the gathering of Nazi leaders at nearby Wannsee in 1942 to devise a plan to deport and then murder Jews.

But while support for the AfD dipped in polls at the time, it soon rebounded and then accelerated. Now, it has achieved breakthrough results in state elections and raised concerns for next year’s national elections.

The party — whose Thuringen leader, Bjoern Hoecke, has been convicted twice of using a Nazi slogan to boost his party — is unlikely to form a ruling coalition in either state, since it is shunned by other parties. Still, it will have additional seats in the state legislatures and will have the numbers, particularly in Thuringia, to interfere with some governing decisions.

A far-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance or BSW, also produced notable results, coming in third in Thuringia with 15.8% of the vote. Last month, the current head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, warned that the party, which has accused Israel of genocide in its war in Gaza, was “fueling hatred of Israel in Germany.”

The new election results bode ill for Germany’s future, Schuster said on Sunday.

“Can we recover from this hit?” Schuster wrote in a column in the Bild newspaper. “Our free society must not fall, especially in the face of Islamist terror. Unvarnished truths — honesty and sincerity — are needed, not populist pseudo-answers from radical parties.”

In Thuringia, the mainstream Social Democratic Party barely squeaked in, with 6.1%. Several parties, including the Greens and Free Democratic Party, received so few votes that they will not have any seats at all.

BSW also came in third in Saxony, with 11.8% of the vote, following the AfD with 30.6% and the CDU with a narrow win at 31.9%.

Younger voters overwhelmingly favored the AfD in this week’s elections, according to an NTV-Infratest exit poll.

“The survivors are asking themselves: ‘Didn’t we do enough to teach, to tell, to show?” Christoph Heubner of the International Auschwitz Committee, told the Guardian.

Some Jewish leaders say German politicians would do well to address the concerns apparently expressed by voters this weekend.

“The election results in the German federal states of Thuringia and Saxony are a clear wake-up call to the centrist parties in Germany to listen to the real concerns and fears of the people,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement. “When half the population votes for parties on the extreme fringes, their problems must be addressed openly and honestly.”

Sunday was an “insanely sad” election day, German Jewish journalist Samira Lazarovic wrote on Facebook. She said her 96-year-old father compared the outcome to the opening salvo of World War II, exactly 85 years ago.

Lazarovic said it was is urgent to reach out to younger voters. “It’s not that we know better than they; but we should shape the future together.”

Obviously, it wasn’t enough to take to the streets and protest against the far right, she added: “Populists all over the world have one thing in common. They mean exactly what they say and do everything they can to turn their words to deeds.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

WaPo: How car bans and heat pump rules drive voters to the far right

Shannon Osaka at WaPo:

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent. But something else happened, according to a new study. The Dutch families who were most vulnerable to the increase in gas prices — renters who paid their own utility bills — drifted to the right. Families facing increased home energy costs became 5 to 6 percent more likely to vote for one of the Netherlands’ far-right parties. A similar backlash is happening all over Europe, as far-right parties position themselves in opposition to green policies. In Germany, a law that would have required homeowners to install heat pumps galvanized the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, giving it a boost. Farmers have rolled tractors into Paris to protest E.U. agricultural rules, and drivers in Italy and Britain have protested attempts to ban gas-guzzling cars from city centers.

That resurgence of the right could slow down the green transition in Europe, which has been less polarized on global warming, and serves as a warning to the United States, where policies around electric vehicles and gas stoves have already sparked a backlash. The shift also shows how, as climate policies increasingly touch citizens’ lives, even countries whose voters are staunchly supportive of clean energy may hit roadblocks. “This has really expanded the coalition of the far right,” said Erik Voeten, a professor of geopolitics at Georgetown University and the author of the new study on the Netherlands.

Other studies have found similar results. In one study in Milan, researchers at Bocconi University studied the voting patterns of drivers whose cars were banned from the city center for being too polluting. These drivers, who on average lost the equivalent of $4,000 because of the ban, were significantly more likely to vote for the right-wing Lega party in subsequent elections. In Sweden, researchers found that low-income families facing high electricity prices were also more likely to turn toward the far right. Far-right parties in Europe have started to position themselves against climate action, expanding their platforms from anti-immigration and anti-globalization. A decade ago, the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom emphasized that it wasn’t against renewable energy — just increasing energy prices. But by 2021, the party’s manifesto had moved to more extreme language. “Energy is a basic need, but climate madness has turned it into a very expensive luxury item,” the manifesto said. “The far right has increasingly started to campaign on opposition to environmental policies and climate change,” Voeten said.

The pushback also reflects, in part, how much Europe has decarbonized. More than 60 percent of the continent’s electricity already comes from renewable sources or nuclear power; so meeting the European Union’s climate goals means tacklingother sectors — transportation, buildings, agriculture.

[...] Some of these voting patterns have also played out in the United States. According to a study by the Princeton political scientist Alexander Gazmararian, historically-Democratic coal communities that lost jobs in the shift to natural gas increased their support for Republican candidates by 5 percent. The shift was larger in areas located farther from new gas power plants — that is, areas where voters couldn’t see that it was natural gas, not environmental regulations, that undercut coal.

Gazmararian says that while climate denial and fossil fuel misinformation have definitely played a role, many voters are motivated simply by their own financial pressures. “They’re in an economic circumstance where they don’t have many options,” he said. The solution, experts say, is todesign policies that avoid putting too much financial burden on individual consumers. In Germany, where the law to install heat pumps would have cost homeowners $7,500 to $8,500 more than installing gas boilers, policymakers quickly retreated. But by that point, far-right party membership had already surged.

The Washington Post explains what may be at least partially causing the rise of far-right extremist parties in Europe, Conservatives in Canada, and the Republicans in some parts of the US: rising energy costs that low-income people are bearing the brunt of.

In the US, right-wing hysteria about gas stove bans and electric vehicles are also playing a role.

[casper-ry]

I am scared.

Oh what a time to be alive, I think, as I look at the results of the EU election in my home coutry, Germany.

The second-strongest group in my home country (AfD) is far-right, supports Putin (even had Russian spies in their midst), wants to literally DESTROY the EU, wants to revoke women's and LGBTQ+ people's rights, -

and that's just the beginning. And I can tell you where it'll end. And we had that same situation about a hundred years ago. Back then, Germany lost its constitution and started a genocide. And yes I'm talking about the Nazis.

I am scared. Not just of this political climate. I am scared because a lot of the people I know and am lucky to call my friends and acquaintances don't have a German passport, and because this party will want to get rid of them, or do anything they can, at least.

I am scared, because I am a trans man undergoing hormone therapy. It is, regrettably, a very vulnerable situation to be in in this political climate, because all they need to do is ban one type of medicine and claim it to be harmful-

or perhaps they will just revoke my rights to exist peacefully completely.

I am scared, because all this literal danger to the German constitution needed to do was speak a few pretty words for the camera, post it on Tiktok, and the people believed them blindly. So many haven't read the election program, so many don't know what these people want to do-

but they hate the other parties. So why not elect the one party that actively threatens the freedom and equal rights of our country?

I am scared. Maybe I won't be first in line to be shot, but I am standing in the queue.

And what scares me even more is that I can't understand HOW this situation could even happen. Were our voices not loud enough? Didn't we cry out and warned them often enough? Why did so many people choose to ignore the riots, the pleas, the thousands and thousands of voices?

Just "to make a statement"? Is voting against peace and against freedom and against equality a protest now? Is humanity so easily influenceable that they tune out all the voices on the streets? Or was I just optimistic, am I really just living in a country where we want war and supression and censors and dictators-

because that's what this is going to boil down to. And I am scared.

Scared of this country. Scared of the people in it. Scared of the future. Scared of what this predicts for the next election in 2025. Scared of the visibly easy manipulation of the masses.

Scared, because I KNOW that history repeats again and again and again and again and we claim to learn from it;

and yet, we don't.

[xenglitch]

anyway if i havent made it clear enough with my previous posts & reblogs, if you voted for the afd or any other right-wing party, if you support right-wing people and movements and/or support neo-nazis & nazis get off my fucking blog. i dont want you here and i hope you have a miserable fucking life ahead of you.