{"id":13346,"date":"2024-04-09T19:37:45","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13346"},"modified":"2024-04-09T19:37:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:37:46","slug":"the-dangerous-resurgence-of-germanys-far-right-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13346","title":{"rendered":"The dangerous resurgence of Germany\u2019s far right, explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“A relatively young political party, the AfD was born in 2013 after the financial crisis as a group that protested Germany\u2019s efforts to economically bail out southern countries in the European Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet while its platform initially focused more on the economy<\/a>, it seized on the issue of immigration following the 2015 refugee crisis<\/a>, when Germany took in more than one million refugees<\/a> from places including Syria, Afghanistan<\/a>, and Iraq. This was a roughly 1.2 percent increase to Germany\u2019s population of 81 million people at the time \u2014 but it marked a stark jump<\/a> in the number of refugees thanthe country had welcomed before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, the party has both driven and capitalized on rising backlash toward refugees and immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2016, the federal government has established new centers to house and welcome asylum seekers across Germany, including in states in east Germany that have historically had less diversity<\/a>. High inflation and energy costs have also exacerbated economic struggles that people have experienced in these regions, spurring some to blame immigrants for their problems even though they have nothing to do with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tensions with newcomers, which flared in 2015, received new attention in 2022 and 2023<\/a> when Germany took in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who fled the war, and when migrants from other regions increased as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you think as a German, if you need an apartment and then hear, there would be an apartment free but that is kept free for Ukrainians?\u201d Mario asked. \u201cThen I say to myself, thank you, Germany. I pay taxes but I don\u2019t get an apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of its answer to addressing the rise in immigration, the AfD has increasingly embraced a xenophobic and anti-Muslim platform \u2014 due to the Middle Eastern origins of many earlier refugees \u2014with the purported goal of preserving German identity and nationalism. \u201cIslam does not belong to Germany,\u201d<\/a> reads the party\u2019s 2016 manifesto.<\/a> \u201cBurkas? We\u2019re more into bikinis,\u201d read one AfD tagline from 2017<\/a>. \u201cUnser Land zuerst<\/a>,\u201d which translates to \u201cOur country first!\u201d adorned AFD campaign banners in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe party has radicalized<\/a> a lot since 2013,\u201d Jakob Guhl, a researcher focused on the far right at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany, told Vox. As it did, the party grew its base in the more socially conservative regions in eastern Germany, which has typically lagged other parts of the country economically as well<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2024\/3\/12\/24080074\/germany-afd-far-right<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A relatively young political party, the AfD was born in 2013 after the financial crisis as a group that protested Germany\u2019s efforts to economically bail out southern countries in the European Union.
\nYet while its platform initially focused more on the economy, it seized on the issue of immigration following the 2015 refugee crisis, when Germany took in more than one million refugees from places including Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This was a roughly 1.2 percent increase to Germany\u2019s population of 81 million people at the time \u2014 but it marked a stark jump in the number of refugees than the country had welcomed before.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the party has both driven and capitalized on rising backlash toward refugees and immigration.<\/p>\n

Since 2016, the federal government has established new centers to house and welcome asylum seekers across Germany, including in states in east Germany that have historically had less diversity. High inflation and energy costs have also exacerbated economic struggles that people have experienced in these regions, spurring some to blame immigrants for their problems even though they have nothing to do with them.<\/p>\n

Tensions with newcomers, which flared in 2015, received new attention in 2022 and 2023 when Germany took in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who fled the war, and when migrants from other regions increased as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think as a German, if you need an apartment and then hear, there would be an apartment free but that is kept free for Ukrainians?\u201d Mario asked. \u201cThen I say to myself, thank you, Germany. I pay taxes but I don\u2019t get an apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of its answer to addressing the rise in immigration, the AfD has increasingly embraced a xenophobic and anti-Muslim platform \u2014 due to the Middle Eastern origins of many earlier refugees \u2014 with the purported goal of preserving German identity and nationalism. \u201cIslam does not belong to Germany,\u201d reads the party\u2019s 2016 manifesto. \u201cBurkas? We\u2019re more into bikinis,\u201d read one AfD tagline from 2017. \u201cUnser Land zuerst,\u201d which translates to \u201cOur country first!\u201d adorned AFD campaign banners in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe party has radicalized a lot since 2013,\u201d Jakob Guhl, a researcher focused on the far right at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany, told Vox. As it did, the party grew its base in the more socially conservative regions in eastern Germany, which has typically lagged other parts of the country economically as well.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2024\/3\/12\/24080074\/germany-afd-far-right<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[728,727,509,1146],"class_list":["post-13346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-politics","tag-right-wing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13347,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13346\/revisions\/13347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}