Is being a Nazi ‘hip’? Germany’s youth increasingly embrace far-right ideology
The German far-right recruits youth through music, rap, and martial arts, rapidly expanding on social media while using codes to evade prosecution
Germany is moving to the right again.
This was not only made evident by February’s election results, but it’s also becoming more visible among ordinary folks, especially young people.
February’s snap vote, brought after the collapse of a centre-left administration, saw the conservative bloc come out on top ahead of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which garnered its best-ever result in a federal vote amid discontent over immigration and the economy.
The soaring support for the AfD, in a country where being far-right was long considered a no-go in light of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, appears to be going hand in hand with a wider willingness to openly voice racist views.
Thanks to social media, the far-right scene is able to better target young people, some of whom the irony of chanting Nazi slogans in a country that is responsible for the Holocaust appears to be lost.
Domestic intelligence officials in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate say that right-wingers nowadays express their views more openly than they used to and are increasingly present on social media.